Posts by P. Lee
1850 posts • joined Tuesday 4th December 2007 14:24 GMT
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Re: 15 minutes...
This is not about the man. My understanding is that spying on Americans is the job of the FBI (a slightly more transparent and accountable organisation) and not allowed for the NSA.
The story is about the NSA ignoring or working around this restriction to the point where the intent of the prohibition is completely undermined. The prohibition is to limit government intrusion.
It would be like Google routing all data in loop through Canada so that the US government can read everything as it crosses the borders.
Its one thing to know something happens. Its quite another to have evidence which names names.
Re: “Systems administrators.." "..low level, typically have the highest access to systems and data"
The easiest way is to encrypt all media file systems. The USB file system is then useless when plugged into a different computer. That's easier to do than squeeze glue into all the usb ports.
The key logger is probably not helpful. It wold be easy to cut and paste text from other sources into something which is executed by an interpreter - e.g. a perl script to open two network ports on the local machine and then pass data between them and out to a file.
I have to agree with earlier posts - files with secret things should not be decryptable by admins with access to those file systems.
> So the guy sold the project ... then went screaming that his project wasn't free anymore
> So you think the Oracle bought a company pushing GPL'ed code and then have a right to complain about forks?
Oracle know exactly what they were doing. They destroyed the product underneath the MySQL name to reduce the profile of a well-known free product which was in competition (in a small way) with their profit-making system.
Oracle stripped down the core functionality that you would expect in a db and put the functionality into a separate non-GPL product, rendering the core product free but useless.
Re: PostgreSQL
> It lacked the most fundamental database capabilities, and the real important stuff like RI.
It depends what you want it for. Perhaps RI isn't important because its used as a content cache. There are some places where speed and low resource requirements are more important than accuracy. UDP, JPG and MPEG4 don't fail as protocols because they are lossy.
Just don't use it for your finance database!
Re: Double standards
What gets me is that the HMRC is quite open about its own double standards.
"Employment law and tax law are not related." Employee A is deemed to be working for Company B when it comes to Employee A's tax, but not when it comes to Company B's tax or employment benefit obligations.
Re: Huh?
> What's this, zombie rush? SCO went down years ago, how the hell can this lawsuit even happen?
Like zombies, corporations and intellectual property are (legal) fiction. Just like in films, they can always come back, a little more mutilated and even more scary.
Re: MS Humiliation
> My guess is that it's two completely independent codebases. (Anyone know for sure and able to say?
More to the point, MS hobble's its non-Windows offerings. They will provide the basic functions in 365 but for "enterprise" features (wtb sarcasm tag) like visio, you'll need Windows.
They just want to make sure you don't defect to a different office document format. Apple hardware costs and lack of Visio etc make sure it windows doesn't lose out in the enterprise. They will support BYOD, but make it slightly harder than you expected.
Posted in Review: Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock
Re: Thunderbolt be a solution...
It wasn't really intended to be used to attach a single external disk, like USB; it is a cable to allow you to use an Apple screen as a docking station. Plugging in one or two 2.5" 5400RPM disks isn't really what a 10G link is for - use the USB3 on the MBA for that.
True, Apple should not have removed the 1G ethernet but mostly Wireless N is fine and ac is arriving. That just leaves multiple screens. My main issue is that I'd have liked to be able to plug multiple dp screens into an MBA. Its a major flaw as far as I'm concerned. Multiple 27" screens don't always fit on the desk and Apple's 27" screens are a little pricey- its a deal breaker as far as I'm concerned.
Re: pre-release software may not be final version
> Apple normally pay great heed to the old adage "Never explain, never apologise".
They've just forgotten to, "never let anyone see what you're doing until its done."
Wrong measurement?
We already know atom beats arm when it comes to work/watt. The issue is watts/idle.
Actually, it isn't even that - price makes a big difference, as does controlling your own corporate destiny. If everyone does ARM, everyone has a chance to tweak things for competitive advantage or a different market slant. If everyone takes a single model CPU, things get very boring very quickly.
Re: "they probably won't have a real debate about selling more at the correct price"
I'm not sure that you can say its logical to suggest that there is "no correct price" and then suggest that selling at the same price everywhere is "unfair" to poor people.
The point is that companies have to operate within the law. It would be quite easy to fix the problem. You just make companies honour transferable warranties on kit bought anywhere and don't give governmental protection to official vendor channels.
Re: Not just Australia
The warranty issue is a major red-herring.
Seriously, how many consoles fail in the second year?
If it were a lot, the manufacturers would deserve a good beating. My Core2 has lasted for years with a very hot graphics card inside in a room which hits 38C regularly in summer. If consoles, which normally sit under the telly in the most temperature-controlled room of the house can't last that long then there is something wrong with QC.
I simply don't believe it.
Re: "Max Turbo" modes
Ah, the NEC V10!
Cloud... rental
I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that if we no longer make things people want and that the solution is probably not to just find ways to charge more for the same function.
This is not a solution, its an economy about to implode further.
Re: That's one immense database
Could not read disk. Abort, Retry, Fail?
To the tape library!
Re: What war on terrorism?
Waste of Money? Have you seen Lessig's TED talk on american elections? First you have to win the "friends with masses of cash" election, then you get to play for public vote.
If you don't engineer a situation where those with masses of cash get more, they won't let you play in the next stage of the electoral process. There are few things which bring easy profits as government contracts and tax handouts.
The system does precisely what it has been molded to do.
Re: 2-in-1 WTF?
> Unless they've found a great way to share data between the two operating systems I can't see it working very well.
I can see it working well. Screens and batteries are expensive - being able to share those cuts the cost of IT even if you can't share data.
Re: Yes, yes it's all very nice but…
It isn't just prices, its about controlling your own destiny. Samsung will see no reason to be held hostage by Intel over chips when it can reuse an existing design ARM bluebrint, be beholden to no-one and have the product cheaper to boot.
Having seen how MS dealt with vmware, Checkpoint dealt with Stonesoft, Nokia etc, I would never base my business on adding value to someone-else's product.
Wrong direction
The standard is there to promote interoperability. DRM is the opposite of that. You may as well let those who want it write their own plugins. There is no point including DRM in a standard.
Re: I miss the dayxs when I could flip between 3 programs simultaneosuly.
+1
You only need to cache from the last keyframe and you only need to one tuner per multiplex. That must be a miniscule cost on a 40" screen.
Add some smarts (do stats on most often used multiplexes or look at whereabouts the user is in the EIT) and you can probably cut the number of tuners dramatically.
Perhaps its all moot with people recording everything rather than watching live.
"... you can even run multiple instances of the same app on one screen."
Wow.
This is an amazing OS!
Re: Just first iteration
Indeed. This is not mobile phone consumer quality. This is release-early, release often hardware, google style.
I wonder...
how many subscribers think they are just signing up for Office updates, rather than an access subscription?
Re: Should work here too...
Filtering does work. It's just that the work its required to do is create headlines and the illusion of action by politicians.
Whether it works in practise is almost irrelevant in the West.
Re: Bill is right this time.
Forget corporate law, there's no particular reason to return more than what the law requires of personal income either. Giving to the state is not a moral issue and corporations are just legal fiction - they can't have morals.
Corporation profit is just a convenient and efficient place to identify and collect tax - at least it was.
One way to put a damper on things would be to only allow one set of books. Stop allowing companies to tell the tax office one thing and shareholders another.
Then you could deal with IP - all payments sent abroad for the use of IP will be credited as profit on imported units in which that IP is used, pro-rata.
It's late and I may not be thinking straight.
There is, of course, a moral obligation on people to help those in need.
Re: Completely Wrong.
Orlowski has a very weird view of the economy.
He appears to be saying that free stuff drives out paid-for stuff and that is bad because it reduces paid-for stuff which reduces tax income, employment in paid-for-stuff industries etc.
By extension, cheap stuff drives out more expensive stuff, so does he really want us all to only pay for the most expensive things to keep as many people employed as possible and to maximise tax revenue?
Did I read that correctly? I find it rather disturbing that people want as much surplus value as possible to be removed from customers by corporates in the form of higher prices.
Or maybe its just click-bait.
How not to bleed in a shrinking commodity market
Scale back your sales costs.
Re: Yup - Me too!
Except that inexperienced shoppers take three times longer to get through self service than a shop attendant.
I guess the maths still works, but its often faster to go through a manned checkout.
>You were lucky, we had to use Edlin.
Edlin?
When I were young we 'd a new invention called a typewriter and a bottle of white paint to cover up mistakes.
Before that, we 'ad to write with a pen or pencil and we 'ad to cross out our mistakes.
And we still made it through school!
Re: The Liberator - a bargain
You miss the point - its a downloadable gun.
You just wait until you're on the aircraft and then use your iphone to get it!
Converting Value to Cash
It seems that companies these days are bent on converting every bit of surplus value to cash. The problem is that it is surplus value that the customer is used to getting so they are reducing the value of their goods to the customer.
That's a dangerous strategy.
Another dangerous strategy is courting advertisers. It compromises the focus on the end-user experience.
I can't understand why MS don't find their own strategy rather than trying to mimic Google and Apple. With so many Windows/xbox systems out there, use your console as a private cloud. Make a big play of not having spyware or adverts and allowing users to keep control of their stuff. Keep your email on your xbox and just offer the option for mirroring/backing up to the cloud. Sell adsl and cable cards for xbox so that they can host VPNs for access while out and about, or at least offer an option to terminate pppoe on it.
They need to make a good product and do some good marketing, not find some dodgy way to make money from unexpected means.
Re: That could have been me....
+1
"Only update while on my nominated wifi, otherwise, just prompt for app updates" should be the default.
Re: Units?
Forget the download plan, how about using "Orange" for a unit of Android phone shipments.
I want to be able to compare Apples to Oranges.
Re: Most useful "IT" skill I learned in school.
> Programming in an obsolete language? No.
This isn't job-training, its teaching how to think of algorithms, using a handy computer language. It may include how relational algebra works, or the principles behind view planes and how perspective relates to 3D graphics. It's why Logo has a place, but Excel macros probably don't.
Just like most physics classes, it probably won't ever be used, but Comp Sci classes should be available. Just don't go near that ICT rubbish.
Re: One thing puzzles me...
I'm not sure about the particular Irish arrangement, but often the rules are that you don't have to pay tax on foreign earnings.
I guess you set up an Irish company which only does business with foreign corporates. Likewise, Ireland could be served quite well by shipping from the UK.
I have noticed that everyone is on the tub-thumping bandwagon. I'm not sure how the US expects to tax Apple's income when the UK, France, Germany etc all want their shares too.
In the end, its just political theatre for the public. Interestingly, I've noticed that most people realise this. Until you limit the power of the few to fund politics, you won't get much of a change.
I notice there's little talk of the UK IR35 solution: we don't care about your corporate structure or costs - we're just going to tax you however we feel like.
HDMI?
This needs to work in the Marketing Director's big-screen pc or mac to be taken seriously - HDMI won't cut it.
Build it into screens (with USB, (maybe thunderbolt) and a wired ethernet switch - the screen becomes a docking station and is stationary and programme the "SIM" to hook into the corporate VOIP solution. Use it as a lync replacement.
Also, find a way to "remote" apps onto the windows/mac/linux desktop.
Re: Oh God
I'm hoping this is not just a plugin replacement.. After all, the point of plugins was that they are OS-specific and managed by a third party.
I'd like it to be an aid for people who currently do cross-platform to make their lives better. For example, network management tools - currently in windows executables could go x86/Chromium to cover off windows, linux and osx. Perhaps an accounting package for small business, where OSX compatibility might be handy. Chat clients would also be good. Even a google-docs type spreadsheet, but with lower latency and local execution.
How good would it be to give people a clean OS and point them to http://apps.corp.com/ ? There are you base apps, talk to your manager if you need something more. It will be interesting to see if the performance turns out to be adequate.
Re: Where's the advantage?
> JS-interpreters are so amazingly fast these days,
My experience of google docs spreadsheets would disagree with that and JS is relatively hard to code for if you've grown up with C.
A lot of the benefit is in application delivery. The idea is to devalue microsoft on the desktop by making apps cross-platform and delivered via http, which cuts out the wintel support team and reduces the cost of trials and roll-outs. It replaces the windows interface libraries with a browser one, which is an easier direction to take than to do java on the desktop or find some other reason to drop win32 interfaces.
I like the idea.
Re: Phoney Valuations!
But that's corporate profit.
Personal profit is cash extracted to own bank account as company is dumped with the debt.
Re: Now we might have a comparison
Really? Does HP pay MS for each android device?
Are you sure about that?
Re: PC shipments ffailing for ONE reason
True, but I would add that PC manufacturers keep thinking we want more power, whereas phones and tablets suggest we want more access.
Now the costings are all messed up. A case and power supply can easily outstrip the cost of the high tech. New Atom systems cost more than recycled core2's. Core2-i3 isn't much of an upgrade that most people would notice. Sandy-bridge to ivy-bridge isn't a noticeable upgrade to most people. I'd bet most people would hesitate if you asked them if their new i5 laptop is that much faster than an old core2 work laptop.
I'd rather have a home server than a new desktop. I'd rather have a pi strapped to the back of every tv than a new desktop. I'd rather have ac wireless than a new desktop.
I'd prefer new things to upgraded things.
Re: @TheVogon
It actually can make sense, but it has little to do with MS.
Lots of nix boxes are running Oracle, but Oracle is going the appliance route and taking the hardware business with them. It makes sense for IBM (and HP) to push their own iron and leverage FLOSS as an alternative. The trick is to know the FLOSS db's etc as well Oracle know Oracle on Solaris. They need to make it better than x86, not cheaper.
Once IBM are in, there is a chance to up-sell to AIX/HPUX for better troubleshooting than Linux provides. Linux on Power makes Power seem a little less scarey than AIX and segments the market nicely, as being an intro to Power.
Personally I think it would be fun to see linux desktops running off power servers, with citrix handling the windows side. A curiosity perhaps, but fun.
So if great infringement is done by a tiny number infringers...
Piracy isn't widespread and doesn't translate to much lost income, unless those infringers are fabulously wealthy.
Publicity stunt
F: Did not attempt to answer the question set,
Re: What on Earth is the point?
Its worse than that, Jim.
Has anyone else noticed that profitability used to be an indicator of economic productivity, but now its mostly an indicator of how well you can juggle various aspects of a report.
Re: Do these guys not understand copyright?
> The state grants authors the right to decide who has the right to copy their works.
Unless of course, it decides to revoke that right. Copyright is an artificial assignment of control. It may be a good one, but if you ask for state intervention to allow you to make money, the state is in control.
Why the subscription model?
Perhaps the software industry has caught up with the real world.
The big advances have been made, the growth is over. Look at the the Peak Apple articles and the burning of the PC market.
http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_gordon_the_death_of_innovation_the_end_of_growth.html
I've no idea if the analysis is accurate, but its interesting, looking back over the massive innovation, followed by massive global consolidation. I'm not sure where we go next. Maybe we'll have to start making things again, rather than relying on economies of scale and financial shenanigans.
What I really want is the company to host a business number and forward it to my mobile.
Maybe a dual-sim phone with the corporate acting as a mobile telco...
Add a cached local addressbook.
Perhaps just a bluetooth link to PSTN, but I have the feeling I might accidentally walk out of range at a bad time.
Re: I want control
You can use android if you strip the googley bits.
I'd like to have android and pay nokia for the maps, perhaps wrapped in my monthly fee.
Encrypt and mirror all my mail from home to a google imap or AWS and off we go.
For me, google is mostly about always on email and contacts, but I see no reason why AWS couldn't be convinced to run an imap server.
Re: I think of google more as a little sister.
I was thinking more along the lines of Bioshock...
