Posts by mhenriday

Microsoft issues temp fix for serious Windows security bug

But, dear «amanfromMars 1»,

I did not claim or anywhere imply that these Internet Explorer vulnerabilites would not become generally known ; I merely stated that Microsoft's attitude toward them seemed to resemble that of the Bishop's wife. Please do reread my post !...

I must admit that I'm not entirely certain what the first period in your third paragraph, «How much simple to do want World Peace to be ?», which seems to be lacking a grammatical subject, is supposed to mean, so I shall refrain from further comment....

Henri

With regard to IE vulnerabilities,

Microsoft's attitude has always seemed to be that of the wife of the then Bishop of Birmingham, who when informed of Darwin's theory of human descent, is reported to have told her husband :«My dear, let us hope it is not true, but if it is true. let us hope that it does not become generally known»....

Henri

Sci/tech doctorate protects you from unemployment – in the US

According to a recent Bureau of Labo[u]r Statistics

press release, the US unemployment rate in December 2010 was 9.4 %. Taking into account that people who have given up looking for work as they find the situation hopeless are not included in this figure, the real rate of unemployed is likely to be much higher, and it would be surprising if tech doctors were not affected by the general economic malaise in that country. What will prove interesting to follow is how many of these holders of scientific or technical doctorates will migrate to places like China, where their capabilities can be employed, just as very large numbers of Soviet scientists and engineers migrated to North America and Western Europe with the collapse of the Soviet Union....

Henri

World's first space met office goes live

I really appreciated that press release available on the CISM web site :

«First Large-Scale, Physics-Based Space Weather Model Transitions Into Operation». Presumably «physics-based» as opposed to the faith-based space weather model they were running earlier....

Henri

With net unplugged, Egypt cracks down on journos

The cynic in me

couldn't help but be amused when listening to radio broadcasts of Ms Clinton trying to cut it both ways with regard to events in Egypt the other night - but not to worry, behind the scenes the US is pitching for some nice general or other «reliable» person to restore «order and stability» in that great «ally». The small portion of me not yet lost to cynicism feels for the Egyptian people - and the rest of the people in North Africa - who are likely to get the royal - or should that be «presidential» ? - screw over once again. Hope I'm wrong !...

Henri

Finnish regulator calls for iPhone refunds

Three cheers for the Finnish Consumer Agency !

Would only that its counterpart here in Sweden would have the courage to do the same ! But alas, our authorities, unlike the Finns, are well-behaved, fully house-broken poodles to US corporations, as demonstrated in the farcicial Pirate Bay trials....

Henri

Hobbit helmsman Jackson hit by $190K credit card scam

Not only should the card be kept in one's pocketses,

it should be kept on a golden chain....

A need seems to exist for a gollum icon - extraterrestials don't really cut it....

Henri

Google's Schmidt perplexed by Facebook blather, still fears MS

With Google's worldwide search-engine market share

at over 89 % (http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww-daily-20080801-20110131) and both Bing and Yahoo struggling along at about 4 % each, Facebook's «pretty cosy relationship with Microsoft's Bing» doesn't seem to be having a pronounced effect on the search-engine business. Perhaps Mr Schmidt is correct ?...

Henri

Assange relishes US banks 'squirming' over 'megaleak'

Pointing the finger is all very well, Simon 11,

but how much have you - and others who complain about WikiLeaks - contributed to the Bradley Manning defence fund ? Have you signed the petition (http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/bradleymanning) to stop the inhumane treatment to which Mr Manning is being subjected at the tender hands of those defenders of democracy, freedom of information, etc, etc, the US military ?...

Henri

Opera fixes critical form-handling flaw

For some strange reason,

the earlier version of Opera disappeared from the list of installed applications, the top panel, and the list of programmes in Synaptic on my 64-bit Ubuntu 10.10 setup after the new version was released. Is this an example of what Einstein referred to as «spukhafte Fernwirkung» ? In any event, I downloaded and installed the new version, and so far everything is working well, but I'm keeping a lookout for ghosts....

Henri

Hackers sell access to hacked .mil and .gov sites

Ah, the joys of

free enterprise ! Shades of Ayn Rand !...

Henri

Intel's biggest ever buy is going ahead

My question is -

if Intel bundles McAfee's «security ware» with its chips, does this mean that Intel chips will be platform dependent, with one set of chips for MS, one for Linux distros, one for Mac, etc ? Artifex emptor ?...

Henri

UK cops arrest five in Anonymous attacks probe

Warned those chaps - start by posting to the Reg

as an «Anonymous Coward» and it's all downhill from there. But listen to the voice of age and wisdom, nay that they flatly refused to do !...

Henri

Sat-spotters find secret payload launched by giant US rocket

Why not just connect this spy telescope directly

to WikiLeaks, so that we don't have to take a detour over the deathless prose of US State Department employees and that country's military ?...

Henri

Utah to honour Browning M1911 semi-automatic

One can't but wonder if the charming legislators of the sovereign state of Utah

are not concerned about being one-upped by their neighbours to the southeast in New Mexico, where the first nuclear device was tested. But nuclear weapons, of course, do not kill people ; its the people who launch them - and the ones who order them to be launched - who do. Just ask the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki....

Henri

NYT casts Assange as 'arrogant' (with a little 'Peter Pan')

Bill Keller of the New York Times

pointing the finger at others for «arrogance» ? O the irony !...

Henri

Mozilla reaches for almost perfect 10 with latest Firefox 4 beta

An equivalent to Adblock Plus

is indeed available in Chrome/Chromium ; look for AdBlock in the list of Chrome/Chromium extensions. You might also want to install the Browser Button for AdBlock, which is a separate extension....

I, too, am retaining FF 3.6 (3.6.14pre) as my default browser for the time being, but in the event we get an update to Delicious Bookmarks which works with either FF 4.0 or Chrome/Chromium, I'm going to change, as these browsers are so much faster and slicker than good old 3.6....

Henri

Man knows when you're signed in to GMail, Twitter, Digg

«Perhaps http://oppressive-regime.example.org/ ...»

Is there any other kind ? Not, at least, if we don't devote significant efforts to keeping our own respective regimes honest, without allowing ourselves to be distracted by their continually pointing of the finger at the other chap....

Henri

China plans city 'twice the size of Wales'

«... the inexorable rise of China

has rendered meaningless ancient units of area such as the square mile». Mr Haines seems to have somehow failed to notice that the period he truncates reads in the orginal as follows : «The "Turn The Pearl River Delta Into One" scheme will create a 16,000 sq mile urban area that is 26 times larger geographically than Greater London, or twice the size of Wales.» 16000 square miles is the equivalent of 41440 square kilometres, which is probably the unit used by the Chinese. I leave the question of what it would be in Planck unit derivatives to Mr Haines' fertile (?) imagination....

Henri

Italy sues Microsoft for box-bundling bungling

I hold no brief for the European Commission,

but I think its Directorate General for Competition did an excellent job with the browser-choice window and I'd very much like to see a similar device made mandatory for operating systems on computers sold to the general public. Retailers could be required to offer purchasers a choice of, say, five different operating systems, and to install the OS chosen as part of the purchase price of the computer, while users desiring a multiple boot could be charged extra fees for the installation of extra OSs. By thus separating the choice of software from the choice of hardware, even ordinary users would hopefully benefit from a certain degree of competition, not least with regard to price, in the event that, for example, Microsoft did not choose to subsidise the installation of its product. If what holds for competiton in other arenas holds true for operating systems as well, such a rule should, moreover, promote the development of better, quicker, less bloated operating systems, to the benefit of all users, no matter which OS they happen to choose, as real competition has demonstrably done in the browser field....

Henri

US Wikileaks investigators can't link Assange to Manning

«He [Bradley Manning] is also charged, according to military spokesmen,

with "communicating, transmitting and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source [sic ! ; the military seems confused here about the distinction between a source and a recipient of information]"; "disclosing classified information concerning the national defense with reason to believe that the information could cause injury to the United States" ...» To substantiate these charges, wouldn't it be necessary to demonstrate to whom Mr Manning allegedly «communicated, transmitted, and «delivered» - and «disclosed» said information ? If not to WikiLeaks, a connexion which, according to the reports to which Mr Page refers, «investigators are unable to prove», then to whom ? It may be possible - what evidence the prosecutors have at hand we are not told - to demonstrate or at least make plausible that Mr Manning «exceed[ed] authorized computer access to obtain classified information» and «transfer[red] classified information onto a personal computer and [added] unauthorised software to a classified computer system», but these are surely less serious charges than that of passing the information to other parties ? Under these circumstances, it appears that the sole reason for holding Mr Manning under so harsh a regime is, indeed, to harm his mental condition to the degree that he can be coerced into following the script written by the prosecution and pointing the finger at Mr Assange and/or WikiLeaks or whatever bête noire the US government holds current....

Henri

Lawyer wants WikiLeaker kept off suicide watch

«... one has to wonder if he's not blowing his own horn for a bit of publicity....»

To the degree, Mr Bryant, that the old adage «it takes one to know one» contains an element of truth, you, with your ten postings to this thread alone, should indeed be an expert on the practice of tooting one's own horn....

Cheers !

Henri

Good on you,

Ubuntu Is a Better Slide Rule ! Another thing you might want to consider doing is signing the Firedoglake.com petition to stop the inhumane treatment of Mr Manning (http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/bradleymanning)....

Henri

As a retired senior consultant in forensic psychiatry,

let me agree here with the many commentators above who have noted that the regime under which Mr Manning has been forced to live these last six month is rather designed to promote suicidal ideation than prevent it - although it is probably the case that if he did attempt to physically harm himself, he would be stopped, as it would seem that the US Government and the US military do wish to bring him to trial, but first after the treatment to which he is subject has accomplished the objective of thoroughly breaking him. This latter objective would also seem to explain why Mr Manning has not yet been brought to trial ; whatever evidence that can be gathered to support the charge against him is surely already in the prosecution's hands, but a trial,as in the case of José Padilla, will have to wait until the defendent's mental state has deteriorated sufficiently so that it can be scripted according to the needs of the prosecuters . This, in the country and under the regime that presumes to lecture other states concerning «human rights» !...

Henri

That's Schmidt: So long to the Google chief who wasn't

Interesting idea and certainly great for consumers -

but alas, it's not the latter who control the oligopolistic carrier market. The Google leadership, however it is constituted, is certainly going to keep in mind what happened the last time they had the temerity to challenge the power of carriers in the United States over their user's telephones (Nexus One). Can you imagine how these carriers would react if Google started competing with them not merely in how mobile phones are chosen, but in the actual carrier business itself ?All search directed through poor Bing (struggling along at around 7 % of the US market - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/oops-no-copied-java-code-or-weapons-of-mass-destruction-found-in-android/2162 - barely visible worldwide at 5 %) and one's phone bricked if one dares to use another search engine ? But I certainly do hope that somebody (it won't be the FCC, that's for sure) comes up with a way to break - or at least diminish - the carriers' power....

Henri

Pirates: Good for Microsoft, great for open sourcers

The classic article for how Microsoft encourages and benefits from so-called «piracy»

is this one (http://autotelic.com/windows_is_free), which deals with the matter in great deal (note that today's open-source software has made great strides since 2007, when this article was first published). The latest development in this soap opera was the promise given by the Chinese side during Hu Jintao's state visit to Washington that the Chinese government would make sure that only licensed copies of software would be used in government offices. Why not instead go over to open source and save thousands of millions in licensing costs ? My guess is that this is the result of a political calculation : given the political clout the US software industry has with that country's government, it's worth paying the extra money to keep that industry on one's side. Money, as we know, buys influence....

Henri

Google swaps old CEO Schmidt for older CEO Page

For my part, DZ-Jay,

I find a situation in which carriers «subsidise» the purchase of locked-in phones - and attempt to brick the instrument if one opens it - and more than recoup the costs of the subsidy by obliging the user to subscribe to their over-priced services for a lengthy period before taking his or her custom elsewhere and beginning the process again, greatly to the disadvantage of users. For us, a more transparent state of affairs in which the phone purchaser paid the full cost of the instrument and then subscribed to the carrier offering the best service at the least cost in his or her area would be far preferable. This, as I understand, is the change Google attempted to effect with the Nexus One, and I find it deeply unfortunate that it did not succeed as planned. Hubris ? I think not, as Google, as mentioned previously, was wise enough to draw the necessary conclusions in time and withdraw its forces. While the attempt to re-order the mobile phone market did fail, the company certainly has not. Hubris is not a question of never making a decision that proves unwise ; rather it describes ae situation in which one is so enamoured of one's own decisions that one becomes unable to change one's course. Oidipous' determination to get to the bottom of the riddle of his birth is one example ; the US government's invasion of Iraq another. As a business decision, the Nexus-One affair was long from this class....

Henri

«Google also mis-calculated

the resentment it would stir among telcos when it decided to sell its own Google phone, the Android-based Nexus One.» What a pity that Google's attempt to break the oligopolistic control that carriers exercise over our choice of mobile phones did not succeed ! If the decision to try to market the Nexus One outside carrier channels was indeed Mr Schmidt's, than he is rather to be congratulated for his strategic vision. Yes, the attempt failed - but Google was wise enough to draw the necessary conclusions in time and withdraw its forces (until next time ?). Sales of Android-based devices would seem to indicate that no significant damage to the firm has resulted. I hope that this event will not dissuade the Google leadership from strategic moves in the future !...

Henri

FAA to pilots: Expect 'unreliable or unavailable' GPS signals

Just as long as you keep it random,

Sarah - shall we say one of ten ?...

My best to Mr O !...

Henri

Yet another demonstration

of why Europe and ESA were wise to go for Galileo, i e, a satnav system not under the control of the US military. Posted a comment to this effect on another thread dealing with Galileo a few days ago, but as I made the mistake of also responding to a posting which contained a not entirely favourable reference to a certain Reg contributor, my comment, along with that of two others, was removed by the censors who maintain discipline on the Reg fora. Hope they will find the present posting so innocuous that it is allowed to pass !...

Henri

Brazilian cult condemns USB

I'm taking mine out

immediately ! Coniunctio interrupta !...

Henri

NASA 'naut falls off bike, misses shuttle launch

«... he will not be able to support the launch window next month.»

Where does NASA find those geniuses who write their press releases ?...

Henri

AMD to Intel: 'Thanks for the marketing boost'

Sandy Bridge vs Llano ?

Can't wait to see the tests - but perhaps both Intel and AMD would be advised to keep at least half an eye on the ARM boys while they're wrestling with each other. In any event, as a consumer, it's nice to have a choice !...

Henri

Google's revenue machine stays unstoppable in Q4

Given that

«[r]evenue from outside the US was 52 per cent of revenue, with the UK accounting for 10 percent, or $878m», perhaps it would be wise for Google, rather than playing musical chairs with Messrs Schmidt, Page, and Brin as players, to consider internationalising its top leadership, including the layer immediately under the Big Three, which AFAIK (I may be wrong and if so, request correction) seems to be entirely dominated by persons from the USA. Perhaps a widening of the base for recruiting this leadership would make the latter a tad more cautious in, e g, participating in political campaigns orchestrated by the US State Department....

Henri

WikiLeaks accused of tapping P2P for secret docs

Wow, think how glad organisations like the RIAA and the MPAA

will be to learn that P2P is responsible not merely for music- and film downloads, but also leaks to Wikileaks ! But of course, this is not to suggest that they have anything at all to do with Tiversa or the fact that this fanciful tale is receiving widespread publicity. Pecuniam sequitur !...

Henri

WikiLeaky phone scam targets unwary in US

«... the US Pentagon openly banned military personnel

from visiting Wikileaks for security reasons» ? Security reasons ? Does this refer, perhaps, to a fear in the higher echelons that military personnel might view what their superiors tell them with a certain amount of skepsis after reading the material ? More power to that !...

Henri

Europe bites Hungary over media and internet censorship

«... if Hungary does not change the law[,]

'it will be very difficult to talk to China or Iran about human rights'.» Not to worry ! We Europeans, like our frères in North America are masters of hypocrisy - always ready to point out the mote in our neighbour's eye, while ignoring the beam in our own. We shall continue to lecture the rest of the world regarding lack of human rights, while engaging in wars of aggression abroad and killing millions....

Henri

Ubuntu - yes, Ubuntu - poised for mobile melee

Interesting article - Ubuntu on mobile devices

does look as if it could become a top contender (even if I find Matt Asay's predictions on the death of the PC rather premature). I've been using Ubuntu on both stationary boxes and laptops for years (ever since Edgy) and find it more reliable and user-friendly than its legacy counterpart, besides making much smaller demands on the hardware. But in one respect Mr Asay's article was a disappointment ; he writes that «Because much of Canonical's client operating system business is in developing markets like China. (You know, that little country near Japan?)» but gives no figures for Ubuntu use in China and provides no links. When I check what StatCounter has to say on the matter (http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-CN-daily-20080701-20110118), Linux distros are so poorly represented that they all are lumped together in the category «Other», with a market share of less than 1 % - while Windows dominates totally, with good-old (?) XP still enjoying a market share of over 84 %. Are StatCounter's statistics invalid when it comes to China, which most of us regard as Microsoftland ? Does Matt Asay know something the rest of us don't ?...

Henri

Symantec launches scale-out NAS using Chinese hardware

Why the pronounced emphasis on the fact that

the hardware happens to be made in China by a Chinese firm ? Would Chris Mellor/the Reg have written/published this article in the same manner if the hardware manufacturer had been from, say, the US or the UK ? Or are we to presume that hardware produced in these latter countries is, ipso facto, somehow safer than that produced in China ?...

Henri

Mozilla slings out 9th beta for Firefox 4

The Minefield 4.10 nightly build works fine for me on Ubuntu 10.10 ;

it's smooth and fast and generally speaking, in the same league as Chrome/Chromium and Opera. Indeed, if the Delicious Bookmarks add-on worked on it, I'd make it my default rather than the FF 3.6.14 build I'm running now. Alas, Delicious seems to be in some sort of limbo, so who know if we're going to get the update needed to make it run with FF 4.0 ?...

Henri

WikiLeaks gets Swiss bank info

One can only hope that Wikileaks

both obtains and publicises more information on the devious means by which the rich protect their incomes and their fortunes from the taxes to which we plebians are subject. And if, in the event, they also obtain and publish information on just how much money such figures as the Reg's Andrew Orlowski have contributed to the Bradley Manning defense fund (http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/858/1/), that would be a plus - perhaps the sanctimonious Mr Orlowski has matched Wikileak's contribution ? (Of course, contributing to the fund may in certain venues leave one vulnerable to the charge of «supporting terrorism», but given the interest Mr Orlowski seems to have in Wikileaks' financial activities, he certainly won't mind if others take an interest in his....

Henri

Chinese crack down on 'money-sucker' Androids

But isn't entrepreneurship

something that now is taught in school ? And aren't startups with smart business ideas to be applauded ?...

Henri

US air force has new scramjet hypersonic plane plans

Can't help wondering

why a Chinese J-20 represents the end of the world, while «the Reg hyperplane desk ... applaud the new [US] HSRFRV plan». Surely «lovers of spiffy hyperplanes» would applaud development no matter where it takes place - or is it the fact that unlike China, the United States has continually been engaged in foreign wars of aggression, leading to the premature deaths of millions of people, these last 30 years, which makes the latter's plans so titillating ? Is a Glock 19 with a 30-round magazine also part of the kit for those posted to the Reg hyperplan desk ?...

Henri

Sarko to use G8 presidency to promote net regulation

With friends like M Sarkozy,

internet freedom hardly needs enemies....

Henri

ESA hits scientists with hefty Planck

Kudos to ESA for this achievement !

Imagine what mankind could accomplish if the major part of the resources we devoted to scientific and engineering research went to projects like the Plank observatory, the Hubble telescope, the LHC, etc, etc, rather than to F-22s, F-35s or, for that matter, J-20s or Su-35s or PAK FA/T-50s ! Alas, while our urge to penetrate the mysteries of out universe is strong, our urge to penetrate and destroy each other seems even stronger....

Henri

China's 'stealth fighter' flies – brown trouser time, or not?

I don't if it's brown-trouser time or no,

but I'm pretty sure where Mr Page has his nose. To whom does the «we»/«our» he constantly uses refer - Reg readers ? If so, he needs to be reminded that we are not all cheer leaders for the Evil Empire. One good thing about the article, however ; Mr Page makes explicit what he means by the geographically anomalous term «West» - «the US and its allies» (a better term, IMHO, would be «satrapies» rather than «allies», but that's another matter)....

Henri

Apple refuses frozen iPhone repair

How does Apple get away with treating its customers

with such incredible arrogance - must one have documented masochistic tendencies to be eligible to purchase one of the firm's products ? A certificate in triplicate from one's psychiatrist ?...

Henri

Assange bailed again

Mr Assange, for all his foibles,

has performed and is performing work of great consequence for all of us who are interested in a bit more transparency concerning what transpires at the highest levels of government and in the military. I have read the alleged police-report leaks the Guardian choose to publish regarding the charges lodged against him by the Swedish authorities and I have also noted that these charges were dismissed by Stockholm District (the venue in which the alleged «crimes» took place) Chief Prosecutor Eva Finne, but that the case was reassigned to - guess whom ! - a Chief Prosecutor in an entirely different district (Göteborg), Marianne Ny, whose chief (pardon the pun) claim to fame is her position of Deputy Director at the Prosecution Development Centre, which deals with so-called methological development with respect to crimes of violence and sexual crime and who has for many years been closely allied with the attorney who appealed Finne's decision to throw the case out, Claes Borgström. The conclusion I draw is the same as that drawn by Chief Prosecutor Finne, i e, that none of the incidents described in the police reports suffice to serve as the basis of charges of rape or sexual coercion against Mr Assange and that the case should have been dismissed on its merits. Were it not for the fact that Mr Assange and the organisation he leads have managed to make implacable enemies in certain powerful circles, Finne's dismissal of the case would have been the end of the matter. That, however, was not to be, and while awaiting the dénouement, we spend our time discussing Mr Assange's possible guilt, rather than turning our attention to the essential matter, i e, the efforts on the part of various governments - among them those that love to talk about «freedom of information» and a «free internet» - to further assert their control over what gets published on there. Nice feint there, Ms Clinton et al !...

Henri

Tech giants score record patent stash

Lars, you might find this Ubuntu-forum thread

(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=700670) helpful....

Henri

I've been considering

patenting a system for propelling a human body through water by rotation of the arms at the shoulder and beating the legs up and down (don't any of you dare to steal this idea, now that in my Reg enthusiasm I've inadvertently disclosed it !) As far as I've been able to see via a cursory examination, no such patents are outstanding ; as for «prior art», to me the term merely evokes visions of Leonardo and Rembrandt....

Henri