Posts by Gert Selkobi

Dev preview of Ubuntu for phones touching down February 21

Losing focus

Having been a die hard Ubuntu fan from day one until they forced Unity on us, I'm now using Mint as my day to day OS. The problem with Ubuntu is that they are trying to do a Microsoft and have their fingers in too many pies. They need to get back to the Nix mantra of do one thing really well.

I think it all started with Ubuntu One, they tried to diversify and started losing focus. Then they turned the desktop into a toy with Unity. M$ followed suit with TIFKAM.

Now they're trying to do phones. Shuttleworth is trying to fast track to becoming the new M$ and he's doing a great job of it. Alienating users/customers and trying to be all things are not traits that sit well in the Nix communities but are SOP at Redmond.

What next? A Ubuntu console to try to compete with the Steam box?

Screw you Shuttleworth, you changed Ubuntu into an entirely different beast to that which attracted so many users in the early years.

NASA melts mysterious 'metal Martian flower' myth

It's obvious.

It is blatantly the tap of a stop-cock. This is proof that there was once semi-intelligent life, similar to human kind, on Mars. They've even put it in what seems to be a particularly daft place, which just re-enforces that notion that we may be descended from Martians.

Clash of the Titans: Which of you has the greatest home lab

@phuzz

*BANG!* *zzt!* *fizzle* *phuzz*

I think you must have spilled a bit. ;-)

Mostly a dusty graveyard

OpenBSD:

Sun UltraSparc 2i Ultra5 - dev web server

Sun UltraSparc 2i Ultra5 - dev db server

Dell PowerEdge 1400SC - CVS and file server

Dell Latitude D820 - Gateway / PF firewall / DansGuardian / clamav / DHCP / DNS etc etc

Dell Inspiron 510m - IDS

Dell Inspiron 510m - Logger

Dell Inspiron 630m - Backup gateway

Linux Mint:

HP / Compaq 8710w - General use

Windows 7:

Home brew Corei5 / 8GB / 2x 500GB / 3 monitors - Desktop dev workstation

Debian Squeeze ARM:

Model B RaspBerry Pi

Ipad3, Asus Transformer TF101, Buffalo 1TB Linkstation Duo +2TB USB and a couple of Watchbot IP cameras

The women of my life have rarely been happy about my other family, but my kids seem to think it's cool.

Montana TV warns of ZOMBIE ATTACK in epic prank hack

Brilliant!

I know there are possible negative consequences to this hack in reality, but I have to take my hat off to this, if it really is a prank-hack. Really made me chuckle, visualising the fun that the h4x0rs will have had when they saw their work go live. :)

SHOCK! FIFA 12 goalie does it doggy style with striker

You know what they say...

... any hole's a goal!

How can family sysadmins make a safe internet playground for kids?

Dansguardian

I run an OpenBSD firewall/proxy with dansguardian. It can be a bit fiddly to set up and refine but well worth the effort.

Stops the nasties and provides virus scanning as well.

Beeb measures Blighty in doormats

SPB Banner mouseover

I'm probably very slow on the uptake here, but I've just noticed the mouseover effect on the SPB Reg banner. Brilliant!

The BBC dumbing down again? I'll head on over then.....

Ubuntu's Oneiric Ocelot: Nice, but necessary?

Same as Whitefort

I've been a Ubuntu user and almost an evangelist for sever years now. However, 10.04 LTS is the last Ubunto I've kept. I still have it on the laptop, but my main desktop machine is now on Linux Mint. The Unity farce has put me right off and even 10.04 didn't run right on my Corei5, nVidia fx430 combo. I'm even willing to sacrifice the excellent apt and dip into Fedora 16 when it gets released next month.

I'm not at all keen on the way Canonical is going and feel that they are undoing a lot of their great work in bringing Linux to the massess.

ICANN rescues time zone database

@Jason Bloomberg

The thing is, until recently, Astrolabe were themselves in breach of copyright, by using photographs of famous people on their website, without permission. These photographs have since been removed. There will be obvious evidence of this, despite the fact that they have tried to brush away that evidence.

As has been mentioned already, they bought the rights for the data at a bankruptcy auction, it's not like they created it themselves. Morally, they are in the wrong.

Where we do seem to agree, is that the law is indeed an ass and needs to be changed. Just because a corrupt law says that they /may/ have grounds to sue, it doesn't make it right.

Us 'freetards' are looking at the morals of this case, more than anything else, I know I am. We have a right to express our moral outrage at this case. If the case is ruled in in Astrolabe's favour, it won't be egg on my face, but a look of disappointment and despair at 'the system'.

C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead

Very sad news.

I've read so much about the man's history and achievements and still rank "The C Programming Language" as in my top 2 tech books of all time, jostling for top spot with Stevens' "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1 - The Protocols".

A TRUE pioneer and innovator. Pretty much personifies those words, in fact.

Rest in peace Dennis.

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked

Facebook page gone

I'm beginning to get the impression that alabe.com know that they have royally ballsed up here. Their facebook page has disappeared and their facebook 'app' just returns a blank content area, although that may have always been the case.

Both alabe.com and their trolling legal representatives should not go unpunished for what they have attempted to do here. The lawyer already has a shady track record, I understand.

Let us hope that some common sense prevails and that they are both made an example of. Sadly, being the US of A, I really doubt that will be the case.

@AC 17:55

There is a link there now.....

Image rights?

I've also noticed that on their website, they are using images of various famous people.

http://alabe.com/solargold.html

I wonder if they have permission to use those images on their site? Anybody know if this is something that is reasonably easy to find out?

FFS

Shoot the lawyers.

If there were ever a worthy target for the likes of Anonymous and the like then here it is. Both Astrolabe and the trolling lawyers who have brought this about.

As was said above, let them suffer for their actions.

Email and compliance: How not to blow the storage budget?

Floppies

There must be huge stockpiles of unused floppy disks somewhere that nobody can sell. That could help with costs.

Backup and restore wouldn't be much slower than BackupExec, I feel.

Seriously though, better, more efficient mailbox storage is the way forward. Of our ~1,500 staff, quotas are always hit and it is down to emails being sent out willy-nilly where the recipient isn't usually relevant but is on a big distribution list. A more efficient database would cover this. 1 mail sent out to thousands of people in the same domain, shouldn't mean thousands of copies of that mail. It should be one copy of the original email with an index referring to the recipients and storing message state, ie read, unread, deleted and so on. Once an email is forwarded, yes it becomes a new email and we go around again.

I thought MS Exchange worked this way, but I have some doubts, at least as to the precise implementation.

Just a suggestion.

ICO probes Tory minister PI blagging allegations

Lawful?

Lawful, possibly. Honest? Definitely not. Misuse of public money? I reckon so.

He clearly wanted to gather this information in an unaccountable way and used dishonesty to do so. The man needs to be sacked along with the others who think it acceptable to act in this way. He should also repay the £5,000 out of his own pocket.

HP's fondle-slab dilemma: What to do when you're No 2

@ Tony Paulazzo

I'd recommend it. I've had one for a little while now. It's not perfect and needs a few must have apps, like Hacker's keyboard and the web browser can be a bit flaky at times. It is a nice piece of kit though and I'm satisfied with it overall, despite the slight niggles. Personally not delighted with Android and am waiting for a reliable way of putting a decent Linux onto it that won't get randomly borked by OTA firmware updates.

If you're in the market for a fondleslab then this is a good one, especially with the dock.

Canon crossbreeds mouse with adder

Not quite...

As has been said, if they'd left the screen and calculator functions out of it and concentrated on making this a mouse that doubles as a numeric keypad (or vice versa if that helps to market it), primarily targeted at laptop users, then it would be a sure-fire winner.

Almost genius, but not quite.

Phone-hack backlash BBC in embarrassing headline gaffes

Re: Guten Tag

Good work!

A common mistake.

Although not one that is acceptable from such a high and mighty organisation as the BBC, this is a very common mistake. Last night I was reading through some technical articles on OpenBSD network security, written by an obviously intelligent person, which was littered with the exact same gotcha. If people only read their work back to themselves in a proof reading exercise, this would be easily caught.

Awaits grammar check report from fellow commentards.

Google+ disk space cockup creates notification spam-storm

Refreshingly honest.

Admitting that they should have been prepared for it, but weren't?

I like the honesty.

Could still be a bit of hype generation.

Tablet fever cools as e-readers heat up

Tablets are the way forward.

Asus Eee Transformer here. Great piece of kit and getting better as I get more familiar with it. The struggle is keeping it away from 'er indoors.

BT cheerfully admits snooping on customer LANs

Trust nobody

Same as others have said, additional firewall in the mix. Virgin AmazingHub -> OpenBSD pf firewall -> WAP -> IPSec.

Job's a good 'un.

Planet with British weather found 20 light years away

Brilliant!

> Cold, rainy, inhabitants likely to be hostile

> The atmosphere is, in common with our own Middlesbrough, toxic.

Lester, I salute you. Supoib!

Reg ed rattles the Red-Headed League

It's serious stuff.

Look at the grief Neil Lennon's getting up in Scotland for being a ginger. Poor bugger's had it all his life, but he won't dye it, no sirreee.....

Anonymous hacktivists: We've got Stuxnet code

Careful now kiddies.

Depending on your view, Anonymous can be either admirable for standing up for the public against tyranny or a bunch of jumped up skiddies. Most of the time I do think fair play, go after some of the untouchable big boys, by all means.

However, now they are starting to make themselves sound like a terrorist organisation, laying down subtle threats with a big helping of posturing. Any credibility they may have been building in some sectors will soon evaporate and they'll have no public support whatsoever.

Pipe down children and just go after the big boys as and when they take away your sweeties, or those of your friends. Don't go for the posturing when there really is no need.

Nominet asks what you think of police domain grab

ebay?

"Nominet is asking for feedback on proposals from the police which would allow them to "switch off" websites used by criminals."

Will they shut down eBay then?

How about The News of the World? The entire gov.uk fleet of web sites?

Superphones: A security nightmare waiting to happen

Sensationalist drivel with no sensation

That's all. Can I have the time back that I spent reading that article? Please?

Microsoft issues temp fix for serious Windows security bug

Potential fixes?

[quote]The security team is working with website operators, including Google, to explore possible server-side fixes as well. Potential fixes include filtering newline characters out of requests and responses, prepending newline characters onto HTTP responses, and altering the status code of HTTP responses.[/quote]

So, in essence, part of M$'s thinking for a fix to THEIR problem, is that the rest of the world and its web serving standards need to be tweaked?

Just fix your problem yourself Redmond and stop expecting the rest of the world to accomodate you.

As others have said, switch away from IE to get away from this vuln. Better still, switch to an alternative OS and vendor altogether.

Three cops spanking in mobile user ranking

Three

I have to echo the first post here. I was with three for a few years and left them because they were robbing me blind on internet usage, had awful coverage around where I live and when I tried talking to them in their off-shore call centre, neither of us could understand a word the other was saying even in my best 'phone voice'.

They offered me the world to stay, but by then I was jarred right off with them and switched to O2, taking my number with me. I haven't looked back. O2 haven't been anything special, but I've not need them to be. But they have provided me with the service I signed up for, with consistency and haven't given me any cause for complaint. That's all I've ever asked, but Three and before them, Orange just weren't up to the job.

Joke alert icon, as it may alert others to the joke that is Three customer service.

Adobe (finally) adds security sandbox to Reader

chroot

That's all.

New owner slips into unwitting BoJo's domain

@litheringeejit

Great idea. I'd suggest any of the folowing:

.lie(s)

.fib(s)

.nob

.tit

.arse

.ripoffhtepeoplewearemeanttoserve

Steve Jobs no longer Eggman as Beatles hits iTunes

Rip off

£10.99 for an old album? You're having a right merry chuckle aren't you Lord Jobs?

And the box set at £125 or $149? Hang on, what exchange rate is that based on? Oh yeah, I forget this is rip-off Britain, isn't it? The Beatles started off in Britain, yet we Brits have to pay well over the odds? What are we paying, export duty to the states and then import duty back into the UK?

Makes my urine boil it does! >:(

MS offers Security Essentials to small business

@harryhedgehog

Agree with harryhedgehog 100%. I work with M$ products, but use Linux or OpenBSD by choice.

I'm fairly anti-M$ to be fair, but I must say that MSE is probably the best antivirus software I've used. I swore by Avast for around 5-6 years and peddled it to all and sundry. Nowadays I just get MSE on there and leave them to it.

Very unobtrusive, haven't come across a false positive as yet and doesn't seem to degrade performance by hogging resources. Amazingly, it's all good.

I feel dirty now.

Fake IBM playboy pleads guilty

Confirmation required

Can El Reg please confirm the day rate, as I'm waiting to tell my boss where to stick the job so I can go and shovel shit for good money.

US energy-weapon project going well

Wot no boffins?

Not one mention of the words boffins or boffinry?

Refreshing, but what have you done to the real Lewis Page?

Microsoft: 'Prepare for 15 billion more clients'

So does that mean.....

.....that in the future my washing machine will suffer the dreaded blue rinse of death and/or be susceptible to blocked overflow attacks?

Got me coat...

Microsoft's Linux patent bingo hits Google's Android

When will it end?

I am utterly sick to the teeth of M$'s corporate bullying. Money comes to money and all that. All they do is stifle innovation to boost their coffers and levels of control. I have to use and support M$ crapware for a living. If it weren't for that, I would never use their software or anything they produce. Yet even as a non-M$ customer, I would still indirectly be helping to finance them? How is this right?

It is nothing short of recketeering, which I was sure was thoroughly illegal. Maybe not?

Protection money. Pay us a premium or we'll make sure you never trade again.

Wish there was a general evil M$ icon for this. Bill Gates isn't the devil, it's the company he (partly) started and then lost control of. Little wonder he wanted to walk away.

MS patent looks just like Unix command, critics howl

FFS

And Microsoft wonder why people detest their business practices? No, wait, they don't wonder, they know and don't give a dam as they are always able to throw enough money at the decision makers to get their own way.

Utter, utter bastards!

They steal from OSS constantly, then try to cripple OSS with the patent system. Money comes to money, like flies around shit.

Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

No problems here.

I did an upgrade from 9.04 on my Acer Extensa 5620 and it has been great. No problems whatsoever.

While the upgrade was going on, I was running XP in a VM to sort out somebody's XP over remote assistance. Got their's done about 10 minutes before the upgrade finished, finished the upgrade and after rebooting, the only thing I had to do was let VMWare recompile its modules. I've since enabled Compiz for a bit of eye candy and it is STILL all good.

Surely the vast majority of upgraders are without problem and those with problems are in the minority? Sounds more like FUD to me.

Gmail users howl over Halloween outage

Choose another gMail?

"I'll definitely have to reconsider my selection of gmail for my primary email account." ~ Jason Reed

Way to go, really stick it to Google by going to their free email rival Gmail.

Or does he mean that he'll close his existing account and set up another with them, to avoid future outages?

Sounds just like somebody who once asked me if I could "install the internet" into their computer.

Fecking numpty! Did make me laugh though. Can we set the BOFH onto him. He deserves it.