Posts by Morely Dotes

Court must reconsider Microsoft Excel patent damages

Greedy? Hardly

Microsoft - arguably the wealthiest corporation on Earth - stole his invention. Since the least-expensive Office bundle containing his patented invention sells for US$30 (and goes up to something like $800 if memory serves), a royalty fee of $2 per copy is extremely reasonable. Excel comprises between 12.5% to 25% of the bundles in which it is found, and the inventor is reasonably entitled to that percentage of net sales. He's demanding far less.

Microsoft would have done well to have settled out of court for the $2 per copy he wants.

Elon Musk delays SpaceX launch until 2009

@ Webster Phreaky

If you care about the survival of the human race in the long term, you ought to care about efforts to make space travel a commercial venture. It's the only way we can ever expect to establish viable, self-sufficient human colonies off-Earth.

Right now, we have all our eggs in one basket, and they can all go smash with a single asteroid strike on Earth, just like the dinosaurs.

Microsoft's LAMP answer arrives in pieces

@ Chad Keffer

Professional hosting services (and Google) use LAMP because (1) low entry cost; (2) stability; (3) security; and (4) Open Source means the publisher can't hide a back door (like, oh, I dunno... WGA?) in the executables and lie about it.

If you want to work for someone else and do code, sure, you'll get paid more for Java and .NET - and you'll work 60-80 hour weeks for the same *per hour* wages a 19-year-old kid gets for running a LAMP server.

I'm ex-Intel (former Build Engineer for Network Products Division). I've seen it happen all too often.

@ Rich Turner

"most serious software has client-side management tools that can administer remote servers."

Absolutely true. And Linux excels at this, having been designed that way from the ground up, rather than having had to have the GUI ripped off and the command-line tools tacked on as an afterthought.

Public don't want internet filters, MS tells MPs

Kudos to Matt Lambert

And skunk glands to Tanya Byron in the event that she *does* call for a clampdown on violent video games, unless she also calls for a total ban on broadcast of competitive sporting events, banning them from schools, and abolition of the Armed Forces, because those *definitely* cause violent behavior (e.g., "soccer hooliganism," and military training).

I would be perfectly happy to support that conclusion, knowing full well that anyone who published it would be laughed out of business because the military isn't going away, sports fans will probably lynch her, and schools would go bankrupt without the idiotic gits who donate to them for support of "athletic competitions."

Personally, I play a mage in World of Warcraft. That is indeed a violent video game; I run around casting "black magic" to kill people, demons, and animals, and rob their corpses; I also hack them up with a sword if they get close enough. If I had chosen the "undead" race, I'd also commit cannibalism.

Strangely, that behavior has never spilled over into real life (although I must admit, there have been moments when I deeply wished to cast a Fireball at a particularly thick customer...).

But I think Lambert is right on the money. If parents don't parent, it's NOT up to the Nanny State to do so for them. Take the kids away and give them to someone who will.

New York subpoenas Comcast 'reasonable network management' records

@ Anonymous Coward

"Then Pay For What You Use "

I am paying for what I use. And, I am using what I pay for: My contract states "unlimited" bandwidth, 15Mbps downstream, 2Mbps upstream, 8 static IP addresses, a wireless AP/router (which is as secure as possible given the inherent issues with WAP2, etc.), and some other bits, for US$99/month.

My contract does *NOT* say "we will forge packets to prevent you from using some services." And my ISP doesn't do that.

Comcast has *denied* doing it and would stil lbe denying it if they hadn't been caught by network professionals which checked up on them.

The issue is not "reasonable network management." It's fraud.

@ Andrew Norton

"It is good to see that at least one prosecutor is looking closely at what is, at it's basis, a first amendment issue."

Andrew, while I agree in principle that Comcast is in violation of the law, it's not the First Amendment. Comcast is not the Government, and the First Amendment only protects Freedom of Speech from prior censorship by the Government.

However, what Comcast has done is fraud, and can be construed as attempted unauthorized access to computer systems, since they are intercepting specific types of packets and forging false responses. Furthermore, nowhere in their advertising does it specifically state that Comcast will, on a whim, prevent customers from accessing certain sites, services, or protocols, and that is precisely what they are doing.

Throttle bandwidth for network management purposes? Well, as long as it doesn't go below the guaranteed minimum (which should be the speed stated in their advertising, and which is not stated, and therefor the customer has a reasonable expectation of getting the "up to" speed), manage away, by throttling.

But packet forgery is knowing and deliberate fraud and unlawful, unauthorized computer system access.

And if Comcast can't deliver the speed they have advertised due to bandwidth issues, then they should be brought up on charges for knowingly and deliberately misrepresenting a product or service for sale, which they are unable to provide due to their lack of possession of that product or service.

Cut to the Web Server Core: Windows Server 2008

Are they totally insane?

All right, sure, making Server 2008 less Windows-like and more Unix-like is a good step. But who is stupid/crazy/lazy enough to try to use a Windows server to try (and fail) to emulate a LAMP server, when (1) Windows costs infinitely more in dollars, blood, sweat, and tears, and (2) Windows is less stable an less secure by orders of magnitude?

And those who really want to can build a WAMP stack. It's already freely available and ready to roll out (although having tried both WAMP and LAMP on the same hardware, I'd have to question the logic of devoting 80% of your server resources to drawing the desktop).

As for .htaccess - I honestly can't remember the last time I edited one. That's what virtual hosting systems do *for* you.

German high court throttles government net snooping

Full circle

Germany upholds personal rights, while the USA and UK embrace total Government control of citizens' lives, and total abrogation of personal rights "for the good of the State."

It was the other way around in 1939. How long until the New Pogroms?

BT pimped customer web data to advertisers last summer

@ AC

"no matter what an ISP do they can not make a program on your computer just start connecting to random places."

Of course they can. DHCP allows the ISP to tell your computer which DNS servers to use, and if you have not specifically entered your own choice of DNS servers, then BT will be able to push whatever they like down to you - which means that, if they so choose, *every single Web request* will be forwarded to a transparent recording proxy, and the data returned to you as if you were deliberately using Network Address Translation. In other words, if you use BT's DNS servers, they have total control over where your computer connects.

Bitlocker hack is easily prevented, Microsoft says

@ Andy Turner

"Windows/Linux/OSX probably has some gaping security holes that no-one knows about and therefore no-one can leverage. It's only when some prat finds them and publishes them that they become a problem."

When security holes are found in Linux, they're normally fix in a day or two.

When security holes are found in Windows or OSX, they're normally fix within months of the public announcement by the disgusted security researcher who originally told MS or Apple about the problem in the first place, a year previously.

It works like this: You have a gold min, and a nice fence around it to keep people from helping themselves to your gold. Only the fencing contract ran out of wire before he finished the job, so there's a gaping hole in the fence back in the woods where you've never noticed it. Now,if an honest person walking the fence notices it and tells you, you can fix it. But if a gold thief wanders through the woods and finds the hole, he's going to start pilfering your gold, and while you may notice it's gone missing, you won't know how, and you won't suspect there's a hole in the fence back in the woods because you've never seen that hole.

So it's much better to have honest security researchers find the holes in your security and tell the world, because that way the holes will get fixed, sonner or later.

Ooops

"He said BitLocker allows administrators to remotely change protection settings by having a script execute."

Guess what? if "administrators" can do it, *anyone* can do it if they're willing to violate the law - and it would appear obvious that cracking encryption is likely to be illegal.

This is the biggest flaw in *all* versions of Windows, not just Vista - practically every "script" is ActiveX, which has *no* real security.

That Wi-Fi network you thought was secure? It ain't

@ N

"Does anyone know if limiting access by mac address can be compromised?"

MAC spoofing is trivial. You can even do it in Windows.

Judge accuses hacks of hacking cannibal ruling

@ ImaGnuber

"If at all possible, the reporters should be prosecuted."

Oh, absolutely. It will be very entertaining to see the reporters ordered to violate the First and Fifth Amendments and incriminate themselves by revealing the source of their information - who will almost certainly be whichever lawyer thought leaking the information (without telling the reporter that it was privileged information and not to be revealed) would help his case.

FFS! People like you are the reason our rights are being eroded, day by day! Bush and Blair must love you.

Pentagon: Bullseyed turkey-sat pieces will all burn up

@ Richie M

Firstly, every amateur astronomer on Earth can verify the kill independently. If you haven't done so, it can only be due to your inability to operate binoculars, or a preference for impugning the skills of the US military versus verification of facts.

Secondly, no one but a complete cretin would have said that the Erie was trying to "shoot down" a satellite. One doesn't do that with anything less than an equal-momentum vehicle moving on an opposite trajectory.

But I suppose simple maths and orbital dynamics are a bit much to expect from the products of modern "education," since they have been exposed primarily to psychobabble and social conditioning instead of useful skills.

Hotmail dies on both sides of the Atlantic

Ah, a positive use for the BGS DoS attack!

Lossless compression of the data stream, by removal of the dross.

Microsoft and Adobe jockey on rich applications

A plague on both their houses

Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, AIR, Flex... It's all crap that's non-compliant with standards and designed to lock-in users to a proprietary software model.

I wish they'd all choke on some dark fiber.

Airline pilot sacked for 777 Top Gun stunt

Cathay Pacific:

The company to avoid; the management has demonstrated that they have no confidence in their aircraft, nor their pilots.

Which is unsurprising, considering who the management are, and who makes the aircraft and trains the pilots. I'd be a bit uneasy about flying in a Chinese aircraft with a Chinese-national pilot, who was probably trained by the Red Army. A little paranoia (especially when it's the Official State Religion) goes a long way.

VMware vuln exposes the perils of virtualization

Of course...

One could always use VirtualBox instead of VMware.

http://www.virtualbox.org/

I am not connected with the project in any way.

Spammers crack Gmail Captcha

Trivially defeated

Making the zombies work harder is the solution.

Current captcha cracks against Google are only successful 1 time in 5 (20% successful). By chaining three captchas together, Google could reduce the success rate to a mere 0.8%, or one in 125 attempts.

While I don't think captchas are especially good security, this simple step would be an interim measure while something truly effective is developed.

Taliban demand night-time cell tower shutdown

On a good day...

I'd have said the Taleban are a bunch of ignorant, superstitious, savage tribal barbarians with less knowledge of how technology works than one might reasonably expect of a fish.

However, I'm not feeling that charitable today. Today I would say they are subhuman parasites which should be sterilized with the largest available dirty nukes.

ISP data deal with former 'spyware' boss triggers privacy fears

Oh dear

"With offices in New York, London and Moscow, Phorm (AIM: PHRM, PHRX) is a Delaware, US incorporated company,"

Delaware and Florida are both extremely corporate-friendly and consumer hostile. I will not do business with incorporation in either State; in the event of a dispute, I know in advance that the courts will side with the corporation.

@ Dunstan Vavasour

Only those with no capability of being honest with themselves believe they have nothing to hide.

For example: Your bank account number, your credit card numbers, the names and ages of your children, and their locations at various times of the day, how much CO2 your automobile produced this month, the interest rate on your mortgage, the current state of your indebtedness (up-to-date, past due, etc.), your medical history...

Only the abysmally ignorant, or the absolutely dirt-poor think they have nothing to hide.

Morocco jails Facebook faker

@ Hans Mustermann

"Hi, I'm Bush. I was diagnosed with Down's Syndrome as a kid. And I think Real Men aren't afraid of a war. We still learn about the Romans, don't we? I never got this pinko-commie-liberal peace obsession."

Sorry, not credible. It's too coherent, contains words with more than two syllables, and isn't sufficiently aggressive; you entirely left out the part about "A dictatorship would be a good thing, as long as I was the dictator," and "anyone opposed to us sending their kids off to die for Dick Cheney's oil profits is a terrorist."

Samsung laptop battery burns

Perhaps it would help

..if congenitally stupid gits could understand that there are *portable* computers, *transportable* computers (think "Osborne 1;" you can transport it if you happen to have a handy milk float), and *notebook* computers.

There are very few actual *laptop* computers, and those are all very expensive, and designed for use in hostile environments, such as military field operations.

And, of course, the first few pages of the owner's manual *always* warns against using the computer on a soft surface, such as a lap, carpet, or blanket. Even morons ought to be able to make the connection between "soft surface" and "pillow."

Pakistan blocks YouTube

Pakistan? Pakistan...

Oh, yes, that little upstart province of India, off to the Northwest, which seems to originate nothing except spam, phishing, system cracking, and DDoS attacks.

Frankly, I've had all .pk IP space that I could find null-routed for donkey's years. They're worse than useless; I had a governmnet official tell me to essentially "piss off" when I sent a spam report some time back. That's when I decided the world would be better off without .pk

Looks like I simply anticipated a growing trend.

Judge greenlights lawsuit against Microsoft

@ Mad Hacker

"Vista Server isn't even out yet."

Praise whatever gods you worship and sacrifice some MBAs in thanks.

UK rattles 'three strikes' filesharing sabre (again)

Right, you lot own up!

WTF is a "Shadow culture secretary?" I mean, I'm familiar with SHADO and UFO-1 and all that, but do they have their own government and all now, too?

Google encourages 10 teams to rocket to the moon

My own proposal

The launch vehicle will use well-known principles to overcome Earth's gravity without the use of chemical rockets, and upon arrival on the Lunar surface, the rovers (nine in all) will be released. The rovers will be designated Kinetics and numbered 1 through 9; thus K-1, etc.

The full-length one with the rather long and colorful muffler, please.

Treehuggers lose legal fight to solar-powered neighbour

Re: Electric car efficiency

You neglected to factor in the "efficiency" of drilling for oil, transporting the crude, cracking the crude into petrol and other things, transporting the petrol, pumping the petrol into storage tanks, pumping the petrol out of storage tanks, and all of the same factors for motor lubricants as well, plus disposal of the used lubricants.

Overall, the total efficient of an internal combustion engine is close to 2%. A hybrid might possibly crowd 2.5% on a really good day.

Compared to your 23% for the plug-in electric, that's on the order of "pathetic."

Vista SP1 kills and maims security apps, utilities

@ Bronek Kozicki

"Microsoft never made promise that these hacks will ever work, futhermore it never documented APIs and data structures exploited by these hacks."

It would be more accurate to say, "Microsoft never made promise that these hacks will ever work, furthermore it never documented APIs and data structures."

Full stop.

Which is why Microsoft continues to get into trouble with the EU (and will do so in the US again, post-Bush) for abusing their monopoly position.

Yes, I know they've promised to do so. GWB promised to focus on the CO2 problem, too, in 2000, when he wanted votes. I'm a skeptic.

Security boffins unveil BitUnlocker

@ Chris

"So is there anything Windows-based which is idiot proof and 'just works' out of the box?"

No.

In fact, nothing is idiot-proof; every time we think we've idiot-proofed anything, along comes a more ingenious idiot.

Now, honestly, were you *deliberately* trolling with the juxtaposition of "Windows-based," "idiot-proof," and "just works," or was that serendipity?

Robocopter gunship abandons sinking warship project

@ Ishkandar

Uhm...

"Meanwhile, US flesh-and-blood troops are hammered by the enemy's Linux based weaponry !!"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/27/us_army_going_to_linux/

Colorware offers MacBook Air custom paintjobs

Funny thing about that Windows issue...

I can get a machine that's superior to the MacBook Air in every respect (except mass and ability to fit in a shotgun envelope) for half the money, install pretty much any distro I want of Linux for free, and have something that is excellent for work. Granted, it won't impress frat boys who think an MBA is tantamount to godhood, but then, who (with an IQ higher than his shoe size) cares about that?

Apple knows their target market very well; so does Colorware.

Microsoft launches student Java and LAMP challenge

Every programming language has its place

C++ for writing fast code, Java for slapping something together quickly that will (eventually) get the job (or a job) done, asp for creating inadvertent back doors into servers, .NET for making clock tower snipers out of programmers...

Larry Lessig for Congress?

Welcoem to the American political system

How much "fairness in government" would you like to buy today?

Jedi to open Surrey academy

@ Neil Hoskins

"Any suggestions as to how we can register a protest at the next census?"

Two possibilities come to mind; one is the Disciples of St. Vidicon, or Vidiconite in the vernacular. This one you may be able to look up at your local purveyor of printed matter.

The other is Caledonian Universal Nihilist Trappists, and I'll leave it to the Gentle Reader to figure out the common abbreviation.

Restored Vulcan hits financial turbulence

What a disappointment!

The headline made me think that a post-ST III Mr. Spock has been investing in Sharper Image stocks.

The black leather with the rubber ears in the pocket, thanks.

Redmond puts key Vista update on ice

@ Steven Hewiitt

"If windows won't boot, it will ask you if you want to go into safe mode."

Unless, of course, it goes into a BSOD before getting to the Safe Mode/Restore from Command Line/Smash Keyboard with Forehead menu.

Which is the usual "failure mode" (as opposed to the "normal" mode of generating a BSOD only during critical, time-consuming FEA runs) I see on systems in our Engineering department.

BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

@ Oliver Jones

"ISPs can simply render encrypted Torrent traffic irrelevant, by firewalling all incoming ports on your internet connection at their network level, thus preventing your PC from being contacted for a Torrent (or any) download. Quick, easy, simple - and it requires no throttling, filtering or packet analysis. In fact, I'm surprised it wasn't done years ago, because it neatly blows a hole in BitTorrent and any other P2P protocol - and it's something that nobody could possibly design around, no matter how much encryption they used."

Unless, of course, the BT client were so designed that it automatically sought out open ports for bit inbound and outbound traffic.

An ISP which firewalls port 80 will not last long. Ever heard of AOL? They used to be considered an ISP.

@ Eponymous Cowherd again...

"Never has anyone offered any proof that BitTorrent *isn't* mostly used for distributing copyright material."

In a free society, the burden of proof is upon the accuser, not the accused. If you want to be able to make accusations and force your victim to prove he's innocent, move to Russia, or France. You imply that it is always unlawful to distribute copyrighted material. This is patently false; all Linux distributions, and World of Warcraft patches (to name two items that come instantly to mind) are copyrighted, and *legally* distributed via BT.

Disclaimer: Above defenses of "free"societies do not apply when GWB gets involved.

Now... Since you are making accusations of unlawful behavior, either put up or shut up.

Personally, I use BT to download (and upload, of course) Linux distros, WoW updates, and videos produced by my son's video production company. Any accusations by yourself to the contrary can only be offered in knowing and willful violation of the anti-defamation laws.

@ Eponymous Cowherd

"And lets not be under any illusions, here. Despite the whinging about legitimate uses of BitTorrent, 95% + of BT file sharers *are* sharing copyright material."

I hope your ass hurts terribly after you pulled that number out of it. You have just stated that 95% of BitTorrent users are violating copyright law. It's possible I am mistaken, but I believe that under UK law they can now take you to court for defamation, and you have to *prove* what you said - and further, I believe that UK and EU law permits them to demand your contact information from El Reg, and you have no "reasonable expectation of privacy."

Lastly, I would point out that ISPs got themselves into this pickle by advertising "unlimited" bandwidth for a flat fee, and frankly, if they can't deliver what they promised up front, I'd be perfectly happy to see them either go titsup and out of business, or see their Boards charged with fraud - or both.

Opera CTO: How to fix Microsoft's browser issues

Oh, yes

Remove ActiveX from Internet Explorer. The fact is that ActiveX is one of the biggest security holes in Windows even today.

@ AC

"Will you people STOP repeating that Microsoft SELLS XP. They DONT. They sell LICENSES to USE it, which they can revoke as they please. Once licenses are revoked, the vendor is free to disable any activation mechanism which the software depended on."

However, the terms of the contract under which the license has been sold are not disclosed until *after* the transaction has been consummated, and Microsoft has received payment either from the consumer, or from the PC's OEM. Under standard contract law, therefor, no "meeting of the minds" has taken place, and therefor no legal contract for licensing exists. Ergo, Microsoft is liable to support the product as if it had been sold outright, not licensed for an indefinite term at the whim of Microsoft.

I am not a lawyer, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that the argument I have written above *will* be used by thousands of lawyers when (or if) Microsoft decides to disable the XP activation mechanism.

HP's Linux sub-notebook spied on web

HP == Compaq

And there will never be another HP/Compaq in my office or my home as long as I am making the purchasing decisions. I don't need to support a company who outsources everything, and who hires people to spy on journalists.

I quite like the Fujitsu Lifebook, however.

Japan brings down Godzilla of spam

A few others need to go

blogspot.com has a well-known and heavily-exploited vulnerability which allows spammers to automatically create "landing pages" there, and one spammer in particular is abusing it heavily. Consumer PCs are being used to relay the spam.

See reports here:

http://castle-anthrax.us/modules/news/index.php?storytopic=5&storynum=5

MS showcases Red Ring of Death Xbox 360 at expo

Oh, and @ Oliver Jones

"several computer companies were driven out of business by the Commodore 64, although that was largely due to Jack Tramiel's aggressive pricing regime"

Yes, and when the Amiga came along, they continued that practice, selling the Amiga at a loss - apparently they thought they could make it up on volume.

That worked well, didn't it?

Microsoft can afford to stand behind their hardware, and replace the failed machines (they did the "right thing" by extending warranties when the V1 consoles starting dropping like flies). What MS *can't* afford is alienation of game developers.

@ AC

"Whilst the 360 has had RROD problems in the past, how do we know this console isn't an old V1 console that was prone to the problem?"

OK, let's look at this from a PR standpoint: We're going to a game developers' conference, and our hardware is going to be showcased in front of developers who are critical to our business success; developers from all over the world; so we want all of our gear to be QAed six ways from Sunday. No screwups, because this is the place where the Press is going to be. Remember Windows 95 and the Bill Gates demonstration of the BSOD? *None* *of* *that*! You got it?

Now, let's assume that it is, in fact, an old V1 console. That says quite a lot about the QA process at Microsoft, doesn't it? And not a single word of what it has to say is good.

US declares 1400-mile Pacific sat-shoot exclusion zone

@ Anonymous Coward

"they're sure to miss (they are Americans)"

Yes, the well-known inability of the American military to hit anything is what caused Hitler to successfully invade and conquer Britain back in the day, isn't it?

And we managed to miss the Moon completely, and couldn't get any space probes out to Jupiter, Saturn, or beyond.

It's a good job the good old British Space Programme was there to ensure that there was a backup for the American airmen and for NASA.

Tell me, nitwit, did you eat a bowl of Fucking Stupid for breakfast?

Consumer group slams 'unfair' software licenses

This happened when?

"Microsoft is committed to dealing fairly with consumers"

Odd. In my roughly 2 decades of dealing with Microsoft as a consumer, I can't remember a single incidence of them treating me fairly.