Posts by alain williams 2848 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007
This is why I will put RHEL/CentOS on a machine: I configure it and, by & large, it just keeps going. I do not want to play with the config or tweak programs just to keep it going. I don't mind that when I do a major upgrade when, a decade later, it is end-of-lifed. I will be upgrading my CentOS 6 servers to CentOS 8 in a few months time - then leave them (almost) alone for years.
I can see that some might want this, but keep this away from systemd - it is already too large which: brings in bugs and dependencies.
The dependencies combined with the manic determination to prevent systemd working on any Unix than Linux is making it hard to do some things on, eg, BSD. Maybe this is what RedHat wants.
So should we also ban kit from other vendors where there have been allegations (true or otherwise) of back-doors ?
The ONLY way round this is to use open source firmware in all of your routers - that you install yourself. This is not a guarantee of no back-doors but it makes placing them much harder. Yes: the hardware might be compromised, but this is more difficult.
Unless you write all your own software, you are hostage to someone else?If you use an Open Source solution and the authors interests wander elsewhere, ...
There is an easy solution to that : pay the Open Source authors to provide solutions that meet your needs and then continue to pay them for maintenance.
Oh, you say "that will be very expensive", true but:
1) what is the cost of paying a closed source provider for decades ? Once OSS does what you want the development costs will drop to a lower maintenance level.
2) the costs will still be large, but we are talking about governments/similar here, they are paying huge amounts to Microsoft, etc, already.
3) the costs are still large - so why not notice that there is a large amount of overlap in the requirements of governments in different countries. How about working together ? This will really bring costs down - the hard bit will be getting this idea into the heads of politicians who will be being bribed by the proprietary system vendors who do not want the geese to die.
4) put some of your own staff onto the the projects that interest you. That keeps some of the cash that you pay in your country rather than send it to the USA, it also increases the number of skilled people in your country.
5) smaller businesses in your country will benefit from the filter down and not have to send so much of their income to the West coast of the USA.
Summary: it should be a complete no brainer to have governments support OSS; however it is unlikely to happen.
Seriously, where does anyone imagine this idiot is going to get $9m from?
I know nothing about his personal circumstances, but I agree: I doubt that he has anything like $9m.
But the result will be to clean him out, ensure that he has nothing left as a result of all the crookery that he knowingly did causing misery to others. What this will do is to send a message to others who might be tempted by easy money and follow in his footsteps.
His arrogantness, though, totally turned me off from anything I did agree with.
This is unfortunate, but happens a lot.
Just because you disagree with some of someone's opinions, or dislike their demeanor, does not mean that you should consign all of their opinions to the bin - especially someone as complex and who covers a lot of ground as does Stallman.
A balanced view does take more effort as you need to examine arguments carefully, so many do not do so. It can also open you to criticism by those who do not put in the effort and just see the way that the wind is blowing "Oh, many say that XXX is now bad - I shall do so as well", then "Why are you not vilifying everything about XXX ? You must be racist/misogynist/... so I will vilify you as well".
If you do not have the time to put in the effort to properly understand then you should say "no comment", however this can also result in you being adversely labelled; so, understandably, many will go where the wind blows.
That is how these things snowball - sometimes it is justified, but not always.
This are illegal under UK laws dealing with unsolicited goods and so the domain names may ''be treated as an unconditional gift''.
So: if you get a bill, tell 123-reg/names-co that you do not want it, that you will not pay it and that any attempt to collect money via direct debit will be fraud. It they take money: demand that the bank return it. For good measure you could tell the scammy registrar that if you need to recover the money that you will charge £100/hour for your time, with a minimum of 1 hour.
They tried the scam to make money so hit them where it hurts by extracting even more money from them.
Since it is fraud: why not also report it to the police.
Almost 40 years ago I ported applications onto at least 3 completely different sorts of hardware before I considered them ready to release. It was not hard, I just had to be aware of what lint and the C compiler told me. That was UNIX, pretty much the same under Linux these days - although the range of widespread different forms of hardware is less.
So: why, all these years later, is this a big thing in the Microsoft world ? Are they still trying to catch up ?
Eg: your ISP, your 'phone company, your travel card company (eg London's Oyster), your email provider, ...
These all have an insight into what you do and see where you go. The email provider is one of the most dangerous as it can also scan what you/your-mates are saying.
And 'no': these should be forbidden from getting your 'agreement' by adding something to their T&Cs (that few read and fewer can understand).
If UK plods can no longer get to know about criminals of interest who are located in the EU, then EU plods will no longer get to know about crims who are located in the UK. So: surely everyone loses out -- except the crims; doing a 'job' and jumping across the channel will become the thing to do.
Is this not called cutting off your nose to spite your face ?
We may* be leaving the the EU, we are not leaving the planet. Cooperation will still be to mutual benefit.
* 'may' might well end up 'will not' - who knows ?
that is nothing like long enough, especially when the clock starts ticking when the model is first released, not when the last handset is sold.
Updates should be mandatory for 6 years after the last one is sold retail.
For my next 'phone I'm looking at the cosmo communicator that will run Debian. Secure, no spy-ware and software supported forever.
rather than opt out ? For all sorts of reasons setting the opt-out variable will get lost and, potentially, private information slurped. Even if you switch it off does it stop, does it only blab stuff that MS claims ?
Mind you: if you are using a MS system you are getting slurped anyway, but powershell is available on Linux - maybe the NSA wants another way of snooping on Linux boxes and MS has obliged.
when he tries to negotiate a trade deal with the USA after a no-deal Brexit ... the more weaknesses that the USA is seen to have then better for the UK.
He'll still have to agree to us having chlorinated chicken, most people will just eat it if it is 1p/pound cheaper. I'm worried about things like the NHS ...
All students must pass a specific class on Office in order to graduate.
How much does MS pay you to be an arm of their marketing department ? This is the sort of thing that keeps MS where it is.
I could understand a module showing proficiency in a word-processor/office system (eg allowing use of LO) but one specific implementation - this is almost criminal, should be illegal under anti trust laws!
Every time LO fixes an incompatibility with the latest version of MS Office files
and the faster that MS can push out new versions the faster that it can make people think that LO is crap because it is ''incompatible with the real thing'' - subscriptions are another way of achieving this.
They are muppets if they do so, unfortunately this is all too common.
The problem with bringing in Javascript from all over the place is that it makes the web page fail if the visitor is running a Javascript blocker, as we do in increasing numbers to stop 3rd party adverts and privacy intrusion from things like google-analytics.
If you want to use jQuery then dish it up from your own server, it is smaller than the corporate logo that you have on every page.
when it was just us techies who went there.
Then the email spammers arrived, irritating but we could cope with that and invented things like SpamAssassin.
Then the morons arrived, but that was not a problem: we did not bother to look a pictures of cats or of what they had for breakfast; it did hurt some people when they promoted stupidity, but we looked at the evidence and vaccinated our own kids.
Then the crooks arrived. It did not affect most of us as we knew to not open dodgy emails, but we had to clear up messes when the air heads in marketing and finance did so.
Then the politicians arrived and decided to make war with each other using the nice space that we had created. Not content with buggering up the real world they are now intent on spreading their deceptions, hate and vendettas all over what should have been something to the benefit of mankind.
How do we get these people to fuck off and play their stupid, harmful games where it does not matter ?
be that a formal war or guerilla warfare.
It would make organisations take security seriously. Currently they can pay lip service knowing that insurance will pick up the tab. This can be thought cheaper than doing a proper job.
It should also lead to choosing business platforms that are less prone to such attacks (I'm looking at you Microsoft) and better staff training.
Also: in many cases the real people affected are not compensated: if a customer's data is exfiltrated and sold to the highest bidder it can hurt. Most customers suffer little ill effect, some are hit hard - it is difficult to tie one person's woes back to a particular organisation's cyber attack.
If it is not found to be an act of war: then expect more insurance companies to add this sort of thing to the list of exclusion clauses.
That is how most insurance companies work.
Many years ago I spent some time at a large UK insurance outfit [think: nodding dog]. They had 2 floors where people earned commission: sales, well that I expected; claims - as understood it part of their commission was on how much less they could persuade claimants to accept as settlement, these people where experts up against insurance novices (like you & me) and convinced large numbers to agree less than they rightfully should have had.
so Qualcomm could still win, long term, in spite of the fine. Somewhat like the €497 million that it fined Microsoft a few years back.
Part of the problem is the time taken by the investigation - far too long.
Reading the link that you provide, the last paragraph of the first section contains:
parts of the Patriot Act expired on June 1, 2015.[9] With passing the USA Freedom Act on June 2, 2015, the expired parts were restored and renewed through 2019
So: it is still very much in force.
I wonder how many of the commentards who bash the US would feel if they lived under the same laws and repressive politics that exist in China today.
China does not have a good reputation about human rights, etc. However please do not try to use that as a reason for accepting that the USA is behaving badly towards Huawei. The two are not flip sides of the same coin.
* Companies in all countries are subject to national laws that compel them to obey their spooks and not admit it. How often this happens we can only guess at. Some times, like Cisco, we hear about it.
* China does have a bad reputation for not respecting copyright, patents, etc. The USA only implemented/ratified the Berne Convention in 1989 - 100 years after it was first accepted.
* The USA is engaging in a trade war with China, Huawei is targeted, partly, to try to preserve USA dominance in telecommunications. The reason that the USA loudly shouts 'national security' is that this is one of the few get outs from World Trade Organisation rules.
As ever in wars: truth is the first casualty.
can be copy-pasted in from any spreadsheet
Copy/paste will not allowed after 1 April 2020: section 4.2.1.1 So: beware this cannot be used for long.
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