Posts by alain williams
460 posts • joined Tuesday 29th May 2007 08:50 GMT
Re: I dunno
That is rather like saying "we won't ship Perl because we ship Python instead. They are both scripting languages and you can do much the same thing in either." But that does not help if youhave an application written in Perl.
Similarly: there are many applications written to use Mysql so RedHat have to ship something that is Mysql compatible so that their uses can run them. Agreed: Postgresql might be better for a new project, but that is a different story.
Will it be an MOT requirement ?
Or will you still get your MOT is this device has 'failed' ?
Re: Land of the Free?
... and the sort of surveillance that was frequently, and rightly, denounced as being oppressive.
The Swivel Eyed Loons carry the day
Up tight about sex while ignoring stuff that has a far worse effect: gratuitous violence & religious mumbo jumbo.
This will just have the effect of blocking some NHS sites & the like while adding to the costs of ISPs.
Re: I can't recommend it.
Microsoft may well be doing the best that it can; however it is still subject to the USA Patriot Act.
It would be interesting to have a MS customer (I am am not) write them a letter explicity addressing this issue. I can't complain about them having to obey it, but they should at least come clean.
Space Invaders in real life ...
I lived in a large house, 40 - 50 of us. We played space invaders in the long sitting room.
Most lined up across the room advancing slowly, menacingly shouting ''Boom, boom'' towards the other end where a lone defender hurled cusions & pillows at the invaders.
Those were the days!
Posted in Amazon faces its third strike in Germany
Easy to pay
They can pay their workers out of the corporation taxes that they are not paying
Georgia Moffett
She was the fictional Doctor's daughter and in real live is daughter of the 5th Dr and spouse of the 10th Doctor.
Anything with 80+% market share
should be forced to fully document the protocol and (for our unfortunate cousins in the USA) release all claim of patents for use with the protocol.
Defective by design
Do something about it, support the Defective by Design campaign that is doing something about DRM http://www.defectivebydesign.org/rss.xml
You have just missed International Day Against DRM - which was 2 days ago.
Re: Analogy Time
> understand that religions can be a positive and rewarding part of people's lives, even if we do not partake of it.
They can be positive, but I see a lot of harm coming from religions: wars, one religious sect against another; theft from people, look at some of the USA TV evangelists; psycological damage, I know plenty who have had their minds screwed by religion - and that is not just the more wacky sects like moonies.
I think that on balance the world would be a better place without it -- unless, of course, they can demonstrate some reality in their myths.
Re: Analogy Time
Do religious education classes carry mental health warnings these days ? Are there warnings about recognising and avoiding religious web sites ? If not then they ought to. Far more harm is done to young minds by religion than porn.
And ... don't get me started with the violence in kids' computer games, but that is somehow OK.
St Paddy's day
It was a little green man who lost control when returning home after over indulging on the black stuff!
Re: I'm confused
Sack them and insist that they can only apply for the dole via the web .... what do you mean you don't have an old browser ... ?
How long before they are rooted ?
Once you can do that you can do what you want to it; doesn't matter what google try to do with it.
If you have rooted it (and it talks to non google servers) and google tries to disable it -then surely they are trying to damage your property and could be prosecuted.
Posted in WTF is... H.265 aka HEVC?
Re: Ah, another patent encumbered format
But I thought that software patents were not (yet) enforcable in Europe ... so we could write and use codecs for free, it would just be those in the USA (& a few places) who could not.
I have not paid for software for years ...
I just download it from the Internet. Quick, easy - no bother with extra admin worrying about how much or many licenses.
Isn't Open Source great!
Investigation preview
''It was all the fault of some lowly paid minion, he should be flailed alive and never allowed to work in IT again. The top executives cannot be held to blame in any way at all; they could not know what was happening since they were too busy counting the bonus given to them as a reward for having cut costs by sacking long time experienced staff and instead employing untrained and inexperienced contractors in India.''
Posted in Anonymous blitzes Israel in new attack
I have a lot of sympathy for what Anonymous are doing here
I agree that it is illegal and in many ways wrong. However what the state of Israel is doing to the Palestinians is very very wrong: they have ignored UN resolutions with impunity and little international reproach, when Saddam Hussein ignored UN resolutions governments around the world screamed loudly.
The actions of the Israeli government need to be said as what they are: internal oppression against an ethnic minority. When that minority (inevitably) fights back this is taken as an excuse to hit back even harder. If this were happening anywhere else in the world there would be loud condemnation. Why does this not happen here?
A wrong to fix another wrong is not the right way either. I both support and disagree with what Anonymous have done at the same time.
Let us hope that this sparks real debate as to what is happening; however I suspect that it won't.
Before someone accuses me of it: I am not anti semitic. Just because I disagree with some of the actions of the Israeli government does not mean that I hate Jews; just as when I loudly complain about the actions of whoever is currently in power at Westminster does not make me anti British.
Why the musak under the voice ?
Why have jangly musak when the guy is talking ? Do they think that people are such air heads that without it they wil get bored ?
We need a relay
In earth orbit but 60 degrees before or behind us. That will let us keep in touch when the sun is in the way.
Maybe it is part of the selection test
If you complain about the poor security then it helps to show GCHQ that you have some clue and thus worth considering for employment.
I wish, but I suspect that I am wrong.
Re: Enta outage
I have a router from these people http://www.mikrotik.com/ - handles IPv6 well. A few small bugs but OK. Setting it up takes a bit of work to get right.
GoPro don't respect their customers
I bought one at the start of Nov for my son; available within 7 days. We got the camera, but they said that a couple of extra items would be a few weeks --- not so great since he was going to Madagascar. A few weeks came & went - we were told early Feb. Feb came & went - so I cancelled. I spoke to them on the 'phone and email, they showed little interest.
There was a promised andriod app to control it -- does not work properly. The camera itself crashes.
My son does not recommend them.
I am sorry if I sound like a broken record ...
why not try a system that is secure by design - some version of Unix. OS/X & Linux are the most popular.
The above is a good start, but you need to take security seriously: install OS patches, train users to not be plonkers (good passwords, think about what they do, ...)
Nano is OK for simple users
but anyone who spends a lot of time editing text files should invest the time to learn a more powerful editor that allows you to change many things easily, etc. For that both vi (or vim) and emacs are what you should be looking at. To not do so is like digging a garden with a hand trowel because you never learned how to use a spade.
Having said that I do come across huge numbers of people who waste a lot of time by never having learned to use the tools available to them; they then justify their ignorance through abusive comments on the better tools - sad.
Enjoy pastures new
and maybe send in an occasional guest item -- maybe something that WSJ will not let you publish.
Posted in Top tools for junior Linux admins
Good conferences ...
as a compliment to web sites - meet other guys with beards and spectacles. You pick up more than just the problem that you have today and get to make friends. Try this one in Newcastle at the end of March:
We can't annoy the farmers!
and cut the CAP - which eats just under 1/2 of the EU budget. Got to keep the French farmers happy, and Greece would go completely bust if they could not fiddle their olive subsidies.
Blocking caller ID
It ought to be illegal for any corporation/... to block caller ID. If any do so, or give a false number, they must get a large statutory fine. That will make it much easier to identify and nobble the scam artists while allowing legitimate business to continue ... not all business calls are unsolicited sales.
I will accept a few exceptions like child line & the VD clinic.
Re: No luck here
I have a Desire Z, I asked HTC when they were going to provide an upgrade of Android. Their reply is below, but they refused to say what their reasoning/criteria were & then stopped replying. It seems evident that they have little interest in supporting kit once they have sold it -- so I told them that I would be unlikely to buy HTC again. Maybe this is one reason why they are losing market share.
''We only update our phones if it will provide an overall improved user experience as we balance features, performance and usability. Because of this, the current firmware you have has been decided to be the best for your device.''
Posted in When open-source eats itself, we win
Apache 2.4
Although Apache 2.4 came out 10 months ago it was not ready for production use. For instance: it took a few months for perl and php to work with it, then this all needed to be adopted by the distributions. This has happened to an extent (eg it is in Fedora & Debian experimental), but the main stable distros come out with a new major release every few years and won't change before then. So expect it in RedHat 7 (out later this year) and Debian 7 (maybe this year) or Debian 8 (2014+).
Don't expect most people to run it on serious production platforms until then. Even then, transition will be slow since we don't like to upgrade stable, supported systems.
What is the difference between royalties & licences
''chip royalties made up 52 per cent of ARM's revenue, ... , and licences brought in 38 per cent.''
What do they mean by ''royalty'' as opposed to ''licence'' ?
Why not launch from altitude ?
If it is worth while launching from the equator to get an extra shove from the earth's rotation, why not also launch from up a mountain ? Kenya is on the equator and has mountains 5Km high. OK: there is a cost getting rockets to a mountain, but there is also a cost building a big boat to launch them from sea level.
Cape canaveral is 28 degrees North of the equator.
Please give me text
I started to listen to it ... started with some idiot music, then people telling me where they were. Not interested.
Please transcribe it to text and then I can scan it & read the bits that I want to, I don't have 50 minutes to burn.
Re: UK users?
Re: AC 23:05
Good to see that the microsoft trolls are reading this forum. Shame that they can't kick the habit of posting MS sponsored lies. Funny how they always pos A/C -- not got the balls to admit who you are then ?
Amazing to think ...
that each pixel in the picture is a sun!
What sort of million ?
Would that be 1000 x 1000, or 1024 x 1024 ?
Portal of truth ?
Good idea, I like the truth. Truth is supported by evidence, until then it is just stories - mythology.
Let him provide us with testable, objective evidence - it he cannot then he should bear in mind the 8th commandment which is something about false witness.
Their analogy is flawed
I support the right to protest: to go somewhere, be noisy and make your point of view as one of a group. If you believe something - stand up, be seen, be heard and be counted.
DDOS: let me see...
Do we know who is behind the protest ? No: the DDOSers have typically hijacked others' machines.
Do I (as a visitor to the web site) know what it is about ? No: all that I know is that the site is slow.
Can we count the protestors ? No: they aren't using their machines, we do not know who they are.
Having an analogue of a street protest is difficult in cyberspace, most people who visit the site just won't know. So what can we do:
* Insist that all web sites have a link to whoever wants to say something about them ? Not practical; Apple knows how to avoid this (until the court finally kicked them hard enough).
* Permit sites with domains like XxxSucks.org that will show up in google. Yes - that is as close as I can think, these must be protected from being taken down by Xxx.
Subroutines invented
I thought that Ada Lovelace wrote about subroutines. OK: the analytical engine was not built, but she did talk about the idea.
Paypal - grrrr
I made what was effectively a charitable donation; they used paypal. I ticked the box saying that I did not want to create a paypal account (I read their nightmareish T&Cs years ago). The next thing that I knew I received email from Paypal telling me how to update my account settings. I phoned them, they lied to me; gave me an email address to complain to that did not work.
They are an unscrupulous bunch of crooks who have no intention of operating in a truthful manner. I will now never have anything to do with any organisation that only accepts payment via that bunch of bandits.
Posted in AFACT wants ushers to confront pirates
Re: Movies are to theatres
When I used to take my kids I would bring in my own sweets - rather than pay the stupid prices in the cinema.
It is a technological triumph
even if we are being pursuaded to think that it is a joke. They have had to get many things right to put it up there; even if not everything appears to have worked properly.
Heaping derision is the way that our politicians try to keep us thinking negative thoughts about NK. It is all politics. I am not saying that NK is the best of nations or that it could find better ways of spending money; but the black & white view is simplistic.
But to say that the only purpose is to bomb the USA (so we should be afraid) while the USA has its own ICBMs is complete hypocrisy, such technology has multiple uses. In a similar way we are told that the only reason that Iran has a nuclear programme is to make bombs - ignoring other purposes.
8,000 years - yummy!
So the cheese should now be nice & ripe!
Re: Just trying to protect their balliwick
The prices of movies and shows and books are virtually identical from one service to another due to contracts that prevent content from being sold cheaper on another service than it is on the one the contract covers.
Clauses like that should be made illegal, a company that insists on (and gets) such a clause has become too big - Amazon is such a company.
Re: Hobbit Schmobbit!
If you do use IPv6 it says that it is the same and that the difference is in the visitors. I know, I just tried both.
Sod which Amazon entity provided it ...
all that they need to ask for is how much was delivered to addresses in Blighty.
Where Amazon is operating as a fulfillment center, then the 'sale' value is how much the charged the e-shop/whatever to pick, pack & post the item.
It is sometimes a mistake to look at the nitty gritty.
He could offer to decrypt individual files ...
My reading of S49(2)(d):
that it is not reasonably practicable for the person with the appropriate permission to obtain possession of the protected information in an intelligible form without the giving of a notice under this section,
So: he offer to decrypt files on demand - one at a time. When PC Plod refuses and demands the key he says ''see you in court'' - I suspect that a jury may side with him, he did offer.
See: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/49
