* Posts by PAT MCCLUNG

113 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2007

Page:

Munich may dump Linux for Windows

PAT MCCLUNG

Munich

if this report is true, it is the most disgusting, unreasonable, fake, paid-for, bribed, sell-out by the Munich municipality I can possible imagine, since the premise that Windows would be (in some way) better, or cheaper or more functional than Linux is demonstrably false, in every possible respect and circumstance.

Has Linux got OpenStack licked? The Vanilla 'Plus' strategy

PAT MCCLUNG

Canonical's Juju chams

Most people, especially in front of an edifice like OpenStack, really don't have very much to say. But, they still want to "expand and enhance" it. Shuttleworth, unfortunately, has never had much to say about anything that matters. Causes lots of trouble, though.

'F*cking crap' aside, Linus Torvalds says Linux 4.9 is coming along nicely

PAT MCCLUNG

Re. Linus Torvalds

Thank the lord for Linus Torvalds. Everything else is full of f*cking crap. Linus has shown us that it is possible to be an inspiring and admired leader, without needing, or trying, to steal big in any way. What a great and inspiring guy. A model for the rest of us.

Tim Cook's answer to crashing iPhone sales: More iPhones

PAT MCCLUNG

Re: "India is the new China, as growth in the latter has slowed."

China, US and most of the developed world are mature smartphone markets, where most everybody that wants one already has one. The big un-satisfied market is in India. ALL of the smartphones are now manufactured in China or Kores (Samsung). India, (smarter than the rest of us, I guess), has placed a 12% import tariff on smartphones. Consequently, Apple and Samsung are building plants there to make phones for the Indian market. So Indians get employment, as well as inexpensive smartphones.

Farewell, Fadell: Nest CEO Tony quits IoT biz

PAT MCCLUNG

NEST of Snakes

What a POS invasion of our liberty and privacy.

You want google to monitor your thermostat settings? Read the US Declaration of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

You can't pursue happiness without Life, of course, but you can't do it without Liberty as well.

Perhaps more understanding of this problem is developing. I sure hope so.

Anybody who would stand for or allow information-bearing electromagnetic radiation to emerge from their real or personal property without their ability to monitor it, and TURN IT OFF fails to meet minimum requirement as a responsible human being , a participant in a free society with whom we can interact and respect.

"By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they are in our pockets."

Edward Snowden

Engine warning light appears on Uber's $100m driver settlement

PAT MCCLUNG

"Only problem is that, in the act of harnessing Uber, they will kill the company."

Now THAT would really make my day!

The case for ethical ad-blocking

PAT MCCLUNG

ad-blocking ethics

Indeed it is ethical for me to block unsolicited advertisements from appearing on the web pages I visit.

I do not wish to see them. Moreover, I have made a promise to myself NEVER to buy a product or service that I see in an unsolicited web advertisement.

Therefore,

1. ad-blocking is beneficial to me, because I do not wish to see them.

2. ad-blocking is beneficial to advertisers, since it is possible for me to buy their product or service only if I do not see their advertisement.

Everybody benefits.

Official: EU goes after Google, alleges it uses Android to kill competition

PAT MCCLUNG

Using Android to kill competition

Well it shouldn't be that difficult to identify th EVIL that you're not supposed to do, should it, Google? I guess Larry and Sergey have gotten too far away from the now heavily institutionalized profit 'ho's they hired to do their somewhat shady bidding. As one google employee said, "Evil is whatever Sergy says it is." But he's too busy playing in th sandbox with Larry to see what is happening among the alphabet profit 'ho's, I guess.

Gartner: Why we had to dash tech cash splash

PAT MCCLUNG

Having lived in the world of technology forecasting, I have a lot of respect for Gideon Gartner, whom I first met when he was director of Commercial Analysis for IBM, a long time ago. the Gartner Group has made a ton of money satisfying people's need to understand what is going to happen in the future, or at least, to make them feel that they can huddle together in a Group "The Gartner Group", pay Gartner $20K a year, and sit together enjoying the "Gartner" predictions and evaluations, without the slightest idea of what is going to happen next. If your company or project, or business enterprise is fucked, you can say, "How could this have happened? We paid the Gartner Group for their technology forecast, and their customized study, and we followed it."

The fact is, pilgrim, nobody has the faintest idea what is going to happen next. One thing is sure, the predictions of the Gartner Group, tainted as they are by all the money and flack coming into them by those who have an interest in "shaping expectations". These Gartner predictions, and the other "engagement consulting" crap they generate for which people pay $50K, and more) and

the resultant activity of the technology producers and consumers that these reports generate -- I don't know how to describe the results -- ludicrous.

The worst Gartner analysts are those who are the "best qualified" (e.g., 12 years progressive responsibility and experience in whatever aspect of the changing IT area they are covering), these people are useless, because they rely on what they know to tell you what is going to happen. They are wrong, obviously, because the future does not depend on the past. Perhaps you have noticed this.

The best Gartner analysts are those like that guy at Sotheby's who sold you that $20 million Rothko, (are you sure?) , who have a knack for conning the customer base. It's show business.

Infinidat adds predictive analytics to Infinibox OS. But what's it mean?

PAT MCCLUNG

If anybody says "Quality of Service" to you, grab them, four wraps of malleable aluminum wire around the ankles, three wraps around the wrists, kneel down, one 9MM bullet in the head. Get a back hoe, dig a big hole, throw them in with a bag of lime.

Go home, sleep like a baby.

How do you build a cheap iPhone? Use a lot of old parts

PAT MCCLUNG

iPhone. A totally disgusting product, in every respect. Everything about this product has increased "their" ability to watch you, monitor what you are doing, limit your freedom. You paid money to enslave yourself? You must be nuts, if you carry one around.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

You can't pursue Happiness, if your Liberty is taken away from you. Almost the same as taking away you life.

Pitiful of you just to surrender it voluntarily.

Holding out for a Jobs: Tim Cook still auditioning for position of Apple god

PAT MCCLUNG

These psychopathic personalities like Jobs and Ellison do enormous damage to our society and people's lives. Anybody, who can see clearly, will recognize the truth in this. Remember 1995, when the Internet was free, not watching you, not selling your eyeballs? Then, you could make a telephone call without identifying yourself. Now, you walk across the street, and they got you within 20cm.

Microsoft lures top Linux exec from Oracle to Redmond

PAT MCCLUNG

Any puke that has worked for Oracle should fit right in at M$.

True believers mind-meld FreeBSD with Ubuntu to burn systemd

PAT MCCLUNG

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

True believer. True believer.

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

A long way from home

A long way from home

Last year’s Android finally overtakes year-before-last’s Android

PAT MCCLUNG

What good is a software enhancement if it won''t run on the hardware people own? Only to create product obsolescence and artificial demand, false profits. I love my 2003 Linux desktop. Runs Fedora 23 like a champ. Also, Windows 2000, as I sometimes want.

AdBlock Plus, websites draft peace deal so ads can bypass blockade

PAT MCCLUNG

AdBlock Plus

Truly it is amazing that some company may want to send me an advertisement that i would prefer not to see. What kind of marketing is that? Absurd. Perhaps we should form an organization, called "We Prefer", which promises NEVER to buy anything that appears on their Web pages as an unsolicited advertisement. A stronger form is to pledge NEVER to buy ANYTHING from a company that is such an intrusive advertiser.

Facebook cares about you, yes you, so much it won't give up on India

PAT MCCLUNG

Facebook India gambit.

"Saint Michael, the Arc-Angel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wiles and snares of the Devil [aka Mark Zuckerberg]. Restrain him, O God, we humbly beseech thee, and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, cast into Hell Satan, and the other Evil Spirits who roam about the Earth, seeking the ruin of souls" Pope Leo XIII

It's official: India bans Facebook's Free Basics

PAT MCCLUNG

Thank God that reason and love of Liberty has prevailed among the people of India. Now, look to your own.

Are Indians too stupid to be trusted with free Internet?

PAT MCCLUNG

Don't you see these simple facts?

Who is this crud apologist for Facebook, and its pathological founder? This is not journalism, this is paid propaganda. This guy is Zuckerberg's flack. Facebook's Indian gambit, is the most colonizing, overbearing freedom take on the planet. Thank God the Indian authorities stopped him. Now, let us all reason how to give Liberty to the 2 billion existing Facebook subscribers, who inadvertently gave it up, not knowing or expecting the consequences. Let us try to lift them out of their dreaded muck-filled silos, one by one, or at least stop them before they reproduce and create more Zombies. No, people, you do not have the freedom to give up your Liberty. You have the responsibility to retain it. You remember, don't you? You read it in grade school.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

You may perceive that there is no way to "pursue happiness" unless you have Liberty, which means freeing yourself from Mark "You have one identity." Zuckerberg's identiy-destroying silo, the biggest plague that has threatened to engulf mankind in a long time. This man is really sick, sick, sick, sick, sick. Destroy Facebook and restore human Liberty.

Cat fight: Watch out YouTube, here comes Facebook

PAT MCCLUNG

OMG lewt's stay with You Tube

You Tube is good. Thanks to google is not a "successful business", rather it is a video repository anyone can use.

Facebook is bad. Though a "successful business" it is a closed, dead-end street. No exit. less desirable than syphilis or gonorrhea.

Mozilla bins 'Tiles' ads plan in Firefox

PAT MCCLUNG

Look,

In order to take back the Internet, the World has to revert from an "advertising based revenue model" to a "service based" model. That means, you and I are going to have to fork over to Moizilla $10 bucks or so annually to surf on their browser. Not willing to do that? Then realize the implications.

And if Firefox loses half their base by charging $10. I say, good riddance to these folks.

BBC shuts off iPlayer to UK VPNs, cutting access to overseas fans

PAT MCCLUNG

BBC VPNs

Oh, my. It is soooo easy to download the bbc TV program content from unauthorized sites, if you want to watch it.

The good British advocates of free content are good at uploading their TV programs within hours of broadcast.

But, what about us upright citizens who would rather pay to see them?

It would be nice if the BCC provided an option, so that we could pay, elect not to choose to download unauthorized bbc content, presently our only option. Works well, though ethically debilitating..

But, we will watch, anyway. Nothing can stop that.

Cash-hungry Google chief upgrades advertising veeps

PAT MCCLUNG

Larry and Sergey

Larry and Sergey are tired of worrying about stupid things like Google's profits - definitely do not care about this. They can hire little profit "Ho's" to run that part of Google. With Alphabet, Larry can now play in the sandbox, just like Sergey has been doing. Lots more fun!

Linux kernel dev who asked Linus Torvalds to stop verbal abuse quits over verbal abuse

PAT MCCLUNG

Good riddance.

Spotify now officially even worse than the NSA

PAT MCCLUNG

Truly hard to understand why 20 million people would patronize this spyware. No force on earth can save people like this! Plenty of places to get the information and media you want without this aggressively intrusive media slut.

Windows 10 to MELT YOUR BRAIN and TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE

PAT MCCLUNG

MS Windows

OMG, I would have nothing to do with MS Windows, except I have to keep a copy (8.1), just to see what is going to happen next. But many family members continue to suffer every day, and so I try to help them. What a disaster. Windows 10 promises to become an apocalypse. Hopeless. Hopeless. Horror. Horror. Horror. Beyond all human comprehension that anybody voluntarily uses this software. Still, there it is, like Syphilis and Gonorrhoea, and I have to treat the victims.

Apple Watch is like an invasive weed says Gartner

PAT MCCLUNG

Before it kills again

We need to stop this monster Apple, before it kills again. Enormous harm done to the free Internet and the common infrastructure of human freedom, open software, configurable, maintainable hardware. If you can't open it, look at it, fix it, you don't own it, it owns you. At a minimum, boycott Apple products. For instance, the Apple Retina Macbook. $1299. Pure junk. The Apple watch? Similar to the Red Porsche buyers. Three inch penis.

VMware sued, accused of ripping off Linux kernel source code

PAT MCCLUNG

Certainly is an apparently valid claim against a gplV2 license violation. I hope they nail VmWare to the wall on this.

Super SSD tech: Fancy a bonkers 8TB all-flash PC?

PAT MCCLUNG

Storage

Storage is free. Forget it.

Microsoft comes right out and says backup software is dead

PAT MCCLUNG

Cloudy

"The Cloud" is one of the most pervasive "shibboleths" now pervasive in popular thought.

What is a "Cloud"? Merely a bunch of remote procedure calls we make, sending some operands and data (essentially a security "crap shoot") out there, and (hopefully) getting back the responsive behaviour we desire..

I come from the 50's-60-s world, when all computing was done remote from the "terminal", since the "user" had little local storage or computation capacity. Then, with the technology revolution predicted by Gordon Moore, we got (and now have - plenty, at a cost of next-to-nothing) enough storage, computation, and connection technology to do whatever we want, and a free network to exchange it and to freely collaborate with others we intelligently select about our sharing our data and our computations, work, and thoughts. You cannot securely "back up" your data? Crawl in a hole and die, somewhere.

Tell me again, please, what "The Cloud" does for "we, the people"? May do something for others, "pinhead Innovators" and surveillance operatives, but does not do much for we the people, and for our freedom. Highly dangerous, and socially corrosive. I regard most "Cloud" operatives as predators, to be deeply scrutinized and evaluated by us individually in respect of each of our inherent interests, if not to be avoided altogether.

.

Revealed: Facebook Boss Zuckerberg's One Weird Trick When Hiring

PAT MCCLUNG

How this small, limited and insignificant person could have $40 billion is a testimony of the extreme viral pathology now engulfing our society.

Microsoft opens kimono on Windows 10 Universal App Platform

PAT MCCLUNG

I would rather die than have a "universal app".

Lenovo: We SWEAR we're done with bloatware, adware and scumware

PAT MCCLUNG

No hardware trojans?

No hardware trojans, or malware in UEFI?

Buggy? Angry? LET IT ALL OUT says Linus Torvalds

PAT MCCLUNG

Linus Torvalds is a treasure. The right man, in the right place, at the right time.

Docker: Sorry, you're just going to have to learn about it. Today we begin

PAT MCCLUNG

Docker

Don't worry about these money freaks. We'll run over them in a few months.

Five-eyes partners dilute UN resolution criticising metadata collection

PAT MCCLUNG

Metadata

"We kill people based on metadata."

Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and CIA

The last PC replacement cycle is about to start turning

PAT MCCLUNG

smartphones are pretty depressing

The fact is, the workstation/laptop are declining because the consuming public becomes more and more dumbed-down and plagued with hyperkinetic disorder that they are no longer able to (or willing to) take the time to learn to use this magnificent tool. For the attention-deficit generation, a smartphone works great. Load down a bunch of tracker-surveillance APPS, and that will satisfy your 90-second attention span. The point is, the smartphone is a device an ignorant consumer can use for immediate gratification. But, see quote below. A laptop is a tool, and you can get it to do what you (ought to) want and actually do need, and securely communicate with others, particularly if you run Linux on it and can program, even a little.

Of course, you could get your smartphone to work right, plenty of good hardware there, but it's a lot harder than doing it with a laptop, and murderously difficult to maintain security. They are designed to be used by ignorant consumers who don't understand (or care) that they are the product being sold.

"There is no way that you can describe yourself as free, if you are being constantly watched."

Chris Hedges

Ex-Soviet engines fingered after Antares ROCKET launch BLAST

PAT MCCLUNG

Those Antares rocket first stages were fabricated in Ukraine, not Russia.

Apple iPhone 6 Plus: GORGEOUS FAT pixel density - but it's WASTED

PAT MCCLUNG

Providing pixel density greater than the capacity of the human eye can see is a phenomenon that I truly can't understand. Any androids with enhanced vision out there to use it?

Microsoft thumbs nose at NSA, hardens crypto for Outlook, OneDrive

PAT MCCLUNG

clerk

"Our goal is to provide even greater protection for data across all the great Microsoft services you use and depend on every day," Thomlinson wrote. "This effort also helps us reinforce that governments use appropriate legal processes, not technical brute force, if they want access to that data." Microsoft Corporation statement

Microsoft is a (the first, since 2007) NSA Prism provider. In respect of the NSA Prism program, you can figure out in general how it works by looking at the slides released by The Guardian newspaper and Le Monde, from the material Edward Snowden provided to them.

You can believe this, if you can believe the authenticity of the US Top Secret documents that have been provided by European journalists, In fact, it is extremely hard to believe anything that is in variance with these documents, certainly not a statement from Microsoft Corporation.

1. Every "Prism provider" - NSA designation (P1-Microsoft, P2-Yahoo, P3-Google, P4-Facebook, P5-PalTalk, P6-YouTube [now Google], P7-Skype [now MS], P8-AOL, PA-Apple - maybe others we don't know about), has, directly connected to their company servers and databases, in one or more private locations on their company premises, a "Data Intercept Technology Unit - DITU", property of the US government, controlled and operated by FBI personnel.

2. Each FBI DITU has a direct connection with the NSA, and CIA, and FBI. I intepret this to mean that there is a direct connection to the Prism Provider's servers, not an Internet connection. An Ethernet connection.

3. There are two types of situations at the DITU.

a) "surveillance" the individual Prism provider client is "under surveillance". This means that every action in which they participate, login, e-mail, voice, videoconference, file transfer, image transfer, etc. is automatically provided to the DITU and transferred to NSA (and, optionally, "dual routing", to the CIA and/or FBI in real time.

I think it takes a FISA court order to put someone under surveillance, but I don't know that. Seems to me the statistics about government requests that some of the Prism providers supply are about "surveillance"

.

b) "Stored Comms" the NSA analyst sends a request to "poke around" in the information (about anyone "Target") that the Prism provider has in their stored database with an association to the targeted client. (e-mails, web pages, uploads, voice, videos, "friends", etc.). In routing the NSA request to the DITU for "Stored Comms", the NSA request is first filtered through an FBI "Electronic Communications Surveillance Unit - ECSU", which filters out the requests pertaining to individuals (presumably only those not under "surveilllance") known by the FBI to be "US Persons", before the request is sent to the DITU. This is done, presumably, to adhere to the 4th Amendment, though I don't think it does very well. For instance, If I "friend" or send an e-mail to a targeted non -"US person", the NSA would get that...

You can look at the slides and see if you agree with my thoughts about this. Incidentally, the Wikipedia site says these slides were released by Edward Snowden, though, of course, Snowden has not released them, to my knowledge, at least.

So, some Prism providers' statements, to the effect that they provide no information directly to the NSA are technically correct, though such statements seem to me to be deliberately misleading.

Comcast exec says wired broadband customers should pay-as-they-go

PAT MCCLUNG

Charging for traffic use makes sense.

Charging for bandwidth trafic use makes a lot of sense. You pay for the electricity you use, don't you? Also, this would generate a lot of consumer awareness of and resistance toward all the crap sent to them on the internet that they do not want to receive, and tracking data coming back from their access devices that they do not want sent. Scaling down the bandwidth charges in low volume time periods makes good sense, also. Download content to watch tomorrow while sleeping.

FCC MUST protect net neutrality to preserve AMERICA, say Google et al

PAT MCCLUNG

Re: Uh-eh

Some bay area company called google has a network. Couple of them, Kansas City, Provo, and lots more coming.

10 PRINT "Happy 50th Birthday, BASIC" : GOTO 10

PAT MCCLUNG

Clerk

BASIC, designed by John Kemeny to teach idiots about computing, is one of the geatest didasters eve perpetrated on the human race.

Spy back doors? That would be suicide, says Huawei

PAT MCCLUNG

Clerk

It is a proven fact (beyond denial) that NSA has back doors in Huawei routers and firewalls.

See the ANT product catalog among the Snowden documets released by Der Speigel: HEADWATER; HALLUXWATER.

Got Windows 8.1 Update yet? Get ready for YET ANOTHER ONE – rumor

PAT MCCLUNG

The presence or absence of a "Start Button" is something only those below mental age 12 care about.

Most of Windows users are so unworthy to use a computer that they havn't any idea how it is configured, whether it has been updated, etc. I fixed several for family members last year. By now, I am sure, they have sunken back into the mud. Windows 8, by the way, a pretty good operating system.

US biz spaffed more dosh on internet ads than TV spots in 2013

PAT MCCLUNG

Clerk

ALL the advertising revenue, web, TV and print is on the order of $100 billion. So, with more market entrants, the revenue growth of companies who depend primarily on advertising revenue has GOT to "S". Think about it.

Torvalds rails at Linux developer: 'I'm f*cking tired of your code'

PAT MCCLUNG

Clerk

systemd, along with all this cute lambda function recursive stuff is definitely more trouble than it is worth. Onanism. systemd is "extensively documented", but almost impenetrable to human understanding. The biggest question is: Who needs this s---?

Is this photo PROOF a Windows 7 Start Menu is coming back?

PAT MCCLUNG

Clerk

Anybody who gives a damn about what the GUI at the front of the OS "looks like" is an idiot, in my humble opinion. Windows 8 is a good OS, far better than anything MS has so far produced (Windows Vista was an atrocity, we can all agree). Anybody who cannot find their way around the Win 8.1 GUI garbage, and get to the Desktop, where you can do what you have to do in Windows, run programs, is an.imbecile. What do you do with your computer? I use mine to run programs, which is quite easy in Windows 8.1. Of course, I don't do this unless I need to run a Windows-only program, which is less and less necessary. Got 5 computers, and all run Linux as my personal choice, but I do need Windows to access some Windows-only programs I want to run,. Anybody who runs Windows exclusively has my personal sympathy, which I extend to all the mentally handicapped.

How many mobile apps collect data on users? Oh ... nearly all of them

PAT MCCLUNG

For those addicted to the android or iOS phones (any cell phone, with or without GPS, actually), an easy way to protect yourself is to create a "Faraday cage" for your smartphone by wrapping it in aluminum foil. Then they can't track you, for sure, for no radio waves can get in or out of it. Aluminum foil works. Try it. Or you can buy a sleeve to put the phone in. Cheap ones from China work, are available on eBay for 5 bucks.

I mention this because of the recent news story that demonstrators in the Ukraine were texted by the government that they were in a demonstration location, and to get ot of there if they weren't demonstrating. You might like to shield your phone if you do not wish "them" to discover that you were in attendance at, for instance, a political or confidential business meeting, or that you and your confidante were together in hotel x at time y. Of course, the NSA listens to you, to the tune of 5 billion records per day, but they don't text you about it.

Microsoft asks pals to help KILL UK gov's Open Document Format dream

PAT MCCLUNG

Actually, I like CSV best.

Page: