Posts by Alan Brown

Why Oracle will win its Java copyright case – and why you'll be glad when it does

Re: This article conflates two important issues

> "1. Is and API itself copyrightable"

> That has already been decided by the courts, and the answer is a confirmed, settled and now

> indisputable "Yes". Not even Google are endeavouring to get that court judgement changed.

Actually, that's wrong. It hasn't gone up to the Supreme court.

In addition, that decision is USA-only.

Any attempt to bring a case based on use of an API in the EU would be thrown out.

As others have noted, Oracle have attempted to conflate the issues.

1: Use of the java API for API-compatible code (Let's call it DALVIK) that operates differently internally

2: Use of Java internal code.

The Oracle Schills have been out in force since the last judgement and this should have been properly attributed as an opinion piece along with the affiliations of the author, as was done in other publications.

Who's to blame for the NHS drug prices ripoff?

Re: NHS are at it too

"However as soon as he needs more than 1 prescription each month it's cheaper to just get a PPC!"

I have 6 each month, so the PPC is the way to fly - but it's worth noting that the _actual_ NHS price of the items is still substantially lower than the cost of the PPC (it works out about 10p/day)

Re: "Cheap" generics are not always the answer!

"Often the generic blister packs the foil breaks away from more than 2 tables at once, or the tablets break in half (+dust) when trying to push them through"

FWIW, cracking the foil with a fingernail first before pushing the pill through stops that happening.

I agree on the variabliity of generics though, Even between them there are major differences between effectiveness or side effects.

For a drug with only 750 prescriptions/year, paying 130 pounds a shot may be cheaper overall than going through the entire tendering process to get a 12 pound rate, but it does encourage general gouging on low-rate items and there's no reason that sourcing has to be within the UK (single EU market, etc)

Re: I've read the original article

"the drug makers have agreed among themselves who will be the sole maker"

The very essence of cartel behaviour....

Flytenow's other wing clipped: second appeal fails

Re: Good. Serve's 'em right.

"as demonstrated by the poor GA accident rate."

Putting that in context: GA injury and death rates are on par with motorcycling.

Contrast and compare with civil transport aviation.

TalkTalk scam-scammers still scam-scamming

"I hate it when it gets difficult to tell the fake scammers from the real scammers..."

Especially as automatic contract lockin rollover has been illegal since before 2013 and the maximum contract duration for a new signup is 2 years.

If this was a claim genuinely made by TalkTalk then Ofcom needs to get involved.

"the replacement for the DPA (the EU General Data Privacy Regulation) allows for 4% of global turnover or 20 million Euros, whichever is higher."

Except the companies will argue that this is damaging or they don't have the money, so the ICO won't enforce it.

On a similar vein, emulating the TCPA's statutory per-call damages plus right of consumer action and joint liability for caller/hirer would put a large dent in the illegal sales calls made in the UK.

The ICO and Ofcom are _both_ notably silent when this is raised, or try to claim that it would result in the courts being overwhelmed in a tsunami of claims. (really? If it's that bad then why are there so few actions and so few entities being fined?)

"It prompted us to take up TTs offer of free CLI."

What makes you think they can't manipulate that?

CLI is trivial to spoof if the origin is VOIP or ISDN

Lights! Camera! Infraction! Filmmakers behind 117 million robocalls to shift DVDs

Note who's doing the enforcing.

FTC _and_ FCC

meantime in blighty, Ofcom gets to play chocolate teapot whilst trading standards fiddle.

Telstra wins copper repair contract on the copper it sold to nbn

Re: Commercial in confidence gets the best deal for Australia

"having destroyed a lot of it by putting that silicone gel in the connection boxes. "

Que?

It was known 40 years ago that using silicon grease as a water barrier in copper connections was a spectacularly bad idea (the copper and silicon ions crossmigrate). On the other hand, petrolatum works a treat (vaseline)

How old are these grease-filled joints?

'Windows 10 nagware: You can't click X. Make a date OR ELSE'

Re: Fit for purpose

"If they have to correspond with people who use Microsoft Office, particularly heavily-scripted files, then it never has, does, or will fit perfectly,"

Libre imports and exports office formats adequately for the purpose. Scripting isn't an issue.

As stated in another thread: "80% of Office users only need 20% of the features." Which, incidentally is how MS took over the WP market in the first place (fewer features than what existed but 'good enough' and cheap.)

MS being a moving target was actually a factor in switching to Lubuntu/libreoffice - too much stuff was coming in in newer msz formats the existing software couldn't open, etc.

Compatibility issue solved. Licensing issues solved. Network printing/scanning issues also solved. Recurrent virus/malare problems solved. Productivity up by a factor of 5 or so. Old hardware life extended (important where the average pay is $4/day). Documents now all regularly backed up, etc. Yes, all doable with windows but the existing systems were crawling anyway and the desktops are now fairly snappy.

Re: Fit for purpose

"Wonder what'll happen when (not if) THAT copy gets upgraded to Windows 10 as well? "

My experience with pirated win7 installs (in outer bumfuckistan) being upgraded to win10

1: 2 weeks to download the update. Yes, bandwidth really is that bad there.

2: a day to install the update. Yes, the machines really wore that underpowered.

3: after firing up, relatively ok BUT the installation realised the original serial numbers were fake, so nags every 10 minutes about pirate software and "pay $30 to get a legal version"

These boxes were Dells - originally sold with Ubuntu onboard and "upgraded" to Win7 before being placed on desktops.

The ironic thing is that Lubuntu + Libreoffice suited the outfit's needs perfectly, "but it isn't windows"

Re: Not Vista

"The system was screwed previously by malware and the hardware barely supported the original system. "

On the bright side: Just as 7 runs better on such systems than Vista did, 10 also runs better.

Lubuntu runs even better still. :)

Re: Not Vista

"Vista is not eligible for the free Windows 10 upgrade"

Look to see that "free upgrade" extended to everything.

Re: What date is good for you?

" but I haven't bothered to even turn them on since all this malarky kicked off. I'll turn them on when the danger's passed."

Given the way MS is forcing this, it will probably decide to upgrade NOW, no arguments or alternatively they will keep postponing the drop dead date out until they've achieved the update goal.

Probably both.

Swiss effectively disappear Alps: World's largest tunnel opens

Re: Never happen here.

"It also took rather less than 17 years to build"

Chalk is somewhat softer than granite and basalt (amongst other things)

The irony is that this tunnel is one of the biggest NIMBY projects ever - being driven by the Swiss dislike of an endless processing of heavy transport through their picturesque mountain towns.

Re: What's a couple of hundred meters between friends?

"TL;DR version - there won't be enough heat to make it worth while."

Which is the same reason why geothermal plants aren't worth building(*), except in a few very limited cases where you're on top of a magmatic hotspot such as Iceland.

(*) The heat they produce is low grade, resulting in thermally inefficient production and the heat output declines substantially over time no matter how many new boreholes are sunk. On top of that you often have "interesting" side effects - the Icelandic hot lake being one, but "The Craters of the Moon" at Wairaki being a more common counterpoint that's not particularly beneficial unless you happen to be a tourist (plus you need to get rid of the bore water, which is invaribly highly polluted with dissolved "stuff", either by reinjecting it into another bore (high energy requirements) or dumping it in a river with associated fishkill, etc.)

Re: Swiss efficiency

"It is under a mountain i.e. nobody's back yard."

Several mountains and several hundred backyards.

Also several major fault lines. It's an impressive piece of work, especially considering that in these kinds of tunnelling projects it's never _quite_ certain what you'll encounter no matter how much seismic imaging you throw at the problem.

Amongst other things, the Swiss factored in time for delays for such things (which weren't needed), unlike british projects which are run on hopelessly optimistic timelines (Crossrail was relatively straightforward as the geology is very well known and it was archeology which was the big delay factor) and never designed to cater to slight usage expansions, resulting in having to "do it over" when the project proves insufficient for the task.

Re: Swiss efficiency

"On average it has only had to be closed a few nights every month for the five years since it opened, because they cut so many corners on the quality of the equipment used during construction..."

And because the road it bypassed was closed as soon as the tunnel opened and was subequently ripped up with a lot of haste, traffic has to take a 20-30 mile detour to get around the blockage.

"Quality" Brutish Workmanship.

Server makers love Intel Xeons (true) - but not the price tag

Re: Make Servers, Not War!

"but in the end it's still x86 with all the baggage and compatibilities to the old-world it drags or brings."

What matters is what it does and how much power it consumes whilst doing so, not what baggage it brings.

This is why Intel have beaten AMD in the datacenter for some time (The only reason I have AMD compute servers is because at the time it was the only way to get more cores in the box)

If ARM beats Intel on this then it will rapidly take over for non compute-centric applications. The problem is that as ARM has gotten faster its power consumption and purchase price has approached the low end Xeons for the same performance as those low-end Xeons.

Where ARM might win is if a few hundred cores could be put into the box, but that's not happening either (yet).

Re: It's a case of ....

"But when pretty much no-body makes off-the-self servers using AMD chips then what choice do you have?"

And that has a lot to do with AMD's chips being cheaper but having significantly higher power consumption compared to the Intel equivalent. TOC ends up being higher and that's a bigger deal in a server farm than CapEx.

Life after Safe Harbour: Avoiding Uncle Sam's data rules gotchas

Re: Summary

"The USA wants strong controls over what they export and no controls over what we export"

It gets stranger and stranger though.

Stuff which has been taken into the USA may be prohibited from being carried back out, or in the case of data files, read by the very people who created them - on top of which, if a copy of your data makes it into the USA, even though you've never been there and your copy of the data still being yours on your desktop, can still result in you being charged with a US federal crime for giving a copy to your chinese colleague who likewise has never been anywhere near the USA and the entire data path not having been near the USA.

It's very much a case of "what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine too and I'll happily come and take it off you if I want it, no matter where you are" - in a lot of cases that means you should be doubly careful to ensure that your data doesn't _cross_ USA territories, let alone ever reside in them.

Leak: Euro Patent Office 'court of appeals' rails against King Battistelli

Re: The people who appointed him

"So, get your mates to set you up in Office, then turn it into a fiefdom."

A fiefdom which (unlike FIFA, EUFA, IOC) gets him diplomatic immunity.

That's the fundamental problem here, else he'd have been arrested and charged with breaching labour laws some time back.

Jaxa's litany of errors spun Hitomi to pieces

"Other sensors existed to check whether it was giving correct data or not (and would have shown it was giving false data), but were ignored"

Japan has had a _lot_ of missions fail and still doesn't seem to be accepting the idea that juniors can/SHOULD query seniors' work.

In every single case all the paperwork is correct, every documented step has been doublechecked and signed off on, etc. The critical mistakes are baked-in from the outset with no thought given to questioning the spec. Experience shows that when things go wrong in japanese technology there's a LOT of coverup going on afterwards which frequently compounds the "what went wrong" from fixable to disaster scale - one example being Fukushima, which could have been a whole lot worse if the senior engineer onsite hadn't finally broken his conditioning, told Tepco management to go fuck themselves and started doing the stuff which needed to be done to save the plant (If manglement hadn't blocked him from the outset, there may not have been meltdowns or hydrogen explosions). Monju is another example of a japanese clusterfuck, then there's the Mitsubishi wheel bearing scandal on a more mundane level.

There's an egrarious cultural failure that needs addressing, starting with the institutionalised bullying within the japanese education system where the "odd kid out" gets the crap beaten out of him from a very early age (5-6 years old) whilst the teacher looks on and does nothing - it's taught from a very early age that you will conform OR ELSE, you will not ask questions OR ELSE and you will accept what you are told by your seniors OR ELSE.

The militaristic cultural model needs fixing. Until Japan faces that reality they'll keep breaking spacecraft and failing to learn from it.

Michael Dell bought his PC biz for a bargain, must get checkbook out for stiffed shareholders

Re: I don't understand

It's those shareholders who were forcibly bought out who are being compensated.

As noted in the story, the ones who voted for the deal get nothing.

That sinking feeling: Itanic spat's back as HPE Oracle trial resumes

Re: The disconnect

"It is so extreme that is difficult to have meaningful communications with them"

Especially when what they sold doesn't actually work (personal experience). This was the final straw which ensured that my employer never purchased HP systems again.

Intellectual property laws in China, India are flawed, claims US govt without irony

fundamental problems

1: Copyrights and patents have been extended to stupidly long periods that are badly damaging to the hosting society.

2: There are cartels controlling distribution of media around the world.

The patent system was originally a way of distributing royal favours and ended up being abolished by the king because of widespread egrarious abuse, then recreated in a much more equitable form.

It looks like abolition and recreation is long-overdue.

the second part also needs nuking from orbit. Australia correctly declared DVD regioncoding as an illegal restraint on trade more than 20 years ago and subsequently backed down on it. TTP and TTIP will actually make things worse, not better.

Re: Wall of text alert

"It used to be that possession of an official recording gave you the right to listen to the music it contained. Giving, selling or inheriting the physical object transferred that right."

Do you realise that publishers (books and records) tried to have that made illegal in the past?

Their failure to suceed in those attempts is where the "first sale doctrine" comes from.

This is something they've been attempting (and largely suceeding) to destroy ever since (hence software being licensed, etc)

Brexit? Cutting the old-school ties would do more for Brit tech world

Re: You don't need money to get into Oxford or Cambridge

" It's remarkable how often college benefactor's children get admitted with inferior grades."

And for them the important thing is not graduating but the social networking they're able to achieve, that's unattainable at a lesser university.

It's like the difference between the contacts made at Eton vs the ones made at Harrow (both are top echelon schools, but the Eton old boys network has far more political clout)

Re: The facepalm is strong in this one

"The EU is a fluffy cuddly thing... that has driven Southern Europe into the ground."

Southern Europe has done a very good job of that all by itself.

As for what happened in the recession in Greece, it's a replay of what the West did to the Asian Tiger economies when they faltered: IMF lends the country in trouble money which is used to pay off the bankers immediately and then the IMF loan must be repaid - in other words the IMF is more-or-less directly propping up bad bank loans instead of forcing the original lenders to take a haircut.

Re: Missing the point

"I remember carnivals where the whole estate would get together to watch, and there wasn't as big as a worry of crime"

Perception is not reality.

Statistically we are safer than we've ever been at any point in history, even with recent minor rises in crime figures.

That makes any form of crime newsworthy which in turn means that people think crime levels are higher. They're not, they're just better reported.

I lived in the countryside as a kid in some very isolated areas. The reason we didn't bother locking doors was that anyone wanting to break in would do so anyway and as well as a turned-over house you'd also have a smashed doorframe or windows. If the place wasn't locked they usually didn't bother making a mess and just went for cash or easily sellable items.

Re: I don't much care...

"The reason for this is the ridiculous post-war imposition of the Green Belt."

The really ironic part is that the loudest voices screaming "save our greenbelts! no new housing in our village!" come from those living in houses built in the last building spurt of 1920-1926 or so - those same houses whose rapid-fire erection led to kneejerk passing of the greenbelt rules after 40-odd years of dithering.

When you dig into the reasons given for objecting, once you get past the usual "changing the character of the area" claims, you get to the REAL reason for objection which is "adversely affects property values"

What do you expect when you live in a bubble market that has prices dictated by an artificial scarcity of supply?

Greenbelt areas have become a refuge for the middle classes to hide from the hoi-polloi, with families that have lived in these areas for generations being priced out of the market. You don't need gated communities (and there are several around surrey) when you can isolate yourself from "trouble" with distance and no bus services.

Re: I don't much care...

"And that's not accounting for birth rate or increased longevity."

The single driving force beyond all others that accounts for housing demand is the size of households - down from 5-7 per housing unit in the 1950s to less than half that now.

Even if no immigration had occurred there would be a critical housing shortage now, simply due to this seemingly simple change in population demographics.

The UK government funded councils to build a lot of social housing in the 1960s-70s for 1-2 person households, intending it to be retirement housing for pensioners. It was _all_ taken by young couples, and then the thatcherite selloffs happened (taking an old labour idea but selling at 90% discount AND prohibiting councils from using sales income to build more housing - it was a calculated way of nobbling labour dominated councils by converting housebuyers to conservative voters (blatent vote buying) and simultaneously fomenting discontent by ensuring the councils couldn't house new tenants). Those selloffs ensured that older folk in 3-4 bedroom council flats had nowhere smaller to move into and simultaneously ensured that couples in 1-bedroom flats had no place larger to move into.

The whole EU referendum is a dog-and-pony sideshow, intended to distract from the simultaneous trainwrecks of NHS, welfare and education system disembowellment, the pensions system falling apart (there simply isn't enough money to pay for retiring Boomers) and the housing crisis pigeons released by Thatcher coming home to roost. It's working exactly as planned too.

Re: From the outside looking in

"we didn't have a fascist dictator, as dis just about every other nation in this wonderful EU."

Those who lived under Oliver Cromwell might beg to differ.

Re: From the outside looking in

"The EU was an exercise in running away from the competition of developing nations by trying to hide in a closed market."

The EU started out as a way of attempting to avoid the widescale famine that happened post WW2 - something that only major US intervention stopped turning into a death toll on par with the war itself.

People tend to forget that until the last 70 years parts of Europe were pretty much always at war with other parts of Europe. You can see the same mentality at work in brexiteers as you do with antivaccine freaks. It all seems like a good idea until a 20-30 year trade war erupts into a shooting one, or Polio rears its head again.

Re: Another remainer...

"Much like many of our laws start out as the creations of *unelected* civil servants"

And those creations are foisted on us no matter which party happens to be notionally in power - frequently retried after a party change if rejected the first time.

The power of the Civil Service is one of the greatest dangers that exists to democratic society.

Disk death: Three-quarters of PCs will run SSDs by 2020

"so of course it had an SSD. After replacing the damn thing three times in the first year "

What model was it? OCZ have been spectacularly unreliable as a f'instance.

"Of course I realise Enterprise SSD's are better than this, but have you seen the prices?"

Samsung SM863s are about 30% more than the 850Evo versions (or about 15% more than the 850Pro)

And as has already been pointed out, if losing a single drive knocks out a server, you're doing it wrong.

only 3/4?

The only thing preventing SSDs taking over _now_ is that supply can't keep up with demand.

Anything smaller than 1TB is pretty much 100% SSD already.

UK.gov's promise to pour cash into SMEs was just hot air

aggregation

> CCS' remit specifically states it will "work closely with the wider public sector to ensure that the benefits of aggregation and centralisation are shared across the public sector to maximise savings for the taxpayer."

Except that in many cases it simply doesn't. Several suppliers have quietly restructured so that whilst on paper they're making the mandated 3% markup, it's actually significantly higher, by way of pushing the sale via a number of subsidiaries with their own markups. (The 3% is on the final step) and in some cases the figures being charged are HIGHER than non-civil service clients pay.

It's just the same kind of scam as tax avoidance - perfectly legal but still highly unethical.

Samsung: Don't install Windows 10. REALLY

Re: Five minutes with a small screwdriver and...

"That or just install the Windows Vista/7/8/8.1 driver for that Broadcomm card."

Using old drivers in compatibility mode causes major slowdowns.

Helium... No. Do you think this is some kind of game? Toshiba intros 8TB desktop drive

Re: Longevity

"Blackblaze Q1 2016 data shows HGSTs Helium drives have a lower than average failure rate"

Every time I've looked at BackBlaze's stats, HGST drives have a lower than average failure rate (helium filled or not) and my own datacentre experience backs that up. The only HGST drive I've ever seen fail inside its warrantied lifespan came in packaging that showed clear signs of extremely rough handling.

WD, not so much and Seagate's "enterprise" drives have generally been more unreliable than their consumer counterparts (with the exception of the consumer barracuda DM series - of which every single drive failed _at least_ once during its warranty period. None have ever lasted more than 7000 hours and some less than half that)

The chinese ministry of commerce and competition finally OKed HGST being folded into WD - hence WD now selling helium drives, but they also OKed Toshiba being folded into Seagate, so these X300 might be Toshiba or they might be Toshiba-branded Seagate. Do you feel lucky, punk?

(This ties into today's other story about spinny disk sales collapsing. They'll collapse faster now the mergers are underway)

Re: Longevity

"Previous drives have had plenty of sealing failures."

Standard drives are not sealed. Being sealed would be a Very Bad Thing as amongst other things they wouldn't be able to be airfreighted or used in passenger aircraft at altitude. On the other hand the breathers on standard drives have pretty good filters to keep "stuff" out and there are also filters inside the case to catch and trap anything thrown off the platters.

Helium-filled drives have to be rigid enough to handle the extra case stresses causes by external variations in atmospheric pressure (weather and altitude). They also need to have good enough seals to handle this variation, which means that they're pretty good at keeping helium IN and everything else OUT. That said I'm not sure I'd want to fire one up whilst flying at 30,000 feet.

FWIW you could probably fill 20-30 HDDs with the helium in one party balloon.

Re: Longevity

"How long do these last?"

Longer than the warranty.

"The helium will escape"

Eventually, but this isn't a slightly pressurised party balloon with only a thin porous membrane keeping the helium inside.

And in the case of the X300 there's no helium.

The Windows Phone story: From hope to dusty abandonware

Re: "OEMs regularly complained..."

"Just, it was one of the reason to get a Windows Phone - no third party crap you couldn't remove."

It's removable if you root. The apps are freezeable if you don't. They're not gone but they don't startup either.

Re: I wonder when Microsoft is finally going to pull the plug.

"with the success of Surface Phone to be decided,"

Consumers will be even less tolerant of crashy surface phones than they're proving to be of crashy $3000 surface pros.

I don't think Surface will survive long enough for phones to appear.

Norks' parade rocket fails to fly, again

Parade rockets

A lot of the ones parading through Red Square back in the day were painted cardboard.

The Norks (being a soviet creation) are likely to do the same thing. They might even believe their painted cardboard versions can actually fly.

Systemd kills Deb processes

Re: Creating problems that didn't need solving

"I don't give a flying f*** if Linux takes 10 or 30 seconds to boot after that"

Some of our more complex systems take in excess of 20 minutes to fully restart, thanks to singlethreaded startups and clustering races needing to be avoided across FC mesh. One system was noted for taking 24 hours to start, thanks to singlethreaded FSCKs of a few hundred TB (and SysV netfs scripts which needed heavy beating to multithread the checks across FC mesh - yes, FC is regarded as a network and yes they force all network checks to be single threaded)

The Systemd approach has the right idea by parallelising as much as possible, but it's a Frankenstein Monster in a lot of areas and you have to understand the dependency chains if you're going to tweak with it.

Incidentally, it's NOT a huge monolithic process and can be understood _if_ you take the time to do so.

FWIW I spent more than a decade resisting SysV over BSD rc startups on Linux then spent months kicking myself after taking the time to understand the differences. systemd has a lot of positives for large systems, the biggest negative being Lennart himself.

The blind hate is unjustified. You might not want to use it on your single-user box and that's fine but in a large, complex, multiuser environment it's a different story. That said, it's far closer to an ideal startup sequencer than BSD or SysV were and _that_ is why it's not going to go away until something better comes along.

As others have pointed out: Unless you nohup your processes, most *nixes will shut them down when you logout. This is posix behaviour being enforced - and as it's controllable in security configuration it's not a bug, simply a change in defaults to "what should have been" all along.

Re: Broken expectations

"I frequently push processes into the background as an unprivileged user and immediately log out expecting that process to stay the fuck alive until I choose to terminate it."

And _I_ frequently have to deal with runaway processes eating 100% cpu because some fucktard has backgrounded it and logged out, instead of leaving the process attached to a "screen" session.

A lot of sysadmins on shared systems will be applauding this option. It saves us having to find and kill misbehaved software processes (Mostly IDL and emacs) left behind by people despite being told not to do it.

If everything was well-behaved then it wouldn't be a big deal, but badly written software (especially "scientific" stuff written by commercial entities) is just as prevalent on *nix is just as on windows - and the "fix" is usually the same - "fix one minor bug, ignore most of the rest, add 10 new unnecessary features, charge for an 'upgrade' "

EU wants open science publication by 2020

Re: Egregious Scam Ending ?

"And the biggest suckers are the clever hard-working researchers, who accept to do all their peer reviewing for free. "

They've been wising up for years. The reality if that if they don't peer-review for free, they don't get their own articles published.

Blackmail? You could say that.

Re: Short-term protection

" On top of that, there are still printed journals and this requires a lot of money to achieve."

In the department that I work in, NOBODY bothers with the printed journals. Everything is accessed online apart from the really old stuff which hasn't been digitised yet.

Printed stuff comes in, gets filed in the library and ends up with enough dust on top to show it was never touched since filing. It's easier to search and crossreference online and once you've done that downloading the PDF is only one more step.