
Leccy... augh!
I can't take it any more! "Lappy" was cute but toothless, "Mobe" uglier but still relatively easy to dodge, but "Leccy"... It's like being shived, every time. I'd gladly trade it for one of the banned abbreviations...
55 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Jul 2007
Does "working with standards bodies" mean a) dominating the standards committee (why do I think of W3C?) to force thier ideas through so that the standards will be too complex for small companies and free software projects to implement, and then b) implementing most of that standard, but doing it in a way that makes it slightly incompatible with the standard? Because if so, they've been doing this for years. Mission accomplished!
Is this an example of a Digital Rights Management system making life difficult for the consumer? Let's see... it's a problem with the supervisory system that manages whether you have the right to run the code, and ... hmm ... and of course it's running in a digital computer. Let' me think; this means that there's a problem with the Computational Permissions Supervion, that's a CPS, not a DRM. So, no. DRM conspiracy theorists can relax.
Fonts too small to read on your monitor? Let me fix that for you.
http://tekhedd.com/greasemonkey/bh_gd-point-fonts.user.js
You'll need greasemonkey. Links and such at the root url http://tekhedd.com/greasemonkey/. Fixed-point-size fonts are one of those things that just keep popping up. :)
Pirate, because it's a script to hack el reg, well, sort of. Actually it's kinda blah, as piracy goes.
Wells will declare: "TXT messigin email N inturnet chat rooms R showin us teh way forward 4 english lets giv peeple greatur freedom 2 spel laik they hear stuf its tiem 2 git rid uv the fet-ish that sez speling things write is a principul part uv bein ejucated srsly lol"
Finally, Wells intends to sound the death knell for the bothersome apostrophe, suggesting: "insted of N (apostroffe?) single quot thing we kin just leave it out its could becom its or leave a space so we'll wud become we ll hav we rly nothin better 2 do wit our livs then fret about teh single quot??/?!?11"
the language works. What else would you expect when you're halfway between a rant and an opinion piece? It's like if you crossed a Rolling Stone back issue with, well, a normal Reg article. All it needs is a huge cigarette ad.
Web 2.0 might be fish in a barrel, but IMO Rails needs to be laughed at more often. Rails even *rhymes* with fails.
Well... it's hard to knock those bullet points. Selling out is good for the owners, when the offer's right, but it's not always good for the company, and when the buyer is Microsoft it never seems to be good for the end users. (Well, that's my opinion, yours may vary.)
"Microsoft can’t decide what is and isn’t strategically important..."
You could probably stop right there, it seems to me. MS has enough power and money to "choose poorly" and still get away with it, many many times. Just give away the product, "integrate" it with Win/Office, and/or buy out the competition. When you have these options, strategy is sort of irrelevant. But I'd hate to depend on Microsoft for my internet searches, or as my primary web portal, or as my only secure login provider, or... nightmare scenarios all.
Depressing just to think about it.
I've had the chance to work on a few Mac-based applications over the years, mostly dropping in to do light maintenance on a control panel or something. And, this whole "let's break things every 5 years" thing stinks of Apple, so I'm not really surprised. Apparently, the developers at Apple like to say "No, this is the *new* *right* way to do it" and come up with an entirely different approach to the GUI every, oh, 5 years or so. So, you hack together version 1 of your control panel, it works OK, and then 5 years later good ole Tom is called in to work in an unfamiliar environment with strange tools and every API call throughout the interface is done in two different ways (to support both the old and the new way for existing installations) and the "new" way is deprecated for an even newer one.
OK, too much information. All I'm saying is that my experience down in the code seems to support the criticism. All I'm saying. I'm going to get a beer, anybody else want one? And where's the beer icon? (Paris, because there's no drugs or rock'n'roll. One out of three is only 33%, you know.)
Wait, if you can take the IP address or cookie, run it through a one-way hash, and locate all of the user's unique identifying information... couldn't you do that again any time you want? Or just set up a trigger waiting for someone's incoming request to trigger this profile again, or...
Wait! I just described two ways of getting around the foolproof anonymizer system, making me guilty of spreading hacking-enabling information. Me pirate hacker. *sigh*
"...there’s also no clue as to what will happen to non-US citizen’s data once..."
For the clueless, here's a prediction based on past performance.
Homeland Security will simultaneously deny that data is being retained, refuse to say whether or not it is being retained (because it is a matter of national security), and insist that the option of retaining this data is essential to our continued safety against terrorism, is perfectly legal, and is authorized by the president. Also, that there is no way that the data could be misused; and that there are procedures and policies in place to prevent the misuse of retained data, should there be any.
Anyone else? Yes you, the plant with the prepared question...
Based on the summary in this article, the entire presentation sounds like a presentation-length equivalent of a forum troll ranting about nothing.
Three reasons nobody cares about the overall average level of enterprise involvement in FLOSS pro or con 1) there's nothing you can do about it, 2) the level of involvement *must* vary on a per-project basis, because involvement in a project is mostly driven by the developer's needs, and 3) Free Software does not exist solely for the purpose of creating a new world exactly as RedHat envisions it.
"I'm not in the business of seeing whatever pleases you." --Master Shake
I have to give these guys props for talking to El Reg and talking on the skeptics directly.
They state plainly that they are not storing personal information. They also imply that it can not be easily associated with a particular individual. This is almost certainly deception through omission. It's more or less trivial to associate it with a user at a later date, if this is what you want.
Their intentions seem good. What if their intentions change, or are changed for them?
Seriously, this whole "anonymizer" thing is the weak point. Even if it's legit, it doesn't have to stay that way. In just the last year, how many anonymizing services have been "officially" compromised by some form of local law enforcement, without telling the community of users until some time later? I can recall at least two. They started out completely anonymous, and then later became un-anonymous.
This system is worse than that, because it collects a profile of your surfing habits. Sure, it starts out anonymous, but who says it's going to stay that way?
a) Law enforcement can step in at any time, demainding "add this identifying information". Or, they can simply add a separate identifying database. Trivial. If you're paranoid, assume this demand comes with a gag order of some sort.
b) But even if they don't want to do that, what's to stop somebody (anybody, not just the law, who really I'm not that worried about) from fishing thorugh the profiles, and then locating the identifying information after the fact. The *next time* you use your browser, you're identified.
c) Yes, I said *you*. Now don't you regret that google search for "hacking tutorial"?
"The extensive recent coverage of American torture outsourcing has made many Americans uncomfortable..."
One of the reasons I love reading El Reg is this amazing gift for understatement displayed by so many of the writers. I've been self-censoring my criticism of my own government's actions for several years now, especially on the web where it can be automatically scraped and cataloged. Waterboarding? I'll pass, thanks.
Oh well. At least we can give him credit for not pointing a weapon (loaded or unloaded) at somebody else. So, like, half credit. Still a failing grade, then.
One idiot offs himself (IMO without much creativity), and that whole "serf" mentality kicks in. "Ordinary people aren't smart enough to have weapons, only the lord's army should have weapons." Heh. Only so many people fit in that castle on the hill, you know.
a) Church? Cult? In the case of Scient*l*gy, it's moot. Pretty much no government will recognize them as a religion of any kind.
b) Obviously, it would be the Church of the Cult of Scientology. Duh.
c) Because all the world's ills are caused by alien ghosts, it is appropriate to use the alien icon in any comment related to CoCoS.
Is anybody fooled by Microsoft's transparent ploys to force bloated, poorly "designed" "standards" on the rest of the world? Does anybody *not* think that their only goal is to ensure that nothing works properly with the standard except Microsoft tools? If you raised your hand, you're a dirty liar, and you're going to hell.
I was going to post an attempt at humor, something along the lines of "how dare you post this so-called research when it's obvious that the earth is about 150 years old"... But, I guess there's no point. These barely-contained rants lovingly hand-crafted by genuine creationists are the real deal. I could never top that.
Ain't nothin' like the real thing, baby.
People are so quick to judge. Why is it that every time a man is found wearing women's leather clothing, fishnets, and fake breasts in a bad neighborhood, people assume that he's there for some sort of mysterious sexual purpose?
Remember, killing yourself is stealing from the state, and very illegal!
Also, I'm noticing a disturbing trend: this week it's getting very difficult to dig out the IT angle from the suicide, autoerotic asphyxiation, gun nut type articles. These are "the defendant ran a web site", "no excuse needed", and "he used email to express his opinion", respectively...not always immediately obvious. El Reg should IMO be better about ensuring that its stupider readers can locate said angle.)