Posts by Mage

Re: DRM means you don't own your content

I buy ebooks from Amazon and use my REAL Kindle's serial number on a plug in for Calibre so I will always have it and can read on non-Amazon eReader or apps with no DRM.

At least Amazon does let publishers (or indie authors) be DRM free. Smashwords is also DRM free.

DRM is evil period.

I never give other people copies of anything still under copyright. Eventually the content of my physical and digital archives ought to be public domain.

Re: Any Restriction Placed on the Internet

DRM has many problems:

1) It adds extra cost to consumer (HDCP on HDMI)

2) It can fail where a authentication server is needed (Adobe ePub extensions or Plays for Sure etc)

3) It ultimately is contrary to properly implemented copyright laws based on Berne convention

4) Usually it doesn't stop professional pirates and makes life awkward to users.

5) It blocks innovation, entry of new hardware, software, operating systems etc. Benefits largest suppliers of end user SW/HW

There are other problems too. Basically unlike copyright or patents which can be implemented properly, DRM is simply coercive and evil. It's often misused to achieve other ends than copyright enforcement.

Re: ???

I'll bite.

A "trojan" isn't always a virus. It's something dressed as something else. Beware Greeks bearing gifts, or Geeks baring Gifs. c.f. Story of fall of Troy.

They existed in mainframe days, a free 9 track tape with a demo would actually also do something else.

A Trojan might have any purpose. It usually needs to be explicitly run. It might be presented as "click here to install this codec you need", or as legitimate app.

A "virus" is code that replicates itself from the computer it somehow got on, to another computer via any method. Amiga should have warned MS that "autorun" CDs on Win95 was rather ideal for a virus replication medium.

Malware can obviously combine Trojan and Virus techniques.

A root kit is a way of hiding malware, it may be legitimate such as special kind of device driver to emulate some particular hardware, or make a mounted ISO look like a CD/DVD to anti-piracy software.

I suspect wikipedia, bing, google, yahoo answer the question.

Re: most LED lamps draw

Most LED lamps are SMPSU giving a low voltage. Most CFL use a SMPSU that is called an Electronic ballast, which replaces the passive iron cored choke.

The problems are that the circuits take current spikes at the peak of the sinewave and generate RFI. Also life is short due to the electrolytic capacitors drying out.

I like the new filament string LED (typically 28 LEDs and 110V per filament, but 220V/240V models may use longer "filaments" or pairs). Virtually no RFI, though they still only take current over part of the cycle as they have a rectifier and capacitor, though no pesky SMPSU in ones I've looked at.

Some SMPSUs will blow up or go on fire or trip the "fuse box" during a "brown out" as they take more current to maintain output power and voltage.

Re: PHP

Look at the OLD security bugs in new PHP modules on mailing lists for all the popular CMS / Forums etc.

EVERY WEEK!

Popular or fast to put out the door != good

Re: What about the postcard thing?

Users of Google maps should not be able to mark a business as closed, period, not without proper verification. That's too open to abuse by competitor's shills, trolls and idiots. It's an abuse of Google's market share too.

Improved coverage and speed

No new spec gives either of those, only a change in licence conditions forcing operators to treble or x10 the number of base-stations. Also a SINGLE wholesale RAN for all bands would instantly give x2 to x4 improvement in speed/capacity.

The issue is ROI, the profit vs cost of more basestations. Unless there is a different charging model, adding coverage adds too few extra customers and adding speed/capacity adds almost no extra customers and almost no extra revenue per customer.

The 5G doesn't change physics or economics. The newer high speed bands will only work on femto cells fed by fibre, near line of sight, maybe reliably only 100m at high speed.

Cloud selling and Pricing

Yes, the "Cloud" is the problem. The way it's hyped, priced and marketed encourages beancounters to outsource to it.

Almost Zero regulation.

No 3rd party audit or oversight

No transparency on backup, resilience, security or privacy. Just vendor hype.

There are things that are appropriate for the "Cloud". However increasingly due to marketing of the Cloud vendors, the applications are inappropriate.