Posts by alain williams

Red Hat strikes a crushing blow against RHEL downstreams

I am surprised that IBM took this long

to find a way of effectively making Red Hat closed source.

One result is that I shall move servers to Debian both mine and those of my customers - some of whom have done things like: Red Hat for production machines and Rocky/something for development and standby machines.

It is tempting to say "just grab the source, it is GPL" but IBM is a law firm that happens to sell computers so even if I am in the right they will make it very expensive for me to do so ... much the same as a patent troll does "pay $40k for a license or risk $100k legal costs".

Shame: Red Hat was nice while it lasted.

Mega-data platform worth half a billion will suck in info from family doctors

So my data will escape ...

from my GP and end up in the hands of USA corporations, a country that has inadequate data protection, also read Schrems II.

Chinese malware intended to infect USB drives accidentally infects networked storage too

What operating system ?

Please, el-reg, when reporting on malware tell us what operating systems/environments are affected. I want to know if I need to worry.

I notice references to "DLL" and the Checkpoint article uses MS Windows path names ... so, phew, I can stop being concerned about my own machines.

Why, after all these years, is Microsoft still so susceptible ?

Open source licenses need to leave the 1980s and evolve to deal with AI

Let us hope that we can ignore licensing

This seems to be the attitude. Grab/digest as much code as possible, learn from it, generate proprietary code as a result.

Having to worry about the license of the code digested is hard but should be doable. It will increase costs and this is what the ML owners do not want.

Copying of code and ignoring licenses has been going on since the year dot. If the output code is not distributed then it is hard to detect. So what is happening here is not new but just happens faster.

Small custom AI models are cheap to train and can keep data private, says startup

How long before ...

these things are used by the phishing crooks to generate emails that are plausible to many of the targets ?

I fear that this will become one of the profitable uses of this AI.

Amazon Prime too easy to join, too hard to quit, says FTC lawsuit

Re: This is in the past I assume?

Where are you, Europe or the USA ?

The app may be different on different sides of the pond. Can anyone enlighten us ?

It is not just Amazon

that uses such tricks. Many web sites make it easy to accept what the web site wants and hard/much-clicking to stop things.

Having said that: Amazon is one of the worst.

A suitable penalty (when found guilty) would be to refund prime membership fees for the last 5 years - all of them since it is not possible to know who wanted it and who got sucked in.

Apple stomped all over NYC store workers' union rights, judge rules

The managers who removed the flyers ...

can, presumably, be identified from the CCTV. They were breaking the law, they should be held personally accountable.

If Apple pays a fine it will be trivial compared to its profits, the only way of changing behaviour is to make people liable.

Astroscale wants to be the world's friendly neighborhood space garbage collector

Re: is this correct?

Try that argument with a copper if you are ever pulled over for lobbing your apple core out of the window.

People seem to be able to drop litter with impunity in the UK - I doubt that a copper would bother.

Anyway: an apple core I would not worry about if it were tossed into a bush as it goes brown & rots quickly; oranges are unsightly for longer. I have done some litter picks in my local area, the worst offenders are smokers - large numbers of butt ends and fag packets; followed by hard/soft/coffee drinks - glass/plastic bottles & paper cups.

Music bosses go after Twitter's unlicensed soundtrack to the tune of $250M

They are getting into the queue

When twitter goes down who is going to get paid ? Many will not. So the music people are making their claim and hope that they can get a slice.

UK smart meter rollout years late and less than two thirds complete

Re: screw 'em

It is not so much the code but how & where the data is used.

It is uploaded many times a day - that means that the supplier can see when usage suddenly drops and so deduce that you are away. All it then takes is a sysadmin under financial pressure to run a script and share who is on holiday with his made Burglar Bill.

The ability to delay readings being uploaded by 2 weeks would make me feel much happier.

Florida man insists he didn't violate the law by keeping Top Secret docs

What I cannot understand ...

is why he kept all of these files ? What advantage to him was there ?

Given the huge number of boxes it does not seem like an error, a few forgotten bits of paper. Was it systematic, what did he do with them, did he show them to people, did he brag about it ?

I cannot see the point.

Software picks out more satellite photobombs in Hubble image

Surely the positions of all satellites are known

Can this information be used to say where the trails might be in Hubble images ?

Beijing proposes rules to stop Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networks going rogue

I'm going to China next month

Take a burner phone. Any certificates that you will need should be already installed on the 'phone. Wipe the 'phone on your return.

10 years after Snowden's first leak, what have we learned?

Time expired secrecy

One thing needed is stopping perpetual secrecy rules imposed on a telco, web site, ... where data is grabbed under one of these laws. After this the NSA/... would have to publish the data request and an overview of what they got. The organisation that provided it would also be free to publish, this is important as one cannot trust the NSA/... to disclose everything that it should.

The default period should be two years. If more is wanted the NSA would need to get approval from a judge, with a maximum of 10 years.

Users accuse Intuit of 'heavy-handed' support changes on QuickBooks for Desktop

Re: It's hard to avoid the cloud

A customer of ours had written their own ERP from scratch.

Could they be persuaded to open source it ?

Scientists think they may have cracked life support for Martian occupation

How about plants ?

Grow them in Martian soil. One by product is vegetation that might be useful as food.

Malwarebytes may not be allowed to label rival's app as 'potentially unwanted'

What does this say about Microsoft ...

not just labelling Firefox as bad but actively replacing it as the user chosen web browser and setting Edge as default ?

Microsoft battles through two 365 outages in one day

Re: I despair

We have migrated to all things MS cloudy and Teamsy over the last month or two where I work.

Do tell us what was the business case. What were the savings ? How much have the outages cost in terms of lost work ?

UK warned not to bother racing US, EU on EV subsidies

Availability of charge points

There are not enough of them to give confidence that one can complete a long journey without undue delays.

We also need to be able to pay with a credit card rather than having do install yet another app on the 'phone -- there are far too many different apps needed.

Toyota admits to yet another cloud leak

"Toyota said it had no evidence the data had been misused"

If I shut my eyes before looking in an empty pot I will not see anything either.

Did they ask all the customers affected ?

Has Amazon found the ultimate lock-in? Cheap cellphone service for Prime

Will Amazon get to see:

* who you call and who calls you ?

* content of SMS ?

* who you connect to over the Internet ?

Watchdog calls for automatic braking to be standard in cars

Cars kill about the same number as guns

In the USA about 12 per 100,000 but they do not seem able (or willing) to control deaths due to guns - which should be an easier problem.

Google veep calls out Microsoft's cloud software licensing 'tax'

Would it not be cheaper for Google, AWS, Alibaba

to get together and produce free/FLOSS replacements to the MS software that their customers use in the cloud ?

They do not need to start from scratch, there is plenty that would need a few extra features and interfaces to allow the enterprises' applications to work.

Obviously it will be more work than I suggest but it does not need to be 100% compatible - just as long as the effort to port workloads is not too hard.

Releasing this as Open Source will be vital so that enterprises can test it in-house ... some may use it in-house as well.

Note: they do not need to replace everything that MS produces, just what most of the cloud customers need. Start with the easy low hanging fruit.

Yes: it will cost but being able to take customers from MS should result in an overall gain.

Brits and Yanks join forces to make fusion magnets cool again

If you want a second unit of temperature ...

please use Kelvin, not Fahrenheit

AI menaces superbug by identifying potent antibiotic

Please ONLY use this in humans

Too many antibiotics have been used in farming as it makes the animals healthier & they grow a bit faster. The result is that the bugs evolve to be antibiotic resistant. If we only use this new compound in humans the rate of evolution of a resistant strain will take much longer.

I am species-ist I would rather see cattle & poultry die than humans.

Twitter Spaces groans under weight of Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk's egos

Twitter chief engineer falls on sword

Twitter engineering boss quits after DeSantis launch glitches

Google wants to target you – yes, YOU – with AI-generated ads

Re: So Google builds a profile of me ...

El Reg works well enough for me with Google Analytics (is that really a word?) blocked.

As do I (well, map it to 127.1.1.1). Maybe an El-Reg hack would like to add a comment below saying why it needs Javascript from: www.googletagmanager.com www.google-analytics.com pagead2.googlesyndication.com

So Google builds a profile of me ...

would this not count as personal data and thus have to be regulated by the GDPR ?

Somehow Google seems to consider itself as not having to bother with this. It is not just using the search engine that profiles us but also things like google analytics that is on most web sites without asking for permission (including el-Reg - tsk, tsk).

However the UK government seems bent on watering data protection laws down and anyway the ICO is a bit of a chocolate teapot.

Microsoft enables booting physical PCs directly into cloud PCs

Building ever longer fragile chains ...

where it takes one link to break and you cannot do any work.

The closer that resources are to you the more likely that you are able to at least do something.

Amazon a prime target of warehouse law protecting bathroom breaks

Re: "employee injury rate at least 30 percent above the average"

The reason that I used those words is that they are part of this paragraph in the article:

The bill also gives Minnesota labor law enforcement agencies the right to inspect any warehouse that has an employee injury rate at least 30 percent above the average yearly injury rate for such workers, and to have inspection rights and safety meetings.

"employee injury rate at least 30 percent above the average"

Surely law enforcement agencies should have the right to inspect any warehouse regardless of the injury rate ?

NHS England spends £8M to extend Microsoft deals by a month

Re: Maybe not Linux but Office maybe ditchable

For example: you get an X-Ray or CT scan and 30 secs later the doc is looking at it on a hi-res monitor using a custom-built Windows app.

Surely the NHS is a big enough customer that the vendor would write a custom-built Linux app to keep the NHS happy -- it can't be that difficult.

Microsoft will upgrade Windows 10 21H2 users whether they like it or not

The most recent update that MS pushed out appeared to disable my AV solution and then enable Defender.

So MS wrecked your security setup. Does that not fall foul of section 3 of the computer misuse act ?

LinkedIn links out of China with 716 roles for the chop

So: the Chinese 716 ...

have been LinkedOut ?

Russia tops national leagues in open source downloads

Little point in restricting downloads to Russia

Someone would just set up distribution servers (ie mirrors) within Russia; so a minor inconvenience at most.

Strike three: FTC says Meta still failing to protect user privacy

Re: "This is the third time"

Fie years ? Surely under the USA 'three strikes & out' laws he should be eating porridge for much longer than that.

Fresh GDPR ruling says even 'minor anxiety' could mean payouts for EU folks

Anxiety & upset are very subjective

What to one person is reasonable another could claim makes them anxious and/or upset. The result will be a minefield even for websites & businesses that are trying to do the right thing. This could be a gift for those who have a beef with an entity and so make claims of anxiety/upset; even if the result is that they were acting correctly the costs in the determination could be huge.

Do not get me wrong: I am not defending those who abuse privacy, etc, but am concerned that a lack of objectivity could cause mayhem.

I suppose that we will have to wait for the courts to make judgements that can provide clarity ... except that these will differ in different jurisdictions.

The lawyers must be rubbing their hands in anticipation ...

Handwritten Einstein essay on theory of relativity goes under the hammer

"The auction will end on April 11"

I do not think that Einstein said that we could move backwards in time.

Should that not be 11 May ?

Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia

What is deemed harmful to kids ?

I have been browsing the draft bill to see what it says is harmful. Pornography & sex are easy to find. Fear of violence - OK. Nowhere could I find two of the biggest: portrayed violence as do many shoot-em-up games that can be very graphic; religious ideas which is even worse as some of them fill kids heads with all sorts of stuff about some people being bad, eg if they do not believe in the correct myths, or their sexuality is not the approved sort.

Religious sites need to be behind an age verifier to protect young, impressionable minds that they might be evil because of what they, or their friends, think.Religions target kids.

China again signals desire to shape global IPv6 standards

Will China-IPv6 interoperate with other versions ?

That is what matters. If some 'features' stop working at borders then I will not care** as long as web sites, email, etc are visible globally. We do not want a fracture in the standards such that some parts of the world cannot speak to some other parts. Censorship of content is a different issue.

**Not entirely true, I do care how the Chinese government mistreats its citizens, but that is me speaking with my human head, what I wrote above was written with my techie head.

UK watchdog blocks Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition

I wish more takeovers were blocked

to encourage a diverse market. The CMA needs to help make a market with many competing suppliers - that is what is good for consumers.

Proliferation of AI weapons among non-state actors 'could be impossible to stop'

"non-state actors"

This seems to imply that states will act in a responsible way, will not develop AI weapons, ...

If anyone really believes that then they are naive.

Google backs Bard to generate ads, which apparently improves creativity

Oh, foolish, naive people

Did you ever really think that LLM would be used to benefit you ?

Those who pay for it will use it to add to their bottom lines. Advertising is a large contributor to profits.

Meta virtual reality interrupted by financial reality as thousands lose their jobs

Re: "Meta expected to disemploy"

Also "4,000 people will be let go"

Were these 4,000 scrabbling at the doors trying to get out ?

No: they were sacked. "Let go" is slimy mouthed management speak. El-Reg: do your job properly and describe things as they are!

Musk tells Twitter advertisers: You're welcome back, but don't make demands

I have been meaning to ask ...

Is Twatter still not paying rent on its offices ?

Chromebook expiration date, repair issues 'bad for people and planet'

Google does tell you how to

install Linux on your Chromebook, so all is not lost if the hardware is still OK.

Yes: it does mean that the nice, easy environment that the school bought into is not there but many pupils would be happy to buy their own machine and be capable of supporting it themselves. So the school could get some money back on an old machine.

Enterprising kids could even sell these "refurbished" machines to those with simple computing requirements, eg grand parents.

I agree that longer s/ware support lifetimes would be even better.

Fujitsu bags £142M UK government work since Horizon probe announced

"We can't undo the damage that has been done."

Errrm: yes, it is easy. Compensate those who's lives were wrecked so that they are put into the financial positions that they would have been if this had not happened.

Then: look at damage due to anguish, etc, caused and thoroughly compensate them (and their kids, etc) for that.

The trouble with this is that there are many, many postmasters, etc, who were effected and so many in government have decided that compensation is "not affordable", so just say some fine words, theatrically wring hands and delay until most of them are dead or burned out.

How many of those who knew, or should have known but looked the other way, have been brought to book ?

Brits start 'em young with 20% of tots 'owning' a smartphone

Remove all notion of privacy from them while they're impressionable...

FTFY

UK consortium bid for NHS data platform falls at first hurdle

"first hurdle"

They prolly failed due to absence of, or too small, brown envelopes to the right people.