Posts by oiseau

Everything you need to know about the HPE v Mike Lynch High Court case

Not the end

As the promised “end of Q1” date for judgment in the years-long case draws closer ...

I doubt we'll see the end of this for a few years still.

HPE will keep going on and on till there's no air left to breathe, both in the UK and in the US, they have the money to bankroll an endless lawsuit.

Basically because if they lose the case, they are probably done.

For good, left to evanesce into nonexistence like other large IT corporations have.

eg: Sun Microsystems.

What still has me baffled is that while in the in US you can more or less file a lawsuit for just about anything you consider to be a legitimate grievance and actually be accepted in court, no class action has been taken by HPE shareholder's against the company and/or all those involved.

8.8 billion dollars is certainly not a number any corporation can ignore, more so if it is a write off on the puchase of a company they paid 11.7 billion for.

ie: over 75% of the price paid.

Such a lawsuit should put things straight very quickly with the blame clearly set on those responsible.

ie: HP's CEO, CFO and executive board.

Maybe Lynch is a crook, don't know.

But I'm convinced that the HPE executives involved in this monumentally absurd fuck-up are either crooks or dumber than a Brillo pad.

My odds are 10-1 to their being crooks.

@Gareth: thanks for the write up.

I was starting to lose track of how things were going.

O.

What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose

I wonder if there's a problem with bank IT in general?

Well ...

What there IS is a problem with banks in general.

For the longest time now. ie: since they were invented.

What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?

Bertold Brecht

A.

Crafty: Cricut caught out by user revolt, but will cloud stop play?

Us? Joking, right?

... us, the users who are tempted into buying cloud-powered hardware.

Us?

To paraphrase Tonto : "What you mean ... 'we', Rupert?"

I would never (ever) spend a dime on cloud-powered hardware.

Hell should freeze over first.

Twice.

It is a sure-fire way to, sooner than later, get royally screwed.

O.

Microsoft's GitHub under fire after disappearing proof-of-concept exploit for critical Microsoft Exchange vuln

Re: What. A. Shock.

In a book about Freud’s Theory and Method, a chap by the name of F.S. Perls quoted "a great astronomer" as saying:

“Two things are infinite, as far as we know – the universe and human stupidity.”

It is not known if Perls was referring to Einstein or someone else.

Both are long gone so it is quite probable that we will never know for sure.

But with respect to human stupidity, the evidence is at hand.

Also applies to the use of GitHub.

O.

Twitter sues Texas AG to halt 'retaliatory' demand for internal content-moderation rulebook in wake of Trump ban

Re: First comment is obviously a sealion, figures

Far-right isn't defamatory, anyway.

Quite so, it isn't.

The confusion arises because it happens that, all over the world, that particular section of the political spectrum is mostly populated by deadbrain assholes.

It is yet to be fully determined, but it has been postulated in some scientific circles that it is a very specific behaviour with an origin in a genetic condition that causes reduced blood flow ie: oxygen to the brain.

O.

Keeping up the PECR: ICO fines two marketing text pests £330k for sending 2.6 million messages

Absurd pittance

Directed at lower income households and in violation of regulations?

Just £330.000?

That's £0.127 per message.

An absurd pittance joke.

They will do it again and next time they will hide their responsibility deeper down.

"No, it wasn't us guv'nor ... "

The owners/directors/managers of these marketing (?) companies (from the top down) should be held directly responsible and fined in such a way that guarantees there will not be a next time.

The scumbags didn't give a monkey's toss about the possibility of a fine, they knew them to be low and simply factored them into what they charge their clients.

And those who received the results of these violations, usually larger companies or corporations, should also be held responsible.

Avon may not have sent the texts but be quite sure they knew all about it.

How could they not?

Absolutely everyone involved knew what was going on.

The only way these bastards will learn is through a nice big hole in the profits of all involved.

O.

Self-supported Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server virty users see stealth inflation

Surprise! Not ...

Hmmm ...

Is anyone actually surprised?

Just what did you think was going to happen after what happened with the CentOS 8?

O.

9 years after SpaceX strode into Texas village, Elon Musk floats name change for Boca Chica: 'Starbase'

Unfair

I think it's unfair to be so harsh on the chap.

You forget that the things he/his outfit is doing today were, a mere five years ago, the type of thing you would only see in sci-fi flics.

Now we take them for granted and boo/hiss if things go awry.

Tsk, tsk ...

O.

IBM settles £36m Direct Line insurance platform project lawsuit, after claiming Teradata tried to usurp its spot

Translation

... an IBM spokeswoman would only say: "The proceedings between DLIS and IBM have been settled on confidential terms".

Translation:

Once again, we screwed up big time but could not blame the contractor or the customer so we decided to fold before things got worse and even more shit reached the fan.

O.

Alexa, swap out this code that Amazon approved for malware... Installed Skills can double-cross their users

No such thing

... analyzed the security measures protecting Amazon's Alexa voice assistant ecosystem and found them wanting.

Security measures?

Protecting?

Amazon's Alexa?

It's been quite obvious from the very first time this crap came out on the market:

There - is - no - such - thing.

If you are stupid enough to buy one, you deserve what you get.

O.

Pyrrhic victory: Co-Op wins £13m from IBM over collapse of £175m Project Cobalt insurance platform contract

Certainly not blameless

... customer wasn't blameless for debacle, rules UK High Court.

Hmmm ...

They chose IBM to build a new, essential software platform to manage their business?

Of course they are not blameless.

They are the only ones to blame.

Another case of lack of due diligence?

O.

Huawei's new Mate X2 foldable phone costs almost $2,800

Nothing

Nothing to write home from Shenzhen about.

Exactly.

Or here * at ElReg for that matter.

O.

* ie: yet another extremely fragile, useless and absurdly expensive gadget aimed at mobile gamers.

O.

House Republicans introduce legislation for outright ban on municipal broadband in the US

The Republican Party seems to be composed of idiots.

Hmm ...

Seems?

The Republican Party seems to be is composed of idiots.

There, fixed it for you.

But they are not all idiots.

A great many of them are just millionaire delinquents living comfortaby inside the deep pockets of corporations.

O.

What the US desperately needs is competition - two many cities and states are still stuck with telco/cable monopolies ...

What?

Surely you jest ... or drank the wrong tea this morning.

They have been through that for the last what ... 50/60 years?

Incentives, absurd tax breaks and all sort of political malarkey® have resulted in what is happening today and the net result is that they have grown larger, richer and more powerful.

Enough is enough.

Corporations have long ago set up camp in what is (and will always be) natural monopolies, communications is just one of many others, like public health. Look at the UK today: it is nothing but the poster child of the absolute failure of the private sector in public services.

For the private sector, the only permanent objective is to expand and increase profits.

And they have shown to be capable of doing anything towards that goal ie: no means to that effect are spared, only the inefficient ones.

eg: can you be so naïve as to think that BigPharma gives a monkey's toss about saving the world from Covid? Or Telcos about improving broadband?

Need to cite more examples?

It's all about the revenue, always.

Nothing else, the system was designed to work that way.

Public services cannot/should not be in the hands of the private sector.

In todays' world, any communication service is a Public Service and should be heavily regulated by the state and if municipal broadband, so be it.

Unless these bastards are reined in ASAP, we're all (ie: worldwide) screwed big time.

O.

New FCC boss leaps into action by… creating three committees to look at longstanding problems and come back at some point

Sounds like someone trying not to rock any boats ...

Could very well be ...

I think that she has to be confirmed by one of those Republican infested Senate committees.

Taking into account all that needs to be done, better to try to get it done after that confirmation is in.

If she shows her cards now, she won't get the job.

Telcos et al are big Republican donors and have very deep pockets.

Only time will tell if nominating Rosenworcel was the right move by Biden or the FCC has had a Pai replaced with another one, albeit in skirts and with a wig.

O.

Groupware is not dead! HCL drops second beta of Notes/Domino version 12 and goes all low-code and cloudy

Precedent

26 years after IBM paid Lotus $3.25bn, the Notes email client might be getting useful.

Hmm ...

... might be ...?

It's been a while so my memory is a bit hazy.

But ...

Did IBM's Gerstner ever get to write off $2.6bn from that acquisition and then sue Lotus' Manzi?

I do recall reading that Manzi stayed on with his people at IBM.

O.

'It's where the industry is heading': LibreOffice team working on WebAssembly port

Re: It's the way the industry is heading

It's all just raw, uncontrolled pride sheer stupidity.

There you go, tidied up a bit. 8^7

O.

Re: "good for security"

... the document lives on the server, which is good for security ...

I wonder if the DH that said this can actually keep a straight face while spewing such rubbish.

I mean, the chap does work in some IT related business, yes?

Absolutely incredible ...

O.

Re: It's the way the industry is heading

Sounds like a great reason to waste coding resources!

Sounds like?

It is.

Nothing but a waste of coding resources.

You'd think they would have the basic common sense to dedicate it to ironing out all the bugs in LO.

Jerks ...

O.

Re: If this is the future...

Then we're all fucked.

You beat me to it.

+1 and a case of stout for you because I can only upvote you once. 8^7

But I think it reads better if it says "Then we're all thoroughly fucked."

O.

Dev creeped out after he fired up Ubuntu VM on Azure, was immediately approached by Canonical sales rep

Have I got to move again?

In a nutshell?

Yes.

O.

Re: Avoid the big beasts in the jungle

...depend upon the competence, probity, and goodwill of a behemoth.

Hmm ...

Competence?

Microsoft? Depends on your point of view, like most other things in life.

As for probity and goodwill, forget it.

Never had any.

Remember how MS started.

O.

Curious? Really?

"... curious to know what else these 'publishers' are getting from Microsoft about me and the machines I spun ..."

Curious?

What else?

You're dealing with Microsoft and their new chum, Canonical.

There's no need to be curious.

The writing has been on the wall for ages and the answer is absolutely everything.

O.

Mike Lynch extradition: Uncle Sam offered Autonomy founder $10m bail if he stood trial in the US

... apparently she also admitted having not read the Due Diligence report ...

So ...

Still not culpable?

In any case, she is just one, albeit an important one, of the many people mixed up in this very turbid affaire.

... may have believed that the deal was irredeemably bad so reading the DD report was a waste of time.

What she may have believed is no excuse for anything.

At least not one for a CFO whose time (wasted or not) was paid for by HP with yearly salary+premiums that are most probably well above $5M.

If she did not read the report, it was nothing short of shallow and indolent.

At the very least, lack of due diligence on her part.

But the question remains: why has a class action lawsuit not been filed against HP et al.?

O.

... an aspect of the unacceptable face of humanity, treating everything as a game and willing to sell their own parents for a dollar profit.

Indeed ...

And then the buyer will file a lawsuit if the kg/$ ratio was not what they or their beancounters appraised it to be.

I find it rather odd that, having the beancounters been fined a nifty £15m for not properly doing what was expected of them ie: ... their jobs properly and scrutinise Autonomy's books. that this Lynch chap is still on the hook.

It has been reported that a total of 15 firms advised HP on the Autonomy deal, among them heavyweights UBS, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, with Slaughter & May and Morgan Lewis serving as the company's legal advisers.

Are all these firms staffed by dumb DHs?

No one saw any red lights?

It seems that in US can more or less file a lawsuit for just about anything you consider to be a legitimate grievance and actually be accepted in court, apparently with no limits to your (legal) imagination.

So ...

Just how is it that this financial scandal has not become the object of a huge shareholder/class-action suit against all those involved?

I mean, 8.8 billion dollars is a number you do not play the fool with, be it yours or not.

You could write off (maybe) up to 10% on a deal because ...

But 8.8/11.7 is over 75%.

Such a lawsuit should put things straight very quickly with the responsibility for this absurd fuck-up where it is due. ie: HP's CEO, CFO and executive board.

O.

Windows' cloudy future: That Chrome OS advantage is Google's to lose

Re: Interesting that Google...

... against using cloud services to store data, everything has to be behind the firewall.

+1

Is there any other sensible way to do things?

But as their thing is to cut costs no matter what, beancounters will disagree but your data stands a much better chance.

O.

Contributing? Surely you jest ...

Microsoft is contributing so much to open source now ...

Really?

How about this: Microsoft is slowly but steadily infecting open source now ...

Reads like a more accurate description of what is happening.

Not without stressing that my pointing this out is not in any way an excuse for Google and what they do.

From a post here at ElReg by AC (20180614) which sums it up quite nicely:

"Linux, Linux Foundation, R, Git, Atom/Electron, MariaDB, Python, Mozilla, RedHat, Debian, Gnome, KDE, ... are all being "disrupted" by M$. Their trojan horses infiltrate all important open source free software foundations and companies (EEE Nokia style). (M$ is a sponsor to all of these foundations! And Linux Foundation congratulated M$ for buying Github! WTF) ..."

I find it tragic that you [an ElReg staffer/contributor]do not or maybe just choose not to see it and then spread such BS.

O.

Amazon coughs up $62m to shoo away claims it stole driver tips, cut pay rates without telling them

Utterly absurd ...

In agreeing to the settlement, Amazon does not admit any wrongdoing.

So ...

Amazon pays a thin shred of what they propably stole, everything goes away and they become innocent?

Incredible.

This should have cost them a good precentage of their revenue during those years so they don't try it again.

That is the only way these bastards learn: through a nice big hole in their profits.

O.

Troubling news for JSON tinkerers? Windows Terminal unveils The Settings

Re: I sense a sea change at MS. And I'm not sure it is all swells from here on....

After all the IT world has seen from MS in the past 30+ years, I fail to understand that support of more open languages, environments, even OS's could be so naïvely seen as just wonderful or a sea change.

More so by someone who reads ElReg.

I also fear The Bard would object to your use of the idiom in this context.

No.

It is not wonderful and certainly not a sea change of any sort.

These are nothing but Trojan horse tools to do the same as always: Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.

O.

Takes from the taxpayer, gives to the old – by squishing a bug in Thatcherite benefits system

Re: As they said in the 80s...

Benefits are the Governmental version of the bully who steals your lunch money.

Hmmm ...

I spent a good while trying my very best to see if I could come up with another suitable definition for this particular AC.

But no.

So total arsehole it is.

O.

Decade-old bug in Linux world's sudo can be abused by any logged-in user to gain root privileges

Re: How is this possible?

.... better just because it came from a big and reassuringly expensive vendor then think again.

Beat me to it. 8^7

I cannot understand how this is still, after all the IT years gone by, a permanent assumption.

It's downright stupid.

O.

President Biden selects Jessica Rosenworcel to head up FCC as acting chairwoman

Interesting

Good, Rosenworcel's got a load of things to both do and undo.

It will now be interesting to see where AH Ajit Pai lands, now that he's out of a job wreaking havoc at the FCC.

And then see if he gets properly called out for it.

O.

Screw you, gadget-menders! No really, you'll need loads of screwdrivers to fix Apple's AirPods Max headphones

Surely only an utter idiot (or an Apple fanboi) would buy this at this sort of price.

Hmmm ...

Methinks you may be exaggerating and giving the poor idiots a bad rep.

Let's leave it at Apple fanboi.

O.

AnyVan confirms digital break-in, says customer names, emails and hashed passwords exposed

The only way

This is something that has become so frequent that no one is in the least surprised anymore.

A huge data breach?

Thousands of passwords and (most important) personal and banking data stolen?

Move along now, nothing new here, happens all the time.

The only way that this will eventually stop is to heavily fine the company that allowed this to happen.

We can't continue to be so naïve as to think that, in this day and age, these things just happen.

No ...

They happen because some DH beancounter calculated the risk vs. the cost of having a secure system and decided that, given lack the penalties involved, it was a good deal to take the risk.

And some bigwig approved it.

Of course, we all know that given enough time and resources, any secure system could eventually be breached.

But a severe penalty eg: 50% of the previous year's profits and 100% in a recurrence would put real fear in any CEO's mind.

The result will be that systems would never again be breached due to incompetence and greed.

O.

Debian 'Bullseye' enters final phase before release as team debates whether it will be last to work on i386 architecture

Re: I'm finding this hard to believe...

I've got a couple of Atom based things ...

My Asus 1000HE (Atom N280/2Gb RAM/250Gb HDD) runs perfectly well and when I'm not travelling with it, I use it to run my coffee roasting software which, to my chagrin, stopped being published in 32bit at v1.1.

It's over 10 years old, runs Devuan Beowulf 32bit / Openbox with no issues and don't see me getting anything else for the tasks it covers.

Cheers,

O.

Dems to ISPs: You're not gonna hike broadband prices, slap restrictions on folks in a pandemic, are you?

Natural Monopoly

In todays' world, any communication service is a Public Service and should be heavily regulated by the state.

Corporations have long ago set up camp in what is (and will always be) a natural monopoly, just one of many others.

Their <b<only</b> permanent objective is to exopand and make more money.

No means to that effect are spared, only the inefficient ones.

Unless they are reined in ASAP, we're all (ie: worldwide) screwed big time.

O.

Confessions at a Christmas do: 'That time I took down an entire neighbourhood'

Hello:

In order to boot the device off the UBR, the command 'reboot cable modem [MAC address]' is used ...

That particular UBR software was obviously written by a certified DH who could not bother to do it properly.

An incomplete instruction should result in a non-executable instruction and a potentially dangerous one shoud print a Are you sure reply requiring a y/N from the operator.

eg:

...

[root@cable_DH~]# reboot cable modem

Usage:

admin cable modem [options] [MAC address]

Options:

-list - Display cable modem data

- off - Switch off

- reboot - Reboot

- ...

... or something to that effect.

You know, basic stuff.

Cheers,

O.

Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 Gen 8: No boundaries were pushed in the making of this laptop – and that's OK

Re: Nothing? Surely you jest.

You missed one - can you replace the OS ...

You're right.

This being a Thinkpad, I took to be a given.

Should have known better.

I stand corrected. 8^D

O.

Nothing? Surely you jest.

There's literally nothing frustrating about this machine.

Yes, there is.

More so if you consider the £1,820.00 you have to spend to get one it.

1. RAM soldered to the logic board

2. Proprietary Ethernet adaptor

3. No Ethernet port

4. No SD / MicroSD slots

And then the unforgivable unknowns:

1. User replaceable storage?

2. User upgradeable WiFi card?

3. User replaceable battery?

Sorry, but I'll pass.

Have a great New Year's Eve and a 2021 that is (at least) better than what 2020 has been.

Just couldn't be worse.

O.

My website has raised its anchor and set sail into the internet oceans without me

You get what you pay for

Merry Christmas Alistair. =-)

... Apple keeps changing the brand domain for the email address it assigns you. Do I use the dot-me, dot-icloud or dot-mac address? Are they different? Are they the same? Are they aliases for something else ...

Well ...

That's what you get for buying that stuff.

O.

75% of databases to be cloud-hosted by 2022, says Gartner while dishing on the weak points of each provider

Re: Heads in the cloud ?

If your company really needs that amount/type of storage, it must to invest in the right things.

ie: on premises equipment, personnel, knowhow and training.

The much touted expense/cost is nothing but investment in security, reliability and independence, among other important things.

And the supposedly "expensive and difficult to manage", a favourite of the bloody bean counters who should not be allowed to opine with respect to such decisions, ends up being peanuts when the proverbial shit hits the fan and clean up time comes.

eg: Talk Talk, Equifax and a host of other examples which we have not heard about

Cloud?

Be sure it will, sooner or later, rain on you.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, SAP, IBM (and others)?

Be sure that given the chance, they'll screw you over.

Twice, if it means more money.

O.

How the US attacked Huawei: Former CEO of DocuSign and Ariba turned diplomat Keith Krach tells his tale

Pot and Kettle

... USA believes Huawei is an arm of China’s government, enables its pervasive surveillance regime and is also a critical part of its intelligence apparatus.

Hmm ...

Is the kettle calling the pot black?

O.

Watchdog signals Boeing 737 Max jets can return to US skies following software upgrade, pilot training

Re: Scares the pants off me

Nothing coming from the FAA or Boeing reassures me that this will not happen again.

+1

Exactly what I was about to post.

Not a plane I will be getting on if and when I have to.

O.

Re: Dating back to the 1096s

...computer in the middle allows for enormous redundancy and improved safety, along with better passenger comfort.

Indeed ...

We've seen how the redundancy has worked (see sensors) with regards to safety.

As to passenger comfort, I guess that the bottom of the sea or a nice casket can be quite comfortable.

O.

America's largest radio telescope close to collapse as engineers race to fix fraying cables

I hope they do get it fixed though.

So do I.

Otherwise it will be yet another fuck-up to add to The Orange Asshole's™ "legacy".

O.

Why it occurred?

"... working vigorously to understand why this industrial failure occurred."

Why?

Really don't know?

In August last year I noted that due to the lack of federal aid, a great deal of Puerto Rico's basic infrastructure was still in ruins after hurricanes Irma and María (both in 09/2017) devastated the island, all made worse by an earthquake in January of this year.

The lack of basic federal aid in the wake of two important hurricanes (two weeks apart) undoubtedly affected not only Arecibo's maintenance schedules but also its funding, if any at that point in The Orange Asshole's™ tenure as occupant of the White House.

Really no need to be asking why, it's quite obvious.

Unfortunately, I don't see Arecibo getting any help before January 20th. 2021, so who knows if it will survive 2020.

O.

Not on your Zoom, not on Teams, not Google Meet, not BlueJeans. WebEx, Skype and Houseparty make us itch. No, not FaceTime, not even Twitch

Re: Nobody wants to use this stuff. It's dehumanising.

What really frustrates me ...

... don't realise that they're encouraging me to make them redundant.

Indeed.

Two or three years ago, one of the three important local (albeit foreign owned) supermarket chains started to implement this self-checkout thing by means of which you ie: the customer, instantly become an unpaid employee by doing the work paid cashiers do.

For the obvious reasons, I had never used it and was not going to.

But one time, as I was patiently waiting in line to check out a small purchase, an employee standing by the self check-out machine started to visibly call at me to use the new service, to which I made signs to the effect that it was allright, that I could wait.

The third time she called out to me I obliged, but only to make it clear to her that the reason I never used said service was because, if in the long run it ended up being widely accepted, people like her would eventually be made redundant and that I thought it was an outrage that their guild/union was not acting on their behalf.

Result?

I was all but told off, like if I was speaking to the manager or a shareholder of the company.

Incredible.

O.

I think you may have missed the point(s).

In my view, the most important one(s).

"It's dehumanising. You can't maintain eye contact like humans do ..."

"Voice only leaves your brain free to think instead of processing broken visual social cues."

It is not just about interoperability.

O.

HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink

Re: What a way to honour Bill & Dave’s legacy

HP’s founders must be spinning in their graves ...

But not for this ...

They have been spinning and spinning for about twenty years, ever since the HP/Compaq disaster went through, on that occasion led by the first of HPs Bitchy Broad™ type CEOs with political aspirations, Carly Fiorina.

The next one to come along was Meg Whitman, the brains behind the puchase of UK firm Autonomy, the one that led to a whooping US$8.8 billion write down further on.

But ...

What's the all the fuss about?

Can't blame HP for for trying to claw back one or two cents on each dollar they wrote down.

Which (of course) has to come from their clients' pockets.

Miserable bastards ...

O.

Here's a little Intel: Beware of Linux graphics vendors bearing gifts of shared code – open-sourcer

A sign of where things are going.

"A warning then to anyone wishing for more vendor code sharing between OSes it generally doesn't end with Linux being better off, it ends up with Linux being more fragmented, harder to support and in the long run unsustainable."

A sign of things to come.

Hopefully this sound warning will be taken into account.

And those responsible will act accordingly.

O.