Re: IBM a patent troll?
I've added a link to the court document + the patents involved. Enjoy.
C.
3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011
"you posted at 1 minute past midnight"
Yes, that was the embargo our writer agreed to.
"an article riddled with errors"
No, you're wrong. The price, availability, core count, core speed, benchmark speed increase, size, compatibility with the Model 1, and more, were all correct.
It was ambiguous whether this was an ARMv6 or ARMv7 SoC. Not any more - we've made it crystal clear it's 4 x ARMv7 Cortex-A7s.
C.
"So is this the official announcement that there will be no more changes to the layout"
No – I don't have the final say on the design; there may be more tweaks coming but certainly nothing like turning the site into lwn.net.
Just trying to be helpful suggesting things that readers, who I do appreciate, may be interested to try. Not exactly perfect solutions, but I figured it would be better than silence.
C.
"You are arguing against actual computer users who understand interface design"
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. I'm saying: here's another layout to try. You may like it. You may not.
C.
Hm. Odd. It's right down there, bottom right, in the grey box. Under the Twitter and Facebook button links. Or you can try m.theregister.co.uk, but you may be redirected to the desktop version if you're logged in as a desktop user. I tried just now in a Chrome Incognito window and it worked for me.
As for this being sad, I say no, sir. We've got a new design. It's not everyone's cup of tea. There's an alternative layout (and the hidden print page) if you want to give it a go.
C.
Psst... scroll right down to the bottom and, on the right, hit the "mobile version" button. You'll get the mobile-friendly design that doesn't have all the extra layout and multiple pages – just a plain drop of links for the front page and one-page articles.
If you get sick of it, scroll down to the bottom, click on the desktop version link to switch back.
C.
Pssst.... stick a Print/ between the .co.uk/ and the year in the URL, eg: this one-page print-happy review versus the normal look.
C.
> Now fix the "Hero" pic
First off, I'm not a site designer, nor am I directly in control of the site design. I just work here.
But I will say this: the hero pic works well, IMHO, with stories that have good pics, eg: Cameron and Barack, Raif Badawi, Musk's railgun pods, etc. That's just from today. Yes, we'll slowly and gradually eliminate the stock photos. But, as US editor, I feel we should promote strong illustrations/photos to support our stories, IMVHO.
C.
"GROW UP AND TAKE IT LIKE A MAN - IT'S ONLY A BUNCH OF COMMENTS, NOT LIKE WE'VE PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED YOU"
I only sighed to the effect of "why bother" because some people wanted a total revert, no other options. Which doesn't leave much room for dialog. Trust me, I've had far worse from the internet than the feedback here :)
Merry Christmas,
C.
Yes, all right, David Bailey ;-)
We've got images up to and beyond 650px, some 2000px, some 185px, some 200, some 450, and so on. It's not all sub-650px. This comes from optimizing images for a site serving 20+ million page views a month. We're gearing up for bigger and better image use, just give it time.
Edit: I swear every downvote makes me not want to spend my time here.
C.
"In that case they need better training to pick ones that are an appropriate size and quality"
Problem is that the site used to be 535px wide and most of the teaser art was about 200px wide. So a lot of our internal pic library is <650px. Then the width was increased to 650px in the redesign. It'll take time to flush the smaller stuff away and populate the library with hi-res images.
C.
"Seriously, do you expect us to share articles on the state of the IT business on facebook"
Sharing links about new all-NAND storage arrays to your grandparents is obviously a really dull idea. But a mid-range smartphone review, a laptop comparison, a story about scams targeting small biz, a piece about malware holding people's files to ransom, abuses by the government and cops, etc may fit within your social circle. Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever you want, or none at all. No pressure.
But millions are sharing news via social.
"The front page pictures are starting to be related to the stories."
Fantastic. We're getting there. Not every story can carry a giant 650px pic, but some can, so a compromise must be found.
C.
"HUGE PICTURE: Also often not even specific to the article, but some general stock photo."
I'll admit I was among those who suggested we make a better play of pictures. Perhaps they shouldn't appear on every article until we've either got a dedicated picture desk or they should be made smaller, or both. I don't make these decisions.
It's sad because it wasn't our intention to use pics that, as one soul said above, have "fuck all" to do with the stories.
"Time-format..... Is this being done to make it easier for people in different time-zones?"
I guess so. More than half our readers are in the US, and we have a healthy number in APAC.
So I think the main thing is that the in-your-face design we hoped would guide readers to the obvious big news – NATS cockups, Sony being hacked/sued, etc – and allow people to scroll down to peruse other stuff isn't working. There were worries that the previous design was looking like Ceefax.
Sometimes a big story or a really decent analysis can get lost in all the other coverage. Social stuff needed to be more accessible rather than tucked to the side.
What I'm trying to say is that there is method in the madness. It's the UK office's Xmas party tomorrow (Wednesday) and people are off and about for Christmas, so please don't get too frustrated if changes aren't made immediately.
C.
OK, it would be nice if everyone calmed down. The feedback from people posting here is clear. As I've said before, you're treating the redesign as tantamount to physical assault, which isn't right.
All I can say is: we're working on it. If we rush out a change, everyone posting here will go apeshit again.
C.
"Did he specifically say 26% of employees globally?"
He said:
"To fix its business problems and speed up its 'transformation,' next week about 26 percent of IBM’s employees will be getting phone calls from their managers. A few hours later a package will appear on their doorsteps with all the paperwork."
and
"One in four IBMers reading this column will probably start looking for a new job next week. Those employees will all be gone by the end of February."
Other than saying the US workforce would be "hit hard," there's nothing country specific in the claims. He thought 110,000 people would be laid off in the space of five weeks.
Still, it got Forbes 420,000 page views. Kerching!
C.
Probably ROP - return-oriented programming. Overwrite part of the stack so EIP/RIP is popped with an attacker-controlled pointer to some code in the executable or library, like, say:
pop rsp
ret
This moves a previously attacker-modified value off the stack into RSP - congrats, you've pivoted to an attacker-controlled stack. Then return, popping another address for RIP from the evil stack. That points to another bit of code like, say,
pop rax
call [rax]
ret
...and so on. Chain bits of code ("gadgets") that end in ret. Use a tool to find ROP gadgets to build up your own program from the stack until you spawn a shell over TCP. All the gadgets you're chaining together are in the executable-enabled text or library sections. NX can't help you here.
C.
Imagine you're not insane, and you're running a Telnet service on Windows so some equipment can communicate with software running on the server over port 23, or a user can connect and request information rather than run commands. You can change the command interpreter to something non-cmd.exe - anything you like.
Now along comes a bug that allows you to execute arbitrary code via the server, even though you configured it to be a controlled environment. I'm talking legacy stuff here.
Alternatively, according to Microsoft, "if you use NTLM authentication, then your user name and password are encrypted." But commands / data sent over are in plaintext and can be modified by an attacker.
It's not a world-ending bug; it's just wryly amusing that an RCE in Telnet has to be fixed in 2015.
C.
Maybe it's not terrible writing, more that we haven't made it clear enough and you've misread it. I've tweaked the article to make everything crystal clear.
4K readiness is a short way of saying you've got enough bandwidth to stream 4K video comfortably: 15Mbps+
The number of people with 15Mbps+ bw worldwide decreased 2.8% *quarter to quarter* ie: comparing Oct-Dec with Jul-Sept.
The number of people with 15Mbps+ bw worldwide increased 32% *year to year* ie: comparing 2014 to 2013.
C.
Obviously, we're appalled and infuriated by the slaughter, the senseless clinical execution, of brave and witty French journalists who dared to publish an opinion, the police officers who protected them, and everyone else caught up in the killings. Some of us in London went to the Trafalgar Square vigil.
I'm in awe of those who stood up to extremists, time and time again, and paid their lives for it. Will repeating a hashtag, a ticket to join a bandwagon, right the wrong that has happened, in even an infinitesimal way? No.
Are we, The Register, silenced or cowed by these barbaric murderers? No. Simply, no. The alleged killers, according to the authorities, returned from the Syrian civil war, perhaps led by the group known as ISIS, which we're described as "medieval terror bastards", "murderous humanity-hating fanatics", or worse.
Have we published cartoons as striking as Charlie Hebdo? No. Will we be silenced by those who massacred them? No. Will we honor and thank those who paid the ultimate price resisting suppression of free thought? Yes.
C.
I've tweaked the headline to be more specific – it's about anonymity, after all, and an introduction to it. I, personally, would love to do a QubeOS et al review, but it's finding the time to do it properly. Maybe someone can set aside the time.
FWIW if your life really really depends on it, consider using physical separation a la PORTAL of Pi.
C.
Take the article as a whole, rather than reading too much into a single sentence :-) Later we note: "any information provided publicly could be used by miscreants to shape an attack."
What we're saying is: more detail of procedures/policy would be welcome. It's tricky. Some will say you should be able to disclose everything about your security implementation to prove you're confident it's built right. Others will say there's no need to just hand over the blueprints to enemies.
It's tricky.
C.
"If it is a real technical announcement, what does this mean"
The problem is, if you go full disclosure and dump all the details online, someone will weaponize it an hour and by the end of the week someone will have a 12-million-strong botnet. Check Point noted: "This public awareness may serve as a better incentive for the makers to release updated firmware faster."
You need to craft a HTTP request with a cookie that exploits a flaw – probably a buffer overflow – in the server. You can always reverse engineer the firmware yourself, like Check Point did, and I suspect people already are.
C.