Posts by Don Jefe

Ubuntu Edge Linux mobe: 'Made you look,' crows Shuttleworth

Goals & Jono Bacon

The funding goal was way too low. Even if they would have hit their target they'd likely be out of cash before they fulfilled the initial orders. Manufacturing and delivering a physical product and not losing your ass in the process is a tough nut to crack, even for those who do it as their primary business.

Maybe they had some leeway because the SMT gods always need fresh virgin sacrifices, but I doubt the discounts would have been deep enough to pull it off (without delivering a great big turd).

Also, someone at El Reg should ping Mr. Jono Bacon and remind him The Register has had good coverage of this project from the start. In my own experience when I forward an El Reg story to someone I'm much more likely to get feedback from it as opposed to those other outlets that were named. People think I'm sending them something worth reading, and not just rejiggered press releases, and that's usually the case. Just sayin...

Silicon Valley slurped millions of NSA cash for PRISM participation

That was already kind of assumed. Even if fulfilling a court order, the companies involved are constitutionally guaranteed remuneration for any activities related to their fulfillment. I'm sure they charged as much as they could. Kind of funny how that part of the constitution didn't get ignored.

There have been several interesting discussions on this site about how the companies involved have accounted for all these funds. I'd still like to know more about that.

Special Source

The opposite of open source...

I'm also not clear on what the domain certificate bit means. Can anyone point me in a direction so I can figure out what they're talking about?

Report: Secret British spy base in Middle East taps region's internet

Re: Bad Policies

Welcome to SharePoint.

I really don't think this information is that dangerous when we've got people like Darrel Issa to give away the locations of secret intelligence bases during televised hearings:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-10/opinions/35501217_1_benghazi-darrell-issa-security-lapses

Total disclosed costs to close the operation, move informants and setup elsewhere with an entirely new team has been nearly $100M.

You don't see anyone chasing down Darrel Issa for endangering troops, intelligence agents and civilian informers.

Re: This drip drip drip: Really Cranks Up Your Bills

Every new revelation forces governments to issue more contradictory statements and even more backfiring double speak.

We've gone from "nope we don't do that", to "we might have done that in the past" to "yep, we did that but it was a mistake" to "yes, we do spy on everyone".

So far doling out the information slowly has been extremely effective.

BILLION DOLLAR BALLMER: Microsoft chief makes $1bn simply by quitting

Re: Your results may vary.

Did you try throwing chairs or dancing? How about taking your company's leading products and ripping out the parts that everyone does want? Did you develop a new product and completely ignore all customer and partner input then spend $1B on marketing what everyone said was broken?

If you didn't do any of those things then that's why you didn't get a big payout. Next time you'll know.

Steve Ballmer is an excellent salesperson and he's rather intelligent and very nice in person. Where he isn't very strong is in identifying need and product positioning: he's fairly easily convinced something is a good idea and once he's convinced something is a good idea he'll ram it down everyone's throats, whether its actually a good idea or not. He doesn't listen I dissenting voices much. That can be useful and it can be a hiderance, for him I believe it's hurt more than helped.

This is good, it was time for him to move on. But it is wrong to think the man is a fool or a toady because of some poor products. He's not dumb, he's just wrong (quite a bit).

'Silent' staff stood by as £100m BBC IT project tanked – DG

Re: Burnt cakes

The oven did try to tell you. You know all the smoke and the foul smell; yep, means something is burning. You just didn't want to pay attention and now it's garbage.

*The "you" in that example isn't you, you. It's the hypothetical cook/executive :)

BALLMER TO RETIRE FROM MICROSOFT

Phone Call

Steve, hey, Bill here. Look, we both know you're not happy in this role. You've sat in the big chair for a while and I'm thinking now might be a good time to move on. You can write a book and I've got a donor facing position at the Foundation you can have if you want it.

Let's go ahead and make the announcement this week. I'll shoot you a list of potential candidates and you can start planning your transition gala. Ok? Ok.

Delta Air Lines makes mass Windows Phone 8, Lumia 820 buy

Re: Delta have in flight entertainment?

You ought to ride in the front of the plane. The screens always work there.

Re: It's a phone ?

Because the weird way the world works makes it cheaper to buy touchscreen smartphones that can do POS than buy application specific touchpads. Cash registers and POS specific devices are insanely expensive, especially for enterprise scale applications.

Tat bazaar eBay takes a rest for 'scheduled maintenance', goes offline

Re: So Passe Darling

Indeed, people still use passé, although it's best to be rather blasé about it or you risk coming across as a hipster toss pot.

Workers at world's largest – and most remote – telescope go on strike

Re: 16,500 feet?

I'd say we'll stop using esoteric measurements about the time the British value their money according to its actual weight.

You raging moose cock, it isn't that simple for most people to just get a comparable job, even when global economies are in OK shape, much less in times like these when science jobs and funding are being cut.

Unions are part of doing business in many places and industries if the business, or organization, doesn't like that then the business either should not set up a union shop or should set up operations somewhere else. If the organization accepts those conditions then tough shit, they've got to deal with labor actions.

200 Employees?

That's a lot of employees for a telescope array. I wonder what they all do?!

Nice timing in the strike though. Without those pictures most people wouldn't even know about ALMA. I heard a person yesterday, no shit, talking about the 'New Hubble' from South America that took pictures of star babies and that they were neat and told her friend to Google ALMA.

She obviously didn't know much (any?) about the project, but she knew it existed and even how to direct someone else to find the pictures (of star babies). That says a lot about the marketable potential ALMA has, and why it's good timing on the union's part.

*I neither endorse nor oppose unions. I was only commenting on the shrewdness of the ALMA workers for their timing of the strike.

Bradley Manning is no more. 'Call me Chelsea,' she says

Re: Is this the Onion?

I know two April's and two Avril's none of them own any fools...

Re: Military Jail?

They're pretty much like civilian prisons but they have footprints painted on the floor where you stand at attention for extended periods (whenever they tell you to), guards and other workers who you still have to salute and respect if they outrank you and literal military discipline (push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, extended runs with backpacks loaded with sandbags, jumping jacks, temperature extremes and limited forms of sensory deprivation for punishment). Plus they can yell at you (which can't be done in civilian prisons) and their yelling is scientifically designed to make you feel like the worst piece of shit in the world.

Probably the worst part (his lawyer is an idiot for saying differently) are the other inmates. They're in prime physical shape, have had aggression forced into them, and regardless of what they did they are still, generally, fiercely loyal to the service and the US. They'll take an especially dim view of what they will consider a traitor.

It's really going to be awful for Manning, regardless of his gender identity challenges.

DoD, Doctors, and Congress

There was a DOD guy on the radio today saying that they do not provide hormone therapy for sexual reassignment or recognize name changes while incarcerated. He'll be referred to by the name and sex he enlisted with for the duration of his stay.

He also talked about how there is no military medical expertise for dealing with the difficulties of hormone therapy and how even if there were most states and DoD medical ethics prevent doctors from administering the therapy if the patient is in a state of duress or regularly exposed to high stress situations. As well as how the political obstacles of paying for the therapy are pretty much insurmountable.

I'm not sure, but Manning's timing on this isn't doing him any favors. Now he's going to be under even more pressure from the others inside. Even of they get the challenges sorted it'll likely be about the time he's up for parole anyway. If it were me I think I'd want my lawyer to stop giving the other inmates ammunition for making my life shittier.

Kim Kardashian's bosom pal in bling snatch Instagram unpleasantness

Re: can't buy you brains either.

That's because the licensing for quasi-branded cards goes through three or four intermediaries, who each add a %. It's not especially cheap to do, but you too can have JLV branded credit card and sign up all your enemies.

Say, I know a guy, who knows a guy. I can set you up with him for .08% of future transactions...

Re: Geography

The stolen timepiece industry is thriving in the Middle East and China. The Hamptons version of a street criminal probably knows exactly where to get of of something like this.

Re: Jacob & Co

A Patek Phillipe is a mechanical marvel and a testament to human ingenuity, engineering and the study of the natural world. Jacob & Co watches are not fine timepieces, they are jewelry, no different than having a solid gold diamond encrusted hood ornament on your car, which is effectively what they are.

Re: Who's Kim Kardashian?

Here is the place for all you may want to know about the Kardashian's.

Yahoo! web! traffic! BIGGER! THAN! GOOGLE! in! July!

Re: Didn't know Stormfront! had that many users.

I would be very interested in seeing how much if this traffic was to Yahoo! News articles. As you note, Yahoo! & comments on their articles are the mainstream right wing racism website (equalling or exceeding even Fox News) and their visitors hate Obama and the government in general. With the Snowden stuff going on, all the right wing nutters have a place to hang out and scream drivel at each other.

Did Edward Snowden save Yahoo! It's certainly possible he helped a lot!

UK mulls ban on tiny mobiles to block prison smugglers

Re: Cutting Out the Middle Man

I just noticed the URL in the link I posted is terribly designed. The inmate did not impregnable the federal judges face.

Cutting Out the Middle Man

If UK prison guards are anything like those here in the US they are the middlemen for shady internal transactions. If prisoners have their own phones the guards can't demand their cut and they lose their access to more blackmail information.

Plus prisoners might need to speak with the OB/GYN of the guards the they impregnate:

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/04/29/inmate-charged-in-baltimore-prison-scandal-guard-he-impregnated-face-federal-judge/

Re: "electrically unsafe ... they could cause fires and injure ... through electrocution."

The kind of engineer that thinks symbolically destroying a few HDD's will prevent access to secret information.

Bradley Manning* sentenced to 35 years in prison

Re: By their fruits shall ye know them

"Buy their fruits shall ye know them", sounds like an anti-Apple ad from MS.

Re: Which president talked about the military-industrial complex?

Well, we've definitely succeeded in keeping science from interfering in government.

NASDAQ halts stock trading, citing data-feed glitch

Re: What goes?

Oddly enough, I think it's a positive sign. IT spend at big organizations is going again so a lot of old kit is getting updated and projects previously put on hold are going back into play. I honestly believe it's all due to simple expansion aches and pains. Possibly the NSA, but nothing so exciting I'm guessing (but its probably the NSA :)

Four ways the Guardian could have protected Snowden – by THE NSA

Nuclear physicists at CERN are terrorists! They're trying to destroy the universe by disproving God!

Right?

Bin Laden

You make a really good point about Bin Laden. If the most wanted man in modern history was able to hide in plain sight by basically just not getting online, that underlines how ineffective all the government spying on its own citizens really is.

I find it highly unlikely that anyone visiting El Reg is a Bin Laden level target, but the NSA almost certainly has more data about us than they did him. That's just fucked up.

Re: " sent by courier, "

You do realize that there's an entire industry of logistics and couriers out there beyond getting stuff from Amazon right?

If you're really special you can even get your stuff in a diplomatic pouch. Business documents travel that way all the time. I doubt Snowden related files could pull that off, but it would be hilarious if someone slipped them in!

Most electronics are waterproof if they don't have power running through them when/while immersed.

Re: How about strapping a micro-SD card to a homing pigeon's leg?

That would be hilarious! Start a whole movement to communicate securely via carrier pigeon and see if the government tries to ban birds! After all that crow could be a carrier pigeon in disguise!

It'd be like the Cold War all over except bird vs bird vs drones disguised a birds and anti-bird artillery batteries surrounding every town, maybe some giant nets too!

All good points.

It's just that using procedures and products endorsed by the same people spying on you seems like a potential flaw. I know for an absolute fact that more government communications are sent via courier than people realize.

If the government doesn't trust or follow their own advice I'm not exactly convinced those without nearly unlimited resources should either...

Microsoft fights Google for kids' attention with ad-free Bing for Schools

Re: Ad Free ?

You do know the whole 'Apple is for creative people' was originally part of their national marketing to schools right? It was picked back up more recently but Apple has been aiming directly at elementary school children far longer than MS.

Back when buying computers was a really big deal for a school they even had brochures mailed out to parents on the PTA (Parent Teachers Associations) committes with stuff like "Desktop Publishing from Apple/Mac will unleash students creativity and prepare them for the future. Tell your school board to purchase the Mac II" or something very similar to that: All glossy and with 'digital' looking backgrounds and very COMPUTER fonts, in the best '80's style of course.

I've got no horse in this race, just wanted to point out that all big name tech companies try to 'indoctrinate' kids and Apple's been doing it longer than any of them.

EXPLICIT VID: Man filmed trying to bang brand new 'budget iPhone'

Re: No relation?

WTF is a 'woman's feetal covering'? Like a radiation shield for unborn female babies? What is it? I must know!

Titanium Comparison

Titanium is quite strong but is also extremely prone to galling (looks like smudges, to the naked eye). Therefore comparing LiquidMetal to titanium in a simulation to emulate scratch resistance from the metallic contents of pants pockets, is a rather poor one :)

Oh noes! New 'CRISIS DISASTER' at Fukushima! Oh wait, it's nothing. Again

My original comment, in support of nuclear power, was censored by the El Reg overlords. The comment that was posted was my retort to the censor; guess they/he/she/it let it through to be funny...

Ubuntu Edge crowdsauce cash stash comes up short

The partnerships mobile manufacturers have with providers is why it's going to be hard for a not Brand Name manufacturer to get in the game. Partnerships and negotiations are big, complicated, pure business activities; something the OSS people haven't shown a lot of proficiency in.

It's a classic technology problem, and not indicative of the potential of the hardware, but you've got to talk the talk and walk the walk to get things sold, it isn't just about getting stuff in the shelves. You're going to have to wear suits, play golf and schmooze to get traction with big name providers, in any industry, and most OSS types are pretty terrible at that.

I'm not knocking OSS types, at all, I'm just saying that you've got to have a face to front your efforts. Neither Apple nor Microsoft nor Oracle nor Google would be what they are without a lot of salesmanship going on.

New use for old iPhones: Watch your house get robbed in REAL-TIME

Re: How the hell is this news??

Ah, you've found out about wire services, the content provider for most 'modern journalism'. For a few thousand bucks you can get anything on all the wire services and reporters will jump all over whatever is there. It's the cheapest way in the world to get the 'news' to cover your company/product.

You didn't think modern journalists wrote their own articles did you? You just restructure the press releases, add hyperbole, and Bobs your uncle, story's done.

If you're trying to get attention for your project, fund raiser or company you're far better off putting it on the wire than going to trade shows and networking events. The bang for the buck can't be beat.

Re: nsa/wiretapping/interception joke

Start a petition and WhiteHouse.gov for that. I'll sign, it'd be hilarious if they responded.

NSA admits slurping thousands of domestic emails with no terror connection

EFF or CYA?

Kind of makes you wonder if the DNI figured Snowden had a copy of the court order and OK'd the FOIA request. The request had been under review for a year but suddenly was released which is fairly odd: FOIA requests do not have to be honored if the information could put people or Amerian interests at risk.

The EFF is claiming credit but The Clapper and Gen. Alexander are intimating that the document was released as part of Obama's demand for greater transparency of domestic surveillance anti-terrorism programs. Somehow I doubt the veracity of the Governments claims that they've suddenly discovered the Constitution and are now upholding it just as I doubt they gave in to the EFF.

Fame-hating planets don't need to hang around STARS – boffins

Re: So...

A plot point from an absolutely horrid movie.

Space-walker nearly OPENED HELMET to avoid DROWNING

Re: He was documenting his thinking.

He just read the wrong line of the script. The sublimation escape is in scene #113.

Mystery of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'

You're All Half Right

But I've drilled a hole in the drive containing this story so no one will ever read it. Suckers!