Posts by alain williams

If you've bought DRM'd film files from Acetrax, here's the bad news

Defective by design

Do something about it, support the Defective by Design campaign that is doing something about DRM http://www.defectivebydesign.org/rss.xml

You have just missed International Day Against DRM - which was 2 days ago.

Give porno danger classes to Brit kids as young as FIVE - parents

Re: Analogy Time

> understand that religions can be a positive and rewarding part of people's lives, even if we do not partake of it.

They can be positive, but I see a lot of harm coming from religions: wars, one religious sect against another; theft from people, look at some of the USA TV evangelists; psycological damage, I know plenty who have had their minds screwed by religion - and that is not just the more wacky sects like moonies.

I think that on balance the world would be a better place without it -- unless, of course, they can demonstrate some reality in their myths.

Re: Analogy Time

Do religious education classes carry mental health warnings these days ? Are there warnings about recognising and avoiding religious web sites ? If not then they ought to. Far more harm is done to young minds by religion than porn.

And ... don't get me started with the violence in kids' computer games, but that is somehow OK.

Massive EXPLOSION visible to naked eye SEEN ON MOON

St Paddy's day

It was a little green man who lost control when returning home after over indulging on the black stuff!

Brits on benefits: 'Dole office site only works on PCs over 10 YEARS OLD'

Re: I'm confused

Sack them and insist that they can only apply for the dole via the web .... what do you mean you don't have an old browser ... ?

Google Glass will SELF-DESTRUCT if flogged on eBay

How long before they are rooted ?

Once you can do that you can do what you want to it; doesn't matter what google try to do with it.

If you have rooted it (and it talks to non google servers) and google tries to disable it -then surely they are trying to damage your property and could be prosecuted.

WTF is... H.265 aka HEVC?

Re: Ah, another patent encumbered format

But I thought that software patents were not (yet) enforcable in Europe ... so we could write and use codecs for free, it would just be those in the USA (& a few places) who could not.

'Close to one in three - sorry, one in eight - SMEs are software pirates'

I have not paid for software for years ...

I just download it from the Internet. Quick, easy - no bother with extra admin worrying about how much or many licenses.

Isn't Open Source great!

Finance bods probe RBS over bank-crippling IT cock-up

Investigation preview

''It was all the fault of some lowly paid minion, he should be flailed alive and never allowed to work in IT again. The top executives cannot be held to blame in any way at all; they could not know what was happening since they were too busy counting the bonus given to them as a reward for having cut costs by sacking long time experienced staff and instead employing untrained and inexperienced contractors in India.''

Anonymous blitzes Israel in new attack

I have a lot of sympathy for what Anonymous are doing here

I agree that it is illegal and in many ways wrong. However what the state of Israel is doing to the Palestinians is very very wrong: they have ignored UN resolutions with impunity and little international reproach, when Saddam Hussein ignored UN resolutions governments around the world screamed loudly.

The actions of the Israeli government need to be said as what they are: internal oppression against an ethnic minority. When that minority (inevitably) fights back this is taken as an excuse to hit back even harder. If this were happening anywhere else in the world there would be loud condemnation. Why does this not happen here?

A wrong to fix another wrong is not the right way either. I both support and disagree with what Anonymous have done at the same time.

Let us hope that this sparks real debate as to what is happening; however I suspect that it won't.

Before someone accuses me of it: I am not anti semitic. Just because I disagree with some of the actions of the Israeli government does not mean that I hate Jews; just as when I loudly complain about the actions of whoever is currently in power at Westminster does not make me anti British.

'Pong' ported to 29-storey skyscraper 'screen'

Why the musak under the voice ?

Why have jangly musak when the guy is talking ? Do they think that people are such air heads that without it they wil get bored ?

Mars to go offline for a month as vast nuclear furnace gets in the way

We need a relay

In earth orbit but 60 degrees before or behind us. That will let us keep in touch when the sun is in the way.

Facebook prepares to dominate Android

Another reason

to not to buy HTC

GCHQ attempts to downplay amazing plaintext password blunder

Maybe it is part of the selection test

If you complain about the poor security then it helps to show GCHQ that you have some clue and thus worth considering for employment.

I wish, but I suspect that I am wrong.

UK biz ISP Entanet goes titsup, 'broke' a bit of Blighty's internet

Re: Enta outage

I have a router from these people http://www.mikrotik.com/ - handles IPv6 well. A few small bugs but OK. Setting it up takes a bit of work to get right.

GoPro accused of using DMCA to take down product review

GoPro don't respect their customers

I bought one at the start of Nov for my son; available within 7 days. We got the camera, but they said that a couple of extra items would be a few weeks --- not so great since he was going to Madagascar. A few weeks came & went - we were told early Feb. Feb came & went - so I cancelled. I spoke to them on the 'phone and email, they showed little interest.

There was a promised andriod app to control it -- does not work properly. The camera itself crashes.

My son does not recommend them.

Flooding market with cheap antivirus kit isn't going to help ANYONE

I am sorry if I sound like a broken record ...

why not try a system that is secure by design - some version of Unix. OS/X & Linux are the most popular.

The above is a good start, but you need to take security seriously: install OS patches, train users to not be plonkers (good passwords, think about what they do, ...)

Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash

Nano is OK for simple users

but anyone who spends a lot of time editing text files should invest the time to learn a more powerful editor that allows you to change many things easily, etc. For that both vi (or vim) and emacs are what you should be looking at. To not do so is like digging a garden with a hand trowel because you never learned how to use a spade.

Having said that I do come across huge numbers of people who waste a lot of time by never having learned to use the tools available to them; they then justify their ignorance through abusive comments on the better tools - sad.

Farewell, Reg: This hack is hanging up her Apple jacket

Enjoy pastures new

and maybe send in an occasional guest item -- maybe something that WSJ will not let you publish.

Top tools for junior Linux admins

Good conferences ...

as a compliment to web sites - meet other guys with beards and spectacles. You pick up more than just the problem that you have today and get to make friends. Try this one in Newcastle at the end of March:

http://www.flossuk.org/Events/Spring2013

Multi-billion Euro broadband fund obliterated by EU budget cut

We can't annoy the farmers!

and cut the CAP - which eats just under 1/2 of the EU budget. Got to keep the French farmers happy, and Greece would go completely bust if they could not fiddle their olive subsidies.

Psst, wanna block nuisance calls? BT'll do it... for a price

Blocking caller ID

It ought to be illegal for any corporation/... to block caller ID. If any do so, or give a false number, they must get a large statutory fine. That will make it much easier to identify and nobble the scam artists while allowing legitimate business to continue ... not all business calls are unsolicited sales.

I will accept a few exceptions like child line & the VD clinic.

The Register Android App

Re: No luck here

I have a Desire Z, I asked HTC when they were going to provide an upgrade of Android. Their reply is below, but they refused to say what their reasoning/criteria were & then stopped replying. It seems evident that they have little interest in supporting kit once they have sold it -- so I told them that I would be unlikely to buy HTC again. Maybe this is one reason why they are losing market share.

''We only update our phones if it will provide an overall improved user experience as we balance features, performance and usability. Because of this, the current firmware you have has been decided to be the best for your device.''

When open source eats itself, we win

Apache 2.4

Although Apache 2.4 came out 10 months ago it was not ready for production use. For instance: it took a few months for perl and php to work with it, then this all needed to be adopted by the distributions. This has happened to an extent (eg it is in Fedora & Debian experimental), but the main stable distros come out with a new major release every few years and won't change before then. So expect it in RedHat 7 (out later this year) and Debian 7 (maybe this year) or Debian 8 (2014+).

Don't expect most people to run it on serious production platforms until then. Even then, transition will be slow since we don't like to upgrade stable, supported systems.

Out of ARM's way, Brit chip juggernaut runs over analysts again

What is the difference between royalties & licences

''chip royalties made up 52 per cent of ARM's revenue, ... , and licences brought in 38 per cent.''

What do they mean by ''royalty'' as opposed to ''licence'' ?

Sea Launch comsat rocket goes titsup 40 seconds into launch

Why not launch from altitude ?

If it is worth while launching from the equator to get an extra shove from the earth's rotation, why not also launch from up a mountain ? Kenya is on the equator and has mountains 5Km high. OK: there is a cost getting rockets to a mountain, but there is also a cost building a big boat to launch them from sea level.

Cape canaveral is 28 degrees North of the equator.

Speaking in Tech: 'ARM makes enterprise chips? Over my dead body!'

Please give me text

I started to listen to it ... started with some idiot music, then people telling me where they were. Not interested.

Please transcribe it to text and then I can scan it & read the bits that I want to, I don't have 50 minutes to burn.

Revealing new pics of galactic princess Andromeda

Amazing to think ...

that each pixel in the picture is a sun!

Researchers break records with MILLION-CORE calculation

What sort of million ?

Would that be 1000 x 1000, or 1024 x 1024 ?

Pope: Catholics, go forth and multiply... your Twitter followers

Portal of truth ?

Good idea, I like the truth. Truth is supported by evidence, until then it is just stories - mythology.

Let him provide us with testable, objective evidence - it he cannot then he should bear in mind the 8th commandment which is something about false witness.

Anonymous wants DDoS attacks recognized as speech

Their analogy is flawed

I support the right to protest: to go somewhere, be noisy and make your point of view as one of a group. If you believe something - stand up, be seen, be heard and be counted.

DDOS: let me see...

Do we know who is behind the protest ? No: the DDOSers have typically hijacked others' machines.

Do I (as a visitor to the web site) know what it is about ? No: all that I know is that the site is slow.

Can we count the protestors ? No: they aren't using their machines, we do not know who they are.

Having an analogue of a street protest is difficult in cyberspace, most people who visit the site just won't know. So what can we do:

* Insist that all web sites have a link to whoever wants to say something about them ? Not practical; Apple knows how to avoid this (until the court finally kicked them hard enough).

* Permit sites with domains like XxxSucks.org that will show up in google. Yes - that is as close as I can think, these must be protected from being taken down by Xxx.

Bletchley Park boffins start trailblazer EDSAC computer rebuild

Subroutines invented

I thought that Ada Lovelace wrote about subroutines. OK: the analytical engine was not built, but she did talk about the idea.

Ever had to register to buy online - and been PELTED with SPAM?

Paypal - grrrr

I made what was effectively a charitable donation; they used paypal. I ticked the box saying that I did not want to create a paypal account (I read their nightmareish T&Cs years ago). The next thing that I knew I received email from Paypal telling me how to update my account settings. I phoned them, they lied to me; gave me an email address to complain to that did not work.

They are an unscrupulous bunch of crooks who have no intention of operating in a truthful manner. I will now never have anything to do with any organisation that only accepts payment via that bunch of bandits.

AFACT wants ushers to confront pirates

Re: Movies are to theatres

When I used to take my kids I would bring in my own sweets - rather than pay the stupid prices in the cinema.

North Korea's satellite a dud, say US astroboffins

It is a technological triumph

even if we are being pursuaded to think that it is a joke. They have had to get many things right to put it up there; even if not everything appears to have worked properly.

Heaping derision is the way that our politicians try to keep us thinking negative thoughts about NK. It is all politics. I am not saying that NK is the best of nations or that it could find better ways of spending money; but the black & white view is simplistic.

But to say that the only purpose is to bomb the USA (so we should be afraid) while the USA has its own ICBMs is complete hypocrisy, such technology has multiple uses. In a similar way we are told that the only reason that Iran has a nuclear programme is to make bombs - ignoring other purposes.

Sniff.. Phew! WORLD'S OLDEST CHEESE discovered in Poland

8,000 years - yummy!

So the cheese should now be nice & ripe!

Oi, Apple, stick to phones, forget about TV - Time Warner CEO

Re: Just trying to protect their balliwick

The prices of movies and shows and books are virtually identical from one service to another due to contracts that prevent content from being sold cheaper on another service than it is on the one the contract covers.

Clauses like that should be made illegal, a company that insists on (and gets) such a clause has become too big - Amazon is such a company.

The Lord of the Rings saga lies hidden deep in your Mac

Re: Hobbit Schmobbit!

If you do use IPv6 it says that it is the same and that the difference is in the visitors. I know, I just tried both.

Amazon's secret UK sales figures revealed by Parliamentary probe

Sod which Amazon entity provided it ...

all that they need to ask for is how much was delivered to addresses in Blighty.

Where Amazon is operating as a fulfillment center, then the 'sale' value is how much the charged the e-shop/whatever to pick, pack & post the item.

It is sometimes a mistake to look at the nitty gritty.

Man facing rare refusal-to-unlock-encryption charge: Court date set

He could offer to decrypt individual files ...

My reading of S49(2)(d):

that it is not reasonably practicable for the person with the appropriate permission to obtain possession of the protected information in an intelligible form without the giving of a notice under this section,

So: he offer to decrypt files on demand - one at a time. When PC Plod refuses and demands the key he says ''see you in court'' - I suspect that a jury may side with him, he did offer.

See: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/49

IBM warns mainframe shops of 2013 price hike

Meaningful comparison metrics anyone ?

MIPs is not objective, it depends on the instruction set. Something like the SPEC benchmark is what we want, but somehow IBM does not seem to publish the results for mainframes:

http://www.spec.org/cgi-bin/osgresults

Will someone with one of these beasts run the benchmark and let us know, please.

Microsoft dragging its feet on Linux Secure Boot fix

Re: They know exactly what they are doing

Time for a good kicking and another very large fine by the EU competition commission.

Maybe the fine could pay for the cut in the EU budget that David Cameron is trying to get.

Samsung brews half-asleep OCTO CORE phone brain MONSTER

Re: Innefficient

According to the specs of a few months ago it can switch between A7 & A15 in some 20 ms, it can also run both at the same time. It seems to brilliant way of getting low power & high performance out of the same kit.

I wonder how long before Intel comes out with a big.Little equivalent - if it can tread around the patents that ARM presumably has.

Google to devs: Fragmenting Android is AGAINST THE RULES

Not updating

I have an HTC Desire Z - it runs Android 2.3.3, that was out of date when I bought the phone a year ago. I am annoyed that HTC seems to have little interest in providing updates. Unless they do I will be reluctant to buy HTC next time.

I am slowly adding to my DoNotBuy list, eg Brother: who won't provide drivers for new versions of operating systems once they no longer sell the printer.

EU approves push to get the unknown security in ARM chips into use

Who's security are we talking about ?

Is it the security of: the user; the smartphone manufacturer; the telco; the government or the record labels ?

The only valid one of the above is: the user.

I somehow doubt that this is the intention.

HP warns consumers: Don't downgrade Win8 PCs to Win7

Why downgrade from Win 8 ? Upgrade from Win 8!

Install Linux - that way you avoid crapware as well as getting something better.

Revealed! Prime Minister's iPad 'dashboard' for controlling Britain

So the govt of USA sees all that he does

If it is on his iPad then it is controllable by Apple and so all manner of settings & data flow to Cupertino. Under the patrior act the govt of USA will want to see all of that. I don't like the idea of what my prime minister does being seen by the CIA.

Dry martini, shaken not stirred: Cracking the physics of Bond's martini

Much discussed over the last year

on the back pages of New Scientist magasine - the last word

ICO fines council £120,000 for crypto email fail

Hallelujah!

It is about time that people learn how to use encrypted email, it is not exactly hard - I have been using PGP for years.

I don't use it for everything, but some things.

'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES

Re: Let's make everyone happy

``I have a new policy of not mocking people for curious and strange beliefs, as I feel that someday I will be an angry old man moaning about the wifi-leakage from the blasted tablets.''

Yes, but as long as they are harmless. What would you think if you were the poor girl next door who just wanted to use her iPhone and had the anguish of several years of litigation hanging over her ? He has harassed others round him for his baseless beliefs. We should be able to insult others who harm others.