* Posts by JEDIDIAH

2525 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2009

Toxic Plankton feeds on Android Market for two months

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Haven't updated?

"Fragmentation" is just one reason that someone might not have updated.

Needing to "jailbreak" your phone is another.

Although "updates" are less relevant in an article about applications that the user has chosen to download and run.

Time to say goodbye to Risc / Itanium Unix?

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Longevity

I've seen plenty of corporate systems that are out of support. Some part of the system has been de-supported long ago whether its the hardware, OS, or the app. How this goes over in large corporations is a mystery to me.

The length of support issue is a universal one. It is not something where Unix has a magical advantage. Enterprise Unix vendors will gladly screw you over in that respect just as Microsoft or Apple would. It's not just a "small systems" or "PC thing".

Your apps will be "obsolete" far quicker than your OS or hardware.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

There's plenty of extra hype everywhere.

AIX has it's own warts. This includes it's "virtualization" technology and even it's "always up" hardware design. It's not all just a bed of roses.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Don't get out the bagpipes just yet...

Migration away from proprietary RISC Unix hardware has been going on for a long time. A lot of this has been due to lackluster performance from the "market leader" (namely Sun). Over the years there has been some back and forth on this and you've had some shops realize that they might not need everything that proprietary RISC servers have to offer. The same also applies to big name proprietary Unix apps.

Although for really big jobs and large environments, the "little iron" from the Unix vendors still does things that bulked up desktop PCs still can't. The RISC platforms don't stand still either. The situation is not nearly as simple as some pundits would like it to be.

Cloud iTunes DESTROYS music business FOREVER!

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Defending the brand

> I am not sure I want to have all my music on my iPhone.

Why the frell not? It's the modern iPod.

On the one hand it's just EASIER. You don't have to futz with a lot of options when it comes to syncing your collection. You just hit the "sync all" button. Even the rsync version of this is pretty simple. No futzing with a playlist hack to add that one album out of 5 or 18 because you have so little space.

Then there's the whole convenience-on-the-go aspect of MP3 players in general. Some people seem strangely eager to decry the idea of having everything at your fingertips when ever you might fancy it. Odd for a Cloud related article.

...sounds like making poor excuses for what would be considered an obvious fault in any other brand of device.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Bizzaro engineering.

> And that's the great thing about Apple's iSync umm iCloud ...

> you get good syncing for various things for free and 5G of

> usable remote backup or application buffer space

Which isn't nearly as useful as you seem to think.

It's a solution that uses the most expensive storage and network available and the backwards way of how it should be done.

We need a Bizzaro icon for stuff like this.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Mostly spackle...

I see iMatch as mostly just patching the holes in the current iTunes offering. For ease use purposes, you should be able to re-download all of your content purchased from iTunes from any authorized device or copy of iTunes. Apple should provide the equivalent of the big monster media server that many of us have built for ourselves. A paying customer should never have to worry about ever losing the stuff they've paid Apple for.

After I enter my Digital Copy code for Clockwork Orange or HP7, I should be able to stream that from any Apple device I have and not even need to worry about syncing it.

The music "trading" feature is a mixed bag, especially for people "anal" enough to care about having everything with them. iTunes is missing things and may have an inferior copy of what it does have.

A peek inside Apple's iCloud data center

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Yes. Sad is the word.

> You got Xserve, OS X server and it is certified UNIX putting it to AIX league.

Yes. Sad is the word. You probably don't even realize why either.

Phishers LAMP web hosts

JEDIDIAH
Linux

PHP is the bind and sendmail of our times.

PHP is the Bind and Sendmail of our times.

There are tons of badly written apps coded in PHP that ignore basic security considerations. Quite often it is these that provide the way in for such phishers. This article doesn't do enough to highlight the crux of the problem. It seems more about generating hysteria than the public service aspect of proper journalism or research.

PHP apps are quite often the "bad userland" sitting on a robust core similar to what Windows often suffers from.

Apple bars WinXP users from iCloud

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Cost and technology.

>> "I'll have to spend the money I was going to spend on iCloud on a 500 gig external disk instead..." #

>>

>>Posted Friday 10th June 2011 13:18 GMT

>

> It's free numbnuts.

Local storage capable of filling in for this Cloud service is "dumpster diving" material.

Mobile products fail to take advantage of such crufty gear out of choice rather than a genuine limitation. Apple's problems on the road are entirely self inflicted.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Dark ages indeed...

I really don't get it. Sure it looks a little prettier and has a badly implemented form of sudo.

Beyond that, it looks and acts pretty much like it's more ancient counterparts. Some consumers are so willing to add to landfills with really no good justification. XP for good or bad is what's out there. The only thing that Apple will do by forcing people away from XP (or Linux for that matter) is to encourage more people to give more money to Microsoft and Dell.

Apple should be eager to help liberate people from Microsoft in any way they can rather than helping to keep the Microsoft hegemony entrenched.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

The "consumer" culture.

> It was designed for an age before multiple cores were a common thing

Multiple cores were common on more serious PCs in the 90s. Some of these PCs even ran the OS that would eventually become Windows XP.

Your new consumer shiny thing is probably not nearly as new as you think it is.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Re: Not quite.

> Its not a harddisk in the internet, more like a sync service between different devices.

No. It's more like a local NAS that doesn't use the fast local network but instead uses the slow expensive internet. There should be a beefier version of the AppleTV that manages this sort of thing for you and avoids using the most expensive storage and transport options available.

Has Steve Jobs killed the consumer hard disk industry?

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

The cry of the fanboy

> IT'S NOT AIMED AT YOU! It's for the casual user

A 2 hour high res video in a modern format is 25G. That is a short vacation video.

Are you trying to tell us that "only geeks" take vacation videos?

"Normal people" have been making their own videos since the 60s.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Can't work yet but...

I agree with your general point but not necessarily the details. Network access of storage works fine on a nice fast wired local network. Once you get beyond that it falls apart. A NAS transfer can easily outrun a USB transfer. However, a WAN transfer is going to be far worse than either of those.

The network is the problem but networking in general is not the problem.

The world is not flat enough for the Cloud to work yet. If it were, then you could just have your own Cloud at home.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Not really... not really.

You're numbers are bizarre.

Consumer wired networking is 1000mb/s. Even cheap crappy systems have GigE now and the associated switch gear is cheap.

A wired NAS can easily do 80MB/sec or more.

Wireless in general is a big problem. It's a mess in general. Slow. Insecure. Difficult to deal with.

Once you get into this "Cloud" thing forget about it. Minutes quickly turn into hours or even days.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Fanboy silliness.

If it's my DVD then it's my personal property, period.

That said. It's plenty easy to fill up hard drives with your own still photos and high res video.

They sell consumer cameras that record in the same format that BluRay uses. So the idea that an individual can't "legally" have hundreds of Gigs or even Terabytes of storage is simply bogus.

Even my "small personal media files" will choke a cablemodem or 3G connection. Cloud storage is just not cost effective and the network is crap. There's a middle man everywhere trying to extract money from you like some sort of bridge troll.

iCloud is a solution for lame devices that should be less lame.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Racing the turtles...

> Most ADSL connections, 8Mbits/second download, 1MBit/s upload. Sometimes.

>

> Anyone fancy syncing their photo collection at those sorts of speeds?

I was playing around with Amazon's service. I have a cable modem service that's very assymetrical and I spend a little more than a day pushing my personal music files up to Amazon. My collection is not that big, only about 16G.

In the same amount of time, I can push about 1.5TB around my local network.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Thriving tape industry?

When was there ever really a thriving desktop tape industry?

Tape has always been somewhat like SCSI on the desktop. It's a technology that tends to be inherently expensive for the really robust gear. Being cheap with tape really doesn't work out well in the long run. Cheap tape tends to fail and is not really re-usable. Cheap tape also tends to be low capacity, too low capacity to be really useful. Tape in general is kind of awkward and always has been. It's always been better if you had some sort of jukebox or robot.

In short, it's a technology not well suited to consumer use. Short of needing to use it for a Vic-20, it has always been kind of awkward in the consumer space.

Tape continues to do what it has always does, kind of like mainframes.

Apple iCloud: Steve Jobs' own private internet

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Another USB?

This sounds like something that might make sense someday but doesn't really make that much sense now that insufficient infastructure is present now. We still have a lot of people that have poor Internet connectivity and/or draconian data caps.

Any solution that fixates on some remote server somewhere is fundementally out of step with current technological limitations. The cloud needs to be coralled in for now. Some day, it might work to have all of your eggs in Apple's basket on the other side of the world (or not). However, for now stuff needs to be close at hand because data's too big and network pipes are too small and expensive.

The "cloud" needs to be an appliance that sits in your own home.

Apple embraces 'n' extends messaging

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Spam?

Spam better controlled by proprietary protocols? Spam is a proprietary beast. It is likely to be aggravated by proprietary protocols. At least open protocols allow for a diverse ecosystem of tools that can be employed to address particular user requirements.

I dumped the iPhone specifically because of it's closed SMS client. It wasn't up to snuff and they weren't willing to allow 3rd party addons to help make it up to snuff. It was open data but their approach to the problem was very proprietary.

Dear Ubuntu: The netbook is toast

JEDIDIAH
Linux

A case of wishful thinking...

I think it's just a case of wishful thinking. There are seeming a large and diverse group of people that want netbooks to fail and for them to be wiped away by the iPad or other tablets. It seems like they keep on repeating this idea in the hope that if they repeat it enough that it will actually come true.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

It's all about the app....

It's all about the Apps, and this is where I think the original rant was totally off base. He seemed to be thinking that dressing up the Debian package manager would magically attract developers as if he were drawing the wrong lessons from Apple's recent successes. Apps require developers and courting developers and supporting developers. Dressing up your package manager isn't going to make much difference. You've got to court the developers or otherwise encourage them to build for your platform.

Apple has some very well established developer networks. So does Microsoft. It's not clear that Canonical has ever tried to replicate this in any meaningful way.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

...as far as elgato goes.

EyeTV? Are you kidding?

This is the best example of trying to shoehorn something onto a tablet that clearly doesn't belong there. This is something that really belongs on a proper TV. Attempting to do this on a tablet actually leads to an inferior experience in all respects.

The fact that Elgato has to go out of it's way to accomodate the iPad also handily demonstrates the inherent limitations of the iPad itself. It simply doesn't have the mojo to cope with real Elgato recordings. Elgato has had to implement a bit of a hack just to make EyeTV on the iPad even work.

Mac OS X Lion debuts in July as $29.99 upgrade

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Cart before the horse.

> 4Gb and no cd/dvd? WTF.

You mention the "dark and mysterious path" of Linux.

If I were taking a Debian approach to this problem I might create a local package repository on one machine and point the rest of them to that "cache" rather than having each of them suck down 4G in network bandwidth.

I've always found it somewhat bogus that MacOS can't do online updates like pretty much any other Unix.

What is UltraViolet™ and why should you care?

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Clockwork silliness

I recently bought that disk. Ripped it too. Plays quite well on my Linux boxes. Now I have this little digital copy certificate so I decided "what the h*ll, lets try this out". So I went rummaging around for these things. Turns out I have 3 of them. I redeemed the first 2 and got stuck with the last one.

IT EXPIRED.

So much for that "digital copy" thing. Gotta wonder if Ultra-Violent will have the same issues.

...wonder how that 1.75G digital copy will stack up to the real thing weighing in at 27G.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

You're joking...

Disney an "enlightened" DVD distributor. They are they reason I started ripping all of my DVDs. Their alleged no-ad approach to DVD menus was anything but. Just about any generic non-blockbuster movie is a lot more "enlightened" in this respect.

Disney is not "enlightened". They practice artificial scarcity with their whole "vaulting" thing and are always screwing around with the formats on their DVDs and adding out-of-spec forms of copy protection.

An iTunes download is just more DRM forcing me to deal with a vendor I don't want any part of.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

No BD on Linux.

...so who uses physical media any more anyways?

I haven't played physical media directly in years.

It started with CDs and then moved to DVDs and later to BDs.

BDs play great on ANY platform once you get rid of the DRM.

Although you are correct. Most people "simply won't bother" and they will get their PC-ready copy from The Pirate Bay rather than going to the trouble of making their own.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Copy madness.

ANY use of digital media requires multiple copies.

That's just the way it is.

Trying to criminalize incidental copies in such an environment is absurd.

As long as I am not a publisher, Disney should have no ability to interfere with my rights with respect to my own personal property (including copies of something from Disney).

JEDIDIAH
Big Brother

Media investments.

Media is useful for as long as it is functional. Even after that, it's a useful token of ownership that does not depend on any overly centralized service that may suddenly go offline.

Physical media also eclipses e-media in terms of what's available for purchase. Some stuff just isn't available in any e-format anywhere. It's hard to buy something that doesn't exist.

I can liberate stuff now or later and strip any DRM off of it and have no limitations or be under the watchful eye of some digital Big Brother gatekeeper.

'Dodgy Android apps are breaking our phones' - Motorola

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Taking off the training wheels...

A soft reset would be very much like the soft reset I did to adjust my iPhone any time I ran my shell script to clear out all of the SMS messages.

Something that flushes apps and app triggered services would be a hand thing. Probably already even exists in the market.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Taking off the training wheels...

> The multi-user systems of the 70s and 80s had less powerful hardware than the average smartphone of today.

Yes and they also had things like top and ps and KILL.

Entire London 2012 Olympics' cultural events database held on Excel

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Where's option C?

> Team A - you get excel

>

> Team B - you get to start the tendering process with CapGemini, Lockheed,

Where's option C?

Use some ready made application fit for your requirements. Are you trying

to tell me that in 30+ years of personal and business computing that no one

else has never had this problem and that no one else has ever built a product

to address this need?

What happened to all of that MS-DOS monopoly mojo?

Where's my ready made Win32 app?

Why does it have to be created from scratch? Don't need the monopoly for that.

JEDIDIAH
Mushroom

Big bother? Not really.

A college kid could knockout a basic SQL based solution over a weekend.

When you are talking about people "adult" enough to be managing databases, the 'horrible complexity' of real database solutions is really not that much of a problem. Like anything else in tech, you need to understand things on a deeper level than just the GUI.

Someone else mentioned disaster recovery. This is a fine example of the "deeper understanding" problem.

Competent people really should not be afraid of something that doesn't come from Microsoft.

Mac trojan evades Apple's brand new security fix

JEDIDIAH
Linux

How do you get the horse into town?

> switching from one account to another is too much to bother.

There is your Trojan attack vector right there... the "can't be bothered" sort of user.

Yeah. Hitting that logout button and entering your own password is such a bother.

With that kind of attitude it's little wonder that so many problems happen in computing and even in other areas. Just apply that mindset to driving. I am sure all of you can think of suitable examples.

Wake up, Linux hippies: No one 'morally obligated' to give back

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Morality is irrelevant given sufficient law.

Morality is irrelevant given sufficient law. The Law exists specifically because you can't trust individuals to live together in peace with each other. SOME ONE will try to take advantage of everyone else. This is where governments and laws come in. They arbitrate conflicting individual interests.

For lack of a better term, people are evil. This evil is mitigated by law, order and contracts.

Free Software is nothing more than a framework to assure that everyone "plays nice" with one another. It imposes it's own "sufficient law" through contract and license law. A good license ensures that everyone plays by the ground rules that the original talent specify. If someone thinks that they can take advantage of everyone else, then the apparatus of the state can come into play.

As far as "morality" goes. The same "morality" applies to all authors regardless of how they choose to license their work.

Ten... Core i5 laptops

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Fanboy silliness.

> How many of the non-Apple kit will be still usable in 4 or 5 years time?

Been there. Done that.

Been on both sides.

My Apple kit was the stuff that didn't stand the test of time, not my PCs.

I don't fancy myself a bazaar merchant. I don't expect my machine to be obsolete quickly. So resale doesn't really mean diddly-do to me. The whole "longevity/resale" argument is an obvious contradiction. Either you want stuff to last or not.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Linux Love?

Try finding yourself a Linux vendor like System 76 or ZaReason.

Either one of those has some very respectable desktop replacement laptops.

Billionaire Zuckerberg kills to eat

JEDIDIAH
Trollface

Quack! What's for dinner....

> It all comes down to can you look the nice fluffy lamb in that face and takes it's life,

Not sure about Mary's lamb but I have no problem with poultry or rabbits. I see ducks and rabbit and I think "dinner" not "pet". If the meat yield on the yard rabbits weren't so small, I might be inclined to have one of them for dinner.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Actually...

> Why restrict it to meet? Why not let him forage & cut all his veg too?

Actually, from a general awareness perspective it is a very good idea to make and plant your own things even if you don't intend to do it all the time. You get to understand what stuff is supposed to look like and taste like. You become aware of what food is actually supposed to be like versus the cost-cut overly-industrialized long-shelf-life versions of stuff.

Sara Lee? Puleeeze. I make much better myself.

Farmville: Not just for web browsers anymore.

JEDIDIAH
Devil

More precisely...

> Exactly. #

>>

>> We're not designed.

A goat or a cow or even a pig can live off of things we cannot.

If your back garden is big enough, it's more than enough to sustain a cow. You can't say the same for yourself.

If you engage in clueless vegetarianism, you will hurt yourself.

New Mac scareware variant installs without password

JEDIDIAH
Linux

The Flanders Effect

> How about avoiding going to iffy websites and clicking on banners without thinking?!

How about actually enforcing the bright line between data and applications.

No user should ever need to fear data. However, in the modern "the user is too stupid to be bothered" culture, things are automated in a foolish way that leads to all of the virus shenanigans you see on Windows.

If Apple has followed Microsoft's lead in this regard then shame on them.

Asus teases with MacBook Air-esque Eee PC

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Being like a MacBook Air

Being like a MacBook Air is basically taking the original netbooks and dressing them up a little bit and putting a decent GPU in them. Most of what makes the Apple product "distinctive" is entirely superficial.

Dear Dell and Microsoft: You're not Apple

JEDIDIAH
Linux

...seems to work well enough for them both.

Being reactionary and derivative is how Microsoft and Dell have always been. It has served them well in the past and there's no reason it can't continue to serve them well. Microsoft has an entrenched monopoly that will take a long time to counteract. As long as that dominance remains, then Dell will always have a big part in it. Apple certainly isn't an immediate threat to either.

Neither company has ever been particularly good. That didn't interfere with their success in the past.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Apple is no BMW

Apple is no BMW.

It's more like Mercury. That's a Ford with some extra superficial bits.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

It's just another Turing Machine. Really...

> The Personal Computer was never meant to be a business computer, it was designed to be

You're kidding right?

The PC was specifically designed as a business machine. It was designed as a business machine to keep the up and coming home computer company at the time from invading IBM's turf.

The PC was designed by IBM to sell to businesses so they wouldn't be tempted by the likes of Apple.

JEDIDIAH
Linux

Don't try to BS those of us that were actually there.

> I think you need to go back and use some of the old alternatives to IE.

I did at the time.

I had absolutely no desire to flee to the allegedly "superior" IE.

Opera was fast and stable by comparison. IE was not.

JEDIDIAH
Grenade

No. It was DOS vs. MacOS.

> Windows success in the home is the primary reason it is a success at the office.

What? Were you just born yesterday?

DOS was a success in the office before Windows even existed.

The dominance of Windows is an extension of the dominance of MS-DOS in the workplace, not the other way around.

Netgear XAV5001 500Mb/s powerline Ethernet adaptor

JEDIDIAH
Linux

All about cats... with a little fiber.

You have to keep in mind that a lot of your total cost is going to be driven by labor and possibly repairs to walls that have to be destroyed rather than the cost of the cable itself. I opted for a bundled cable myself when I had my house wired during construction. The cable bundle was mainly an accounting gimmick so that I could get multiple cables dropped for one price rather than 2x or 5x.

At the time when I was shopping for cable, the bundle with the fiber was nearly the same as the one without. So now I have a fiber wired house. Not really sure yet what to do with it though.

Cat6 might have been an improvement but I'm not sold on the idea.

Another thing about the "structured cabling" is that it kind of serves as a bit of mass protection (like a motorcycle group on the highway) that resists bad handling. It simply won't bend easily in ways that are contrary to how fiber and network cat5 should be handled.

Handy too... I still get shivers any time I recall what they do to the poor cat5 they put in for phones. Ugly. Scary. Ugly. Ugly.

Apple to support reps: Don't confirm Mac infections

JEDIDIAH
Linux

The "whatever" mentality.

The problem with conflating a Trojan with a self perpetuating virus is the whole "permission" thing. This brings up a separate issue. It's an issue of trust. The problem with any program that runs with your UID is the fact that it can DESTROY ALL OF YOUR DATA. It does not have to be a virus to be dangerous.

The coder could be merely incompetent.

This is why real operating systems don't give you free run of the entire system.

You don't have to be malicious. You could just be stupid.

You could execute "rm -rf $HOME" manually or run some app that does the same thing.