Posts by Quxy

Obama proposes four-point plan to investigate US data spooks

"Restraint"?

We've heard of it...

Bill Gates's barbed comments pop Google's broadband balloons

"Not a saint"

Nope.

While I sincerely applaud the philanthropic work that BillG has been doing through BMGF for the past 13 years, I still have a bad taste in my mouth about the way he operated for the 25 years before that. Having been personally burned by some of his shady business practices, I'm going to be holding my applause for a while...

US taxmen told to hush up shadowy drug squad unit laundering NSA intel

Lecturing the Chinese

I occasionally drop into some of the conversations about democracy on Weibo. These days, "Look how well democracy is working in America" is one of the strongest counter-arguments in favour of 中国特色社会主义 (Chinese Socialism).

Apple patents laser, incandescent projector for laptops, smartphones

Alas...

One hardly expects the Commissioner who ordered reexamination of the "stick" patent (subsequently resulting in the cancellation of all claims) to order reexamination of any Apple patents.

When Apple needs speed and security in Mac OS X, it turns to Microsoft

Of *course* the headline is deliberately provocative

This is El Reg, after all. Martin is just trying to wind up the fanbois... :-)

Kim Dotcom victim of 'largest data MASSACRE in history'

Twitter as "bully pulpit"?

Given that a bully pulpit as commonly understood is a "position sufficiently conspicuous to provide an opportunity to speak out and be listened to", how does a private Twitter account qualify? The position of POTUS is a bully pulpit. Eric Schmidt may have a bully pulpit as executive chairman of Google. But I can't see how Kim Dotcom is in a conspicuous enough position so that anyone other than those following his Twitter feed will hear what he has to say.

Stay away from the light, Kodak! Look, here's $406m to keep you alive

Sharper focus

Yep. Read the article in The Economist that digs into the reasons for Kodak's woes and Fujifilm's revitalisation.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifilm-survived

Microsoft lures buy-curious vixens, corduroys with a cheap fondle

But "productive" for what?

Sure, the Surface RT may be great for consumption of media content. But how does that translate to being a productive educational tool for university students? More likely it'll simply get used for watching pr0n, while the laptop continues to be used for real work.

I'd buy one in a heartbeat...

...if it wasn't locked down with UEFI Secure Boot to keep me from installing *my* choice of OS.

Yahoo! joins! rivals! in! PRISM! data! request! admission!

"unwitting participants"?

Erm, right. And just how would that work?

One can say that the PR departments were unaware of PRISM, but of course that was by design.

Julian Assange: Google's just an arm of US government

Re: Too true

I think that most American citizens realise that their government is uncomfortably cozy with big money, but the secret (indeed, the devil) is in the details. My cynical assertion is simply that it is naive to imagine that Lincoln's words 150 years ago, "of the people, by the people, for the people", have any true meaning in 21st century American government.

Too true

Assange may indeed be a bit of a conspiracy theorist. But you don't have to be a nutter to appreciate the intimate connection between economic power and political power. This is especially true of the modern US government, which exists primarily to serve the interests of commercial interests with the most money. But it is also true of nearly all modern governments elsewhere in the world and, indeed, throughout history; and only a naive idealist would suggest otherwise. Since politicians and corporations alike want to expand this profitable relationship while keeping it as quiet as possible, unpleasant people like Assange are valuable: until the extent of the problem is exposed, it won't even get discussed, let alone reformed.

Online music world on iRadio: Apple, imagine our concern

Re: Eadon...

No, no, use the correct El Reg terminology! Eadon isn't a Fanboi, he's a Freetard ;-)

KEEP CALM and Carry On: PRISM itself is not a big deal

@Agree with Obama

It's clear from his record that the *last* thing Obama wants is a public, democratic debate on surveillance programs. I voted for him and supported his campaign in the first term, but there's no denying that he has authorised a sharp increase in government surveillance while in office.

As former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden notes, "Obama expanded the surveillance programs in volume...NSA is actually empowered to do more things than I was empowered to do under President Bush's special authorisation".

Obama faces off China's prez: We can't be pals with all this cyber-theft

"cybersecurity [is] now really at the centre of the relationship"

Apparently so... now that the US has authorised offensive cyber attacks on economic grounds*.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/07/presidential_policy_directive_20/

[*] However,"operations that are likely to result in... major economic impact... require Presidential approval". So that's OK then.

Obama weighs in on NSA surveillance imbroglio

"capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity"?

Go on, name *one* example where that's worked out for you.

Spotify and Pandora to FACE THE MUSIC as iRadio inks Sony deal

Re: itunes........iRadio...........iYawn

Indeed. Since this is Apple, the available tracks (as in iTunes) are going to be those "authorised for play in your country", which largely defeats the purpose of Internet radio. And advertising...?! Nope, iYawn it is.

Never mind WinRT: Tiny Win8 slabs will ship with free Office, too

Re: they can't win

They could have.

I believe that if Microsoft had accepted the DOJ's 2000 breakup "remedy" instead of coming to the rather dubious "settlement" that they did, they'd be in better shape for profitability for the next decade than they are now, caught in the headlights of the rapid changes in the personal computing environment. Instead, by enshrining in MS culture the inviolable linkage between WIndows and Office, I rather suspect that they've written their own obituary.

Look out, fanbois! EVIL charger will inject FILTH into your iPHONE

Re: Special cable

The problem with that "solution" is that in order to get an Apple device to recognise your charger, you have to provide the correct resistive voltage dividers on both DM and DP pins. If you leave the data pins open, it will simply tell you that "Charging is not supported with this accessory" and refuse to charge.

Elon Musk pledges transcontinental car juicers by end of year

The Jaguar E-type is a lovely car...

But the Tesla S accelerates better than anything but the series 3, and handles better than anything Jaguar has ever built. I had a chance to drive a model S lately, and if Elon Musk can come through on his promises about the network of high-speed recharging stations, the model S is a shoe-in for my next car.

Former Microsoft Windows chief: I was right to kill the Start button

Why "should" Microsoft learn to give the users what they want?

Unless your stock portfolio or income depends upon Microsoft's financial success, why worry?

Microsoft never gave the users what they wanted in the past, but for a variety of reasons their products became widespread in office and consumer environments, and users lived with what they were given. Now that users have more choices on their new devices, let *them* decide. It's hard to imagine that many users or IT professionals will be shedding tears over Microsoft's failure to dominate the personal computing market the way they did a decade ago.

Stop the Microsoft, Skype wedding, screams enraged Cisco in court

1994-6??

You mean when AOL finally decided to join the Internet?

Many of us on El Reg have been using Internet email since the mid-80s, and adherence to RFC 822 et alii has made delivery across the network very dependable -- until the past few years, when companies like *erm* Microsoft have begun to Balkanise email as they introduce proprietary barriers to open delivery to the email systems they control.

Now beaming live from Pyongyang: NORKSCASTS!

Re: Hmmm...

Depends upon where and when you're trying to pick it up. Details here:

http://www.northkoreatech.org/2013/03/31/new-voice-of-korea-english-schedule/

Tea, Earl Grey, hot! NASA blows $125k on Star Trek 3D FOOD PRINTER

Re: Just like inkjet printers...

+++Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++

Microsoft 'poised' to SPAFF A BEELLION on e-book also-ran Nook

Re: MSFT the Value Destroyer

But at least TheVogon/RICHTO/Eadon/ShagBag are couragous enough to post their opinions under their own identities -- in contrast to the ubiquitous astroturfers who invariably post as AC!

The only reason Google get any sales on their books?

While I agree with your comments about M$ competition, I don't believe that Google's position is as dire as you believe. The Google bookshop has nearly all of the titles that Amazon has, at competitive prices; and critically, with Google it is easy to download an ePub, strip out the DRM, and use that standard file on any device you like. Unlike Amazon, there is no need for specialised apps or devices to read Google books.

Don't use Google+? Tough, Google Glass will inject it INTO YOUR EYES

"Engendering"?

Funny, I read that as "endangering"...

Google's 'power to switch off the lights in Europe' has 'chilling effect' - rivals

A particularly relevant quotation from Life-Line...

Not sure why it got so many downvotes, unless El Reg has a lot of commentards who dislike Heinlein on principle. In America, particularly, corporations nowadays do seem to have a remarkably outsized sense of entitlement that dwarfs anything expressed by the individuals clinging to the shreds of America's modest social safety net.

Office for Mac 2008 support umbilical chopped off

Re: Powerpoint bug

2011 has a number of *new* bugs -- but still no fix for the Asian languages compatibility problem that's plagued Office since, well, forever.

(About half the time, whole chunks of Japanese, Chinese, or Korean documents created under Asian localisations of Windows look like line noise when read into Office for Mac or LIbreOffice. Apparently, even Office 2011 hasn't entirely abandoned "code pages". <Sigh>)

Nokia shutters Shanghai store as Chinese stay away in their billions

Eadon

At least he's not a Microsoft shill hiding behind AC, who can be counted on to recycle disproven sales claims like "the Chinese can't get enough of the Lumias" every time a story like this comes up.

Sure, WP8 may be a great OS, but economics (per-phone licence cost), timing (three years late to the party), and consumer perception of Microsoft (who has no one to blame but itself) have led to dismal real-world sales numbers that are really pretty unsurprising.

Court refuses to block Aereo's personal streaming TV service

$80/year?

To watch American broadcast television? The mind boggles.

Facebook prepares to dominate Android

You almost had me...

...until I looked at the date. Phew!

Microsoft splashes coat of paint on Windows 8 comms apps

Outlook and Taskline

I am obliged to make heavy use of Outlook 2007, and as you imply, its integrated calendar and scheduling features are pretty decent. But even Taskline isn't going to stop this bloated monstrosity from crashing twice a day, or fix its infamously broken line wrapping, or bring back RFC2822 email quoting that (mostly) worked until its editor was replaced with Word. So, as for so many other users, Outlook has been sidelined into a role as a glorified calendar, while I've switched to a more modern, well-behaved MUA for regular email.

I believe that the original idiom...

...serves as the semiofficial motto of El Reg writers:

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.

-- Alexander Pope (1734)

Vietnamese high school kids can pass Google interview

Asian language support in XP is superb?

That's got to be the most surreal thing I've heard today.

As someone who has had to switch between English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean on my PC for many years now, I can assure you that Asian language support in XP was only acceptable if you were using the version localised for the specific language you were using. God help you (because Microsoft wasn't going to) if you want to use Chinese on a Japanese version of XP -- or *any* Asian language on a US or EU version.

Windows 7's mostly-complete UNICODE integration is a big step up; but applications (even Office) are still terribly inconsistent, often insisting on using a different language for menus than the desktop for instance. Unsurprisingly, OSX has long been better at multilanguage support -- but so is any modern distribution of Linux (*how* old was the Linux you were referring to, anyway?).

Microsoft reports on how often it helps police with their enquiries

Random fishing expeditions?

Of course. And this is surprising... why?

Schmidt calls China's attempts to take over internet 'egregious'

Internet *privacy*?

Eric Schmidt doesn't give a damn about Internet users' privacy, and he's famously said so in as many words.

As a good American billionare, what bothers him about China is that it's the *government* trying to control the Internet and remove any expectation of privacy, whereas by rights it ought to be big *business* controlling the 'net and *monetising* user privacy, while allowing them to retain the illusion of privacy.

At least the Chinese government's actions derive from a (IMO misguided) patriarchal notion of what is best for Chinese society, while Schmidt can't even pretend that Google's privacy grab benefits anyone but advertisers and Google shareholders.

Windows Phone 8 support to end in 2014

@Donkey

Having talked to plenty of mobile developers, I suspect that you're right. Windows XP was arguably Microsoft's high-water mark in terms of desktop OS stability, long-term support, and market acceptance -- and developers joined in droves. But (despite CE and 6.5) Microsoft has become the new kid in smartphone OS, and the UNIX-based kernels used by everybody else really look like the safe bet. WPx just doesn't bring enough to the table to be worth learning a completely new model of apps development.

I'm an OSS developer...

...but Microsoft's accelerated EOS strategy sounds more like a common-sense acknowledgement of the state of mobile OSes than anything else. I'm not interested in WP, but the planned obsolescence of previous versions seems sensible enough in a market dominated by IOS and Android. The RHEL 5 and Windows XP models of long-term support really have little validity in the land of smartphones with rapidly-evolving hardware and two-year contracts.

Virnetx loses Cisco case: VPNs not its property

Of course...

...VirnetX won a $368 million damages award against Apple last November in front of the same judge and using the same patent claims -- just a different jury -- as the Cisco case. This time around, the judge simply strategised a bit better, so the jury found VirnetX's secure networking patents to be valid, just that Cisco hadn't infringed on any of them. Small victory for troll hunters, really.

Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

Re: Unity is worse than TIFKAM

Yes, but for desktop Linux installations it's a choice that can be avoided altogether, rather than simply being worked around, unlike the case with TIFKAM in Windows 8. With Ubuntu, there are many other window managers that you can choose at install time instead of Unity.

Unity and TIFKAM

No, neither Unity nor Metro are horrendous system-breakers, and both of them may be better user interfaces for certain sorts of devices and use models. But even their fans can't argue that either of them make desktop computing more productive -- yet they have served to alienate Linux and Windows desktop users because of the way they have been forced on them as the default UI.

It really seems that Mark is making the same mistake as Steven Sinofsky, in thinking that the same user interface was suitable for smartphones, tablets, and desktops alike. Say what you like about Apple, but Steve Jobs was always clear on the notion that the best way to interact with a tablet is not the same as with a desktop machine, despite the fact that the underlying OS core is likely the same.

Torvalds asks 'Why do PC manufacturers even bother any more?'

Re: poor quality of FOSS?

I don't think that there's any objective evidence that open-source applications are of any poorer quality than the proprietary ones they replace. In my experience with Windows, for instance, I've been forced to use a lot of really terrible applications that someone actually paid money for. And the Linux kernel itself demonstrates the excellent quality of software that can be produced by non-corporate FOSS developers.

But don't get me started on documentation! I'm not sure why the online help provided with Windows and Mac applications is regarded as a benchmark for quality. It's almost invariably terrible, too shallow to explain anything more than the basic functionality of the menus. You nearly always have to Google to find out how to do something unusual or complicated in Word, for instance. Compare that to the exhaustive documentation, tips, examples, and configuration information provided with a cross-platform FOSS application like Lyx. Or the Linux kernel documentation. Yes, FOSS documentation is very inconsistent (the documentation for LibreOffice is as bad as MS Office), but IMO its average depth and completeness is as good as commodity commercial products.

@Hagan

For Linus and many other FOSS developers, our "work" isn't something that we leave at the office at 5pm. We carry it around with us, debugging code in the office at home, writing documentation on the train or in the coffee shop, answering email everywhere. Our other machines serve specialised functions (servers, compile farms, test beds), but don't have a keyboard or monitor unless we're testing GUIs on them.

This is precisely why Linus makes such a big deal about his laptop! This is why he complains so vociferously about poor keyboards and low-resolution screens. His laptop *is* his primary computer, and once he gets it set up the way he wants, he intends to use it everywhere instead of wasting time setting up multiple machines.

Sure, since laptop resolution has been crap lately, I've got dual high-resolution monitors in my various offices. But if my laptop didn't have a great keyboard, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

Except that...

..."business models" aren't what motivate Linus or most of the other brilliant Linux developers.

In 2000, Steve Jobs tried to hire Linus (away from Transmeta, at the time) into a rather senior role. Linus said no. At the time he clearly recognised the business sense in Steve's plans for OSX and was confident that it would be a success -- but it wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to be working on.

Marc Ewing's Linux distribution has turned into a successful business model -- but that's because of non-techies Bob Young and Jim Whitehurst.

Re: When are you going to quote Torvalds properly?

If you read down the conversation thread, you'll find that he compares the Pixel to his Macbook Air (his current primary laptop, as world+dog knows), so even from that limited context, the article draws a reasonable conclusion. Knowing Linus, I can say with some certainty that whatever device he chooses as a laptop is going to become his almost exclusive work-related input device -- for a year or so, until something better comes along.

(Remember that he's working exclusively in Linux, so the idea of switching to another keyboard and monitor just to work on one of his other machines is a completely foreign concept to him. *NIX guys don't think that way. We use our favourite laptop as the input device for *everything*, and let X do what it was designed to do.)

Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL

"Fragmentation"?

No mention, of course, that Miguel was instrumental in an awful lot of that fragmentation! I don't believe that he's been a constructive force in FOSS for years, certainly long before he received a Microsoft MVP award three years ago.

Review: Livin' in the cloud with Google's new Chromebook Pixel

Re: MacBook Air Linuxed

I swear that there's some sort of cognitive disconnect going on here.

At LT's suggestion, I bought a new Macbook Air, for less than $1100. It has a 1.8GHz i5, 4GB DDR3, and 256GB SSD. It is thinner and weighs less than the Pixel, and (has been pointed out) has USB 3.0.

I immediately installed Linux, with no problems whatsoever. It cold boots to the desktop (not login, mind) in less than 15s, and has >6hr of usable battery life.

So... the Pixel has a gorgeous display -- but neither price nor technical specs going for it. What's the point, again? Maybe it'll be a fun toy when it drops below the price of a used MBA, but until then?

Canonical announces Mir display server to replace X Windows

Yep. Lennart Poettering put it best...

"Isn't Mir this thing that burnt and crashed into the South Pacific Ocean near Fiji on 23rd March, 2001, after some dudes in Russia flipped a switch after they gave it up? This must be a metaphor for something, haven't figured out for what yet, though, must be something deeper than 'This software includes a space toilet and Canonical will give it up one day, when it will burn and crash and then we'll be in a south pacific paradise setting.'"

(LP is the developer of systemd and PulseAudio, among other sensible core bits of modern Linux distributions.)

APT1, that scary cyber-Cold War gang: Not even China's best

"Want"?

Dunno about you, but I'm teaching *my* children hacking skills!