Posts by Chronos 1258 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2007
Never mind, DD, at least we have this lot to be crash test dummies for us. I didn't bother to try it: I just paid heed to the sound of a thousand files being altered without the owners' permission, along with the possibility of browsing habits being sucked in at a force of several kiloLovelace - hearsay, natch, but they're an advertising company. One of Brin's papers in 1998 was specifically concerned with mining as much useful data as possible from large sets. What else would they produce a web browser for? I suppose you think they go on an abandoned kitten search every Wednesday afternoon, too? This may have led me to conclude that this software is possibly, nay, probably not for me. Besides, I can't be arsed to compile WINE [1] just to try another sodding web browser that will probably annoy the hell out of me anyway, even if it does run Java'scrap really, really quickly for "The Cloud," whatever the chuff that is ;)
My hardware, my borrowed electrons, my node, my rules! You may like your hardware running around complying with any old munchkin's orders or your data/documents/life sitting on some goon's storage but I prefer to have control. YMMV, NAWPBL, SWW etc.
If you think this reads as unduly offensive, it's because I'm having one of those days where the lusers think it's safe to crawl out of the risers and floor space and actually try to interact with me (they scuttle back in making gurgling and clicking noises when I exceed their capacity of two syllables per word), so I'm not feeling particularly empathic or sympathetic, especially toward people who think it's OK to let all and sundry muck (I originally began that word with an F) about with other people's shit whenever they feel like doing so on the sly and then gape incredulously when someone points out that it really isn't cricket, to the point that it looks like they're taking the piss out of the one sensible comment in this entire Google-adoration-fest of a thread. It's a web browser produced by an advertising and data-mining company. It's not first contact, the second coming, the breaking of the third seal or the fourth horseman, although it looks suspiciously akin to the latter with regards privacy, as do most things Google have come up with recently.
[1] No, it is not Linux. What is it, then? Mind your own sodding business.
The source is under a BSD licence so, no, it doesn't violate the GPL. WebKit is dual licensed (BSD/LGPL). There is nothing in the Chrome code that is GPL only except for Win32 pthreads, which is LGPL and non-viral.
Remember, the GPL is far from the only licence that can be considered safely open source. The OSI has a full list of them.
http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html
That said, this is going nowhere near my machines. I guarantee worlds of pain for anyone trying to sneak it in. Remember that costing you wrote? I hope you do because you have to start again...
"When will the masses of Kool Aid Drinkers just learn to say no to these a-holes?"
No idea about them, but I swore off Google when the devil (you know who you are, Old Nick) convinced me of their ulterior motives. That was ages ago.
No, I'm not going batty and hearing voices. On Usenet, specifically uk.r.a, you can be whoever the hell you like.
Poison. 'nuff said.
Indeed. I have an inverter on the boat, but that is a direct connection to a leisure battery. That is beside the point. I was talking about the connection method, the cigar lighter socket and associated cabling. Believe me, I've seen what a faulty cigar lighter connection does to a car's wiring loom first hand. If anyone remembers the old Rover 200 series Mk1, their cigar lighter went straight to the main 60A link fuse via what looked like 16/0.2 hookup wire. It blew said link fuse, but not before the white wire with a tracer melted its way through the dash wiring. Moral is that you cannot know what setup a vehicle has until you look. Yes, I did manage to rewire that poor unfortunate car. The cause? A faulty mobe charger.
This pulls far more current from that connection than is safe. If you connect a current consumer of this magnitude to something like a cigar lighter with a comparatively high R contact set and wiring that will probably show resistance of several ohms at this current, it WILL "deep six" something. It's almost guaranteed. If you're lucky, the fuse will go first. If not, enjoy the smell of melting PVC. Next time you look at your inverter, pay close attention to the gauge of cable that connects the inverter to power. Then, if you can be bothered, compare it to the wiring leading to your cigar lighter socket. You will soon see why any inverter over a certain power rating is supplied not with a cigar lighter plug, but croc clips for direct connection to a lead-acid style battery.
"Wattage is output." OK, so let's assume it's, oh, I'll be generous, 90% efficient. (400*(1/0.9))/13.8=? It's 32A - from a cigar lighter socket. Unwise, my friends, very unwise. It'll also drain the average car battery in a little over an hour. You alternator can probably manage to offset this current draw with nothing else consuming power, unless you're an audio buff with an uprated alternator, in which case you'll have a 45A or 60A alternator fitted which can easily accommodate these currents.
Contrary to what you imply, I am fully versed in DC theory and the engineering applied to a car's LV wiring. This sort of thing is the whole rationale behind increasing a car's LV from 12V to 48V posited a couple of years ago: Higher voltage equates to less current for a given power, thus the manufacturers can get away with thinner gauges/longer runs of wiring for the same power draw.
That's 29A at 13.8V (nominal open terminal voltage on a standard car battery). I think cigar lighter sockets, last I looked, were rated for 8A max. I balk at connecting the notebook's 70W LV power adapter; even though it doesn't exceed the rated current it still gets bloody warm due to the comparatively poor contacts one finds in these things. I shudder to think what a 400W inverter (I hope that's input and not output) will do. Meltdown, probably. One look at the cable the manufacturers use to connect the cigar lighter to the fusebox should convince you that this is a bad idea.
Don't you just love these "plug in and bugger the consequences" gizmos?
Flames, for obvious reasons.
Yup, that was the idea to which the ellipsis alluded ;)
The two ACs above have hit the nail squarely on the head: Using McAfee's site advisor (or squidGuard, Spamhaus Zen, ORDB and the likes) is a conscious choice on the part of the sysadmin/end-user, effectively saying "I trust this data more than I trust the sites to which it refers and I have no wish for my *private* machines to communicate with these endpoints at all." McAfee have blocked nothing at all. The end user has, as is his or her right.
This needs confirming legally as a sysadmin/end-user's absolute right. These bastards aren't just suing McAfee, it's a broadside against the entire malware/abuse information system, ultimately challenging one of our most important rights on the Internet just as TFA pointed out in the first place.
ISPs please note, this is also one of the reasons for the backlash against Phorm: Implementing this is forcing machines to communicate with an endpoint that nobody in their right mind would choose to communicate with, let alone disclose sensitive data to.
More relevant is the case of e360 Vs Spamhaus, I would wager. McAfee do exactly the same thing Spamhaus do: Make recommendations on the trustworthiness of a particular host on the Intartubes. Spamhaus only lost in the first instance because nobody turned up to represent them and, later, they seemed to win on most points, although e350 scumbags got their own way on one point (we weren't spamming in Sept 2006. OK, guys, we'll remove the ROKSO entry for Sept 2006. Now, what about this spam in Oct 2006, and this one from yesterday?).
Hilarity. Of course, Spamhaus were quite right, although I can't help feeling they would have been doing us all a great service if they had just STFU and showed up to squash these parasites like the bugs they are: They have no physical presence in the US, therefore were not within US jurisdiction. You can't tell a US judge that without getting his/her hackles (heckles, feckles, schmackles, whatever they're called, they're up and pointing at you, buddy!) up. Thankfully, McAfee are a US company and will probably turn up, grovel adequately to the judge and set a precedent once and for all. We can only hope...
Check your named.conf for "query_source" and remove/comment that line. Other possible causes are the rc script calling rndc reconfig rather than kill/exec, which will leave the running process resident and just cause it to re-read the config. Manually /etc/init.d/named zap && /etc/init.d/named start (or is it /etc/init.d/dns on Genitals? I forget...) as big bad root. You may also have a firewall/router in the path of the 'net connection undoing all your nice port randomness.
Yes, they're vulnerable. The transaction ID is irrelevant as it is guessed by the attacker with chances of a hit being one in 65536 per shot. The crux of the matter is a static upstream query port on the recursive server being queried, allowing the attacker to both send unique unresolvable queries within the target domain (1.example.com, 2.example.com...) to port 53 AND know which port the server is listening for an answer on. He then fires answers at it pretending to be the server the resolver is querying (remember, this is UDP. No state, easy to spoof, no reply needed once you get an answer accepted). You only need to guess the transaction ID correctly once and then you've polluted the cache for the entire example.com domain for however long you set that answer's TTL to (or the cache lifetime, whichever is smaller) by dint of in-bailiwick answers always being accepted for the whole domain. All the real example.com DNS servers will send back is NXDOMAIN, which doesn't get cached so you have, in effect, limitless query headroom to get the transaction ID correct without the risk of the real servers populating the cache first.
What the patch does is enable the server to use a random source port for every query in a recursive search, spoiling the cracker's ability to track which port the server expects a response on, thus giving the cracker no opportunity to insert his own bogus answers. It is, unfortunately, security by obscurity. We need signed roots and DNSSec. DNS is and always has been insecure. It's only a matter of time before more holes are found and this whole song and dance commences yet again. Of course, that implies ISPs will care enough to set up trust anchors, but that's a discussion for another day.
By the way, if anyone thinks adding 1 IN A x.x.x.x, 2 IN A x.x.x.x etc. to their zones is a defence, just ponder the use of very small shell scripts, uuidgen and sed to create the hostnames to query. I'm sure you'll agree that this idea is no defence at all. The hostname used is just a simple way of explaining the exploit. Even your run-of-the-mill skiddie isn't going to be that obliging. Patch. Now.
"Dell also said it has taken steps towards making Linux more accessible to a global marketplace by adding the ability to select different languages during the first boot."
Sorry, Dell, I think you're taking credit for something Ubuntu's alternate installer was designed to do. As shown here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ubuntu_OEM_Installer_Overview OEM mode install starts up in a "I'm not sure who this new user is, so I'll ask some l10n/i18n and account questions" by design. Sorry to be picky and there's no doubt they're doing a great service for the open source movement but, as the BSD license hints, "Do anything but don't claim you wrote it."
Yes, the screenies are from Dapper, but this functionality was in Feisty and I'm pretty sure they won't have ripped it out of the alternate installer in 8.04. Full disclosure, though: I haven't touched 8.04 yet. I still have Feisty images on the pxeboot and I've been too lazy to update them.
Screwfix are just as bad. A box of 6x3/4" brass screws and a packet of screwcups (Imagine two England's Glory matchboxes stuck together and a small bag of washers) in a 2'X1.5' box, secured by a 2'X1.5' sheet of cardboard taped inside to stop them moving about with a secondary purpose of hiding the product making me wonder why they sent me what appeared, at first glance, to be an huge, honking great empty box.
There must be a surfeit of cardboard in the world. I also notice HP used the old pink anti-static foam to protect those sheets o' paper. I wonder if they had "Handle only in an ESD safe area" stickers on them, too?
Ferchrissakes, that's Steve "The Messiah" Jobs, not Steve "Fscking kill" Ballmer. It's bloody obvious to anyone with the i's to see. Yes, they both have an over-inflated notion of their own worth but they really are different people. For a start, it is rumoured that Ballmer sweats more, although you can't see soggy armpits on a black turtleneck, and I've never yet seen Jobs impersonate a demented chimp at a keynote, although he does a very creditable impression of an annoyed silverback (with very expensive lawyers) if you dare to take the piss out of him (I'm immune; I'm nobody whose opinion matters, so I slip beneath the RADAR).
Jobs because, well, just because, OK? El Reg, can we have a flying chair icon or something to stop this insanity? Just take the black helicopter icon, remove the chopper and put an office chair in there. That'll do the job (er, Ballmer) and it may just become an ISO standard or something for insane CEOs' office doors.
"You must not infringe the rights of others, including the right of privacy and copyright"
BT would do well to study their own T&Cs. Phorm, anyone? We'll just accuse you of copyright infringement and then, if you have a web site, turn around and make a copy of your copyrighted content for our own commercial gain against your wishes. We'll also invade your privacy by inspecting every http request you make. We're allowed to do this because we're BT and we're above the law you little people have to abide by.
Talk about kettles and pots, not to mention that there are many legitimate uses for P2P. Okay, I know most instances are being put to illegitimate uses and I'm in full agreement that this is against the law, but that does not alter the truth. I mean, Blizzard uses P2P tech to distribute patches (since my son is an avid WoW player, believe me, I know. It wanted holes in my firewall. It didn't get them and got disabled) which is quite legitimate. I suppose we're going to have snoops ripping these packets to shreds to look for evidence of infringement now?
People in glass layer 7 packet inspection houses should not throw accusatory stones.
About time we had someone with a bit o' sense talking about this. I would have gone a little further with the nuclear is simply dangerous issue, of course, since we have little idea how many lives have been lost to coal (the whole shabang - blacklung, cave-ins, firedamp), oil (what has four legs and goes "woof?" Piper Alpha), gas, offshore and onshore wind etc. to compare to the "known" number of lives lost to nuclear power.
I'd also like to know how many people/animals/fish have been blended by hydro, not because I really give a damn, but it seems a particularly nasty way to go. Still, "Trawsfynydd Hydroelectric is brought to you in association with Moulinex - of course it blends!" may give them an additional revenue stream. Oh, and the RSPB can get stuffed; the more shite-hawks beaned by turbines, the better as far as I'm concerned. Those of you who live near the coast (or landfill) or own a boat that you have ever painted or cleaned will know exactly where I'm coming from.
Aye, perspective is what we need and Professor MacKay seems to have it in bundles. That said, the current trend seems to be legislate for anything that stupid people may stub their toes on. Given that we're legislating against natural selection, why don't we simply hook a huge alternator to Darwin's grave? He's sure to be spinning at a rate of knots.
Rabbit. That shipment of fail arrived years ago although, since this one actually adheres to a standard, the client devices may actually be useful on other networks. I can't see anyone being happy to actually purchase a handset locked to what amounts to an outgoing only service, either. Who is going to hang around the Rabbit^HUK01 sign on the off-chance someone will ring them? Data is moot, too, since there will be a nice, handy WiFi hotspot at the same location.
No icon, which is exactly what punters will see if they move a few hundred yards up the road.
"The prime minister argued that terrorism was the “most dramatic *new* threat” facing the UK in the 21st century" (emphasis mine)
Remarkable how quickly the IRA get forgotten, along with the simple fact that we weren't hiding behind our sofas back then, isn't it? Of course, one could argue that it doesn't really matter since it's only an excuse, but that would be realis^H^H^H^H^H^Hcynical...
Proceed with this nonsense since they will, no matter what anyone says.
Well, despite the fact one would think using the public as doormats would be considered disrespectful, that hasn't stopped NuLabour, has it? Turnabout being fair play and all that, I really don't see the problem...
We need a "blatant troll" icon. Ballmer'll do at a push, though he's more monkey than troll. And no, I didn't use the Tw*t-o-tron.
That cushion/pouffe/faux leather wotsit looks to be a very badly butchered red ensign.
I would have thought that the RAF had more things to worry about than kids getting hold of their roundels. Perhaps there is some truth in the old saying that even though the Air Vice Marshal has five gold rings, he's still just one more arsehole. One wonders if they're going to round up all the ex-mods and confiscate their parkas?
Jolly Roger. Less chance of getting sued flying that.
Yes, sadly I didn't get the chance to meet said scumfuck. My inflexible friend, the axe handle and myself could have had a whale of a time. Having said that, it wouldn't have helped Chico at all to have me banged up, although my wife would have done exactly the same just as well, perhaps better - and yes, I did leave that deliberately ambiguous ;)
I'd really rather you didn't encourage dimwits to own shih-tzu, or any other breed/mongrel/Heinz 57 for that matter. No idea if you've ever had one but the top-knot really is optional (one of mine looks like a miniature ridgeback with the pet cut), they're very good companion dogs and they're usually rather comical (just check the washing before you switch the machine on, IYKWIM). A scumfuck akin to the ones you mention used one of mine as a football for a few years before I got him, which has left him incontinent (spinal problem, no feeling from about two-thirds down his back) and with a very out-of-shape lower jaw due to being left to heal without vetinary attention. Christ alone knows how he managed to eat. Picking up what was left and rebuilding trust was our job.
What did the RSPCA (or anyone else) do? Sod all. It took the local rescue to get him out and placed with me, simply because I was the only member they thought could handle him after all that (not bragging. It's nice to be trusted with the hard to manage cases and you usually end up with devoted dogs). Needless to say I didn't get the waiver forms with shithead's address on them; something about not being rescue policy for one of their members to start teaching dog ownership ethics with a baseball bat at some God-forsaken hour of the morning. He has now been thirteen for the past three years (remark made by the vet after I instictively said thirteen when asked the usual question) and seems to be over it, although he hates me picking up a Wiimote. No idea why as we've had him since long before the Wii was released, but fire up Wii Sports and he buggers off sharpish. He's not hand-shy, it's the Wiimote itself. Even waving a TV remote around doesn't spook him. Anyone know of a anything nasty shaped like a Wiimote?
What should really happen to these pricks is they get castrated so the excess testosterone doesn't move them to harm helpless animals "for a laugh" simply because they can't get laid and aren't man enough to go pick a real fight with the most likely outcome being getting their empty heads kicked in. For a start, anyway ;-)
Totally agree with the subtext, though. It's not the dog that's at fault if the empty-headed owner thinks he's hard with a GSD/Staffie/Rottie trained to bite on sight. Staffies in particular think that biting, once trained into them, is just a good game to play with humans/other dogs/cats/the postie. They're just too daft to be malicious, which is why the idiots dock their tails; if they left them on, they'd be wagging so ferociously that the poor thing would take off Muttley style...
Apologies for the language but I think it's justified. Back on topic, what does an RFID chip do to prevent this from happening? Jack shit. But then the RSPCA do jack shit to stop abuse these days, more content to annoy real dog owners whose geriatric dogs are overweight (remember that one?) and causing the dog suffering due to being wrenched away from its owners at this late stage of its life.
"I would have thought that the Capitol would look a little flatter, maybe even with a hint of crater, after a 'real' nuclear attack. Or have I been hopelessly misled about the destructive capability of modern nuclear weapons?"
Depends on the yield, but you're right: It's not realistic. After 200 years (RTFA and make sure you're not in Washington D.C. in 2077) of being an exclusion zone, there would be all sorts of nature taking over. You know, trees, grass, wild animals (not the sort that are currently in office over there, natch) that sort of thing. If Pripyat taught us anything, its that we're probably the only species who think we've evolved enough and can stop bothering with all that adapt to survive nonsense; everything else seems to be able to live there despite the reactor going boom only 20 years ago.
No, not tree-huggery. I'm in favour of atomic power plants, despite the fact technology seems to have become a substitute for the ability to survive without it. Just a healthy dose of derision for the species we've become, arrogantly sure of our technology and blithely ignorant of the possibility that it will be our downfall.
Yes, I know: . < the point ---------------------- a long way ------------------------ my post > . Or perhaps not. If we weren't so dependent on things like electricity, gas, oil and coal for mere survival, would this sort of thing be quite so frightening?
Hello, ESR. :)
He's right, though, apart from the usual posturing about martial arts and shooting folk. You do not use guns or martial arts in an attempt to intimidate people and make yourself look superior. Someone needs to read a little more on the traditional martial arts, particularly the usual "Do not try to be humble. BE humble." guidance and variants of the same. Quiet competence and simple humility speak louder than words.
The point is that taking away the right to have a firearm is just creating a disparity of strength between the criminals who don't care (anyone from Manchester here? I worked there for a while and a word of advice: Never use the toilets in Piccadilly station if you want to get home with your wallet) and the general public.
So, to go against true Brit form and whine without a solution, here's mine: Allow householders with no criminal record a permit to have a single firearm in the master bedroom in a locked and sealed gun cabinet after mandatory training (you may want to upgrade that bedroom's door to something a little more substantial with a decent lock to give you time to remove the firearm and load it in a worst-case scenario). Make it an offence to remove it from that cabinet unless you're in fear of your life and promise spot checks on the seal and counts of the ammunition. It's a powerful deterrent, forces the owner to make a judgement call before the firearm is available to use for loss of temper, gives clear rules about justifying use and could save a few lives to boot. Of course, you'd have to return the right of a householder to defend his or her property but that should never have been taken away in the first place.
One minor detail: If your burglars/assailants are fleeing, even if they have something of yours in their hands, it is NOT acceptable to shoot them in the back or cause any other injury. You have repelled the threat to your life. Simple property is not a justification to use lethal force. Protection of life is the extent of the firearm's duty. This should be stressed over and over in the mandatory training.
Be fair, the two places are getting further away from each other. Just don't take your new laptop with you. It'll save you about a grand buying another one (or two if you're daft enough to buy one over there and try to bring it back).
Boffin icon? Well, plate tectonics, Mid Atlantic Ridge and all that boring geological stuff...
Phorm is most definitely adware and a particularly nasty, cunning, stealthy variant it is. What it's on the borderline of is spyware, but Intra-ISP Spyware (I2Spy) sums it up nicely.
As for AntiPhormLite requiring DX9, why, you have the source (http://www.antiphorm.com/page_software.htm) so go and have a butchers. It's probably just because it's coded in some odd IDE that links world+dog to your simple code. It's also possible that instead of using sockets it's using the DirectPlay API for network access. Use the source, Luke.
Mr. "Gerroff my Internets, peasants, you're slowing down my basketball game stream" himself. Yes, the Internet community has a long, if six months qualifies as long, memory.
For those without such a memory, http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Mark-Cuban-Urges-ISPs-to-Block-P2P-89635 may jog yours. I particularly like the South Park-esque avatar someone has cobbled together (yes, yes, I know all about the avatar generator, TYVM).
Jobs, because he has some funny ideas and hates being mocked too.
Phew! Not the Lunix distro, then? Many's the time I've ribbed Gentoo users for being, well, odd. -O99 -pipe -funroll-loops -funroll-all-loops -ffast-math -freally-fast-math -freally-really-fast-math -fi-am-1337 -fsod-space-gimme-speed -fhold-the-pickles -march=blue-gene...
Then portage craps itself a couple of weeks later and they have to start again. "But it's fun!" comes the reply. Funny old world...
I can't help wondering whether this would have remained beneath the radar if Phorm's marketing department hadn't been asleep on the job. Calling their company "Phorm" was probably the most stupid action of the entire debacle.
Think about it. The name smacks of malware immediately. Any existing word beginning with "F" that is transposed to a "Ph" immediately gains negative connotations. Phishing, pharming, the list goes on.
I suppose we should be grateful that they were so stupid. Past tense, because it's obvious now that this will never fly. Will the next forced advertising privacy nightmare be as easy to spot is the question we should be asking ourselves. In fact, I'm worried that it was so blatant an error that it was deliberate. Decoy tactics, anyone?
In the architectural diagram, the customer end is labelled "BT Wholesale Access Network". Does this, by any chance, mean that any customer of an IPStream, DataStream or IPStream max reseller, who has no contractual relationship with BT beyond provision of telephone line, will have their data passed on to Phorm?
Totally unacceptable if this is the case.
"Even if one does form, competent and hundreds strong like PIRA, it will tend to be riddled with informers and in the end old Blighty will grind it down.
Provided, of course, that nobody panics. Provided nobody starts locking people up for long periods without charge, or giving them hassle at airports because they've been "profiled" - as Andrew Gilligan's chum Philip Baum apparently advocates. Provided that the secret state operates under proper oversight. Provided that racism and religious discrimination don't get out of control."
Not a great deal more needs saying. This is the canonical British method for dealing with this sort of thing. It's part of our culture, our national identity, not to dwell on these events and cower behind our soft furnishings in fear. We used to just carry on regardless. What changed?
"...you also get six USB 2.0 ports on the I/O panel, two eSATA ports, Gigabit Ethernet..."
And enough aluminium in the form of heatsinks to keep a medium-sized bauxite mine operational for six months and an electricity bill to match. A year's supply of earplugs to offset the noise of the southbridge and PCIe controller HSF, not to mention the kilowatt PSU you'll need, will also be required.
It has already been said that the FB-DIMM memory subsystem is inferior to current parallel access DDRx schemes, yet they still keep pushing this as a "gaming" system. Curious. Anyone thinking of buying one of these would be well advised to look at the Tom's Hardware review of this platform (and do try not to laugh at the screenshot of the CMOS utility page for setting up memory bank interleaving when you remember doing the self-same thing on an old PPro Proliant twelve years ago). I will warn you, it's hardly positive, especially given the amount of wonga you'd have to part with to build one of these and the dearth of multi-threaded games that can scale to eight cores.
On a brighter note, I look forward to the day when the fenestrophiles need a Windows COA for each core. It'll bring the price of cases down as there will be no need to paint them.
"The music industry in China wants partnership with the technology companies – but you cannot build partnership on the basis of systemic theft of copyrighted music and that is why we have been forced to take further actions"
Good grief! "I want a partnership with the hot bird down the road, but you cannot build a partnership on the basis of her bringing up the fact that I beat my previous partners senseless and that is why I've been forced to take further actions." Yes, try that in court...
Bottom line: You cannot build a partnership by force. Nobody wants to partner with you after what you have done and are doing to your existing partners (the artists. Waaah! You artsy types are asking too much for your creations. Here's 8% instead) so you're pissing in the wind. With that image in your mind, trying to sue Baidu in China is a surer way to "get your own back" than urinating over the windward gunwale...
Piracy is not the answer, of course. The answer is removing these irrelevant dolts from the mix before they screw our musical culture up completely. That includes releasing crap as well as screwing artists.
It isn't going to work, folks. All you're doing is giving Microsoft another revenue stream in the form of licensing MS "standards" and slapping the interoperability moniker on the idea.
I keep thinking about what would be better for the competition. We have Solaris, Linux, BSD, all the proprietary Unices and a few other disparate clones of clones hardly worth mentioning. One thing they all seem to have in common is that they support well documented open standards and they (mostly) work well with each other on a heterogenous network; NIS, NFS (RFC 1094), Kerberos, LDAP et al. Linux is, or was the last time I checked, annoyingly deviating from the NFS standard by rejecting anything larger than 8 byte NFS locking cookies, but I digress into one of my many pet hates of Mr. Torvalds' bid for world domination.
Better for the competition would be withdraw from this anti-trust saga completely. It was a mis-managed hodge-podge of litigation and typical US court double-speak. Just mandate open standards for interoperability for all government applications and sit back to watch the fallout. Microsoft will either fall into line or become irrelevant. That's how one forces interoperability, not handing them "reasonable and equitable" revenue on a plate making their farcical attempts at ramming proprietary standards such as CIFS (OK, I know, but still...) and AD down everyone's throat seem legitimate. That is, of course, assuming the .gov admins can do more that sit and stab at dcpromo's point-and-drool interface. Perhaps this is the argument's Achilles heel?
Oh, and let's have some sort of browser service for NFS, please. This is 2008 and not everyone wants their remote shares in fstab, or even wishes to know fstab exists, although it does vastly simplify security and administration from the BOfH's point of view. Avahi/mDNS FTW?
Sod all to do with nuclear weapons and everything to do with base load generation. Let's face it, renewables just aren't ever going to provide the energy we need in a consistent way. Hydro generation is already well exploited and coal and gas burning plants, aside from leaving us at the mercy of whoever now produces those two because it's sure as hell we don't any more, are a no-go because of the pollution they produce.
Of course, the greens are up in arms. They always are. They need a crusade somewhere to justify their existence, despite the fact that one of the founders of Greenpeace is also a founder member and officer of SONE (http://www.sone.org.uk/content/view/42/31/ - the officer list makes very interesting reading). If they had their way we'd be using renewables to light our homes and coal and wood to heat it. Can you imagine the CO2 output that would generate? Amazingly short-sighted. Ground loops just aren't economically viable or even practical given Britain's postage-stamp sized gardens and personal micro-generation only works if you're out in the middle of nowhere. Ask the Germans. They are, by law, able to sell energy back to the grid at ABOVE cost, so they could in theory make a profit on micro-generation. That they don't and that the energy companies still turn a profit should tell you all you need to know.
Nuclear is safe. The older Magnox reactors had a shine simply because the pressure vessel didn't enclose the entire primary loop (the heat exchanger was outside the pressure vessel). The later Magnox plants, such as Wylfa on Anglesey, don't shine much at all and they're now considered obsolete. We're now on AGR plants which are safe, clean and even these are only second generation reactors. And before anyone points to the leaking pipe at the reprocessing plant at Sellafield in 2005, let me just point out that the sump, which was designed for that eventuality, contained everything properly and safely.
People have been screaming "do something about global warming" for most of this decade, but when the government do something constructive and practical like this, the uninformed start bashing it because of what happened due to bad design and stupidity on the part of the shift supervisor in a Soviet-era built plant with the primary raison d'etre of producing Plutonium [1], not generating electricity. Let's be completely honest here, the mention of nuclear to Joe Soap in the UK immediately gets you the retort of "Chernobyl" without a second thought. Perhaps we need education rather than ecologists. Or just get a grip and THINK.
[1] The reason I mention this is not to bash the Soviets, just to point out that some of the design flaws in the Chernobyl RBMK reactor were due to the need for direct access to the fuel to remove Pu-239 at short notice. There was, after all, a reason why RBMK reactors were so perilous. If you want an in-depth analysis without knee-jerk reaction, see http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/chernobyl.html
With a wavelength of 5mm, 60GHz just isn't going to make it through a wall, especially at the flea power this will no doubt be using, so the idea of streaming to other devices in different rooms is probably just wishful thinking. I suspect these devices are going to have to be almost on top of each other for this to be practical, both due to frequency and also neighbours' systems having to work in the same band. It looks more like eliminating cables, be that because of idiots who can't get two connectors plugged into the right place or content providers worried that with a physical connection of any sort, nasty crackers may just rip the content anyway (slightly tweaked HDMI repeaters with HDCP on the receiving end pretending to be a telly, for example). One welcome point I did note was the universal remote idea, reducing the number of little boxes that go "BZZT" to lose down the sofa. Just think twice before you throw that one remote to rule them all at the dog.
This isn't WiFi. Think "innovative interconnection for your entertainment centre devices enabling a new user-friendly, hassle-free connection paradigm, leveraging experience with RF technologies from the networking industry." With a side of DRM and you paying for it, of course.
"The display device has detected another WiHD device in range. Would you like to tie these devices irrevocably together so that when one breaks they're both useless? [Yes] [OK] [Go] [Don't Cancel]"
OK, that last bit was hyperbole. I hope.
No, thank you. That small alteration stops the usual suspects from branding us all as thieves. The reality is that most of us just want to enjoy music and pay for the privilege, but not be locked in to a particular format or device. Some would probably tell you that information (and music) wants to be free but, again, most of us are a little more pragmatic, having to live in the real world.
I don't usually find myself praising Bezos' little venture, but the fact that it has always worked for people using "alternative" operating systems and browsers is another step in the right direction. Here's hoping it will continue to do so.
Not so. The point of the fight against DRM is the ability to format shift, escape patent claims on codecs and use the content you have paid for on the device of your choice. It is not, and never has been, about facilitating distribution outside of that controlled by the copyright holders.
This sort of statement is harming rather than helping the fight against restriction of legal uses of copyrighted content.
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