SCO/Caldera would've given both kidneys, nuts, and legs for a case like this...
SCO/Caldera gave both kidneys, nuts, and legs for a lottery ticket...
Vic.
Posts by Vic
5860 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007
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VMware's GPL violation case rolls into German court
Gartner to FBI: Stop bullying Apple and the tech industry
Tuesday 1st March 2016 18:59 GMT
Assumption 1: The main reason the FBI are pressuring Apple for a custom OS is that they locked themselves out when they reset the iCloud password
Assumption 1 is incorrect. There is almost no probability of there being any useful data on this phone anyway. The main[1] reason the FBI are pushing Apple here is that they want to set a legal precedent[2] that they can snap their fingers and pforce Apple to write custom unlock firmware whenever they want.
Apple has backups. Contained somewhere in these backups is a copy of this specific account in its previous state
Apple has backups. They're not bang up-to-date[3], but very close.
Apple has already given the FBI all that data.
This case has nothing to do with that phone - it's irrelevant. This is all about a power grab.
Vic.
[1] Only?
[2] I know they keep saying that this will not set a precedent - that's what's known in technical circles as "a lie".
[3] The phone had not updated its backups in a little while, so there is a little transient data that has not been handed over. That would not have been the case if the FBI hadn't forced a password change so that the phone no longer has access to its backup...
Tuesday 1st March 2016 18:50 GMT
Re: The Age of Incompetence...
Spy agencies have "analysts" who draw conclusions by finding correlations within data
Vic.
Flinging £700m at courts' IT won't increase efficiency, says NAO
Tuesday 1st March 2016 17:41 GMT
Re: Anything can be fixed with a new IT System!
yet we're not properly looking at existing ways of working and how those should/must CHANGE to go electronic
And therein lies the nub of most of these problems.
Systems develop because, in the main, they work. Trying to change those systems gets you two results :-
- You transform a working, if kludgy, system into a "clean", but non-functional one
- Users push back against the enforced changes to their workstyle
Either of these is a recipe for disaster. Together, they create yet another embarassing Government IT cockup.
Vic.
Tuesday 1st March 2016 17:26 GMT
Re: Lawyers get more efficient?
Unless you were the foolish firm to agree on a fixed price with SCO for their doomed glory hunt against IBM.
That wouldn't have worked - David Boies is renowned for his lack of IT skills.
One has to wonder[1] why he took on a case like SCO v. IBM...
Vic.
[1] Not really. The word "Kerching" seems to sum it up nicely.
Institute of Directors: Make broadband speeds 1000x faster than today's puny 2020 target
Tuesday 1st March 2016 16:41 GMT
Re: No one needs 10 Gb today, or the foreseeable future beyond 2030
Outside of the military sector, Concorde was the only supersonic aircraft to go into commercial service. Since Concorde retired in 2003 there has been neither a replacement nor credible talk about R&D on a replacement.
That's entirely a commercial decision - the airlines have repeatedly been given the decision between faster and cheaper. They go for cheaper every time.
Supersonic flight is expensive. Concorde proved that it's technologically possible in the civilian sector - the aircraft was flying nearly half a century ago - and also so expensive as to cause real problems for viability. Airlines want aircraft that produce profits.
There's a project to get Concorde flying again. I really hope they succeed...
Vic.
New York judge blocks FBI demand for Apple help to unlock iPhone
Intravenous hangover clinics don't work, could land you in hospital
Tuesday 1st March 2016 12:39 GMT
Re: @IvoryT
Ah yes, one of those who believes that drinking top shelf vodka (or scotch or gin or what have you) makes you immune to hangovers
Well - I don't get hangonvers. Ever. You, apparently, do.
I think it is an excuse people like to tell themselves since they know if challenged they pass a double blind test between the cheap stuff and the expensive stuff once its been drowned in mixer.
If I'm drinking decent spirit[1], it doesn't get any mixer. IMO, if I need to mix a drink to make it palatable, it's probably not something I wish to drink.
Vic.
[1] I don't drink spirits all that much - but I do have a nice collection of scotches and gins for when I'm in that sort of mood.
Monday 29th February 2016 23:25 GMT
Re: @IvoryT
I figure you should have to pay a little something for drinking to such ridiculous and glorious excess
I don't. Hangovers are a waste of time.
The single most important aspect to avoiding hangovers, IMO, is being fussy about *what* you drink. How much doesn't matter - but if you drink shite, you'll feel like shite.
Being properly hydrated, and walking a good half-hour home from the pub are also useful tips to a better morning after :-)
Vic.
Monday 29th February 2016 22:34 GMT
Re: Old school remedy
And welders
Indeed. Many CCR divers cultivate welders as friends because they have the gas[1] :-)
Vic.
[1] We use tiny amounts of gas - about 1l/min on average. So my 3l cylinder could theoretically give me nearly 12 hours on-loop. But we need high pressures to fill those cylinders - so the top of a J is ideal, but the rental on the cylinder is prohibitive unless you dive commercially.
Monday 29th February 2016 14:15 GMT
Re: Everyone knows the answer is bacon
From what I've read, fatty foods are best taken before drinking.
I often drink a pint of milk before going out on the lash. It seems to work for me.
Did you know that Gatorade was originally invented as a hangover cure? It's still useful for that purpose today, as it's meant to rehydrate and replenish electrolytes.
Isn't that Brawndo?
Vic.
Microsoft sneaks onto Android while Android sneaks onto Windows
Tuesday 1st March 2016 12:35 GMT
Re: Kind of obvious
Nope. This is a standard area of contract law and underpins discussions of licensing such as FRAND patents. Clauses like this are routinely struck out by courts as too onerous
You are completely wrong. This has been tested in court, and the contract held correctly. This is a matter of record.
The GPL clearly states :
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works
And that's the end of it - if you don't like the clause, you don't accept the licence - but nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works, meaning any redistribution is simply a breach of copyright.
Westinghouse thought they could redistribute GPL code without complying with the licence. That didn't end well for them. There are other instances - you are completely wrong when you say that courts strike down such clauses because, to date, every single GPL case that has gone to court has been successful. The only reason there aren't more court victories is that, in every other case, there has been a pre-court settlement, with the defendant coming into compliance with the GPL. Look it up - there are numerous examples.
Add to this the way the dual-licensing that Google already applies to Android: there's AOSP and then there's the stuff for manufacturers and it's fairly clear that Android is not Linux.
Oh, where to start.
Android contains Linux. Linux is the kernel upon which Android sits. This is simply a matter of fact - see, for example, the Android Common Kernel build tree.
If you look at the COPYING file in there, you will see it contains the GPLv2. That is because it is licenced under the GPLv2, exactly the same as every other copy of the Linux kernel, since tha tis the only licence under which it is available3.
Now that does not make the entirety of Android GPL - that's what's known as a "mere aggregation" - but nonetheless, there is a copy of the Linux kernel within Android, licenced under the GPLv2.
So, as I said earlier, anyone redistributing Android is necessarily redistributing Linux, and is thus bound under the terms og the GPLv2 in respect of that Linux redistribution. If you want to argue that any further - you'll need to find counter-examples where someone is shipping Android on a different kernel, or (legally) shipping Linux under a licence other than the GPLv2. I'll save you some effort - that's a null set.
It's unlikely that such a clause would withstand judicial scrutiny.
It already has. It has never failed to do so.
Whatever, with Microsoft apparently exiting the handset business, it's unlikely for them to start becoming an Android distributor
That's what I said. There appears to be an exception - it remains to be seen where that rabbit hole will go.
Providing an alternative to Google Play services is probably sufficient.
And that has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion at hand.
Vic.
Tuesday 1st March 2016 00:17 GMT
Re: Kind of obvious
They can afford to bankrupt you, me and anyone else who felt like taking them to court over their patent claims.
I very much doubt their lawyers would allow that.
If they're distributing under GPL, they have an obligation to distribute under either section 3(a) or 3(b) - and 3(a) means shipping source with the binaries, which is very unlikely to happen. 3(b) gives any third party the right to redistibute - including the implicit patent grant - and 3(a) gives the immediate recipient the right to redistribute - including under section 3(b). Thus, with a little planning or investigation, everyone has a patent grant from Microsoft, with a guaranteed provenance.
Were Microsoft to try to assert those patents, a single letter should dissuade them. If they tried to take this to court after being shown the patent licence they have granted, the Court will likely see the entire suit as frivolous - and that's how lawyers end up getting sanctioned and disbarred. They don't like that.
Vic.
Monday 29th February 2016 20:45 GMT
Re: Kind of obvious
I reckon that's up for debate
Not serious debate. Android sits atop Linux, so if you distribute Android you are distributing LInux. Android doesn't sit on any other kernel.
I'm not sure whether the clause would stand up in court.
It doesn't need to. If MS doesn't want to be held to the licence, it doesn't need to accept it. But if it chooses that path, then it would be making unauthorised copies of copyrighted materiel, which is an offence in most jurisdictions. And being called out as a "pirate"[1] or "software thief"[1] wouldn't do their public relations any good.
Vic.
[1] Yes, I know these are inaccurate terms. But they're the ones often used in such circumstances.
Monday 29th February 2016 18:05 GMT
Re: Kind of obvious
It doesn't seem beyond the realms of probability that they're working on an Android phone
Microsoft aren't going to ship[1] an Android phone.
At present, they make a load of cash and a lot of publicity from alleged[2] infringements of MS-owned patents. But as soon as they become an Android distributor, they are of necessity a Linux distributor, and thus bound by the GPL in that respect. And the GPL v2, uder which the kernel is distibuted, has this to say (in section 7) :-
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
So as soon as Microsoft distributes Android - even once - all that patent FID and money is history. I don't see them going for that[3].
Vic.
[1] Although I can see them doing some sort of arm's-length collaboration with a puppet organisation
[2] We can argue about whether or not those allegations are true - but that actually makes no difference. It is the *fear* of litigation that means success here, rather than the litigation itself.
[3] I do live in hope, though :-)
SCO vs. IBM looks like it's over for good
Monday 29th February 2016 15:46 GMT
Re: Completely wrong
I think the author has the wrong understanding of the document.
I wonder if the author has read the document...
The second paragraph starts :-
There is no just reason for delaying SCO’s appeal from such Orders
It is very clear that SCO wants to get on with its appeal. As this is a joint motion, it might get its way. That'll be fun...
Vic.
Monday 29th February 2016 15:30 GMT
Re: You have to wonder about the mental fitness of people...
It's not for no reason that their lawyers are referred to as the Nazgul.
I think it's been clear since early on that the entire SCO case was an annoyance case - they merely wanted to be bought out by IBM because they had no ongoing business to speak of[1].
That was a huge miscalculation - for IBM not to have fought the case would be an admission that it had illegally appropriated someone else's technology. For a company that earns its cash by looking after other people's stuff, that would have been commercial suicide. So it fought.
Disclosure: I did attempt to buy some of the debris from SCO from the bankruptcy[2].
Vic.
[1] All they had left was the Unix onselling business - which was supposed to net them 5% of total sales. You can see that didn't pay enough as they ended up just keeping all of that money for some time - and it is to the bankruptcy judge's eternal shame that he made no attempt whatsoever to get them to return the 95% they'd simply stolen.
[2] Unsuccessfully, in the end. Which is probably for the best. When the bankruptcy was initially filed, the HipCheck business was valued at $5m. Towards the end, there was suddenly an announcement that the business was to be sold to Darl for a mere $35k - less than 1% of its previous valuation. As there were already agents for various mobile platforms available, I intended to glue those on top of Nagios to provide something of value. The administrator told me that I would have to pay dramatically more for the business than Darl was getting it for, as they'd already spent more than that sum on the paperwork to sell the business...
Nearly a million retail jobs will be destroyed by the march of tech, warns trade body
Monday 29th February 2016 19:43 GMT
the 5 people at PC world who were chatting and ignoring me
My missus' phone blew up one evening, so we went out to get a new one - there's a 24-hour Tesco near us who sell phones.
She couldn't decide whether to buy the S5 or the S6 - she wanted to see how they felt. The display models had this huge ant-theft carrier, which meant you really couldn't tell.
Tesco weren't interested in letting her feel one unencumbered - so we left without buying either.
Vic.
Investigatory Powers Bill to be rushed into Parliament on Tuesday
Monday 29th February 2016 18:49 GMT
Re: @Vimes
When I asked my MP about something a while ago, the initial clarification was done by email, the formal response by 2nd class post.
The last time I asked my MP about something, my question was completely ignored until I'd sent two follow-up emails (about a montjh apart).
I then got a response - on very expensive paper - providing a vague non-answer to an entirely different question.
I've got a different MP now - who reckons I'd get a different response?
Vic.
Canonical accused of violating GPL with ZFS-in-Ubuntu 16.04 plan
Monday 29th February 2016 11:29 GMT
Ask yourself why Oracle can't stop MariaDB fork of MySQL. The license on the old code stays even after you acquired it, you can't revoke/terminate it (unless there's a revoke/termination clause...).
This is both true and simultaneously irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
You're making the age-old mistake of thinking that because someone does not hold all rights to a piece of code, that means they hold no rights to it. This is simply not true; Oracle still holds the copyrights to all the code in ZFS, and much of it in OpenZFS, and those copyrights can still be enforced against anyone distributing without a licence. That's why keeping to the terms of any FOSS licence is so important - because as soon as you breach the licence, you have no right to distribute, and can be prosecuted under the appropriate copyright legislation.
Vic.
Sunday 28th February 2016 22:20 GMT
Re: bazza @HCV - I don't quite get your point
Remember, SCO sued IBM at the turn of century claiming that it took something like IBM to make the hobbyist OS known as Linux into the commercial/professional OS that Linux has become.
You're seriously trying to prove a point by referencing what SCO said?
::boggle::
Vic.
Saturday 27th February 2016 13:33 GMT
Oracle could change license terms of the branch they own, i.e. Oracle ZFS. They cannot do it with OpenZFS unless they get approval of all developers who contributed to OpenZFS under CDDL
Oracle can relicence any files it owns. This might not constitute all of OpenZFS, but it does necessarily constitute the lion's share. Stripping out the bits that aren't owned by Oracle would leave you with a much more complete codebase than stripping out the bits that are owned by Oracle...
This is specifically why Oracle has no claim on ZFS (or more precisely, on OpenZFS)
Oracle does have claims on OpenZFS - just not on the entirety of it.
Vic.
Saturday 27th February 2016 13:20 GMT
Oracle has no claim to it - it cannot have any, since its has been made open source before they bought Sun
This is entirely incorrect - what you are describing is "public domain". No part of ZFS is public domain; it is all copyrighted software, whatever licence is used. Oracle very much has a claim on it, even if it must honour the rights granted to recipients by the CDDL.
PS I am not a lawyer
That does rather tend to show...
Vic.
Brit brewer opensources entire recipe archive
Friday 26th February 2016 16:57 GMT
For those anywhere near Southampton...
BrewDog are opening up a pub in April.
We're doing well for pubs at present - the Butcher's Hook, the Overdraft, the Bookshop and others. It's a fine time to be drinking beer :-)
Vic.
Friday 26th February 2016 16:51 GMT
Re: This lot deserve a memtion
www.wildbeerco.com - Very interesting stufff
They came to the pub on Wednesday to judge the Bread & Pickles competiton. And to drink beer, of course - we had a Wild Beer Tap Takeover :-)
But if you're going to spell "stuff" with three "f"s, you might want to look towards Four Marks...
Vic.
Cook moves iPhone debate to FBI's weak ground: The media
Saturday 27th February 2016 12:27 GMT
Re: My question is: why Apple gave away the phone backups, but refuses to access the phone?
Instead Apple gave away the backups, but refuses to help to unlock the phone. It looks to me privacy rights are not at the core of this fighting
The privacy rights of the user of this ohine are not relevant - aside from the fact he's dead, he's not even the owner of the phone. But no-one has ever claimed that the case was about his rights - it isn't and never has been.
This case is about the rights of everyone else. Everyone who has a phone - whether an Apple product or not. Whether a US citizen or not. That includes me. It probably includes you.
To suggest that this is just Apple being churlish would seem to indicate a fairly dramatic misunderstanding of the situation...
Vic.
Oh TechNation. Britain's got tech talent. Just not like this
Friday 26th February 2016 21:23 GMT
Re: Bournemouth...
Bournemouth, full of blue rinse and stinks of piss
Good airshow, though. Let's hope the CAA doesn't bollocks it up.
There's a petition if anyone's interested...
Vic.
'I bet Russian hackers weren't expecting their target to suck so epically hard as this'
Thursday 25th February 2016 20:11 GMT
Re: endianness
No-one's mentioned the horrors of having to port between different endian architectures yet.
I worked on MediaHighway for a couple of years.
I don't know if it changed after I left[1], but back then, the ABI was specified, rather than the API. So everything was big-endian as it traversed the interface.
Thus, on a little-endian system, the app code spent the lower layer byte-swapping everything into big-endian, and the top layer of the MH chunk spent its time byte-swapping back into little-endian. Ho hum...
Vic.
[1] I did ask them to change this, but it hadn't happened by the time I left.
Thursday 25th February 2016 19:57 GMT
Re: Just use known patterns ffs
The bug was that the subscript indexer inside the loop was only incremented once regardless of how many times the containing for() iterated. I think it might have been related to compiler optimisations so only showed up in release code as well.
That sounds like a compiler bug; however iffy the code fragment in question, the middle part of the for loop is supposed to be executed on every iteration...
But increment/decrement operators become fun when you start using macros. Consider the following :-
#include <stdio.h>
#define MIN(a,b) ((a) < (b) ? (a) : (b))
void main (void)
{
int foo = 3;
int bar = 4;
int smaller = MIN(++foo, ++bar);
printf("Smaller value is %d\n", smaller);
}
[Apologies for the formatting - ElReg does strange and wonderful things to posts...]
Should print 4, right? It doesn't.
I deliberately used pre-increment here to force the error; post-increment is even more dangerous, because altohugh it would print the value you might nominally expect, it doesn't leave that value in foo...
Yes, this fragement is entirely contrived to demonstrate the point - but I've seen it in the wild.
Vic.
Your xenophobia is killing us, Silicon Valley warns US Congress
Bill Gates denies iPhone crack demand would set precedent
Wednesday 24th February 2016 19:28 GMT
In order to comply, Apple need to build software to work on a particular IMEI and S/N
You're completely ignoring the precedence argument.
As soon as Apple creates this specific, unit-locked piece of software, they open the floodgates to having to create more specific, unit-locked pieces of software whenever a government agency wants one. We've already heard about another 175 phones waiting for the same treatment. There will be more...
Vic.
Plane food sees pilot grounded by explosive undercarriage
NASA boffin wants FRIKKIN LASERS to propel lightsails
Streetmap's lawyer: Google High Court win will have 'chilling effect’ on UK digital biz
Saturday 20th February 2016 03:17 GMT
Re: Google Maps "Lite"
Come on, Google, please listen to your users, dump this "Lite" rubbish and reinstate the old, full function GM
On my box, I can simply click the lightning symbol at the bottom to switch to the full-fat version. Have you tried that?
Lite mode is much quicker - but doesn't give me lat/long for points on the map...
Vic.
Virgin Atlantic co-pilot dazzled by laser
Friday 19th February 2016 22:36 GMT
Re: Filters or just control
Why do cockpits even have windows that can be got at from the ground? Aren't the instruments inherently better than a pilot's senses?
No.
Being able to see where you are going is inherently easier and safer than relying on instruments. IFR is for when there's nothing better...
Vic.
Heart Internet in 22-hour TITSUP after data centre power stuffup
Thursday 18th February 2016 00:42 GMT
Re: Air France Flight 447
as you'll see from the above, the Pitot tubes had plenty of previous.
The pitots in question weren't exactly top-notch, but as you state, Airbus suggested they be changed. Had this been a safety issue, an AD would have been issued, and the change would have been enforced. This is an upgrade, not a safety recall...
Multiple pilot errors from multiple pilots were indeed a very important factor. But one of several important ones
The plane was completely flyable with the problems that occurred. *I* could have flown it to safety. What crashed this aircraft was the pilots - and PNF in particular - not doing very standard stuff when it was required. Had PNF not been holding the stick back - when he shouldn't even have had his hand on it - PF would have recovered from the stall. At that point, everything would have been back to normal.
It's really not useful to try to blame kit here; this was pilot error, and any mitigation we might try to draw simply obfuscates the root cause of the crash, thus rendering it more likely to reoccur. I don't think anyone wants that.
Vic.
Tuesday 16th February 2016 10:44 GMT
Re: Air France Flight 447
with an Airworthiness Directive (?) already in place to remedy it.
There was not. EASA ATA 34 is dated the 31st of August 2009, with the AF447 incident occurring two months earlier.
Fixing any one of them would probably have led to a different end result.
Nevertheless, the stated procedure in the Flight Manual for the condition in which they found themselves - and which the CVR reacords them discussing - is to fly straigh-and-level at nominal cruise power for 60 seconds. Had they followed this procedure, the issue would have been resolved. But they didn't.
Once they were into the full stall, standard procedure - which is drilled in from very early on in a pilot's career - is to drop the nose. PF actually tried to do this, somewhat tentatively. But PNF had the stick hard back, when he should not have been touching it at all. Thus the aircraft remained at high AoA, and the stall continued all the way down.
TL;DR: although the Thales pitot tubes fitted to that aircraft were a bit crap, the aircraft was downed not by equipment but by the flight crew failing to fly the aircraft. They thought it was unstallable. It's reminiscent of the Titanic being unsinkable...
Vic.
Meet ARM1, grandfather of today's mobe, tablet CPUs – watch it crunch code live in a browser
Thursday 11th February 2016 18:50 GMT
Re: I've always wanted to know
Can an experienced engineer look at a chip design photo/schematic and see how it "works
Not any more.
In days of yore, when chips were laid out by hand, you could recognise certain traits. Features made sense.
These days, everything is fully-synthesised. You can recognise major blocks, and that's about it...
Vic.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
