Posts by frymaster

totally agree

what the report is saying is, "a cyberterrorist attack will cause headless-chicken syndrome for the media and politicians, and thusly for the unwashed masses, far more severely than the actual damage done would suggest"

given past events, seems a pretty safe bet to me

the definition of open source

open source means whatever the person damn well wants it to mean. some people mean it's got an OSI-appoved license, some people have wider or narrower or totally different criteria

the MS-PL (OSI approved) has no stipulations on the availability of source code, for example (and is more about protection from patent comeback and preserving attribution) and is only an open source license by the OSI definition if it's attached to source code

re: "peer to peer"

neither BT or virgin media mentions peer-to-peer; the article even states it's applied across all protocols.

it's about the amount of BANDWIDTH you're using, not how you're using it

personally I think the VM system (short periods of throttling and no monthly cap) is the best compromise betweem true pay-for-what-you-use-and-get-a-perfect-service and pay-a-standard-fee-and-fight-for-the-contended-resource, if for no other reason than p2p downloading is ludicoursly aggressive when it comes to aforementioned fighting.

what difference does it make to my downloading? none... I suppose if other people were sharing the line, I might restrict my downloading to off-peak times, but that would, in general, be the polite thing to do anyway...

if firefox can't view the videos (on windows), it's only got itself to blame...

just about every single consumer windows pc has a h.264 directshow codec installed. all firefox has to do is to hook into the operating system's own features for playing media. the firefox devs seem to have a "not invented here" view for using any kind of OS enhancements - which might be a very important design decision given the cross-platform nature - EXCEPT for anything relating to aero and other pointless bling. which means it's not because of design critera and it's just because they like making things difficult

- if firefox used directshow to play media, the video tag would work for most people

- if firefox used the user's x509 certificate store instead of its own, corporations might be able to use it for their dodgy intranet ssl sites

- if firefox used the user's registry for storing config information instead of an sqlite database, corporations might be able to use group policy to control firefox settings (specifically proxies, but I can think of other things that apply)

ultimate?

"instead of versions of the Ultimate SKUs"

sales of ultimate versions are miniscule, probably even for retail sales of windows (which are miniscule in comparision to the OEM market)

MS makes its money on volume sales of home premium to OEMs, and volume sales of business to companies

we know they're the victim of hacking attacks...

...because the bloody zombies created keep spamming us!

"its not for gubberments to block access to any websites"

"its not for gubberments to block access to any websites"

if you read the article, they wouldn't _BE_ blocking it

they'd just be adding it to a list that parental control apps use (i.e. the parent has chosen) or that schools use (and they have a perfect right to control internet access they provide)

andoid costs too

...at least if you want the google apps (most importantly the app store)

(google maps is nice, but I can always use the web version if I had to)

not really...

"Windows Vista was riddled with bugs, offered (at best) lacklustre support for third party software and hardware..."

the ONLY issue anyone I know ever had with vista was just after launch, when there was sod all drivers around for it. that's indirectly MS's fault as a result of the huge negative publicity they managed to drum up ahead of vista's launch, but it was better drivers turning up - and not the arrival of SP1 - that caused the turnaround. I installed vista when SP1 came out - BUT DIDN'T INSTALL SP1 - and had no problems

note that drivers on win7 are generally just the vista drivers, if they work; for situations where the vista drivers don't work, some companies are still to provide updated versions for 7. This means that windows 7 has a subset of the hardware support of vista, currently (I expect that to change over time, and 7 has better support for touchscreens and sensors)

and i'm unaware of any legacy software that won't run on vista that will run on 7 (excepting the business version's XP mode, otherwise known as "I need foxpro drivers installed" mode) - indeed as vista introduced the virtual file redirection system, it copes better than xp for non-admins dealing with ancient code that expects to be able to write to the program files directory.

vista is manifestly NOT worth the development time it took to create it (mainly because they basically abandoned all progress and started again half-way through). vista blatantly did NOT live up to the hype that MS put about many years before release. These factors combined into a backlash of negative publicity which helped ensure that there'd be sod all drivers, especially for 64-bit, at launch. This in turn further fueled the backlash against it, ensuring it'd never really be popular. This is definately a failure that can be laid at microsoft's door.

But objectively, vista IS an improvement on XP, it's not "bug ridden", it's backwards-compatability support is good (there's not a single user-level app I've seen that won't run on it) and hardware support by vendors is now good

noone's denying vista was a total failure for MS, but that's no reason to go making up extra issues with it either

the flipside of customisation

this is the other side of the "manufacturers can customise the os" model - it means it's then a LOT more work for new OS versions to be adapted. However, with the possible exception of the HTC Hero's Sense UI, customers don't really CARE about whatever custom gubbins has been included in the phone, so they get hampered because of something they didn't want anyway

it'll be interesting to see how this plays out as the android handset market becomes more diverse

TPB wasn't done for linking to copyrighted material

it was done for both a) running trackers for copyrighted material, and b) not doing anything about it when notified that users had put up copyrighted material

both the US and EU laws essentially say that automated services like search engines, and user-generated-content sites like forums (or pirate bay, or rapidshare) are immune to prosecution for the content UNTIL THEY ARE NOTIFIED.

being notified, and then not doing anything about it, is when they get done, though there's an argument to be made that a DMCA notice doesn't qualify for an EU site

something google did right

"which notes that the Webkit-based browser integrates Mac OS X's spell-checker and Keychain, plus OS X's built-in sandboxing system"

in a similar vein, chrome on windows integrates with the user's certificate store, unlike firefox. It looks like google are at least making attempts to make use of integration features provided by a host OS (something difficult on linux because the set of features you can absolutely rely on being there is tiny, and you don't want to have legions of prerequisites that concern functionality many users don't give a hoot about)

though I wonder if they've done something about their abysmal screenreader integration yet... (which is the biggest sign that chrome is being developed by a company not used to desktop apps and not experienced in all the subtleties yet)

stop talking mince

whatever kind of privilege separation exists, your virus scanner will be running at "most privileged" and "allowed to do anything it wants" levels or it's pointless

furthermore, virus definition files are neither source nor compiled, they're data files

Should separate out hiring and stats-gathering

If HR want these sort of details for stats from the people they've hired, they can ask them after they're hired. If they want them from the agencies, they can ask for a cover letter with all this kind of stuff (religion, ethnicity etc.) so that it can be easily removed from the CV when the candidates are being reviewed.

personally I'm against gathering these stats for the simple reason that in some mis-managers' minds, they become quotas - "we need to hire more people of special-interest group x" - rather than being used as indicators of a possible deeper problem

The best comment on it ever

was this:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/16/

and the news post:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2005/12/16/

"What you've proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information."

if you want to be paranoid...

"Seriously, they must have _some_ way to mess their users up all the way from Redmond, just like they did with all those millions of xbox users the other day."

yes and no

there's nothing stopping MS punting out a security update that has dodgy side effects (for maximum effect don't activate it until a few months after it's distributed) other than the fact that it would be the end of the company. if they did that with malice aforethought, nothing could save them, the class action lawsuit would kill them even if the drop in sales didn't

Don't know if it's deviant

...but it's certainly vacuous

stop being paranoid!

reg commenters! stop being paranoid! it wasn't a heavy sentence because it was rigged, it was a heavy sentence because people are scared of computers, and think "hackers" can do anything they want with some furious keyboard mashing and a 3d visualisation

the great unwashed! stop being paranoid! this was the online equivalent of putting up a picket line across a company's office front door for the purposes of protest. illegal in the sense that it was an invasion of private property, yes. something to be penalised for, yes. some criminal mastermind invading people's files, no

7 second boot

7 second boot is easy if you have strict control over hardware (don't have to detect a bajillion different possible devices), run it off an SSD, and only want to run a browser instead of being a general-purpose OS

@AC 23:16

bravo

he's a massive cockhead, and I suppose mose people whose details have been leaked are too

still no excuse

@Robert Hill

Bravo.

Sensible attitude from a gun-owning person... the extremes moan so loudly that sometimes it's nice to be reminded that it's possible :)

@JimC

Provisionally agree - I think the crucial point is that we just don't know. It could be some vast evil plot to steal 7zip's UDF parsing code, or it could be some tit of an MS programmer (or tit of a third-party dev, or whatever)

in either case, their optimal response would be the same, and I can't see something this daft being a considered deliberate strategy on behalf of higher management tbh

fail article is fail

that groklaw article is utter fail. It's not sudo, (or even a GUI for sudo), and, though I don't know much about policykit other than what the authors say on their main page, it doesn't appear to be that either

the patent CITES THE SUDO MANUAL. I am not a lawyer, shady or otherwise, but if I _WERE_ a shady lawyer I'd point out to my clients that a reference to the invention you're trying to steal is maybe unwise

from this I conclude that it's not supposed to be about sudo. despite the gorklaw article mentioning "GUI" about half-a-trillion times, the patent goes to great pains to repeat (say, a quarter of a million times) that the gui implementation shown in the patent is merely that, an example implementation, and that the fact that it's a GUI is also not the point

whether software patents are a good idea, and whether, assuming they were, what is being described is patentable, are two other, more worthy, discussions that groklaw decided weren't as important as starting their own inane FUD

the solution to crap laws is to change the law, not moan about them being enforced

the US, which seems to have xenophobia built-in to its government mindset if nowhere else, is a lot less likely to permit extradition to other first-world democracies that it demands they do for it. This is bad, and the extradition treaties should be changed to make it equitable

BUT

that doesn't apply here. He's admited to a crime in the USA, they've asked for extradition, we have an agreement to extradite, end of.

If he doesn't want to be extradited he shouldn't hack into computers in a foreign country and delete their files

@zenkaon / raving angry loony, also @Bob Gateaux

"Microsoft simply does not play well with others. They are unreliable partners"

"And Microsoft continues the attack on open source"

I cannot agree. They were informed of a possible violation and they immediately pulled the software while they investigate it. Given that the typical way these encounters go (which also involves smaller companies i.e. its much more likely the original offence was a result of a conscious desire to break the terms of the license) is that they have to be at least threatened with lawyers before they take notice, this is a good example for microsoft to set.... so far. (This is a preliminary stage, the real test will be what they do now, assuming there IS GPL code in there)

"Why there is a problem if Microsoft takes the codes and makes it better? If the man gives his codes away and they are not already good enough then he seems only natural that Microsoft would do this to make it better for us all"

because the man didn't "give away his codes" - he released them with certain conditions. If you don't like the conditions, fair enough, but then you can't use his work.

upgrade only from vista?

an upgrade license is valid if you currently have xp. you might not be able to do an upgrade _INSTALL_ - though you can, going from 32-bit to 32-bit - but you can certainly use an upgrade license to do it.

@Andus McCoatThen

missing the point a bit - it's not that flash is widely used on facebook (it's not) and it's certainly not the "underlying software" - it's just that one of the bits that DOES use it didn't specify that external flash apps weren't allowed to access it programatically. a very epic fail, yes, but not one that relies on "the ENTIRE FARKING SITE" being flash

(sarcasm) permissions wouldn't be too much of an issue...

...after all, a wiki doesn't have permissions

mind you, in a wiki, you can find out who edited what and when without having to spool the whole damn thing on rewind. and can revert just as easily. fail.

don't see the issue

they have some android phones, and some windows mobile phones. They've released a lot of android phones recently. so the next one is going to be windows mobile, so they still have a released-in-the-last-nanosecond one out there. the smartphone market is mostly contract, contract people upgrade in the month following their contract expiring, meaning there's a very narrow window to catch them, so you always need a new phone out. That does, of course, assume people who, having bought a windows mobile phone in the past, inexplicably want to buy them again, but they must be out there

fail

"By transmitting the ApacheBench program to YouSendIt's servers" - if that's the quality of the technical investigation by the prosecution, this will be a short case...

upgrade license != upgrade install

"It would seem that despite the software requiring a clean install rather than a straightforward upgrade, many perplexed punters were still able to buy the software via Digital River, without being warned that their current OS was unable to perform the upgrade"

if you have an upgrade license you are only allowed to install windows over the top of an existing (licensed) copy. There's nothing to stop you performing a clean install, however.

The only roadbump is you _HAVE_ to start by booting up your old system and running the setup program on the disk. It then detects that you need to perform a clean install, and goes off and does it (noting that you previously had windows installed). When it comes time to acticate, it remembers that you had windows installed and lets you use an upgrade key.

re:spanning

"The Vista/7 graphics model does not accomodate multi-monitor systems in spanning mode"

oh god, what a crisis. it wouldn't be so bad if spanning mode was crap...

oh wait, it is.

spanning is a good way to make the "maximise" button useless, and to get a great big eyeful of bezel wherever the program you want to use thinks the most important stuff should go. It also assumes compatible geometry.

independant monitors should be handled independantly, it makes more sense for both apps (large edit window, palettes on the other) and games (main window, subsidiary information on the second like wic)

copyright

they can't copyright the snow white story, but they certainly have copyright over their representation of it - that's definately meant to be Disney's snow white and Disney's dwarves. Parody is protected only for parody's sake i.e. to take the piss out of Disney, not to sell beer

pointless advice

the kind of people who will both see and follow this advice are the kind of people who don't click on random email attachments. And like david w, i'd love to see them try

@Hein-Pieter van Braam

if you're getting that paranoid, you can't assume whatever is intercepting your communication with the binary patch servers isn't intercepting your communication with the mythical source patch servers. In any case the point is moot, because updates don't just have to be signed by _A_ certificate, they have to be signed by a microsoft certificate, which means you can't just get one from an automated system on some random issuer's website. It's still possible - all you'd need is an inside man at MS - but much less likely.

Realistically, if someone is intercepting and proxying all your internet comms AND they have an inside man at MS, you're screwed anyway.

@R Callan

Google is not a torrent tracker. It is merely a search engine (and one which removes illegal content on request, at that)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_tracker

The tracker is the thing that gives P2P clients the contact details of other peers so they can exchange data

DEP

"Those using Windows Vista with a feature known as data execution prevention enabled are safe from the exploit"

The default for DEP is "Turn on only for essential Windows programs and services"

does this cover adobe reader by default?

unplugged wire bollocks

A computer connected to a LAN where the router doesn't have internet access will spend ages trying to talk to the internet, because it has to wait for timeouts. A computer with the wire unplugged will shoot back an error straight away. I used to use this trick whenever the DC servers were slow - unplugging the LAN cable before boot would speed things up many times over as the computer didn't look for updated login scripts etc.

does this affect....

....the EV green bar? Even if it doesn't, it's no less serious (I notice the green bar; I probably wouldn't notice its absence)

wat

"OK... but if ham/whatever is so great why are you using the Internet to type that post instead of talking to one of your oddball ham freinds?"

so if you use the internet you can't use ham radio? Are you allowed to use mobile phones if you send letters?

I wasn't aware there was some kind of communication media rationing

Clean up

realistically, once a virus has been running on a PC, noone does cleanup, they do backup/wipe/reinstall

the cleanup facilities of an antivirus could cure world hunger and make toast, but I still wouldn't use them