Posts by Patrick Ernst

Done before?

Was this with femtocells and satellite? Didn't the US already have mobile phone comms in airliners in Sept 2001? Otherwise just how did they make those phone calls?

Oooohhh. So embarressed.

This is why CEOs, Ministers and others who have floated to the top like so much flotsam, should not be given a computer - or at least they should be last on the refresh list.

Conroy embarresses the technical minded here although I am sure he plays well at the local bingo hall. To all and sundry, I apologise on behalf of the people of Australia, to the rest of thte world. Sorry. I mean it. We'll try to get Steve to shut the fsck up!

I'm with the Govt

For once I'm with the government - if the report lacks openly stated methodology and testable assertions. Actually, it sounds rather like an IPCC or CRU climate report that the govt relies on so much :-)

Help. I'm being manipulated!

Artists and Military at war

Imagine artists say "hand over details of music played" - military says "can't - Patriot Act" - artists say "gotta DMCA" - loop. I'm trying to think of the consquences. Somebody help me!

PS: the google ads above have an interesting one. "Guantanamo Flights. Get the latest deals when you book your flight to Guantanamo. www.FlightCentre.com.au" Now you can book your rendition flight in advance, which makes it much more convenient for everyone concerned.

@Stevie Bah!

"Great! Another way for people to be not paying attention to the road when they drive."

You're trying to find problems. While you are driving, with these imaging specs on, you can project images of the road into your eye so you can see ahead. Problem fixed!

who owns the data

Is the issue that this company is using the Royal Mail database without paying or just using the information? If company X manually created a private database which matched postcodes to localities is that not a valid use of publicly available information? Its like the RM is saying that they own the rights to GKUGYG-98479 is they decided to use this as a postcode for Norwich. It's just letters and numbers. Put it in a collated form, which has involved effort and labour - access to that I can understand being licensed. It seems company X did exactly that but licensing their API. Did their API do nothing but search the RM database or was it a database independant of the RM one?

I guess this is a bit like a traffic authority saying you can't use the names of streets in a commercial or free product, because its their IP and they therefore own the names.

Kind of answered my own question, from the Ernest Maples web site

" Where's the data coming from?

We're not saying. But, just to be clear: we don't hold a copy of the postcode database ourselves, neither in complete form nor as part of a cache."

Death by degrees

How the hell do you patent incremental innovation? USPTO must be the only obvious answer.

Embedding stuff in a web page up to and including any web apps is simply increments and additions to what has worked before. The first web pages were text only. Then GIFs and BMP files were added for a bit of colour. Animated GIFs got annoying pretty quickly but they ran - sort of. A small step to real animation when links to media files were added and then the leap to playing said media files in the web page itself. Web forms evolved to becoming inline apps. Remember forms that loaded the next form page in a frame when clicking on submit or next? Looked quite app like.

An innovative leap might have been from text web pages to an AJAX or ActiveX app with nothing in between - but it never happened that qway. Eolas must die!

Prior art

I can't see why he got a patent for a wind up radio. Hand cranked radios date back to the very early days of radio, whether they were used to charge a battery or supply current directly, I take it as per his wind up clockwork radio. Do trivial extensions of old ideas qualify for patent protection?

And if there was no Taser?

Petrol sniffing, alcoholism and associated violence has been a real problem for at least 40 years for Aborigines in isolated communities (whether in the city or rural). Its one of the side benefits of colonialism.

What would these same police officers have done prior to Tasers being available to them? I'd bet it would not include shooting the offender. Perhaps it would of included involving Aboriginal Drug & Alcohol Services (they have roaming vans in many places) or Aboriginal Police. So basically, would the outcome have been different or better sans Taser and have Tasers made for cop-out cop work (lets take the easy option - we can't shoot em so lets fry em)?

@Tool Bag

<QUOTE> Flame

It is pretty simple really... Windows is attacked more because it is the most widely used OS in the world. Why would hackers/pirates/etc. bother creating exploits for an OS that a very small majority of people use?

Sorry if this makes too much sense... </QUOTE>

This is simplistic. Apart from desktop, a huge number of Linux & BSD systems provide web and database services. The Internet is not run on windows. Then there are the large number of embedded linuxes on devices eg routers, DSL modems etc. If " hackers/pirates/etc" wanted to write exploits for this OS they have plenty of targets. Linux is targetted, especially through web service languages like PHP.

What is vastly different between Linux (&BSD) & windows is the security models. In Windows OSes it is easy to write self-replicating code which can infect whole networks. This is very difficult in any Linux or BSD environment - because of the security models, NOT because of popularity. PS: in the 'hacker' world, there would be a lot of kudos for writing effective self-replicating Linux code - ie a virus or worm. Hasn't happened yet (aside from a few poor attempts).

well that was a waste of time

To view this course, you need:

* A Pentium II, 256 MB RAM with a processor speed greater than or equal to 400 MHZ

* Microsoft® Windows® 2000 or higher

* Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher

* Macromedia Flash 7.0 or higher (1MB disk space needed to install)

* Microsoft Windows Media Player 7.0 or higher

* Microsoft XML Core Services 3.0 or higher

* A Super VGA monitor with minimum screen resolution 1024x768, with 16-bit color.

* A sound card, and either speakers or headphones (for multi-media audio).

* Internet bandwidth of 56K or faster. Broadband internet access is recommended.

I already have higher specs than this. Opensuse 11.0, Firefox 3.x etc :-) But seriously, and in answer to AC@11:41GMT many IT professionals use an alternate OS but support MS windows environments for our client base. So no matter what OS we choose to use, accessing free info to maintain and support windows effectively is beneficial to Microsoft and it looks unprofessional on their part to provide this sort of information in a non-standards, partisan manner.

@I believe that.....

"This was borne out by the finding recently of a large number of chip & pin machines in the UK..."

Got some valid references for that?

"This meant that whenever a card was used in the machine it dialed a number in Pakistan and gave all the information."

Dial? Like with a modem. A number (phone) will have an owner so there is no anonymising this. I think not. And "gave all the information". All of it? What information? So the Pakistanis then give the information to the Chinese?

Undeveloped?

The implied bigotry in MS's definition of "developed" is interesting. Maybe the execs don't get out much? In the "undeveloped" countries I've been in most people are running current kit. In fact, most of the young kids had more recent kit than I was running. Maybe they meant people outside those 'developed" countries are too unsophisticated to handle the real windows! Poor undeveloped bastards - one can only hope they get sophisticated real soon so MS can sell them the grown up stuff.

Brilliant

The guy *must* be angling for early release based on either being a complete nutter or an irritating boil by filing complaint after complaint. The court clerks must get ticked off. If only he would use his powers for good instead of evil. :)

aussie uprising

Bloody hell governments are stupid. Unfortunately most Ministers and upper level public servants rarely understand computer based technology - hence they make "all of govt" purchasee decisions despite the best efforts of technical staff.

Mostly we aussies are a bit lazy about protesting this kind of thing but it looks like this time we're getting of our bums to complain. There was a protest aust-wide of Saturday and people are now starting to write to MPs on both sides of the house. There is some info on the Linuxsa mail list that Mark Newton often posts to. http://www.netcraft.com.au/pipermail/linuxsa/

This we will defeat or work around it!

reactionaries

@Master Baker @Fluffykins @The Fuzzy Wotnot - Perhaps you lot ought to reread the article again. It's quite clear in it that "insulting Islam and inciting racial tensions" is being used as an excuse to jail the man. The act is purely political. Anonymous from Malaysia gives a good breakdown of the situation in @It's not about Islam. Is the US/UK et al any better with their detention without trial policies?

An article like this always gives reactionaries their own opportunity to "insult Islam". Islam is perfectly robust enough to weather a great deal of insulting, some of which has been delivered using depleted uranium express post.

salaams

@Matt Bryant

You are any angry little man. All your wailings are accusations and allegations. If we work with the idea of "Innocent unless proven guilty" then even bin Laden is innocent as is Binyam; unless proven beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law. Not some rigged military (political) court.

Linux expecations

"apparently having taken the baton from the desktop, which has failed to live up to years of expectations and promises."

Linux has not failed to live up to expectations and promises. It works perfectly fine in desktop capacity, whether that be for personal or business use. Its use in a business desktop setting requires an IT Dept with sufficient knowledge and commitment to facilitate a migration. It requires management that will commit to financing a migration and it requires training of end-users. Obviously in any company this becomes a major project which requires thought, testing and cost-justification, especially if core applications have to be modified, migrated or replaced.

This has nothing to do with the ability of Linux to perform. At a personal desktop level, I only recommend Linux now to people who want a new PC. I can't be stuffed supporting them when windows fails to perform adequately due to some action on behalf of those users. Windows does not adequately protect inexpert users from their own actions. When will it live up to expectations and promises? :)

@Here we go again

Would you prefer firefox doesn't get updated? Look at the foot-dragging MS did for years with IE5 then 6. They still patch 6, as they should. Logic flaws will always be found in software. Some of this stuff is very sophisticated and may not be found during normal test cycles.

So since I'm sick and bloody tired of AC whinges, please please go back to internet exploder. You deserve it.

Brainiac

I get all my good ideas on blowin' stuff up from Brainiac. Would recordings of this show get you in trouble? I don't caravans as much as they do ..... :)

@in other news Martin Owens

Martin, check out the link in the article for GUIMark. You willl find the source code for each test there. Now you can run your own tests. No need to be upset at all really.

@David Wiernicki

/quote ...the only western (?) country more terrified of sex than the USA.

I take it this was tongue-in-cheek? 29,000 units in use - somehow I don't think we're too afraid of sex. :)

It was a(nother) Howard govt disaster. Thankfully they're gone. We've moved on, said "Sorry" to our indigenous fellow citizens and hopefully grown up a bit now the nannies have moved into the retirement village.

For myself, at $0 cost, I set my home DNS to use OpenDNS.org with adult filtering. If I need a dose of porn there's always a torrent somewhere and my kids are way less likely to browse onto some site which is outside their emotional & cognitive development level.

Paris - cos we've talked and agreed she's just not a good role model for the kids. :-)

Road Kill

I drove back from Melbourne 9Vic) to Adelaide (SA) a week ago. A 1000k's - at night and I can assure you I was looking out for Roo's the whole time. They'll came out of scrub across the road when they get startled by lights. The general rule is, don't swerve. Brake hard if you can and hit them if you must. an adult roo does enormous damage to the front of a car. I don't have a roo-bar so I'd expect to be stranded out on the highway with a crushed radiator.

On this road, there is a possibility of saving a joey. You might be able to get ti to the next town and maybe there'll be a vet or local police station. They might have to bump the little bugger off if there's no kindly rescue person locally.

Out in the bush though, forget about saving the joey. It could take days to get to a decent town and the joey would get completely stressed and dehydrated. Now most people I now don't go travelling with shotguns or 22's so the crack on the head might be the most humane option. I'd opt for the slaughtering knife myself.