Posts by The BigYin 3071 posts • joined 25 Mar 2008
@AC 11:10 - But that is the problem, one will find it very hard not to buy a PC without it due to that way Secure Boot has been implemented. One will be effectively forced to have MS keys installed (to resolve various driver issues with PCI cards) and then one is at the mercy of MS and any key revocations in the future.
"it won't be certified as "desgned for", or whatever they call it."
I am not talking about MS badging requirements (that's a different topic), I am talking about Secure Boot itself. The current design is cocked. Totally cocked. For example, the authenticode format only allow for a single signature. This means that even if you want to run Fedora, you'll still need the MS keys.
"[MS] worked with Red Hat/Fedora in order to make sure that they have a key to sign their own bootloaders."
Bullshit. Red Hat has to now buy their freedom from MS. Canonical is trying a different approach, but that has it's own issues.
This is exactly what MS want - competition cluster-fucked by a "standard" and some plausible deniability.
Now, with regards to MS's badging service; what "obvious reasons" are there for specifically excluding the user (you know, the owner of the device) from being able to load their own keys on a badged ARM device? If someone buys a badged Win8 ARM unit, they are now an MS hostage too.
The general idea of Secure Boot does offer some benefits. But not in the way it has been done. Now it is just another method for MS to exclude any competition.
It really is time for the regulators to get their whacking sticks out.
The way MS has rammed this implementation of Secure Boot through is simply breath-taking. They have effectively blocked F/OSS OSs (or at least held them hostage).
MS...as evil and anti-competitive as ever.
1) Drop downs are not so terrible - nice to tab into a type. Smart people will do something like that *and* have a calendar picker.
2) It's hilarious isn't it? You've just provided passport details, age and whatever else; then you get to the verify stage, click on "I forgot" (seriously, who remembers that bloody password) and it validates you....by asking for information you have already provided! Wow!
Show the "price on the plane" cost for a ticket which includes all surcharges, taxes etc. All the "extras" like insurance and what not, I can add on later if I feel like it.
By the time you've added on all the hidden-extras, the likes of EasyJet can be nearly as much as Lufthansa or someone; so I pay the bit more and get some decent customer service.
That's right, you get to choose the correct waffle that you need to hear. As a mere member of the USA public, you are not nearly smart enough to know which waffle to listen to.
And I wonder how random "randomly" actually is.
Still, stay on message! Report the party line, not the truth!
I give you "TrackMeNot". Ok, it just does searching but the idea is the same.
Seriously Apple, tw@ off with these patents.
You are part of the problem, and then you try to patent an idea for the problem you are part of.
"Google it"? Hardly. Maybe "Wolfram Alpha it"
A1) It goes down of course. Not because the battery is now in the lake rather than the boat, but because you are now in jail for illegal dumping! :)
A2) Ban all road vehicles. Well...all except mine. Because I'm brilliant, me.
A card levy per per ticket? Ridiculous.
Just how the hell does one pay by cash on-line? And are cards any worse than any other on-line business?
Just roll the charge into the advertised price you shower of lying bastards,
See Joe Schmoe in concert! (Or fly to somewhere, the scam is the same)
Only £10*
*Plus booking fee, plus handling charge, plus card levy, plus postage; total - £10 per ticket.
Will Google pay their taxes now?
Lots of sources seem to think they are involved in "evil" tax evasion...err...avoidance...err...efficiencies.
And TiVo etc. You can bet that if their isn't an nVidia chip in there, it's a competitor's due to better GNU/Linux support.
Yes folks, that's right. GNU/Linux is everywhere. Get used to it.
@AC - 08:32
You are selectively reading. Linus has openly praised people when he thought their work was good. He has also openly castigated people when he thought their work was poor.
What is it about honesty that you don't like?
Kid gets meal.
Kid photos meal.
Kid (with some help) writes it up.
No where on the blog did I see "Dinner lady Ms Foobar is a big poop-head!" or anything like that and some of her meals (a minority) did not look too bad. The paled into insignificance compared to the European/Asian ones (the USA ones looked terrible).
if the council do not want their tender little employees to be "distressed" perhaps that had better stop getting them to server sub-standard nosh?
Wankers.
Here's a lesson on the Internet: Streisand effect. I wonder if A&B council is prepared for the amount of butt-hurt that is going to come their way.
Public participation in "democracy" is not permitted in the UK. Plus ca change!
So much for Cameron's "Big Society" because this is exactly the kind of thing the UK needs (Veg's blog, not the block or Cameron's empty pontifications). Still, having a 9 year-old showing you up as collection of money-pinching, selfish buggers has got to be a bit embarrassing.
A&B council is not unique - various councils up and down the UK do whatever they can to stifle any dissent or criticism.
Convicted monopolist to now become hardware vendor and sell products that will only run its OS (SecureBoot on ARM cannot be disabled on Win8 badge devices).
Unleash the regulators!
Oh, and before someone mentions Apple; I have a rather dim view of their lock-in as well and there is case to class them as a monopoly in the smartphone/tablet arena already.
@1st AC - A democracy does not try to ram laws through that permits state-snooping without judicial oversight.
We no longer live in a true democracy. We live in a plutocracy. You think most MPs are there based on merit? Pfft.
Just looks at the utter rot May is spouting about the new snoop laws. "We can't protect the privacy of paedos you know. PAEDOS PEOPLE! Think of the children!"
...for the war-mongering, religious nutbar.
Is there any room up there for T. Blair, A. Campbell and P. Mandelson heads too?
@AC - The big worry is that so few women are dustbin men.
I think you mean "multi-point materials collection operative"
There are more men than women in IT. For whatever reason, that's what we currently have.
So TV shows are written than reflect that situation, simply because that's what exists in the real world (I rather doubt it is a misogynistic cabal plotting to keep women subjugated, us blokes are really not that organised).
I put it to you that is there were more women in a given industry than men, TV shows would be written and represent that imbalance. Would people still complain?
Do all TV shows/films have to represent some platonic ideal of society that we should aspire to? Or should they, by and large, represent what we have?
Obviously if a TV show shows (say) all women as hormonally imbalanced harpies who can't reverse park or change a fuse; then unequivocally that show is either sexist or so absurd and over the top that you are simply missing the joke (because I bet all the men are shown as knuckle dragging lager louts hell-bent on rutting and rugby!)
And one final question - why can't a woman have a man as a role-model (or vice versa)? Can role models only come from the same sex, race, culture, religion, skin-type....?
bind9, dnsmasque or solution of choice.
Direct what you don't want to 127.0.0.1.
Simples.
And I say 'simples' as, seeing how this is a tech site, I assume you have a modicum of technical competence.
Or AdBlock/GreaseMonkey. El Reg has to be one of the worst site for ads. Too big, too colourful, too bright. And then we having the branding changes...I mean really. Sometimes when on a different PC I think I've arrived at the wrong site! El Reg - is you identity worth so little to you?
@AC - I work in a fairly well rated Senior School, a lot of the kids can barely change their passwords.
That's a good point. How much of this should we expect kids to pick up at home/in their own time? School can't teach everything. Parents and the child's own initiative have to play a part. Of course one needs to balance the amount of time the brats...err...little dears spend hanging out on IRC looking for teh-upl04d-codez and running around being noisy buggers...err...kids.
@Ian Yates - I always view with special characters on. Drives my colleagues nuts! And yes, I am forever fixing 20 spaces with a tab/ruler change.
@JDX - Clamouring for 'neutrality' has to mean you can't clamour for schools to use Linux because then that's just as partisan.
Huh? Linux is a kernel for many competing operating systems that exist in a vibrant eco system with actual competition and innovation. But I never mentioned Linux (or BSD or anything else). If you want to talk "neutrality", then I would say that any F/OSS software is light-years ahead of any proprietary stuff simply because the F/OSS coders have no real desire/need to deliberately create lock-in by designing/implementing inconsistent and incomplete 'standards'. Nor do the stuff the ballot of major standards bodies to try and give a veneer of credibility.
I just think the companies should be kept out of education as far as is possible (but obviously someone needs to print the books etc). So no fizzy-drink sponsored textbooks which are little more than adverts for fizzy-drinks. No junk-food companies running the canteen. Heck, we should keep the corporates out of various places. Why do our hospitals also host junk-food provenders FFS? It makes no sense.
Then again, I have odd views when it comes to companies and sponsorship. For example - at the Olympics I would only serve the athletes McDonalds. Why? Well McDonalds was allowed to be a sponsor of a sporting event, so they must be selling the best food for athletes. It's not like some suits will just have accepted a wodge of money and paid no attention to the message they are sending, is it?
"Redmond-backed ICT GCSE with-real-actual-programming"
So the school will be pressured into making the kids will learn Visual Basic, maybe C# and some ASP? Or will they be taught some actual real skills in a vendor neutral manner?
I am not sure how much the new GCSE is "Redmond-backed" and how much is just ElReg spin. But the taint of MS should be kept out of education wherever possible.
Be that music, film, literature, painting, sculpture etc; only gains value when it is shared. And by "shared" I really do mean person-to-person, the grease in the gears of human culture not industrial scale stuff or the likes of TPB. I will happily join the queue of the people wishing to kick the seller of hooky DVDs/rip-off toys square in the nuts.
The increasing vice like grip of increasingly draconian copyright laws gets in the way of this and reduces the value. These meeja-morons are going to legislate themselves out of a job.
And artists having second jobs? Well boo-fucking-hoo. Many of us work one job so we have the funds to pursue our passion. Or should we venerate artists above the hoi polloi?
Oh, and one final thing, if the art industry is now worth 7 times more than though; this will be used to claim the infringement is seven times worse and we need laws seven time as tough with fines seven times the size.
If a site does that, the answer is simple; stop using them.
Or only use them via a puppet server/VM.
That fact the people are willing to give away so much to the likes of Facebook and Google saddens me quite frankly. I detest people who host their code on Google and will only allow its download if I absolutely have to (which is very rarely).
Tracking, marketing etc should always require an explicit opt-in from the user/recipient. And I don't me a pre-selected check box that the user/recipient has to untick, or a list of check boxes (some ticked, some not) which ask for consent to market/share data in contradictory manners. I mean simple, clear and concise questions:
Can we track you on our site? [ ]
Can we track you across the Internet? [ ]
Can we sell the data we collect about you to third parties? [ ]
Can we allow others to track you on our site? [ ]
Only a dribbling moron would tick more than the first one (and even the first one is optional). Note: I am not talking about session cookies etc that are required to make stuff work, I am talking about the nefarious, not technologically required bullshit.
Of course people should still run ad-blockers, cookie killers and consider splatting the privacy intrusion services in their DNS cache.
@AC "Always keep copies of your passports, visas, etc on you. I kept copies stored in my email, in my money wallet and at my grandparents place... backups don't apply just to computers. Having those available even as duplicates speeds up getting replacements."
I'd almost agree to that, but if travelling with someone else I would swap the copies. If one person gets robbed, the other(s) act as a back-up.
Also, never carry credit cards in the same wallet as money and other common sense precautions.
I'll agree on the tone, but not on the punishment. Being robbed is a total shit.
Trust me.
No matter what you may think for RMS or his ethos, being robbed is not amusing and not something I would wish on anyone.
I hope he gets a replacement netbook (or other device) and I hope he does not suffer from losing his meds etc. Actually, I hope they find his property and the thief! Or the thief just turns everything back in.
But a salient lesson to one and all:
1) Backup, backup, backup!
2) Keep important documents in a secure place (e.g. hotel safe, concealed pocket, money wallet)
3) Secure bags where possible (e.g. lock and chain, Pacsafe, trusted person/location)
4) Backup!
Shock-proof? With spinning platters? Should have a 128gb SDD. More than enough for any GNU/Linux.
@Yet Another - well Canada censors government funded scientists who don't toe the party line, so I'm hardly surprised.
The "slippery slope" is not a good argument, and neither is the petulant "I wanna download stuff for no charge. Waah!"
What is a good argument is "The current copyright terms are too one-sded and do not balance the cost to society against the cost of the original creator [or however you wish to phrase it] and my alternative is [insert brilliant idea here]".
Let me be clear, I do not like the extensions to copyright, the official rubber-stamping of cartels (RIAA et al), DRM, region-locking and other barriers to free-trade. But If ones doesn't base one's argument on a credible base, it will soon be undermined.
Let's be honest about it? OK. TPB is mostly used for copyright infringement. Yes the technology is benign and has lots of uses (e.g. distributing GNU/Linux iso files and other FOSS/CreativeCommons stuff) but what level of use does it get for that, compared to grabbing copyrighted material for nowt?
Exactly. And that is why is was (in all futility) blocked.
We can argue about how stupid the current copyright terms are (and I personally think they are very stupid), how draconian the new laws will be and how how much of an asshole the RIAA, BPI etc are all being; but none of this changes the fact the main purpose of TPB is copyright infringement.
If your biggest problem is that in now takes you 30 seconds longer to download a copy of "Avengers Assemble" for nothing - then you are very, very lucking indeed.
To call it "censorship" is, quite frankly, disgusting moral relativism that diminishes the suffering of those under the heel of actual censorship. So get off your moral high-horse.
@Tom 13 - Oh, there's a few urban foxes I'd love to take an M16 to. And a few neighbours who feed these mangy vermin.
@Phil Endecott Your flawed logic is staggering. The tool (unless it is single purpose, like an M16) is not at fault. It's the human that puts that tool to use who is at fault. Baseball bats can kill people. Hammers can kill people. CDs and be used to kill people. Any chemist with time on their hand can choose to kill lots of people. Are you trying to suggest that all knowledge/items should be tagged with "Don't do bad things, m-kay?"
And even if they were - do you really think someone who had murderous/lethal intent is going to give two figs about your petty little license? "In the interest of national security, you opinions can GTF" is the response I believe.
Just about anything you do, for anyone at any time could potentially be turned around and used for something you don't like. So does this mean you contribute nothing?
My, you must be a real joy to live with.
@AC - oh, don't start me on how poorly GPG et al hang together at times. But when they work, they work great. Which, of course, is why one would hire a consultant to sort it all out.
But my main point remains, if these are truly important documents then encryption and digital signatures are better than a fax.
By fax....? Really? o_0
Install GPG, pinentry and Enigmail (or similar).
Generate a public/private key (if you don't already have one)
Get your recipient's public key (and signing is just another excuse for a party)
Encrypt and send in peace and (relative) security.
This. Is. Nuts.
I disagree with the staggering length of copyright (and the various abuses of due process and free trade my the media cartels) but I agree 100% with the idea of copyright. When used correctly is allows a lone creator to keep control of their work and stop a company with more lawyers than the creator has probably had hot dinners stealing it.
Oh, wait; now I see why this law is being passed.
Add to that all those wonderful folks who release their hard work as "CC BY NC" (Creative commons, by attribution, non-commercial". They are going to get royally screwed. Maybe not in a monetary sense but in a "It's my work, I'll decide how it is released" sense.
Just imagine the email exchange:
"Dear MegaCo, You are using my image for your new, multi-billion pound campaign. This is against my licensing terms. Kindly stop."
"Dear Pleb, Your image was lifted from a random website. There was no indication of license. We complied fully with a reasonable search as per law and had it declared orphan."
"Dear MegaCo, But it's not orphan; here I am."
"Dear Pleb, The law declares it orphan and we are free to use it. You are clearly deluded or trying to commit a fraud. We have called the police who will shortly arrest you for bothering us. Enjoy prison."
As for Digimarc....nice idea, but I'd like to see a published standard so that other competitors can enter the market and keep the price down (and keep each other honest). And heck, if there is a published standard that means we can get a F/OSS solution so that it's not just rich Westerners who can protect their assets.
@AC - how do you think a lot of geo-location works?
Clue: It's not all satellites in space, y'know.
@hplasm - Exactly.
If the other people wrote that information down and then used it to commit a fraud against you...then you'd have recourse. But just for overhearing or record "Dude on the train said this totally unbelievable thing..."? No.
@ed2020 - No, because that's theft (although their insurance company may argue negligence).
Nice way to conflate to completely separate issues.
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