* Posts by thecakeis(not)alie

485 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2010

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Scientologist overlord declares victory over Anonymous

thecakeis(not)alie

I am curious about something...

Do you get paid to post these comments, or is it part of some "volunteer work" you perform for Scientology? I don't actually know how it works, but i suspect that if you are actually paid for the astroturfing, (as opposed to performing it "voluntairily" under the auspicies of Central Command) there might be legal issues.

Find an OT 3+ and ask them!

Assange: Text messages show rape allegations were 'set up'

thecakeis(not)alie

@g e

Funny how they never managed to pass that "reason" along. Nor provide an accounting of how much was collected, nor what was being done to unlock the funds, what timeframe...

There hasn't even been the consideration to use that as a convienient excuse! Instead there has been nothing but slience.

Funny that.

thecakeis(not)alie

Innocent until proven guilty.

"Innocent UNLESS proven guilty" hasn't applied to anyone in the western world for a while now. Why the hell should Assange (of all people) get the benefit of the doubt? Step into your perv scanner you are a guilty terrorist until proven otherwise! If you choose the molestation station instead of the perv scanner, you’re a TIME WASTING terrorist: the worst kind! Smile for the CCTV and don't type anything bad into an e-mail; ECHELON's children are watching you.

Speaking of children, have you dropped yours off with "the man" lately? They want some DNA samples, fingerprints and a complete track record of every single misdeed for the profiling computers. While you're at it, check to see if someone left a complaint including completely unsubstantiated rumour with the police. That ECRB check is a real bitch for getting a job, innit?

The instant we started to accept "innocent UNTIL proven guilty" over "innocent UNLESS proven guilty" we had begun our downward slide as a society. In the past decade, we've truly accepted a complete destruction of the concepts that underpin liberty. The only way out is to get the hoi polloi good and uppity about this.

Every indication – from the media circus to his own lieutenants abandoning him – is that Assange has a fairly large ego and something of a messiah complex. Fair enough. Not the kind of person I would ever want to drink beer with at the pub; but these folks are useful nonetheless. Let him be crucified for the cause and let’s hope he makes a big enough noise that everyone sees exactly how completely screwed our society is.

Since none of us have a right to the presumption of innocence anymore, I don’t see why Assange gets a special pass. Quite the opposite: he has placed himself in the crosshairs. The advantage is that the sacrifice of this one might well be of benefit to the many.

…but only if we (collectively as a society) heed the wakeup call that this entire bucket of Drama Llamas raining from the sky represents. Sadly, of history is any guide…there’s fat chance of that. The hoi polloi might have to look away from their boob tubes, and HOLY CRAP they might end up missing “Oprah.” Can’t have that, now can we...

thecakeis(not)alie

Poor bugger indeed.

Consider a donation? http://www.bradleymanning.org/

(P.S. Don't donate to wikileaks on behalf of Manning! So far, none fo that money has made it to the Manning Defence fund. Additionally, Manning's defence team has been unable to get any information out of Assange as to how much has been collected by Wikileaks on behalf of Manning, nor when it may or may not make it's way towards actually helping Manning.)

Catfish: A fanfare for Facebook fakery

thecakeis(not)alie

More like this.

I like this author! I demand more! (It was a very well written review. Honestly!)

<3 Sarah.

Merry Christmas, Moderatrix!

New spaceplane proposed for NASA station crew contract

thecakeis(not)alie

Or, you could just work with your neighbours.

Edmonton Garrison is an army base parked on top of what used to be the Namao Air Force Base. Namao had one of the longest runways in the world: it was at one point one of the backup landing strips for Shuttle. There's a huge city with gobs of infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of very competent individuals very used to dealing with absolutely enormous (read; much larger than Shuttle + boosters) equipment.

We have to personnel, the equipment (large crawlers), the space…even a good launch and recovery site! All that would be required is paying the Canadian government to pick up an Army base and move it, then rehabilitate the extant Air Force base. Let’s be honest, moving an Army base won’t cost that much, and what’s there would be a damned near ready-made replacement for Canaveral and Huston all in one go.

No, the issue is government pork. Efficiency means nothing to bureaucrats, merely who gets what money to pad which expense account and keep which electorate happy.

Microsoft boss to wave tablets in CES faces – again

thecakeis(not)alie

@paul.s

Whilst (nearly) any individual Microsoft application can be surpassed by alternatives, no set of alternatives interoperates as well as Microsoft's gear. Say what you will: but the complete Microsoft "stack" is actually a fairly compelling case in and of itself for it's own existence. It works well when it works together; but you have to be prepared for very nearly a Microsoft monoculture in the server room.

Thanks to the diversity of good product working well together, they aren’t going to be driven out by a bunch of great products that need lots of TLC to even know about one another’s existence. Well, not yet anyways…

thecakeis(not)alie

Holy crap.

Microsoft is still around and making fuilte attempts to be "relevant" outside the depths of the server room!

Retro.

Police probe British Anonymous activists

thecakeis(not)alie

Oi.

Think outside the box, would you?

Wear a hoodie and some shaggy clothing. Go buy a prepaid credit card. In cash. Use said card to buy yourself some phat virtual hosting somewhere not remotely related to you. Do so from a system you don't own, and which is off the beaten path of your daily travails.

Fire up LOIC on remote system, point at people you don't like and make them go away. It’s cheap, easy, and largely untraceable. The biggest thing you have to worry about it being done for by CCTV that you didn’t take the time to pre-scout.

Kids these days. Whatever happened to the age group that was used to things like burner laptops and RRAS points from cheap motel rooms. It’s so much easier to be anonymous in today’s world…you just have to be a bit creative.

Facebook trains self to recognize your face

thecakeis(not)alie

Well that's

creepy.

Oracle mobile Java licensing suit boomerangs

thecakeis(not)alie
Happy

Indeed.

Be in Harmony with your Java fork.

thecakeis(not)alie

That I can't agree with.

JME is an abomination and needs to die, but Oracle's hold on Java needs to be loosened. Everything Oracle touches turns into too-expensive-for-purpose buckets of crap. The way I see it, there needs to be two options:

1) Let the TCKs go free such that Harmony (and by extension Davlik) are legal. From there, these two projects can be brought into compliance with the "mainstream" Java and we will have one universe once more.

2) Oracle waves around it's gigantic sueballs and there becomes "Java" and "Coffee." Oracle's precious becomes a "multi-platform language and execution environment' that only works on high-end servers. The rest of the world forks Java and creates something that ACTUALLY works on all platforms.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some MariaDB updates pending and LibreOffice just finished downloading…

thecakeis(not)alie

Let the TCKs go free!

The time has come for full java stacks on mobiles. JME must die. DIE JME DIE!!!

UK Man cops to £500,000 iTunes royalty scam

thecakeis(not)alie
Badgers

Remember kids:

Punishment should fit the crime. The punishment for crimes as heinous as downloading a TV episode you missed, or an album of music so you can "try before you buy" is enormous. Punitive to the point of ridiculous.

Here's someone from the "other side" of that looking glass screwing regular folks by stealing credit card information. Let's all watch and see how harsh his punishment is. If you get thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars worth of punishment /per track/ for downloading songs, surely a copyright owner who is /actually stealing/ (as opposed to merely infringing copyright by “making available”) will get nailed to the wall!

I demand tens of thousands of dollars worth of punitive damages per credit card stolen, on top of paying back the monies owed! We all know however that won’t happen. Stealing from the “walking wallets” of the world is /nowhere near/ the heinous crime of infringing upon the rights of copyright holders!

The hell of it is…this is one copyright holder I respect! At least he’s honest about how he views those consume the content he owns…

Google drops nuke on 'objective' search engine utopia

thecakeis(not)alie

The first amendment

I think the single most important freedom of expression is that which allows individuals to make choices about what information they wish to receive and what information they don't.

Like drouping doubleclick, admob, etc. on the floor right at the router. But that’s just my opinion…

Prisoners plot strike action over mobile phones

thecakeis(not)alie

@Graham Marsden

There’s a wider argument. It is now largely accepted that there are a certain category of individuals who simply cannot be rehabilitated. Individuals with mental disorders who simply cannot be reacclimatized. These disorders can be genetic in origin, or they can be environmental. (Brain lesions in the amygdalae or the temporal lobes would be excellent examples of non-genetic environmental effects which could cause untreatable mental illness.)

No matter how hard we try, if the individual is actually incapable of feeling sympathy for their victims – or in some cases capable of feeling any emotions at all – then we as a society are left with an ethical dilemma. How we deal with it is really a hugely philosophical choice. I can’t tell you what the “best” path is. I cannot tell you what the “most acceptable” path is. I can tell you what I personally think is the best way to deal with this, given the technology we have available to us.

I believe the most important element is that of determining who are “those individual who simply cannot be saved.” Sociological triage. Modern imaging techniques should be able to tell us if the individuals have serious brain lesions and modern psycho-analytic techniques are often good enough to pick out the dangerous genetic psychopaths and sociopaths. These folks should go to a special prison; one from which there really isn’t any return. Here, they should be provided as much support as we can possibly provide them whilst asking them to contribute (through their labours) back to the society which is housing them. To be clear, this isn’t to rehabilitate them. It is to protect us from them and nothing more. To minimize the risk of wrongly (permanently) imprisoning individuals who actually are salvageable in this system, they should be reassessed on a regular basis. (Every five years?)

The rest of the prison population, (read: the vast majority,) should be in a completely separate penal system. These are individuals who are biologically and physiologically capable of making the choice to rehabilitate and become productive members of society. Here we should be providing education, social services and discipline training. If these people are affiliated with (or beholden to) criminal organizations then we should do what we can to “cut the cord,” and return a productive individual back to society.

While I know that it goes against some people’s belief systems, I don’t believe that the dividing line between which prison system you end up in should be the crime you commit. I believe it should be based entirely on science: are you physiologically and biologically capable of being rehabilitated, or not? If yes…we as a society do everything possible to rehabilitate you. If not…we lock you away forever.

I am interested to hear alternative views on the matter, and recognize that my viewpoint is not one that will be accepted by all.

Google Cr-48: Inside the Chrome OS 'unstable isotope'

thecakeis(not)alie

I don't know about that.

If ChromeBooks come in under the magic $100 mark and you'll see uptake...

thecakeis(not)alie

Might yet be useful.

My Desire can serve as a WiFi hotspot. Baked into the OS, and the telco doesn't charge extra for the privilege. I was thinking about getting a fondle slab of some variety to eventually replace my netbook. Theoretically a ChromeOS netbook could do the same job the netbook is serving now: it’s not my primary computer, it’s a mobile internet device and media player.

The only issue of course is that the ChromeOS device won’t play media. At least not from the gigantic store of media my roommate has on his server. Everyone in the house has applied to the beta in hopes that one of us will get one. I am very curious to see if we can make the ChromeOS netbook doohickey as useful as a (rooted) Android Tablet or a Fujitsu P1510d.

Hmm…

WikiLeaks.org resurrected in US of A

thecakeis(not)alie

@David Wilson

Possibly. Either way, it does at the moment look to me a little too much like "promising to help the man and then throwing him under a bus."

As such, I donated to Manning's defence fund. 2011 will consist of trying to find ways to support Cryptome and OpenLeaks. Just leak the info folks, no Drama Llama required.

thecakeis(not)alie

His name is Manning.

He has been thrown under a bus in this whole thing, despite being the guy who actually took all the risks. If you feel like helping him out here is where you should start:

http://www.bradleymanning.org/faq-on-bradley-manning-defense-fund/

Please do not donate towards his defence by donating to Wikileaks.org. At current, the monies donated to Wikileaks in support of Manning have yet to make their way to actually helping Manning's defence. Please donate towards the defence at http://www.bradleymanning.org.

If you don't feel like helping out Mr. Manning, but want to support a Wikileaks-alike cause without the omnipresent Drama Llama, I would like to suggest http://www.cryptome.org. They have been around for quite some time, have leaked some very important information and in my opinion run a far more professional operation.

Very soon there will also be http://openleaks.net/, formed from a splinter group who have left Wikileaks due to personality conflicts, funding questions and organisational issues.

That said, of all the people currently on the stage asking for monies to support their vision of free speech, I would like to once more put my personal plug in for Bradley Manning's defence fund. He's the guy who right now, at this very moment is in trouble and needs our help. he is the one who took the risks to leak the materiel. I don't deny that what he did was probably a crime in the US...one he most likely will not escape some form of punishment for. Given what he is up for though, it might be the difference (literally) between life and death, or at the very least the difference between "the rest of his life in prison" and "getting out of jail before he's old and infirm."

Apple pulls jailbreak detection API

thecakeis(not)alie

Wow.

Nice to see that personal attacks haven't gone out of style. Heaven forbid someone on the internet dislikes a product from your chosen "lifestyle brand."

For the record, I'm with JaitcH on this one. Whilst a decent phone, I think that overall the iPhone 4 is largely inferior in quality and reliability to the iPhone 3GS. Feel free to pile on the charges of blasphemy and the personal attacks!

Gawker rooted by anonymous hackers

thecakeis(not)alie

Who cares if you care?

I have had the chance to exchange a few e-mails with one of the web guys, (and his predecessor.) He is a really nice guy. There may (?) be a second coder that pokes about from time to time. That’s about it. I would rather they focus on actual security issues - like password protection - than pointless ego crap like "upvoting your own posts." The man has a feature request list as long as a city block. I say let him worry about securing things that can actually lead to data compromise and information loss, as well as implementing new features.

I don’t care if the code is “pure.” I care that it works, that El Reg remains a great place to comment, with interesting things to read and that my e-mail doesn’t leak out to spammers.

That said, all professionals take pride in their work. I am sure if you actually took your suggestion for how to improve the code, put it into an e-mail and sent it to webmaster@theregister.co.uk, El Reg’s very small web team would deal with it as quickly as they can. Let the web team know – as a suggestion rather than a complaint – that they overlooked something and they will probably be quite happy to fix it.

Assuming of course that such fixes are within the realm of possibility. (You should hear my roommate rant on that subject!) Tell a sysadmin for a small business they need an HP server-room-in-a-sea-can in order to run their network “properly” and they will probably tell you to jump in a lake. Tell a doctor in a small African town that you need a fully equipped hospital to set a bone “properly” and they will also tell you to go jump in a lake.

Give a suggestion “here is a small change you could make that would not cost you much time, or is a better use of the resources you already have” and you will receive a much better response. In this case; I see that allowing you to upvote yourself can be annoying to some people who really, really care about their upvote/downvote ratios. They types who lie awake at night wondering how much the internet hates or loves them. Perhaps it was even left in for a larf…I don’t know the answer to that and neither do you.

To extend the fact that a feature exists in a manner you personally disapprove of all the way to “well he’s obviously a shitty programmer, his code is impure and the entire website is probably riddled with bugs” is one hell of a leap of logic. Quite the opposite: I think that rather than castigation for a PERCIEVED (but quite possibly not ACUTAL) hole in the coding, we should be thanking these individuals for putting in the hard work that gives us the website we all enjoy.

We might even – were we both concerned with bugs on this site and remotely decent human beings – try something like rallying El Reg’s enormous and technical reader base to do a bug hunt. If you really care about the security and “purity” of the website code that much, then convince the powers that be around here to post an article calling for a complete external security review of the site, with all information being sent in to El Reg. That would – I have no doubts whatsoever – produce a fairly comprehensive list of all the things that the very human programmers have missed.

thecakeis(not)alie

Upvote your own posts

...who cares? I don't think it's a huge secret to tell you that the folk at El Reg don't pay too much attention to the up and down votes on a post. Removing the buttons was a convenience, probably designed to stop people whinging that "you can upvote your own post!" Why oh why is it remotely worth it to folks at El Reg to put the time and effort into making it “truly impossible” to upvote your own post?

Many of the people here are sysadmins. They control multiple IP addresses. They could sign up for many accounts, and use them to upvote/downvote troll if they wanted. You can’t go banning IPs or other such nonsense because many of us reader types do so from the same IP. As a random example, my household contains three El Reg readers, two of which are avid commenttards. My work has at least five readers. We all of us access El Reg from our mobiles…but our operator NATs anything on the mobile network. Potentially thousands of El Reg readers could appear to come from the same IP address through that route.

No, upvoting and downvoting simply don’t matter that much. Excepting of course to the weak of ego…

MSI confirms tablets to be outed at CES

thecakeis(not)alie

Windpad

I thought any IT product name - espessially a fondle slab - matching *pad* would be in for a right good kicking from Apple's legal department...

Ad networks owned by Google, Microsoft serve malware

thecakeis(not)alie

Just another reason...

...for websites to offer their readers/consumers/whatever the option of a paid subscription or an ad-funded model. Some of us do want to support our favourite websites…but like hell am I giving up my AdBlock or NoScript!

Angry Birds find new way to take your money

thecakeis(not)alie
Happy

Angry Birds!

Birds, BIRDS, birds. Birds which are angry. <3

*goes back to flinging birds at pigs...*

Grand jury meets to decide fate of WikiLeaks founder

thecakeis(not)alie

"Countries can issue arrest warrants for CORRUPTION."

No, as the US has signed but not ratified it's membership in the International Criminal Court.(*1) As such, for all intents and purposes, American leaders cannot be held accountable by the international community. What's more, the International Criminal Court will not deal with issues of corruption. In fact, their jurisdiction covers only "the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression."(*2) Furthermore, in many cases the US has repeatedly not been opposed to declaring Universal Jurisdiction(*3) and simply going after someone it really wants.

Even if the ICC were willing to look into extraordinary corruption, (such as the rationale behind the US's recent wars of aggression,) the US has put an awful lot of effort to ensure that the people in power are exempt from such examination. (*4)

In short: the US can and will do whatever the hell it wants unless you happen to hide in China, Russia or a nation very closely allied with them. Everyone else is so dependant on the US(*5) that they simply will not risk themselves. That – just by the by – is something I find to be a huge shame. In my opinion, the US needs to be held to account. More specifically, its leaders need to be legally accountable for the actions of their country before the International Criminal Court.

At the moment however, nobody has the power to cause the US to even consider extradition of one of it’s ruling class.

*1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

*2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#Crimes_within_the_jurisdiction_of_the_Court

*3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction

*4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_International_Criminal_Court#Efforts_to_shield_Americans_from_ICC_jurisdiction

*5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_umbrella

thecakeis(not)alie

382,020 votes?

That's it?

El Reg has a readership of 5 million+. Let's all vote Lester in as Man Of The Year. PARIS was without question the most important project of 2010.

Apple iPhone 4 vs... the rest

thecakeis(not)alie

HTC Desire

I can't speak to the Desire HD...but I do have the original Desire. I have used it, an iPhone 4 and an iPhone 3GS extensively. I was not a huge fan of the iPhone 4...but I did rather like the 3GS. The original HTC Desire on the other hand, I have very little to complain about.

If I were to break the phones down, this is how:

iPhone 3GS:

Reliable. Well thought out and mature product that doesn’t have any obvious flaws. The newer iOS versions are a little laggy on this older hardware. It is the standard against which I judge all smart phones: to date it still may be the best overall smartphone in existence.

iPhone 4:

Mostly reliable. I have had reception issues in areas where the Desire or the 3GS work just fine. On the other hand it’s screamingly fast with fantastic battery life for the performance level. I have seen a few with broken back glass: take care of it! The huge con is the locked-down nature of iOS. It became infinitely more useful once jailbroken – and no, I didn’t jailbreak in order to pirate apps.

HTC Desire:

A tank. Whilst the screen is slightly more vulnerable to scratches than an iPhone 4, it is otherwise capable taking an unbelievable amount of abuse. It is rock solid: it gets a signal where no other phone seems capable. The downside is that Android is not well optimised for this CPU: while the Desire is screamingly fast, simple things such as menu transitions can end up with 4-5 FPS. Great with optimised applications, however HTC Sense is not optimised.

In all, I think the HTC Desire (non HD) is a perfectly credible contender for the iPhone 4. It is certainly a more worthy opponent to the iPhone 4 than the HTC Hero was to the 3GS. In some ways, I honestly believe the iPhone 4 was a step backwards from the 3GS…in others (such as the front-facing camera) it’s a leap into the future. I fully expect that the next generation iPhone will solve all the little niggles.

In the meantime, HTC keeps going from strength to strength. I have my issues with Samsung (mostly over poor support for the original Samsung Galaxy) and Motorola (mostly over poor support for, well...everything.) HTC, meanwhile, is showing the world what Android phones truly can do.

iPhone versus Android really comes down to a philosophical choice. Android is more open: generally, it’s YOUR phone. You have a lot of freedom under Android that you just don’t under iOS. The flip side to that is Android fragmentation: like it or not, the lack of device fragmentation on the Apple side of the house leads to an operating system that is far more tightly optimised for the hardware it is running on.

With the HTC Desire and the iPhone 4 being so close to each other in terms of capability, speed and app loadout, choosing between them is a simple question:

What matters more; the (non-jailbroken) openness of your handheld, or the smoothness of the “experience?”

Default judgement FAIL: ACS:Law muffs up in court

thecakeis(not)alie

The only appropriate unit of measurment

is the failureplex.

Join in the Wikileaks DDoS war from your iPhone or iPad

thecakeis(not)alie

Donate to Wikileaks?

Nyet.

But I did donate to Manning's defence fund. He's the true "hero," if such a person in this saga exists. He is the one who took all the risks and achieved none of the glory.

thecakeis(not)alie

Um...yes?

I use it all the time! It's a great way to see if my systems will actually work as designed when 4chan gets an irrational hate on for something hosted on premises. Using LOIC to test your infrastructure is just good sense. If you build a wall designed to keep the sheep safe from the wolves then eventually you need to introduce a wolf into the equation to see if theory and reality are in phase...

thecakeis(not)alie

"Self?"

We am the hive mind!

Microsoft ends year with Patch Tuesday bang next week

thecakeis(not)alie
Unhappy

@KarITh

Server will probably come back up. Windows Server (ignoring 2008 along with Vista...) is a good operating system. The issue is whether the third-party software you are relying on was coded in such a manner that it exploited some bit that just got patched. Having your operating system get you to a GUI is worthless if the apps it is supposed to run go titsup.com after the patch.

:(

This in no way has happened to me three times in the past month causing an overabundance of acute bitterness about the subject...

thecakeis(not)alie

Oi.

Linux may have had a squillion patches in the past [timeframe]. There is a critical difference however which you are glossing over:

With Linux, I only have to reboot when the Kernel is updated. For this reason - and this reason alone - will I never, ever even consider a Windows web server.

thecakeis(not)alie

@Jolyon

Everyone can has WSUS. It r maek patchez teh E Z.

That said, when your archaic bloody database software and/or random mission-critical chunk of industry-specific software decides to eat it's own face thanks to patches you can spend an awful lot of time Q_Qing.

For these reasons, many of us can't simply release the patches to WSUS and forget about it. We actually have to spend [timeframe] testing the bloody things on all of our various configurations.

I can sympathise with the OP. While it probably won’t take me until Christmas to do so (as the OP claims it will on his network,) it most certainly will take me until that Friday. Patches come out on the 14...I'll be testing until the 16, forestall deployment until the 17 because it's a Friday and I can reboot servers at that time without any blitting from the back buffers.

Automated deployment is free, and awesome. Automated /testing/ on the other hand…

PARIS concocts commemorative cocktail

thecakeis(not)alie

Touched.

You managed to wring PARIS for another article. On booze no less! <3 fridays.

MORE PARIS! (At least until it's time for LOHAN.)

Primary school miss flashes porn vid at kiddies

thecakeis(not)alie

Re: and anyway

I'll extend that. I would rather my (hypotherical, potential future) children watched a sexual act than be constantly bombarded by "CONSUME, BUY, SPEND MONEY, CONSUME, BUY, YOU WANT THIS NEW THING, CONSUME, CONSUME, CONSUME" at all hours from all places.

thecakeis(not)alie

Think of the children

I thought that summoned the banhammer.

thecakeis(not)alie

Re: and where's that?

Sex ed? Nah. We all know the education system's worthless! The location of the clitoris is discovered during on-the-job training!

thecakeis(not)alie

Think about PC vs. Mac.

So right, and so wrong. Mac during the 90s? You're dead bang on rights! Mac during the aughties? *bzzzzrt*

Jobs figured out one brilliant thing: if you are going to go proprietary, then you have to make it a "lifestyle brand." Apple are the Gucci of computers. Apple in the electronics industry, like Gucci in the fashion industry have nothing going for them other than

a) they have become a brand name that people can use to be snobish to others and

b) they produce a consistent quality of product.

Neither are the best product in their industry, nor are they the worst. They are largely consistent - which matters a great deal to some - but far more importantly they are a "name." They are that brand of jeans you war so you can make fun of other people who don't wear that same brand of jeans. They are the Lexus you drive so you can mock the guy with the Camry. Once Apple cottoned onto that idea, “proprietary” went from being a negative thing to “bloody brilliant.”

The only way to sell proprietary to consumers is to appeal to their vanity. It worked like a charm, and Apple was reborn. Thus whilst your analogy of Apple being the Beta to generic IT’s VHS holds true for the 90s…it really doesn’t work for the past decade or so. For that reason I cannot accept that "this is always the case with proprietary tech."

I propose then a modification to your statement:

"This is always the case with /improperly marketed/ proprietary tech."

Canonical COO jumps clear after 10 months

thecakeis(not)alie

"Balanced," really?

"Balanced" because it agrees with your view point? Because it tries to paint Matt as openly hostile to open source? Where do you come to the conclusion that particular thread is balanced?

Now, I have never met the man - indeed I have only every exchanged one e-mail with him - but I would not go so far as to say he was hostile towards open source. He is pragmatic. He is a business man. I think it's fair to say that his tenure at canonical represented someone concerned with the dollars and cents whilst having little time whatsoever for zealotry of /ANY/ stripe.

That doesn’t make him hostile to open source…it just makes him pragmatic. I think you’ll find that pragmatism (as opposed to idealistic zealotry) is a fairly common trait amongst people who have titles like “Chief Operating Officer.” This isn't to say I agree with Matt about everything: his views on things have set my teeth on edge many times. Almost every time though it's because they hit a little too close to home. A few weeks later, I would think back on what he wrote and grudgingly admit he MIGHT have a point.

So an open attack thread is not exactly “more balanced.” That’s just my $0.02, everyone else is welcome to think their own thoughts on the matter…

thecakeis(not)alie

Good luck, Matt!

I for one hope to still find the odd Matt Assay article appearing in El Reg. Good luck with the move!

Lost ancient civilisation's ruins lie beneath Gulf, says boffin

thecakeis(not)alie

I disagree.

There is quite likely a metric ***-load of oil submerged under the persian gulf. There's only one way to know for sure...

thecakeis(not)alie

@Markfiend

Anatomically modern Homo Sapiens are only about 200,000 years old...but I believe that the Genus "homo" is at least a million years old. I seriously doubt that we only reached "behavioural modernity" 50,000 years ago, however. I'd be willing to bet a fairly large sum of money that timeframe is closer to 100,000 years.

I guess the question is “what is human?” Genus Homo? Homo Sapiens X? Only Homo Sapiens Sapiens? What about our descendant sub-species? When Homo Sapiens Sapiens fragments once more into Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Homo Sapiens Novus, will Homo Sapiens Novus be “human?”

I vote that anything of genus “homo” be called “human.” After all, there’ sreasonable evidence that some of the other subspecies (Homo Sapiens Neandertalensis) may actually have been smarter than we are. (Although less capable of spamming babies and climatic adaptation: thus their extinction. Well, unless you are a believer (as I am) that the last remnants of Neandertalensis were likely absorbed into the invading Homo Sapiens Sapiens populations.)

thecakeis(not)alie
Joke

@AC Are you American?

They have! Sadly, they burnt out the ZPM opening the 'gate to Atlantis and have failed to cough up any new ones.

Bring on the glowy plastic energy saviour!

EU telecoms to Apple, Google: 'Pay up!"

thecakeis(not)alie

@AC

I disagree.

We need dumb networks. They need to implement the fastest technology available on regularly refreshing cycles. In many cases competition simply ISN'T FEASIBLE. (How many companies do you think have the money to plow the last mile?) We do not want the “pipes” intelligent at all. They should be provisioning network access and flinging bits. Nothing more.

A certain (very large) % of their budget should be going to troubleshoot physical plant issues, build new physical plant and constantly increase the speed of existing physical plant. In other words, they should be UTILITIES. They can be privately or publically owned – as per your personal philosophy – but they should never in any way be offering “services” over these pipes.

The provisioning of bits should be 100% separate from what those bits themselves provision. This shouldn’t be a question anymore. Bandwidth needs to increase at a continual rate, regardless of if your are a monopoly or competing in a healthy market. A monopoly company that plays by these rules is quite frankly perfectly acceptable to me.

If the US of A is so terrified of “the evil socialists” that the concept of public ownership of utilities leaves millions of it’s citizens unable to sleep at night…bully for them. They can try to enforce a “competitive” market of multiple people providing physical plant to the same premises. Other countries don’t have that weird hang-up and might well prefer a state-owned “pipe owner” that provisions only one pipe into people’s homes…but makes sure it’s the best pipe reasonably possible.

This really isn’t any different from many utility models. You pay a delivery charge (the cost of the infrastructure) regardless of who provides you your power/water/natural gas/sewage/bit pipe. Once the backbone (wired or wireless) is provisioned, you should be purchasing access to the internet itself from a completely separate company. It is here that you can choose how much of that pipe into your house that you choose to use.

Maybe some backbone bit providers offer unlimited packages (within reason.) That’s no different than electricity providers who offer me a flat, guaranteed rate every month. Maybe choose to pay market rates per GB/month (allowing contention to have it’s way with my bitrate.) Maybe I stump up extra for a guaranteed bitrate.

Once the provisioning of bits is decoupled from the actual network access competition CAN thrive. I wholeheartedly disagree however that competition is necessary for the proper provisioning of physical plant. What is necessary is quite simply that physical plant owners not be allowed to provide “services.” They provide a utility. They do not get to discriminate what goes over it.

Maybe not the most popular view…but it’s my belief.

US Air Force studies fruit-flies to build killer insect swarm drones

thecakeis(not)alie

This will lead to breakthroughs.

Very soon we will have the development of countermeasures: sophisticated sensor technology and precision MASER diodes. Might be the Chinese military pushing it...might be commercial interests worried about industrial espionage. I think this is the first step towards a point-defence energy weapon.

We start by tracking and frying robot bugs. We move on up to jets, planes and helicopters. Remember kids, you don’t have to vaporise them, merely fry their electronics…

Walmart falls in with Washington's war on terror

thecakeis(not)alie
WTF?

Holy

Shit.

Google sees printing in the cloud

thecakeis(not)alie
Joke

Printers

Wait...people still use those?

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