Posts by Paul Crawford
1000 posts • joined Thursday 15th March 2007 16:58 GMT
Re: How much ....
Because you are paying someone else to do it.
In theory you get reliable operation and nice management tools, but in practice you often get a plate of donkey gonads to suck upon.
Re: AC 15:24
Microsoft's FAT32 patent is a very bad example, the reason no one else did it earlier was IT WOULD NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS until Microsoft did it their way.
No one in their right mind would choose to do thing in the FAT32 way unless they have to work with MS software, and their oligopoly status means you have to.
This is an example of why patents need reigned in - where you can't interoperate without infringing. The basic idea behind the patent system is good, the problems I have are those already stated, that the may be:
too obvious
too general
not very inventive
needed for interoperability
too long lasting in areas (e.g. software) where 20-25 years represents many, many generations of a product.
Re: h4rm0ny
OK, that explains something and makes more sense. I had assumed this was an extension of the device driver signing process where they did look at your code.
One way mirror?
So am I right in assuming that to get approval MS get to see all of your 'trade secrets' of your source code, quite possibly to copy (sorry, "influence") for new MS products, but you don't get to see theirs?
If you have to bare all, at least go open-source and maybe get community help in bug-fixes, etc.
Re: Not as cheap as it sounds
Just read the blurb:
"Secure – Amazon Glacier supports secure transfer of your data over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and automatically stores data encrypted at rest using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256, a secure symmetric-key encryption standard using 256-bit encryption keys. You can also control access to your data using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). IAM enables organizations with multiple employees to create and manage multiple users under a single AWS account and to set resource-based access policies."
So basically they encrypt the "tapes" (we presume they use tape ultimately) but the still have access to your data, i.e. it is not encrypted at your side, using a key that only your company has.
Bend over Blackadder, its PATRIOT time!
Re: Not as cheap as it sounds
For a small user at least you save the cost and maintenance of the tape drive, and the off-site storage of tapes in case of major local damage, etc, which makes it attractive.
But the lack of any obvious way to control the encryption yourself (unless I missed something) is not good.
Re: Hmm, where do I put all my sensitive data?
The only sensible option is to encrypt the data with *your* key before it gets to them. Of course that usually buggers up de-dupe and always buggers storage-side compression, so they won't like that being the norm.
Considering the other problem, that of up/down link bandwidth, you would really want to compress/de-dupe your data before considering backing it up, which would help them as well. Not quite so simple to use properly then.
Re: Whatever is bad for Microsoft is good for everyone else.
I up-voted you because some of what you said is true (i.e. we need more and real competition for the mass buyers of computers), even though I suspect you need to keep taking the dried frog pills...
Re: Is this really an issue?
"A surprising number of companies were still using 16-bit installers that should have been done away with a decade earlier."
Er, why?
Assuming they do/did a proper job that the business needs, why should they not be supported on 64-bit as for 32-bit OS?
The idea that *working* software has to be replaced simply because the OS supplier can't be bothered to support it is a worry, and is the best argument of all for going open-source where you have the ability (or paid contractors can) support legacy stuff if it is cheaper then throwing away years of experience and bug-fixes in the pursuit of 'shiny'.
Re: Your rival may get many more viewers by NOT banning it
There are no rivals - except the pirates, and of course then you don't need all of this technology to 'allow' you the watch the stuff you just paid for, you can watch it anywhere.
Really, in a number of ways I support the TPB simply because the low bar to accessing 'pirated' material has, or hopefully will, make the content industry realise its not so precious after all and that if they want my money they have to make the experience of legal purchase easy and effective for me, on any of my devices.
Does any one out there really want stronger DRM to be baked in to the hardware and further restrictions on what you can and cannot do with YOUR hardware becoming the norm? Screw you Apple!
What metadata should be protected?
The idea that removing any metadata should be stopped is a dangerous one, as it could lead to images being attributable to people who really don't want that in public (e.g. photo of a crime, personal adverts on dating sites, etc).
What is needed is some sensible machine & human readable metadata for copyright that is protected by law, and maybe some hash of the rest (date.time, camera settings, GPS coords, etc) if it is missing. That way images' ownership can be traced as needed, but are not identifiable so easily unless the photographer applied their public 'signature'.
Re: Ouch
Do you really want all of your data locked to the CPU, so if your machine dies and you swap the disk to another it is all unreadable?
At least with an iPad there is no real expectation of recovering data/physically upgrading if it has failed (or stolen, as likely), and their whole software model is based on cloud backup.
And yes, you probably should have a backup of your PC but we all know how easy and regularly done that is...and how successfully and well tested the restore process is...
Re: pointless
It is not pointless because:
1) It makes Joe Public realise that this is OK and sort of MS-approved, and is safer than a random download.
2) It gives other browsers a chance, and not just Chrome that Google push relentlessly on their home page.
Remember, this is not for El Reg's typical reader.
Re: What a ridiculous situation
oligopoly
noun
the market condition that exists when there are few sellers, as a result of which they can greatly influence price and other market factors. Compare duopoly, monopoly
The point you are missing is this is not about corporate users for whom a sysadmin sets up the approves configuration, nor for readers of El Reg who fully understand how to install other browsers and/or configure search engine choices.
This is about Joe Public who can't tell the difference between an address bar and a search engine, and for whom the blue 'e' was "The Internet". Once most of them are using an OS-specific browser you get the stupidity and lock-in seen, for example, in a lot of South Korean banks where you need an ActiveX plug-in for on-line banking.
And so you can keep your hands tightly around consumers genitals and squeeze them for all the money you can with little chance of them moving way from your cash-cow.
That is what the EU has acted for, and given the size of MS and their inability to keep a promise, I don't think 10% fine is out of the question. Please educate yourself on the whole anti-trust proceedings that started with MS moving against Netscape before arguing about it.
Re: What a ridiculous situation
You really don't get it do you?
"There is no law saying you MUST buy Microsoft" - go to any of the major vendors (HP, Dell, Toshiba, Leveno, etc) and see what proportion of consumer machines & laptops you can buy world-wide without Windows, then report back here.
Damn, I fed a troll again!
Re: What a ridiculous situation
I think you missed the Troll icon.
Can't you understand what the implications of monopoly / oligopoly status means? If Ford had 99% of all garages in their pocket, you don't think they would get such treatment as well?
As for the success of companies, you also seem too dim to realise that often that comes from misusing their position to crush opposition and/or disadvantage competitors. I have no problem with Google being the biggest search engine if it is due to them having the best algorithm, but it is an issue when they start promoting their own brands ABOVE competitors because of ownership, not relevance.
Geed, you break the rules then expect to get punished! Oh unless you are a US company in the USA where the DOJ drops things that might harm your profits.
Re: Unicorn sighted! Oh wait, it's just a donkey with an ice cream cone stuck on its napper :(
I did not even get that far, I read about it on this esteemed organ and immediately found it won't work on Linux. Now I do have access to an old copy of Windows, but it comes back to the point that Andrew made (as countless others have) that DRM sucks!
The inconvenience and high probability of paying for something and getting screwed later is too high, and suddenly them there torrents looks might good, me hearty!
It comes back to this issue of control-freakery, and I guess some of that comes back to Byzantine licensing terms for each and every country and media that exists having grown over the years. Also pointed out is 2/3 of users are 'honest', so why make life hard and irritate your paying customers to protect content that is mostly going to be paid for, and those who don't pay you can't practically stop anyway?
I wish that some sense could be injected to both sides of the copyright debate.
Email down?
Seems I can't log in to my web email just now - merely a coincidence?
Still no big deal as I just use it for spam and facebook, which is the same thing really.
This is why I disable autorun on all possible media!
Autorun was a dumb idea - if you know so little about computers to be able to find and run a setup.exe file on some new software, you have no bloody business running arbitrary software in the first place! Learn, or get a knowledgeable person to help you (paid if necessary).
Re: AC 13:41
No my argument is more like: My friends/family/granny didn't understand it, it didn't work for them...
As for runas - why should it not have "just worked" like sudo? More skill required to fault-find.
Same for ACLs, the issue is not that I don't understand what they should do, more the fact you often need to use the tool to see what the effective ACLs are, and a lot of insight to see what those implications are for the system.
Then you get on to the thorny issue of execute permissions - can I use the ACLs to block all user-writeable areas like TEMP and their own profile from execute permissions and not break the whole machine? Not break Chrome? Linux has the execute bit that, by default, is disabled on downloads etc (OK, not on stuff copied from CD or FAT which is dumb...) which is another hump in malware prevention, ACLs should allow the same, but by default don't.
But you are 100% correct to say "they shouldn't have had to, the default user IDs are setup correctly for default user access" - it is this 'insecure by default' problem that plagued Windows for years, and while it is much improved now you still get the odd legacy application that only works with your admin pants down. You just pray that no one brings along a bucket of soapy frogs...
<= As an AC he/she just could not select the icon. Fixed it for you...
Really the whole "block the competition" aspect sucks, why not limit patent litigation to deciding on a parentage of the sales revenue based on how much the patent is of the whole device?
Given that most products have thousands of patents used in them it seems ridiculous that trivial stuff can command even a few percent of the cost simply because some big corp has enough lawyer funds to bully for it..
@ AC 11:09
Yes, Windows of the NT/2000/XP... range has many security features that ought to be more than a match for the UNIX model. But avoiding the fanbois arguments about how many bugs in Windows vs Linux and so on, there is a significant difference in that for most Windows users and a lot of older Windows software - it just did not work in practice.
The whole 'run as' option for windows often failed for installers, and a lot of crappy written software (including some from MS in the past) assumed the user had admin privileges and open firewalls, etc, for really stupid stuff. If you are on a tight budget and/or have some older specialised software you just have to run as admin and hope for the best.
The other big problem is the ACLs use for access control with NTFS installations (majority case from ~2000 onwards) are simply too complex for anyone other than a seasoned Windows administrator to understand. So for Joe Average all of the security features it just broke things, or in the case of UAC on Vista it just irritated them when it popped up so often that they disabled that as well.
So to say "just because some people didn't use it" is a gross misunderstanding of the majority of non-corporate Windows users' problems with using the security offered, where as most Linux users don't need to bypass the UNIX model's default security to nearly the same degree.
The "part of patent agreements" is really a wish list. Also sorry for the typos.
Re: patent extortion
Actually the FAT32 issue should never have been allowed as the point here was MS did some stupid things for compatibility reasons and got a patent on it. No one in their right mind would *want* to use FAT32 except for the need to talk to Windows machines (due to their de facto monopoly in the desktop arena, and inability to read/write much else then FAT or NTFS).
I am all in favour of protecting innovation, but anything that is to do with interoperability should be excluded from this.
Also why the secrecy? Any deal that is not public is mighty suspicious and part of patent agreements is they *should* be conducted in the open so that the "value" can be seen for trading, not just to stop predatory agreements being signed, but also to allow investors to see the actual value industry putts on the innovation concerned.
@Gareth Perch
I thought it was Toyah Wilcox?
Re: Windows 8 - what is it?
I don't think there is much change the the underlying OS that is major, but it has has some minor improvements. Had there been a no-Metro option I think most commentards here would be less hateful in their comments, probably looking forward to it in fact as an improvement over 7. But sadly they have already tried the preview...
Maybe on a tablet/phone it has a purpose, but on a desktop it sucks. But don't trust me, I don't own a fez.
Re: hate for XP and the Teletubbies references
I hated the XP teletubbies appearance, but at least they let you change back to 'classic' look.
With win8 they have gone out of their way to stop you, the useless bar stewards!
Mind you, Ubuntu's Unity is well on its way as the Linux moment of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory, think of all those XP users who would find Gnome 2 quite usable? Ooops, we screwed that one.
Noodly appendages
The answer is simple and obvious - those dark filaments are the cooled hyper-pasta of the Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendages!
Thanks, my jacket and hat is the pirate one with the book on global warming in the pocket...
Re: Well, that's OK then
Give up your base? Or maybe time to get another product from a company that is not doing this to you and make damn sure you tell world+dog about it?
Yes, that plain/HTML bug annoys me a lot.
Also the in-line spell checker 'forgetting' to check a whole paragraph, etc, if you just did an edit. Buggy since V2 I think. Finally on my annoyance list is the inability to run filters on the "global" inbox, meaning if you have several email accounts and use the unified folders thing (which I like) you need to define multiple filters.
Email is long established, just fix the bugs please! Oh and give us back coloured button text - that black text only crap is not so good for quick recognition.
F'in caps lock key?
Please will somebody realise that caps lock is of little use, and for most non-perfect typists just a source of hassle when you accidentally touch it going for 'A' or similar.
If dropping anything that is "no longer needed" please get rid of caps lock!
Re: Are you really going to pop that disc in your drive?
Yes, because I don't have a stupidly configured computer that runs anything presented to it, and there is a good reason to expect it is valuable to me. Even with Windows one of the first things I do is disable autorun on *ALL* media via the registry setting.
How would any other media be safer? Infected USB are depressingly common...
Parallel printer ports on motherboard
If you need older hardware support in a modern computer check out the DFI EL620-C ATX motherboard, it has a parallel port (you need a bracket/25D/ribbon cable thing unfortunately as it is not rear-facing), two rear facing serial ports (and more inside), PS2 mouse & keyboard, 4 rear-facing USB ports, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Oh, and it also has 3 ISA slots for industrial cards like we use!
Supports the older socket 775 CPUs unfortunately, but Intel still make the Q9400 quad core one (and others) if you can find a supplier that is not utterly incompetent to actually sell you them.
Indeed. Some how I don't think it will be the grandparent generation who are the worst affected...
Re: Apple treated differently than Microsoft.
If you look at the article, you will find that MS has fallen to "If you factor in iOS devices, the ratio drops to less than 2-to-1". So basically if you include all Apple devices: desk-top computer, laptop, tablet and phone, they are still a minority compared to Windows.
That is why no one has investigated Apple. Yet. The time will come I hope...
Sadly I am troll-feeding but its worth noting this bug was introduced around the time of the last leap-second.
Real problem is lack of testing of such rare events. Windows is no better really, it ignores the leap second so clock is simply wrong for a while which can be a problem for transaction systems.
Sensible decision
Seems the EU has sense here, after all the claims that software is "Intellectual Property" should come with the same sort of rules that physical property has, that you can if necessary re-sell it. I hope this ruling also gets applied to music & DVDs that are delivered on-line to break the distinction between physical and virtual delivery. Of course, there are big concerns that a number of customers won't be honest and delete the copy before selling it on, but really, are they not likely to be the ones obtaining it dishonestly in the first place?
As for cloud-only to get round this - I can see a number of cases where that is simply not practical due to network latency & bandwidth concerns, not to mention issues over data sovereignty and applicable law.
"backdoor control laws"
That is the key point: the secrecy of negotiation.
The fact that some very controversial proposals were included then dropped from ACTA (but not Japan's own laws?) shows the attitude of some aspects of those pushing this forward. I hope, but don't really expect, that in future the revision of patent, copyright and trademark laws are done in the open and NOT simply to maximise large company profits.
This applies obviously to the heinous business of DRM and so on being pushed by the content industries, but equally to the land-grab of copyright by the likes of Google, etc, against small players. The law should be fair to all parties.
How to test?
Why can't someone set up NTP server called skippy or something, that every two days it adds an anomalous +1 leap second and then two days later has a matching -1 leap second?
That way you could set up a test machine that is more-or-less on time, but makes sure that your kernel and any Java, etc, updates are all happy with the concept of a clock shift.
Re: Leap seconds: not a one-off unique event
I don't know why they hung. All of our Linux machines ran quite happily (as they have done fore years before including this event) using NTP and Trimble GPS for precise time-keeping.
It is not like the folk behind NTP don't know about this, it has been supported and documented for a long time:
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/leap.html
Sounds like something that was not tested during the last leap second event, but still, I fail to understand why it would take the system down for more than 1 second?
For what client?
For a Linux VM or Windows VM? My own experience shows NFS as significantly faster than CIFS for the same hardware/network system, so can we please have some like-for-like comparisons?
Methinks MS pushes CIFS because that is Windows default networking and not because it is actually any better...
Posted in Australia goes cold on ACTA
Re: The "dropped" part matters
Irrespective of any merits in ACTA, the manner in which it was negotiated and the attempts to use it to bypass parliamentary process is a VERY SERIOUS matter. Same in the EU where it is/was being pushed by the commissioners as a done-deal to be passed by the EU parliament.
This cannot be allowed to happen!
For the sake of democracy everywhere it is important that ACTA is rejected and politicians made to sit up and take notice that new laws or trade agreements need to be done in the open, and with the goals and participants all visible so that it actually reflects what the people want.
As Andrew has pointed out in past articles, most people are not "freetards" and will support creative work by paying if it is made a easy and good choice, but this has been a long time coming with music finally becoming easy to download DRM-free. Prices are a bit high (compared to CD per-track cost when manufacturing costs are excluded) but not bad. However video is still DRM-encumbered and subject to stupid regional restrictions.
Can the industry groups get round to fixing the carrot before demanding ever bigger sticks?
Posted in Australia goes cold on ACTA
The "dropped" part matters
The fact it was dropped matters, as criminalisation was proposed behind closed doors. And considering Japan, one of the original proponents of ACTA, has gone and introduced this independently you can be sure it was not a joke:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/27/anonymous_japan_ddos/
"from friction comes life"
Getting fscked?
Posted in Ten... pieces of tat for Apple fanboys
Re: In the interest of fairness
Certainly, for windows:
9 sets of AV software + Original CD to nuke it from orbit and re-install.
And for Linux:
8 books on compiling a kernel for Dummies/Fun/Profit/Sysadmin/BDSM/etc, a signed posted of Richard Stallman + a Tux penguin for your desk.
Posted in Ten... pieces of tat for Apple fanboys
Re: Just visit your doctor...
Yes, and no Windows CD-ROM either - now try changing your IP settings!
Posted in Powering your iPad costs $1.36 per year
But what is the cost of running (rechargeable) battery powered sex toys we ask?
Re: Definitions - are you sure?
The salt can't be "random" but could be something complex and user-specific, such as their email address (or a MD5 hash of that).
The goal is to make the required rainbow table too big so a standard table (for, say, all 8-character passwords and common longer ones) can't be used, and the time & storage to generate one big enough is unworkable for a reasonable time-scale so you are back to brute-forcing each user.
