Posts by Oh Homer

Re: "[justice will] cost you a lot more money for zero gain"

Personally I think justice is a far bigger gain than mere money, and I would in fact pursue the case relentlessly until justice was served, money be damned.

However you're right in that, sadly, the only way to achieve justice in a capitalist judicial system is to buy it, and those who can't afford to do so have no legal recourse.

This could easily be remedied by legislating that all claimants must pay the defendant's legal expenses in advance, and they will only be able to recover them in the event of winning the case. That would also be a disincentive for settling out of court (i.e. extortion), as they'd forfeit those expenses, although frankly I think "extra-legal" measures of all kinds, including out of court settlements, should simply be abolished.

Re: And a lovely player it was

I usually don't have anything good to say about Windows or its apps, but on this occasion I have to tip my hat and mourn the passing of an absolute classic, indeed seminal piece of software.

Although the software I'm talking about actually died a long time ago, over fourteen years ago in fact, so mourning its passing now is a bit like mourning the passing of the real Napster long after it had been assimilated and commercialised.

Still, as iconic moments go, this is a sad one.

But weep not, intrepid Ampers, because you can still relive the classic Winamp experience vicariously through Audacious and QMMP.

"And yet how many are in schools being used by kids to learn how to code?"

According to Eben Upton, about 200,000 (see video), albeit not as part of a formal curriculum, simply because there are almost no computer science teachers in UK schools (an absolute travesty), there's only those who "teach" that glorified secretarial course called "ICT" (a.k.a. Microsoft 101).

Sadly, although the RPF can build computers, it can't build computer science teachers, nor can it force school boards to employ them.

Of course, the lack of computer science teachers is itself largely due to a lack of computer science being taught in schools.

This vicious cycle was brought to you by the The Department for Education, sponsored by Microsoft.

Re: Steve Ballmer was Microsoft.

Using "Ballmer" and "soul" in the same sentence is an oxymoron, Shirley, except perhaps of the context in "swallowing".

Re: Infection Vector?

While it's important to openly and honestly recognise security vulnerabilities, in many cases what's implied as "software insecurity" often has bugger-all to to with the security of the actual software, certainly in the realm of generally secure operating systems like GNU/Linux and *BSD, and is more likely to be due to a password compromised by social engineering, then used to gain full access, at which point it's game over and no amount of "software security" could possibly defend against it.

That's also true of most of what passes for "malware" on Android, nearly every example of which is actually a rogue application that must be deliberately downloaded, installed, granted permissions and run by the user. Again, that has exactly zero to do with "software security", it's PEBKAC, and I'm afraid there's no software on earth that can mitigate stupidity.

Genuine software insecurity is far more likely to be found in the realm of proprietary operating systems and applications, where the lack of public scrutiny of the sources means bugs, and consequently security vulnerabilities, are rife, and typically remain unaddressed for extended periods, long enough to be widely exploited.

So I doubt this latest scare has anything to do with the security of GNU/Linux or Free Software in general, at least there's been no evidence to support that theory. But those who despise the principle of intellectual freedom will nonetheless use any excuse to attack Free Software.

I still recall the retarded comments made by Ashley Highfield, former director of "Future Media and Technology" at the BBC, who infamously claimed; "It’s almost a contradiction in terms, if you have DRM how can you have it open source? Because open source people will be able to find out how it works and get round it."

Highfield seemed blissfully ignorant of the fact that the sources for things like PGP were (and still are) available for decades, without its encryption being compromised. The same is true of most encryption software, so there's no reason DRM, or any other kind of software, should be any different.

Ironically (but unsurprisingly) Highfield went on to work for Microsoft, where he was responsible for such things as the proprietary MSN, Hotmail and Windows Live/Instant Messenger services, all of which have have a long track record of security issues.

I find it odd that whenever there's a security breach involving GNU/Linux passwords being compromised by (typically) social engineering, much is made of the fact that it's Linux, and that Linux is Open Sauce®, but whenever genuine software insecurities are exposed in proprietary software, there's an eerie silence on the subject of closed sources.

Re: Genious!

Woosh!

Re: Hard Work®

I don't especially care if their work was Hard®, I only care if it's good.

Then I'll consider buying it.

As for "protecting" this work, that's exactly the sort of thing that's likely to discourage me from buying it. By an amazing coincidence, those who whine loudest about needing to "protect" their work are also typically those who produce the sort of unholy shit that nobody wants to buy, which is after all exactly why they need to "protect" it in the first place.

Re: "Sony seem to be handing [MS] the market"

@ Anonymous Brave Guy

"The last vestiges of non-mobile video gaming will be on the ever lively PC market, and Valve's last-ditch effort to prop up the console market with its forthcoming Steam Box."

Except the "ever lively PC" market is plummeting, and the PC games industry along with it, which now accounts for just 19% of the games market, whereas console games account for nearly half the total market. In fact even handheld games are now outselling PC games, indeed the only segment generating less revenue than PC games is mobile, and that's only due to much lower prices, not fewer units shipped. The fact that, despite this, the mobile market has nearly matched the PC market, is a testament to how dire things really are for PC gaming.

And the Steam Box is not a "games console", despite the hype, it's a commodity PC running GNU/Linux, Valve's Steam client, and standard PC games. Although this false persona will no doubt encourage sales among those who might otherwise have steered clear of a PC, which is after all the whole point of this "console".

Re: "helplessly watching a child die"//Oh Homer

@ac : "Eradicating Malaria would make these places safer to live"

But again it's a false dichotomy to characterise this as a choice between medicine or education. You can't preclude education just because there are other social problems. If that were the case then, according to your reasoning, the US government should just abolish education, because there's such widespread poverty, corruption and poor healthcare in America.

Re: Good advice - but not enormous amounts of fun

@Necronomnomnomicon

OwnCloud is very good at what it does, but I wouldn't use it as a file or backup server. Its most useful function is as a CalDAV/CardDAV server, primarily because there are so damned few of them, for some odd reason, but its file, media and document handling is ... basic, putting it mildly.

My prefered music server is mpd, because it's extremely powerful yet lightweight. It supports numerous, concurrent outputs, including streaming over HTTP, and is supported by a multitude of clients on every platform, including Android. In passing, I also use beets to organise and tag my music. It's a bit complicated, but very powerful, and absolutely essential when dealing with a vast number of badly named/tagged music files.

For video I'd rather use XBMC, which is pretty much the benchmark for HTPC software, and can be either a UPnP server and/or a front-end/extender.

As for the file and backup server, I tend to use NFS and rsync, although I'm not sure how useful that is to Windows users. I suppose the Windows alternative is CIFS and whatever backup software you want to use. BackupPC is multi-platform and extremely sophisticated, but gross overkill for me.

But I don't think I'd use ownCloud for any of that.

I haven't played around with "online editing" much (I don't even use Google Docs), but a quick search revealed something called WebODF. GNU/Linux is awash with collaborative software of one kind or another, so I'm sure there are a few suitable alternatives. Personally I'm more comfortable using native apps.

I've run my own Postfix mail and Leafnode news servers for years, along with Dovecot IMAP, BIND DNS, a Transmission torrent server, Apache Web server, and various other services. Just yesterday I installed a Friendica instance, and I'm toying with the idea of trying the decentralised YaCy search server, in my quest to be Google-free (or rather NSA-free).

Your file sync problems are probably something to do with the retarded way that Windows filesystems handle file modification timestamps. I don't know what specific configuration you'd need to change in ownCloud to mitigate the issue (I haven't touched any Windows filesystems in years), but in rsync, for example, you'd use the "--modify-window=1" option.

Lumping tablets in with PCs

Then claiming the "PC" market isn't dead.

Re: "Blair was a technophobe"

He's also a warmonger, so even if he's clueless about technology, he still knew what he was getting into, and probably did so eagerly.

I call bullshit

Without even reading any of the other analyses:

. "simply by plugging in" - Not without some autorun mechanism (none here at all on my Gentoo/Openbox system). As for exploiting "buffer overflow bugs" in drivers to execute arbitrary code, that would depend on not only targeting hundreds or thousands of unique drivers across multiple platforms and multiple architectures, but then also targeting the payload similarly. And we're really supposed to believe this will magically fit into a thumbdrive's micro-controller firmware? Bollocks.

. "reprograms [thumbdrive] micro-controller firmware" and "can hook into classic BIOS, EFI, and UEFI firmware" - Which one? There must be hundreds if not thousands, and they're all different. Again, we're seriously supposed to believe all that code can be squeezed into a single USB thumbdrive's micro-controller firmware? Bollocks.

. "survive motherboard firmware rewrites" - Survive where? If it's in RAM then a cold boot and full discharge will kill it. If it's on disk then it'll need to hook into the startup process, which can be detected and removed. If it's in a backup BIOS then that can be wiped too. Survive? Maybe, but it wouldn't survive some pretty rudimentary intervention.

. "transmitting data encoded in ultrasonic sound" - Transmitting to what? My non-existent microphone? And note that this isn't an attack vector, both systems must already be compromised, otherwise there's nothing listening at the other end, even if there is a microphone. What nefarious purpose this would serve is a mystery.

It sounds to me like some script kiddie has hacked a small collection of hardware and drivers, then proclaimed this as a universal vulnerability.

Unlikely.

Also, no mention of Amiga OS?

Yes, incredibly, it's still alive and being actively developed.