* Posts by APA

49 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Nov 2011

Log4j doesn't just blow a hole in your servers, it's reopening that can of worms: Is Big Biz exploiting open source?

APA

I had a developer on my project that had a tendency to run into an issue and find a library to incorporate to solve it, rather than re-purposing an existing solution in a library we already had. Combine that with dependencies having their own dependencies, when it comes to a version bump it can quickly become unmanageable figuring out they all interact and what is even safe to bump. Consequently I've always thought the fewer externals the better, and if you do bring one in make good use of it.

One of the dependencies (indirectly) brought in was SLF4J which has proved to be a god-send and dodged a bullet for me with regards to this Log4J issue (hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day, right?). The gist of library being that it's an API abstraction of a logging library, the implementation of which can be wired up to a JUL (or Log4j, or even nothing) at deployment. The developer in question had somehow completely wired it up backward by using the slf4j-log4j compatibility layer instead (intended for codebases that have already used Log4J to move away without actually having to change code) but somehow brought IN log4j-core and a whole heap of errors on the console. After he left and I was cleaning up the mess of dependencies I actually read library's documentation(!), kept the abstraction and re-pointed the implementation to use the library the EE application server already had (payara itself uses JUL so I could piggy back off that), now happy that logging actually worked and (perversely) there were less errors in the console.

Long story short, thanks to that developer who horded libraries I discovered http://www.slf4j.org/index.html which ended up reducing the dependency footprint by allowing re-use of something already available. Can't help but think that other people may now find the compatibility layer quite useful. The theory goes that you can just replace the .jar with news ones at runtime - no compilation required http://www.slf4j.org/legacy.html#log4j-over-slf4j .

Tesla, Atlassian told to go through front door in effort to save Australian industrial civilisation

APA

Re: Bring It On!

It's not a completely idle boast. He did something similar, albeit at a slightly smaller scale, in California in 90 days. Having just opened a shiny new factory the timing is perfect for him to ramp up production.

Is your Windows 10, 8 PC falling off the 'net? Microsoft doesn't care

APA

I duel boot my machine and disabled fast start so that when linux fires up the partition isn't marked as dirty (I keep my Steam library on the Windows partition). The problem is that every time I do an update it somehow gets re-selected again.

What DID fix my problem was adding "remove_hiberfile" to fstab

Google-funded group mad that US Copyright Office hasn't abolished copyright yet

APA

Re: "Individual property rights"

"Got to make sure the Beatles keep making new music somehow."

Wouldn't extending the term have the opposite effect? With the money still rolling in then they don't have an incentive to do anything new. With shorter terms however* then publishers could force content creators to carry on writing new material or they won't get paid.

* Not that I'm agreeing with this. I have sympathies for the author in an above post who would like the book they've written to support them through to old age.

Brit hardware hacker turns Raspberry Pi Zeros into selfie slayers

APA

Re: Hmm

"This can only work in an area with weak cell signals"

So a music festival, then. As described in article. Where the concentration of people in a relatively small area is too big a job for the local cell infrastructure.

Though to be honest in my experience the bigger problem faced at events is battery life. It's quite funny watching half a dozen people fight over the single proprietary apple connector at a charging point and then being given evil looks as you waltz up with your phone with a standard connector and have so many to choose from...

The point being "connection" is a luxury if you can't take the pictures in the first place. So if you really want to annoy people, have exactly one apple connector at the event and set up a coffee shop nearby to watch the fallout. (I am in no way thinking of Big Feastival 2015 where there was a Lavazza stall that had done exactly this, honest)

Doctor Who: Even the TARDIS key can't unpick the chronolock in Face the Raven

APA

Re: Whither Torchwood?

Just watched the first two seasons of Arrow and couldn't help play "spot the Dr Who actor". Yes, Barrowman was good as Merlyn. He didn't break into song once but was actually rather menacing.

(Can't watch season 3 because 1 and 2 were free and I'm tight. I've added the DVD to my wishlist and continue to watch season 4 on Sky1 instead hoping that I won't miss too much)

Chromecast gains wired Ethernet dongle

APA

SMB shares aren't so good as the chromecast needs a stream to read from. The whole process is much easier if you can set up a upnp/dlna server (e.g. minidlna). A cursory search for "openindiana upnp" suggests this shouldn't be too hard. upnp is in fact quite common, without too much effort I've got lots of services set up on devices such as ADSL router (minidlna) and even my Humax Freesat box (mediatomb). Other more obvious upnp servers in my home are OSMC (nee raspbmc) and various windows and linux boxen.

Having got a/many upnp/dlna server(s) running as a source, use an app such as BubbleUPNP (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp) to browse these media libraries and throw the media to the chromecast for rendering. The controlling app is no longer required and device can even be turned off, the chromecast will keep playing the media pulling direct from the servers.

Infosec geniuses hack a Canon PRINTER and install DOOM

APA

Re: I want to know

idspispopd

Muscle memory from 20 years ago still hasn't worn off

Ofcom will not probe lesbian lizard snog in new Dr Who series

APA

Re: Did the BBC just troll people?

"Some reptiles, such as I thing Crocodiles, can hold their breath for amazingly long periods"

Except Crocodiles aren't holding their breath. They simple not breathing and building up an oxygen debt in their blood. Crocodile blood is also known to be very efficient at storing oxygen AND their muscles happen to work well even with low oxygen. The point being their lungs have nothing to do with it. An equivalent practice would be like divers hyperventilating before a long dive. The capacity of the lungs hasn't changed, just the amount of oxygen in the blood.

I found the kiss to be jarring, not because of some homophobic agenda but my suspension of disbelief finally broke that a lizard could transfer oxygen back out of its blood and into its lungs in order to then breathe that oxygen into a human. I'm with another poster on this one, I think the BBC are trolling (JUST like they did with the panto-like Captain Jack). The kiss didn't add anything to the plot that hadn't already been said MULTIPLE times but was wedged in anyway at the expense of the science.

Science Fiction is at its best when extrapolated from already known science. When you start making things up that outright contradicts our understanding of the world then it stops being science and become magic, which has its place in a different genre.

* OK, I'll concede that 2 sets of lungs are better than 1, and so in that sense the additional capacity would have helped but rather assumes that Lady Vastra hasn't absorbed all of the oxygen contained in them already.

Hate data fees but love your HD slab? Here's a better way to pay for bytes

APA

Re: It is my duty to report you to the Ministry of Love, MPAA/RIAA division

It could be a DRMed download. My old Nokia used to do this with the BBC iPlayer. I don't understand why we can't still do it now with. That was a really useful feature.

Windows NT: Remember Microsoft's almost perfect 20-year-old?

APA

Re: Windows NT not designed for the Internet ..

Very early in my career I found myself using SCO OpenServer 4.5. To this day I have no idea how I did this but somehow I manage to kill the password file - you know, the one where all the hashes are kept - it was completely empty. Of course my already logged in terminal didn't have a problem but some of my colleagues did. We had to do a shout around the office to see who already had SU thereby enabling us to restore the poor file from a backup.

Finally, someone's fixed THAT Android hole. Was it your mobe network? No

APA

Re: "but only the Samsung Galaxy S4 has been patched to protect against it"

Quick poll of Android devices in the office that are "patched":

Sony Xperia Z

Sony Xperia SP

Samsung Galaxy S III

Something's not right here. The first two are fairly new but the S3 hasn't been patched for ages. Either the statement "only the Samsung Galaxy S4 has been patched" is incorrect, or the scanner's wrong, or not all devices were vulnerable in the first place.

Run for your (private) lives! Facebook's creepy Graph Search is upon us

APA
Coffee/keyboard

For example, they can ask "people who like BNP [British National Party] and The Police" and discover that fewer than 100 Facebookers are fans of extreme right wing politics and Sting's band.

New keyboard please.

Forget tax bills, here's how Google is really taking us all for a ride

APA

Re: What???

Didn't the internet content packaging thing used to exist by providers such as AOL and Compuserve? Whatever happened to them?

Global nappy hawker trials TweetPee moist-baby monitor

APA
Pint

What age is this aimed for? When it comes to potty training, wouldn't it actually be desirable for the kiddie-winks to feel wet? I thinking that nappies are "too efficient" in this area and are actually making the job harder.

Don't bake your Raspberry Pi - now you can WATER COOL it

APA

I was really responding to the paragraph

"Water cooling could therefore come in handy to keep the CPU temperature lower for longer, enabling more use of turbo mode."

In my experience the pi simply doesn't get hot. I have it set on "turbo" and left it, at worst the temperature gets to the low 60s.I have to admit I've haven't run anything particularly demanding on it, but it does suggest to me that there's plenty of headroom before that magic 85C threshold comes into play. The limiting thermal factor seems to be the networking chip (which is on the far right) but as another commendard suggests, wouldn't the heat differential between the networking chip and CPU cause the heat to flow back through the heat pipe and effectively warming up the CPU?

APA

Not to be picky, but it's not actually the CPU you need to worry about heat-wise. There have been plenty of thermal picture taken of a pi and its the usb/networking chip that gets the hottest. Though I suppose the other chips would benefit from being cooler generally.

http://blog.makezine.com/2012/12/06/raspberry-pi-heat-maps/

A bitter spill to swallow, or 'how to smeg up your keyboard'

APA
Joke

Re: NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!

That' because we're all expecting it...

Raspberry Pi SoC drivers now fully open source

APA

Re: Will this allow making the Roku useful?

And it's arrived. Let the gloating commence.

APA

Re: Will this allow making the Roku useful?

"In stock orders placed before 7pm are dispatched the same day" Oh look, the Pi has green 'in stock' ticks all over it... http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/bespoke/bespoke2.jsp?bespokepage=cpc/en_CC/special_offers/bargains/part_detail/RPi_lp2.jsp&CMP=HP_RPi

This comes from someone who placed an order with RS 5 months ago and finally had his dispatched the day before the announcement that all of the model B's memory would be doubled, even for pending back-orders.

Having watched me play with it for less than week, the wife ordered from the above site yesterday (after 7pm) I'm sure just to wind me up. We're expecting it tomorrow.

W3C reveals plan to finish HTML5 and HTML 5.1

APA

Re: What, XHTML is forgotten already?

Semantically it IS the same, that's the point - each element has a precisely defined behaviour. Its only the subtleties of notation that differ - for which the W3C even provided a helpful guide http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#guidelines

I take your point with compilers second guessing, and I agree with the principle of failing early and often to catch mistakes, but at the end of the day, they both have roots in SGML and both can be parsed unambigiously. If you want to see another GML based lanuage that does a similar thing but with less redundant information, take a look at WML spec.

APA

Re: What, XHTML is forgotten already?

Not quite. If it's proper XHTML then it has to be served with as application/xhtml+xml. Using XHTML markup server with text/html strictly speaking is "invalid" HTML but browsers being the forgiving applications they are let you get away with it (e.g. look at img http://www.w3.org/wiki/HTML/Elements/img#HTML_Reference - it doesn't use the XML short form for an empty element). XHTML after all is only a more formalised version of HTML 4.01 - see the Abstract http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/. This means you COULD write a single document that can be served quite happily with either content type simply by sticking to the stricter XHTML and letting the browsers' interpretations gloss over the notational differences.

Extending the above concept further, the HTML5 specification gives up dictating notation by focusing entirely on the abstracted Document Object Model itself. It's up to the developer which notation, HTML or XHTML, they want to use in their projects.

To be completely honest, while it's NICE to have a well formalized language, I can't see a practical advantage of XHTML over HTML other than to be parsable by an XML document reader which as far as I can tell is actually a bit of an edge case as either the document would returned in a machine reabale format in the first place a la SOAP or JSON or you can access the DOM directly. If you're can't do either, then what exactly ARE you doing? Screen scraping somebody else's material?

Apple iPhone 5 review

APA

Re: Huh?

"Irony: an expression in which the intended meaning is different to and often the opposite of the literal meaning."

Err, that's the definition of "sarcasm" not irony. Not that's ironic; a post that tries to define irony but gets it wrong.

I agree with the criticism against "you're all complaining about lack of innovation when they've innovated a new connector". Isn't innovation supposed to be an improvement?

O2's titsup network struggles to find its feet

APA

Who's left?

Didn't Orange have a 3G issue earlier this year? (yep http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/08/orange_down/) At least their excuse is the merging of two formerly separate networks to create Everything Everywhere.

Are outages like this expected? Do other countries have similar issues with their carriers? Not that I'm suggesting a "Broken Britain" thing (though it might be - a product of a culture that subcontracts everything to defer responsibility and not caring about quality, then wonders why things blow up later), just trying to expand the field of experience to determine whether this is "normal" and expected behaviour for the technology (or "new" technology in general)..

If T-Mobile/Orange and O2 have had their turn, who's next?

Google Nexus 7 Android tablet

APA

Re: Forgive my ignorance, I know nothing about Android

I've got Kindle installed on ICS. I'm surprised that its not available for Jellybean

APA

Re: 3G a problem??

Correct me if I'm wrong but virtually every phone I've had with Bluetooth, including the somewhat dumb by today's standards Nokia 6230, and with it is a PAN like profile to allow external devices to use it to access the internet. This was a really useful to hook up to things such as sat navs to get traffic updates etc.

In fact, it's only really with my current Samsumg Galaxy S where I've had an issue - I swear an (Orange) update removed the BT "Internet Access" which is one reason among many as to why it's now running CM9.

So, what was your point exactly about companies not splashing out for smart phones?

APA

Re: "aren't always in arms reach of a hotspot."

My wife's used my WiFi Xoom 2 as a sat nav. Granted we had to pre-cache the maps but the GPS itself worked fine . The 10.1" display shows the routes very clearly indeed :-)

APA

Re: 3G

That's why you're supposed to tether using bluetooth! It consumes much less power and while admittedly it's not the fastest, it is certainly adequate when the limiting factor isn't actually the connection between phone and tablet but rather the abysmal 3G reception (or more likely, plain old 2G)

HTC One S Android smartphone

APA

Re: No SD card slot?

...which you can do as of Honeycomb.

Windows XP support ends two years from now

APA

Re: ha ha people still using XP... oh wait

FWIW I was doing exactly the same thing with my own Dell laptop. Decided that virtualisation was the key, took an image of the drive using this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx, nuked, paved and installed Ubuntu then VirtualBox. Result: one laptop running an image of its former self.

Wifi was a little fiddly but certainly not the problem it once was. If its a Dell laptop, then the chances are that the wifi chipset is Broadcom. The Broadcom's own SDA driver while helpfully packaged with the distro didn't work with my 1501 but did with my SO's. Ended up using b43-installer which is good enough. Only catch is you need network access to download the firmware on installation.

It all else fails, there's always the ndiswrapper

OAP sues Apple for $1m after walking into store's glass door

APA
Windows

Re: A friend did the same- long ago

And that is the correct response for walking to a glass door; shame, embarrassment and hopefully with enough remaining mobility to run away just in case your asked to pay for damages.

This whole case is backwards, surely Apple should be suing her to try and reclaim (literal) damages. After all, arty installations are expensive, right?

Windows User - because they're a pain in the glass.

Orange 3G data network goes titsup

APA

So, what's new then?

Been a customer of Orange for a while now and can't honestly say I've noticed any change in service as we don't get 3G out here anyway. 'spose you get what you pay for...

Will Windows 8 sticker shock leave Microsoft unstuck?

APA

Re: Re: Apple's transition wasn't as radical.

It's not 2015, it's 15. As in there were 14 versions prior.

(Not that I believe there WERE 14 prior versions but looking at the install directory of Office 2007 and 2010 which use the proper version numbers as opposed to some marketing label, it's in the right ball park)

APA
Linux

Re: Re: Re: It's amazing

"Oh really, so what are Official signed package repositories of the Linux world, if not gardens?"

Its the "walled" bit people are object to, not the "gardens". You're free to use other repositories if you wish, or none at all. The distributors just sign them to confirm their validity but they're by no means limited. Think "proof of origin" as opposed to "restricted to". You can create you own "garden" easily enough and sign them yourself - they're called PPAs.

APA

Re: Re: Re: It's amazing

"And they'll run on Linux if they're compiled for that API"

Slightly off topic, but ever heard of Winelib? http://www.winehq.org/docs/winelib-guide/winelib-introduction#WINELIB-WHATIS

Brit student locked up for Facebook source code hack

APA

Re: > Just putting up a sign saying "do not enter" is not security

"Well, yes it is. Because it deliniates the point at which you become one of the bad guys. Anyone who goes past that sign has crossed the line at which they become of concern to the security infrastructure."

Yes, it proves that a line has been crossed, that you've knowingly done something that you shouldn't have.

No, its irresponsible if you're holding sensitive information on behalf of someone else and rely on people's good will not to cross a line, especially once you've told them it's there.

Isn't relying on the legal position to follow up an attack a case of "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted"? The damage has already been done and that data is now in the wild regardless as to whether the perpetrator is banged up or not. I'd rather it wasn't leaked in the first place.

APA
Mushroom

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I sort of agree, but... @Jason

I was trying to highlight fallacy of comparing break in and entering/burglary/trespass against anything in the digital realm - the two just don't correlate and the overly simplistic analogies are quite misleading. Though I do believe the above discussion was really to do with poacher-turned-gamekeeper scenarios and how effective they can be. In this case, I'm not sure that applies for the very simple reason HE GOT CAUGHT! That rules you out of "cyber mastermind" in my book and so you certainly shouldn't be offered jobs, leaniency (you know what you were doing) etc. Give the hypothetical job to a cracker with a clean record because that means either he's A) trustworthy or B) really good. You won't see it coming in either case...

In Britain there are two laws that cover this general area, the Computer Misuse Act which concerns the access and use of machines without permission but there's also the Data Protection Act which addresses companies' responsibility to look after their collected data, i.e. personal information about US and how they're accountable; register with the ICO and report any breaches (Sadly they don't seem to have any teeth and IMO there should be associated penalties, see the ICO's own FAQ http://goo.gl/M5I6X). Nevertheless, Facebook should treat their user information with the utmost respect. Sure, in this case no data was actually taken but next time they might not be so lucky. The next infraction might be not be so well intentioned, consequently they should take advice from where ever they can get it (unpaid - see first paragraph) or else face charges of negligence/incompetence (now if that isn't illeagal, it should be).

Just putting up a sign saying "do not enter" is not security, systems actually do have to be, well... secure. To the point of openly challenging the white hats to take their best shot. Only then can the general public be confident that their details are being looked after properly.

Go on. Flame me.

Reg Hardware Awards 2011 Winners

APA

Why on earth did you "upgrade" just to use the new file formats? MS have helpfully provided a "Compatability Pack" that'll work with versions all the way back to Office 2000 http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=3

Microsoft's RemoteFX is fab - but will it play Crysis?

APA
Coming late to the discussion I know, but doesn't VirtualBox do that? https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#guestadd-video I can install the enlightened drivers onto the guest machines that exposes 3D functionality to them. They can happily do 3D stuff as if the virtual graphics card was "real". I've had Compiz running within Ubuntu (guest), running within Win7 (host). I've been playing with it for a while now and performance is passable. When I get enough spare time, I'm going to try it the other way round (Win7 guest under Linux host) to see what has better performance (I'm guessing the current setup). Combine the above with VirtualBox's handy RDP extension and haven't I just replicated VDI with £D acceleration (in principle anyway, I don't think they've implemented the current version of the protocol yet).

No winner in Android v iPhone 2011 marathon

APA

That rather depends on the outcome of the lawsuits. The market will only get better if companies decide it's safe to invest and develop their products, which up until now, under the threat of mutually assured destruction, it had been. With Apple calling that bluff, manufacturer won't feel so safe, either to develop new technology worried that once done a) someone will "steal" it or b) it infringes on some stupidly vague patent that should never have been granted in the first place.

Its ironic that while the market has never been so open to the consumer, the development side of it (by which I don't mean apps but rather handsets) is heading for a stalemate

Google's Siri-a-like to be named 'Majel' after Trek actress

APA

Unlikely. She died during post-production of the last Star Trek film (the with with Silas as Spock)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majel_Barrett#Final_voiceover_work

Sony officially rolls-out fresh PlayStation firmware

APA
Flame

These "optional" updates are getting on my nerves. I wanted to watch LoveFilm while I still have the account (seriously thinking of cancelling due to their switch to Silverlight) but couldn't due to the PSN's policy requiring up-to-date firmware. So, answer me this, why do Sony think they can hold my LoveFilm account ransom just because I don't want to apply a useless update? Useless to PS3 owners that is, it doesn't do anything for my and the Vita won't even be released for ages yet!

BT, EE's mobe broadband trial jump-starts Cornish village

APA
Flame

"The really tricky parts of the country don't get decent ADSL OR 3G"

Ha! Forget "tricky", huge chunks supposed civilised East Anglia don't get 3G! I work within spitting distance of Cambridge, where is it supposed to be "silicon fen", and can only get 3G if the wind is in the right direction (no, seriously) and get no 3G reception at all three miles up the road where I live. Its not like its a hard to access area which is the excuse for some counties, with major N/S and E/W trunk roads on my doorstep (A1, A14, M11) I would have thought infrastructure would have follow them to a certain extent. (Bonus question: name two counties with no motorways at all. Clue: one of them was in the article). As I travel around the country seeing family members, it doesn't seem to get much better either. As far as I can see, unless you live in a large town you're screwed.

It makes the data bundle on my mobile tariff a bad joke; 250MB really isn't a lot but there's no way I can use that much in a month via 2G.

The new touchy-feely Doctor Who trend: Worrying

APA

He just seemed to be, well "gayer" than usual. In the Angelo retrospective episode I thought he was going to break out into a West Side Story, number.

The series as a whole had good ideas and obviously had the money, yet still somehow managed to cock it up.

APA

One of my favourite lines of the series was actually one of Rory's:

Rory: I have a message and a question. A message from the Doctor and a question from me. Where is my wife? Oh don't give me those blank looks. The twelfth Cyber Legion monitors this entire quadrant. You hear everything. So you tell me what I need to know. You tell me now and I'll be on my way.

Cyberman: What is the Doctor's message? {the fleet explodes behind Rory}

Rory: Would you like me to repeat the question?

APA
FAIL

Here here! The spin offs aren't fairing much better either. The original Torchwood series provided a nice "adult" angle on the DW world, but the writers seriously messed with the character dynamics, Jack in particular, with Miracle Day presumably pandering to their America paymasters. Was is it just me but was Jack TRYING to be a shallow stereotype?

Eleven - if you will - rocktastic music movies

APA

Not to be confused with "Crossroads" staring Britney Spears.

I've heard about that Steve Vai film but have never found copy to watch, with the BS version polluting all of my searches. There's also a link here, didn't Steve do that Wyld Stallyon "Excellent!" sting (plus a few others) in Bill and Ted?