* Posts by Martin Owens

428 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2006

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OpenOffice builds extensions for v2.3

Martin Owens

Ah yes but you see

>> Let's face it folks, OpenOffice really is rubbish

Maybe, maybe, but it's a) what people have been asking for b) open to negotiation if you have a better idea and c) completely free.

>> You mean the default is English(USA) instead of English(UK)

And there my friend is the rub, English(UK) doesn't exist; It's just English. Those nacies in the USA are not the owners of the word 'England' or 'English' and I suggest they change the name to American-sort-of-but-not-quite-English and default all software to English (real English).

787 unsafe, claims former Boeing engineer

Martin Owens

Airbags?

>> Zeppelins! Bollocks to this airplane malarkey.

Forget planes, zeppelins and auto mobiles; what we need is a vacuum exta-continental train service in which the trains reach a speed of 1100km/h

Microsoft sets spinners on court verdict

Martin Owens

Nie Chris

>> What's the real possible recourse if MS simply refuses to pay? Nothing,

Well the problem for Microsoft is that it has offices, investments and money tied up in the EU and could very well have all that frozen, raided and have anything of value confiscated; and the quaint possibility of criminal arrests for the bosses should they ever set foot in the EU. There are a whole host of things that could be done and I gather Microsoft dare not loose the EU market at all because even a theoretical ban would damage an already pro open source market position.

Besides have you never heard that necessity is the mother of invention? I have a funny feeling that if Microsoft windows were removed from every computer tomorrow by some magic; next week we'd have business apps running on ubuntu.

Microsoft: no plan to appeal EC verdict for now

Martin Owens

Negative

>> Microsoft has a near monopoly position, but don't they have the right to be treated like anybody else?

the sort answer is: No, and the reason is because a company that owns more than 25% of any market is dangerous to the industry and it's self. With Microsoft it's not just dangerous it's a disaster area where the industry has been kidnapped for so long elements of it even suffer Stockholm Syndrome where they try and protect Microsoft. It's really sad because what more does a company have to do to go on to a normal human beings immoral list? do we wait until they've got mass graves and death camps or just a few billion £ in lost productivity? but to be honest I get the feeling that "normal" people have a convenient way of ignoring morality when they want to.

PC superstore unhinged by Linux

Martin Owens

I've always said...

Software criminals are the hardest to convert to Linux of any group of people as can be seen my Mr Worrier's fantastic thesis on how much you don't know about linux in 2 column inches.

Public rejoices at new 'green' nukes

Martin Owens

Mersey

>> Time for that nuke ferry across the Mersey

Have you seen the Mersey? Go take a wander through the chemical disaster area that is called Widnes and tell me if anyone would notice a bit of nuclear waste.

High protein diet good for boxen gurus and open sourcerers

Martin Owens

Any chance

You could make your podcasts available to the people using Open Source? It doesn't look like I can access the itms protocol with anything sane via ubuntu.

Get a passport, enjoy casual sex with foreigners

Martin Owens

Contrary Position

It's odd but no matter how many young people I meet, even when I was one back in the 90's I never felt the need to belittle them and have the bad misconception that these adults in training are some how too stupid to tie their own shoe laces and too sex crazy to be able to read normal English spellings correctly.

The youth might be experimenting with insanity but it's adults in marketing and government that really pushed the boundaries of what is possible with recreational drug use.

Greens walk out of nuclear debate

Martin Owens

Missing pun

Brown makes Greens see Red.

Mac, Linux BBC iPlayers in the offing, says PM

Martin Owens

Hold your Horses?

Dear Tim J, Do I take your post as an insult to Linux users or just that your not quite getting the whole idea of _open_ _standards_ which are supposed to make such market pressure irrelevant. besides 3% linux and about 4-5% mac users these days, we're going to out number windows users eventually so people better start getting used to the idea of using technical standards.

The point is the BBC should not have bothered with internet based TV unless it could put up the tech, it can't because it sold off BBC's technical teams. So the BBC should not be moving on such a plan until some other kind person gives them a standard to work with.

Or better yet they could have asked the FOSS word, with a nudge nudge wink wink that if the community fails to come up with a solution then they would go Microsoft.

Novell fills Microsoft Silverlight hole

Martin Owens

The Problem

See now even if Microsoft come out with useful technology that really moves the industry forwards in some way... there are a whole load of people who are never going to be able to trust them enough to use it, myself included.

As for videos, considering that the Moonlight project has got videos working with ffmpeg (LGPL) and in doing so has enabled Silverlight to play a whole host of different video types; but is prevented from releasing the code that integrates with ffmpeg because of the agreement with Microsoft. Apparently Moonlight can not push changes upstream to Silverlight and Microsoft only want windows media formats and mp3 supported in Silverlight.

Once you've dug deeper in a Microsoft story you can always smell the bovine droppings somewhere and I believe I will be pushing MOTU against using Mono based projects in default Ubuntu installs as it just seems too risky these days to be involved in Microsoft technology without some kind of anti-lawyer suite.

Plants will make greenhouse effect flooding worse

Martin Owens

Comic

Why do I have this picture in my head of a group of plants deciding to help to poor misguided humans? they've obviously done this whole greenhouse/snowball earth thing before so they should know what to do.

Italian boffin designs gecko-tech spiderman suit

Martin Owens

Marvellous Excuse

Does anyone here the loud yelling of a nerd somewhere screaming at the screen that he told us spiderman physics was possible.

I guess it also makes the whole 'sticking to walls' with tiny hairs in your hand more of a possibility although I'd like to see it to be honest.

Citrix breaks the bank to get XenSource

Martin Owens

XenSource

After listening to one of the ZenSource folks give a talk and answering a few of my questions. I fully expect all the proprietory bits and bobs to be re-coded by open source people in the next few years.

I find the windows/microsoft link to be strange and weird considering that Microsoft watches it's partners dance for breakfast and then eats them or kills them for lunch. Oh well lets hope Critix will drive Xen into the ground quickly enough for an effective fork.

BT rubbishes BBC bandwidth throttling reports

Martin Owens

KService? Kontiki?

Why do I get this gut wrenching feeling that the KDE programmers where involved somewhere here ;-)

The iplayer is still not working on my linux computer or my wife's mac; thus it's a pointless investment of the BBCs time and money.

Council employs automatic PC shutdown

Martin Owens

Not hard

I wonder how much investment this software was, I mean ok so it's going to be a little more complex that crod.d shutdown -h 18:00/now but still I can't shake the feeling that this would have been a million times cheaper and easier to do if the network was *nix based.

BBC to advertise to foreigners

Martin Owens

Interesting

How do they cut this with their current BBC world wide segments? I mean the BBC as a UK content producer and public service is great and it'll be nice having our beloved culture splashed all over device screen worldwide (i.e what the FA payments and BBC worldwide are for) but how are the BBC going to square this with BBC america or any of the other distribution channels such as the US-Sci-fi channel who currently buy into BBC content?

By the way, those anti-tax people complaining about the license fee should just experience TV when it's all commercial. it's crap and politically in this world of big business I appreciate the BBC with a tiny amount of accountability (which is being slowly etched away by business thinkers within the BBC) than yet another business that never does anything the share holders don't like.

Desktop Linux: That dog will mount

Martin Owens

Ashlee, Ashlee, Ashlee

Did you decide to take your revenge brain out of the wrong jar this morning? still got that hang up about people calling you a woman? damn it man this is a tech + wit + interesting_stuff scene not techless + rant + not_very_interesting.

I've seen you get flamed before for writing absolute drivel, perhaps your just the lamb to the Microsoft/Register shill slaughter, I don't care. This isn't the first time you've been called out writing ridiculous content that has more sting than wit.

Linux database becomes a browser

Martin Owens

Not FreeSoftware not good enough

While legal, taking source code from current open source projects and locking it up won't win any hearts or minds in the open or free software worlds. KS may be able to sell this but I'd bet anything that if it's really useful there'll be a gpl version by next year.

Beeb exterminates Tomorrow's World rumours

Martin Owens

Holywood Lies?

>> Anyway Tomorrow’s World was a factual look at incoming technology, not 2 people taking great pleasure in trying to prove that Hollywood is full of lies.

I thought the BBC produced something like that for the OU Learning Zone, I think it had Robert Llewellyn and was as explosive as you could get on a £10 budget filming round your mates house on a boring saturday afternoon. still good fun though, like a podcast for telly.

As for the BBc news *Yawn* I've completely lost respect for aunty beeb; she can stick that charter were the sun doesn't shine until they can stop thinking like a business and start thinking like a public service again.

Free Software Foundation plans protests at 'corrupt' BBC

Martin Owens

Possible

Now the FSF are in on the act too; it's about time too. The BBC has been getting away with exactly the same levels of IT ineptitude as the government;

What the hell are we going to do with all the technophobics in the UK, we seem to have a disproportionate number of tech sell outs too; short term thinkers with their brains up their neither regions.

We're going to be the worst place for advancing computer sciences... no wait we're already that, now we're just fighting to stop ourselves looking like complete idiots on the world stage. It's getting quite tiresome really.

OSI approves 'badgeware' license

Martin Owens

License Cost

I'm not sure I agree with the OSI's move here, they've created a rather neat hole for the old BSD style license to get OSI approval; even when such licenses are a known mistake because the cost too much in the end.

I'd rather see these CRM sites use aGPL http://www.gnu.org/press/2002-03-19-Affero.html all other open source web services and technical infrastructure should be too. because otherwise they are right, the site runners have no obligation to release patches or other improvements to the code.

Your boss could own your Facebook profile

Martin Owens

Anyone read your employment contract recently?

As an open source programmer I can't sign the kind of contract that is mentioned in the last comment; I've seen those contracts that pretty much attempt to own anything that you create in and out of the work place; I just refuse it, not much I can do as there's no way I'm about to give up foss work for some money related work.

The ones that are created in work, it'd be nice if they specified in software contracts what the rules are when a person brings in code from home, would an employer still respect the GPL even if you were the only coder?

BBC Trust to hear open sourcers' iPlayer gripes

Martin Owens

BBC iPlayer

I did ask the BBC in my complaint not to continue with it's online service unless it could use open standards and provide a clear way for people who have a licence to view the content fairly. They won't do either, my main problems are the following:

* The BBC are supporting a monopoly which is leveraging media codecs to control the operating system market

* DRM systems rest on the premise that it is legal to encode the restrictions of a contract into software, even when that software and those restrictions go beyond what the law allows; effectively removing due legal process.

* If any encryption method can be broken simply by knowing how it works, then it is not good enough. Those who believe in security by obscurity are not worth listening to.

* Quite a few linux people will not use windows out of a principled obligation to not support a single company who damages the IT market landscape.

* The BBC will only support Apple even though Linux and Mac OSX share similar market share in the UK (around 3% each)

I wonder if we bribed people in the BBC we'd get better actions; does anyone in the FOSS world have a few million squid to buy the Director General a nice lunch?

Postmaster kills off 'free for life' webmail

Martin Owens

Poor Bibliotech

for those wondering about the email spam problem, we used to do daily spam management, then after the board coup those looking after such things were let go. I wouldn't have minded but I came in during my vacation time to give out Christmas gifts and got "leg go"; thanks for the memories.

It is a shame because the technologies are really valuable... or were when perl was a leader in cgi. and their exim management tools where rather nifty.

Linux media centre integrates YouTube

Martin Owens

MythTV

The people at MythTV have been working on that kind of plugin for a while. I wanted one that would scrape off BBC radio content so I don't keep on missing it but it appears all the open source PVR's world are USA only projects.

For one, there are no real integration attempts to get schedules for other countries. instead you have to mess about to get UK guides and even then it's less than complete.

It's a big problem when your project, open source or not; can't even be used in most countries without hacking.

Woman arrested for WoW love affair

Martin Owens

Very unreal

Nice jibe about the soulbound items :-P

What concerns me most is that It's not like this sort of thing doesn't go on all the time. my internet romance started when I was 17 (fortunately for her in the UK) it's just silly.

Doctor Who recruits new sidekick

Martin Owens

Drums

Did anyone have a drum beat stuck in their head from qbase on Saturday?

Harry Potter worm claims death of teen wizard

Martin Owens

Auto-Run

You mean there are still computers out there that automatically execute code from external media? Why did Microsoft not pay any attention to all those floppy drive viri that infected old apple macintoshes for exactly the same reason.

One reason I like usb drives formatted to fat32; there isn't a chance in hell anything on there will have executable permissions (644) but still how many different things need to be done when external media is plugged in that warrants trusting the files on the device?

Microsoft finds good facts to sell Windows Vista

Martin Owens

No mogadonic snails here

>> KDE >=2 runs like a fuc***g dog on the 3GHz box, so you can all STFU about

>> how Windows is bloat and *nix isn't. Oh yeah, and the 2.6 Kernel ? Only

>> dropped support for my legacy hardware didn't it ?

I'm not sure what version of KDE you tried but I'm running 3 (Kubuntu 7.04) on a 1.7Ghz/512MB box and I see no slow down. have a look at KDE 4, aparently they sped a few things up and you always have the choice of using other DEs.

As for your kernel problem, well it's VERY rare for hardware to be dropped completely from the kernel; this is a kernel with drivers for the bt878 still there working. did you ask the devs for the driver to fix any problems? normally you have to pay or work at moving linux forwards.

DVD ripping to be rendered impossible?

Martin Owens

Won't Effect

No change for anyone using libdvdcss then.

Open sourcers rattle EU sabre at BBC on demand player

Martin Owens

No Go

I reckon they just shouldn't bother with this service until the technology is ready. and as for Mr Campbell as I can say is, damn your eyes sir. without hope of a change, there will never be one. and god knows the IT industry needs it.

Martin Owens

How DRM works

Mr Smith, here is a brand new BBC video file... and here A8B57A is the key that will unlock it. now don't go unlocking it when we don't want you to ok.

Duh!

It's the most pathetic way to prevent legitimate users from accessing content that has ever been contrived. business people need to get their heads out of their arses and into the server room for once.

And as for open source, if it's open source then it'll be an open standard more than likely. we're not arguing for a specific platform. we're worried because the BBC is calling for a specific platform from a convicted monopolist who will attempt to use this as yet another reason why using a computer without windows is impossible. We must never allow the USA government failure to curb Microsoft to kill of the IT industry in our own country.

For all those who think that Microsoft Windows is just another choice... it isn't. it's the ignorant or immoral choice. choose which you are because it certainly isn't good.

Day-of-silence protest hits Net radio

Martin Owens

Hundred Percent

Re: re: Thats why

I have no quarrel with content creators (as individuals) I have a big problem with businesses and their 1900's business plans turning the world into criminals because the technology moved on and it scares them that there is only enough money now to pay the artists a large amount and a tidy sum to all the other people involved. Instead of the current system of give millions of pounds to people who have no creative talents merely because they own the 'land' in a business. bah I say, I refuse to listen to music that isn't in the public domain or where I know the artist personally, which is rather limited but so be it until people and business start playing fair and reasonable in the modern age.

Digital data can bite you in the ass, researcher warns

Martin Owens

Information

Too much information is a constant problem. happy hunting.

US gov in Bill Gates inspired robot probe

Martin Owens

Convergence v2

Isn't it more likely that as robots and AI become more powerful they will exhibit the same "failings" as human beings. after all it's the nature of the human mind to be flexible, re-programmable on the fly and a very good analytical engine seeing patterns in everything that if we want machines to do the same we'll end up with machines that get tired (see neural net back-wash), get things wrong, assume information from patterns that aren't real and pick up cultural mis-information.

In fact going back to Futurama: Bender: "I need a calculator.", Fry: "But you are a calculator", Bender: "I mean a Good calculator."

Microsoft strips Office from charity PC scheme

Martin Owens

OpenOffice

Much keyboard ware and tear, can the editors see their way to mentioning this on the article?

Outlook/Exchange - Thunderbird/Evolution, OpenExchange, the list is endless of replacements.

UK firm pays biggest ever fine over 'pirate' software

Martin Owens

OpenSource

I thought the BSA would count FOSS as unlicensed software; or at least they did last time they made a count of how many windows machines where unlicensed.

Woman cleans keyboard... in dishwasher

Martin Owens

Dishwasherless

What do you do if you don't have a lar-de-dah fancy pants dish washer? I had to take off every key from my old 8088 IBM and wash it.

By the way the Enter key being on two lines is a feature of all UK keyboards. I can't stand those unfamiliar us keyboards with the / is the wrong place.

Harry Potter transcript claim doesn't convince

Martin Owens

Waiting

I've never read the books... too popular; I've been watching the films though as they appear on friends netflix subscriptions. not quite the same I know but they hardly ever mention linux in the entire 3 plot lines I've seen.

Rivals torture consumers via Microsoft

Martin Owens

Hardly

>> MS 'innovated' this, Apple got it to market first, Google jumping on the bandwagon.

I dunno, the locate and updatedb commands have been all the rage on gnu systems for years and years and I wouldn't bet against one of the other unixes.

As for gui indexed search tool, it's probable that several third parties have invented it first

Ubuntu chief mua muas Microsoft

Martin Owens

Afford?

No free software project could ever afford to license any "IP"; you may be getting confused between the ubuntu foundation and the conical business.

Besides as mark knows if ever these patents where known the FOSS world would code around them so fast keyboards would melt. IBM with the help of Groklaw would litigate on prior art and nail them all.

If Microsoft really wants to take on the world that's it's choice. but don't expect to win.

Toshiba laptop goes up in smoke

Martin Owens

Check Software?

There was talk on the HAL mailing list of having a recalled flag on batteries that would match certain metrics. Is there no similar solution for windows (dare I say it Mac) machines?

US prof plans to send message back in time

Martin Owens

No problem

Time travel isn't a problem; Time jumping about the place from thin air like in that space ship is the problem.

For instance, star trek film where they go back in time? attempting to break the speed of light round the sun? duh! when you travel faster than the speed of light it's your own personal time that goes backwards not the rest of the universe, the universe continues to go forwards (time inertia), so the question of how you can continue to move forwards in time/space faster than light and go backwards in time is what makes the calculations spit out E on your calculator; not really anything to do with causality.

London out paces NY as global Wi-Fi hub

Martin Owens

Arg!

That sub-title is the worse prune on words ever.

Linspire invites dirty uncle Microsoft over for patent party

Martin Owens

Bye

Never really liked Lindows/Lin****/Linspire; Can't wait for the FSF to sue the pants off Xandros and Linspire; keeps plenty of activity at groklaw anyway.

Macs are more secure: official

Martin Owens

Hardware differences??

"mixture between LINUX and UNIX" Impossible! GPL violations right there. I assume you mean Gnu or something else entirely but the Linux kernel has never been mixed with Unix code because that would enact the death clause and the result would be still born.

"As for Windows security: If you have 99% of the world's hackers focusing on you, problems will be found. So what?"

Most of the real crackers are focusing on Linux and Mac OS X; criminals are going after windows because of the money. crackers want prestige and what's better than showing off that you've made the worlds first virulent linux or mac virus?

"If Microsoft could release their own PC with all their own hardware and their own drivers it would be a completely different matter."

Not really, windows exploitations have always been in the apps, networking and various other none hardware driver code; some are driver related but not nearly enough for your comment to make sense.

"The simple fact that Windows will run quite reliably on virtually any Intel compatable hardware, with third party drivers is miraculous to say the least."

Not really, I mean ok so it's windows but linux runs on even more hardware, it runs of x86, PPCs, Riscs, Z86s for crying out loud. windows has a rather limiting hardware scope in comparison, just look at the Firewire stack in windows, ew.

Downing St ambivalent on open standards

Martin Owens

Status?

Take a look at the Copyright Status field for the submissions page. shows a complete lack of understanding of copyrights and software:

Copyright Owner - i.e. Owner licensed

Shareware - i.e. Owner licensed

Freeware - i.e. Owner liciensed

The fact that freeware and shareware are just form of propritory copyright owner controlled software is a joke and shows pronom to be a joke too. this list should read:

Proprietary License

Internal not Licensed

Free and Open Source License

Public Domain

I'm sure there are more.

Project over-runs make US IT workers scared for their jobs

Martin Owens

To Qualify

In order to become a manager you not only should be able to show true leadership skills (something no one bothers to teach any more) but you should spend 2 years under some of the worse idiots in simulated IT project VR games; then 5 years as an apprentice manager for someone who passed with flying colours.

I know some good leaders and I know some brilliantly technical people. I know only one person with any amount of both enough to drive a project to date and he's Egyptian.

Chip start-up could ignite Blade PCs

Martin Owens

Media Devices?

What do we do if we need to put a CD rom in the computer or perhaps a floppy disk or other media? do we all need usb cd rom drives or will we share these and send our CD rom down to the admin team to put in the one single cd rom drive for the entire business?

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