* Posts by Geoff Mackenzie

744 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2007

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Apache rules web server landscape

Geoff Mackenzie
Joke

IIS is being downplayed here ....

I bet those 11 unidentified were IIS - just down at the time.

Windows hardware challenge draws on resources

Geoff Mackenzie
Coat

Switch turning all security off

It's a shiny plastic disc with a Microsoft logo.

Desktop Eee PC spied on web

Geoff Mackenzie

Hi-def and servers

Not sure how hi hi-def is in practice but my old pre-Coppermine Celeron 433 (with the crippling 66MHz FSB) running Ubuntu 7.10 can play back conventional DVDs perfectly so I'd not rule it out entirely. Linux is actually the OS where media playback works these days (DRM; what's that?) and conveniently it's also less snooty about what hardware it will run well on.

Also, I've been waiting for these for ages, and not for a home media box / general fart-around machine - I want three, as servers (one for Squid / Tor / BitTorrent and a (low traffic) webserver, one as a file server (with external USB disks; I suspect this will have a 4Gb flash drive inside) and one as a database server - again, not heavy duty). Actually I think ASUS are missing a trick here - wouldn't these make the basis for a great low-power server?

I mean, sure, with only one PSU and probably fairly cheap components you're not looking at something as stable as an IBM x346 and it's certainly got nothing like the power, but there will be virtually no (possibly no) moving parts and the power consumption will be very low. At this price you could cluster five of the buggers and at that size you could get them in less than 2U of rack space. Businesses in my experience seem to throw a ton of iron at everything when the fact is in many cases usage is so light that this would be ample - and the network is often the bottleneck anyway (as is the case for everything but the database server in my case and even there the EEE would have enough grunt (or squeak?) for my purposes...

Security firms split over Phorm classification

Geoff Mackenzie

Interesting ...

"A user must accept the user licence agreement to make the service active" - how does that work if it's an opt-out? I've seen "by continuing to use the site/software/etc you indicate that you agree" and "check this box to indicate that you agree" but never "do nothing to indicate that you agree". Taking it a little too far isn't it?

Or does this mean all Phorm victims will be asked first? Won't that kill this thing stone dead?

UK gov unveils 'Innovation Nation' plans

Geoff Mackenzie

Want an innovation nation?

Reintroduce grants, fund science teaching and research and stop taxing everything that moves into the ground then. Just a thought.

The 'green' car tax grabs that don't add up

Geoff Mackenzie

RE AC and FlatSpot

AC first: I wouldn't suggest that everyone use bikes for every journey. Until recently I had a small car too*, which was handy for journeys when I had to move a lot of stuff, give 2 or more people a lift, or on days when the weather really stank and public transport wasn't handy. I definitely wouldn't put a small child on the back of a bike (well, maybe a little trailie for their own amusement but you know what I mean, not a real bike on the road). For an adult commuting alone, in half decent to good weather, a bike is great. That's all I'm saying. I can't believe you actually used the phase "think of all the children" though. :) Not sure about your point about NOX, I'm not very up on that and have to admit that I thought burning less than a third of the fuel was a sign of green-ness in a vehicle... Certainly a sign of cheapness, which to be honest I care more about.

FlatSpot: Nice arrangement with the VPN. Sadly I have no similar arrangement so I have to commute. Given the choice I'd certainly rather work from home 90% of the time and it's by far the greenest option - except maybe from living within walking distance of your place of work, but even there the difference is marginal.

I don't feel pompous about any magic bullet solution, I just think people who do commute one to a car would be better off on bikes, and the rest of us would be better off in a number of ways if they did so.

OK, take your point about noisy bikes - some are louder than others, particularly when run hard, and it does seem pointless. I just don't think it's fair to tar modest, polite little bikes like mine with the same brush. High performance bikes like sport bikes tend to be pretty loud, but they're really comparable to sports cars, which are often pretty loud too. Comparing a sport bike to a small hatchback is a little unfair (a bit like if us bikers were saying cars got 6mpg, based on some 200mph 3-litre supercharged monster of a car).

I repeat from my previous post: I stick to speed limits (including on the motorway, so I'm holier than thou on that one :) ).

And finally, I resent the implication that I'm in some way posing and trying to look cool here. I say I don't speed, I have a small commuter bike and I stick to the speed limits - please don't try to imply I was talking like a poser.

Finally, if I had kids, I would spend time with them. What's your obsession with family relationships anyway? Have a neglectful, absentee biker for a parent or something? Don't take this too seriously, it's not meant to be insulting by the way. I'm just curious why this whole 'spend time with your kids' theme keeps coming up. Are bikers notoriously inattentive to their families or something?

* having a bike and car isn't as un-green as it sounds. It was an old Metro that got about 50-60mpg and of course I only used one of them at a time.

Geoff Mackenzie

Re: motorbikes (@FlatSpot)

My bike gets 100-120mpg and is reasonably quiet (a Honda CD250U). I keep to the speed limit and I use it primarily to commute. During my journey on my two-seat 200kg vehicle I see hundreds upon hundreds of selfish knob jockeys like yourself, one to a car, turning the roads into car parks and averaging 10mph (and probably 20mpg. max), 5 metres at a time. On average two to three times a week one of these blundering idiots, usually mid phone call, tries to kill me by looking the wrong way while heaving his lurching land zeppelin around with all the ease and grace of an elephant on LSD.

So up yours. If I go out for a weekend burn what's it to you? I still use far less fuel than you and am many times less likely to kill a fellow road user or pedestrian.

Top security firm: Phorm is adware

Geoff Mackenzie

Re: poisoning the database

I do a lot of automated web scraping (just for my own purposes; occasionally cheekily but I'm not a scumbag and don't hammer servers or peddle scraped data or grub around for email addresses - just thought I'd better be clear about that for starters!). I'm planning on tweaking this to poison Phorm's database; obviously my automated jobs don't say very much about my preferences and interests. I was thinking, add a couple of random fetcher jobs as well to occasionally fetch a random page and spider around a little. It might even be possible to switch the ID in the cookie now and then - with any luck you might hit someone else's ID and poison the records about them, too, although I'm less sure that this would work.

It's not foolproof of course - they could probably spot this easily enough if they were keen - but if a lot of people started doing this it could make their database relatively worthless. The same trick would also be a little irritation for doubleclick and the like.

I may hack together the random fetcher / spider / cookie poisoner as a standalone application and see if anyone else fancies chipping in a small amount of bandwidth to this 'project' at some point in the near future. To have any real power the poisoner would need to be running in several places. A kind of voluntary botnet. If it really caught on it could really dent this spy-ad industry.

Of course I can't really do that much about Phorm myself as I'm on Plusnet. I know they're owned by BT but Plusnet assure me they aren't involved in this (so good news for Plusnet customers out there assuming that's accurate).

Bill Gates goes to Washington, again

Geoff Mackenzie
Joke

Steve and Bill Jousting

Bill's lance would break when his horse started moving and Steve's would be made of foam rubber to avoid the risk of injury.

Darling talks, UK growth slows

Geoff Mackenzie

We suspect the economy might slow down

So we're going to tax you some more.

Cheers, guys. But then, that's why we pay them the big bucks, isn't it?

Google red cards Privila for gaming search engine

Geoff Mackenzie

What's the problem?

All good search engines will filter and rank results. There's a lot of crap out there. Generally speaking they will try to present the most relevant results first - and Google never claimed, as far as I know, that they would present absolutely everything on the web that could imaginably match your query, so some potential results will be missed out for a wide range of reasons.

Also, all search engines will occasionally index crap and present it as a relevant result, especially if it has been crafted to suck in the search engine. This crap might stay indexed and be presented as a relevant result for a while - this doesn't necessarily mean Google are deliberately indexing it for the ad revenues (though I don't have all the facts and I wouldn't entirely rule it out). It could just be that nobody noticed for 6 months.

I'm not a big Google fan and have some doubts about their data retention, but let's not overdo the Google-bashing here. This is not exactly the most evil thing they do. Also, if we all move over en-masse to bashing Google, who's going to carry on the good work of bashing MS? :)

Minister wants more mashups

Geoff Mackenzie

Orwellian job title

Man, they really walk into these things don't they? I pity the poor soul who has to read the public's feedback on this deeply unpopular government. Mind you, they already know what we think of them - that's why they postponed the election.

Windows better off closed, says Microsoft

Geoff Mackenzie

Various responses to comments above

"would you buy Microsoft Windows XP or Joe Bloggs Wondows XP?" - I think the answer here is "no."

Disadvantages of opening the source:

* Malware authors being able to find hooks and holes with much more ease.

Yeah, because that's so difficult now. On the other hand, you'd also have potentially thousands of volunteers peer-reviewing the code and helping to get those holes closed.

* Malware authors being able to create 'pirate' versions of Windows with the malware built right into the OS. Far more undetectable than even rootkits. Idiot users would love to buy a copy of Windows for £5 at a car boot sale, without realising the full payload.

You don't need the source to do this. It's been done a great many times.

* Software developers being able to see how things work will start to use and rely on internal behaviours. API not doing quite what you need? Edit it and build another.. All comes tumbling down when MS release a new SP or version.

This happens even if you do use the 'official' APIs. Also, hiding internals from programmers isn't the right way to deal with this. If developers rely on internals, then let their software break, who cares? But that doesn't mean the rest of us, who would use APIs responsibly, shouldn't see the source.

It's really quite simple. I use open source software because I like to have the option of knowing what my computer is doing. Source code is just the human readable form of the most precise description of exactly what my computer is doing. What Microsoft do as a matter of course is control what your computer is doing and refuse to let you discover what that is. Granted, most of the time I don't check when I do have the option, but with Windows you don't have the option, and neither does anyone else without a vested interest in concealing defects and underhand behaviour.

How can you trust software like that?

DNA sequencing for the masses

Geoff Mackenzie

I'm not sure, but ...

... it looks a little like amanfromMars has just passed a very informal Turing Test. Congratulations, amanfromMars!

Local councils dish out shoddy computer recycling advice

Geoff Mackenzie

Overwrite every file individually?

You can just open the drive itself as a file (e.g. /dev/hdb) and write to that.

Ballmer pledges PHP love in Microhoo future

Geoff Mackenzie

Hmm, double standard?

If he doesn't think it's worth bringing yet another browser to the Mac, why bring yet another browser to Windows when there are already so many good ones?

Man cuffed for lamppost sex outrage

Geoff Mackenzie

@ Rebecca Putman

While I do think Steve's comment is a little excessive, what about this?

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/05/18/vibrating_knickers/

I suppose the difference was that she wasn't being visibly indecent, but it does show that the ladies can be just as randy (and odd about it) as us Y-chromosome carriers - although in fairness at least it was a sex toy, not street furniture, household equipment or a bicycle. You might also, if you were being picky, point out that the story is originally from the Sun, but you never know, it might be based on fact.

As for the lamp post guy - I don't know, but I have a sneaking suspicion this might have been a case of drunken and unimaginative pole dancing rather than actual simulated sex with the lamp post. And I definitely think society seems to overreact to this harmless daftness - the chaos that ensued after this incident was a little disproportionate in my opinion.

Microsoft jump starts IE 8 with community push

Geoff Mackenzie

@wim

Hear hear.

I actually wouldn't mind trying out the beta (and trying out some of my in-development web projects in it) to see how it goes. If it actually worked, I'd start testing in MSIE regularly again - if only that didn't mean I needed to buy a WinXP license and join the slow but inexorable slide to Vista. Ah well, if it's standards compliant now it won't matter if I just test in Firefox, Opera and Safari I suppose.

Why you should care that Jimmy Wales ignores reality

Geoff Mackenzie

@Daniel

I don't believe you. I'm going to cross check with a couple of other sources. :)

Lawmakers voice concerns over cybersecurity plan

Geoff Mackenzie

Ye gods, the Martian's gone wild

Never seen amanfrommars so agitated.

IE8 to follow web standards by default

Geoff Mackenzie

Broken browsers

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=25" />

Standard compliant browsers will ignore it of course; easier than ever to shut out IE lusers. Up yours, MS :)

Who codes for IE? I just check for IE and add a 'get firefox' button and a note about broken browsers, and remove the bug reporting form.

Asus 8.9in Eee PC surfaces

Geoff Mackenzie

Nice!

I like it. I hope this means a price drop in the smaller screen model - it would do fine for my purposes but I need at least three of them. The eee I mean.

Just to keep up the innuendo (Re: "I've a seven incher already,"), eight point six inches would be great, but I'd settle for seven. :)

US government forces military secrets on Brit webmaster

Geoff Mackenzie

Fantastic!

I would have assumed they would manage to send such critical information by a relatively secure and private method, but they can't even manage to send it to the right address! That's just priceless.

Orkut worm feeds on scraps

Geoff Mackenzie

Any particular platform at risk?

I take it this is Windows only, as per?

HMRC appoints 37 data guardians

Geoff Mackenzie
Coat

Who'd take this job?

Is it just me that suspects the only person that would take a job at HMRC responsible for data safety right now would be a reckless moron? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose?

Court must reconsider Microsoft Excel patent damages

Geoff Mackenzie

Hypocrisy, sure. But it's still great stuff.

Hope he gets $2 a copy. I am opposed to software patents and personally think he should have released such a piddling little piece of software (if it's anything like MS Query) under the GPL, but since this is at least a small thorn in Microsoft's side I think it's riotously funny. Good luck to him!

I hope someone has a similar suit pending for CP/M. :-)

I don't think it's such an inexplicable double standard to be honest. I have similarly mixed views about assault. If it happens to good people, I think it's bad. If it happens to a bunch of arseholes on the other hand ...

Confidential Home Office data turns up in laptop on eBay

Geoff Mackenzie

Panasonic CF-41

I have two of these. The optical drives are under the keyboard, and top-loading; a clip on the front allows the keyboard to hinge up to access the drive, which looks like the top-loading CD drive on some cheap old stereos.

The whole story smells of BS to me though.

7000 Leap Year Babies attack Steve Ballmer

Geoff Mackenzie

Unbelievable

Normally I rarely side with Pope Gregory, but in terms of date standards I think he pips Microsoft at the post. Papal infallibility might be dubious but it's a better justification for using a particular calendar than Microsoft's incompetence...

Japanese joggers to get exercise earphones with attitude

Geoff Mackenzie

@Jan Buys

I think you're missing the point; these are clearly for people who don't :)

Microsoft and Adobe jockey on rich applications

Geoff Mackenzie

At everyone who pounced on me...

...Thanks, sorry, I stand corrected... I'll try digging a little deeper before I post next time. I still think the pages on MS's website that gave me the impression it was WIndows only by only offering a .EXE to download were pretty unprofessional though - they actually left me with completely the wrong impression it seems.

Geoff Mackenzie

Cross browser?

Shame it's not cross platform. I'm sure MS think they're being awfully smart, offering me Silverlight to download, but only as a Windows .EXE, but actually it just makes them look like incompetent dickheads. Adobe's proprietary pap might not be fundamentally any better but at least they manage a Linux version.

The fact that Silverlight appears to be Windows-only makes it only marginally better than an IE-only technology in my view. Any company using this 'new technology' is screwing a small proportion of their customer base. Who's going to want to do that?

Lenovo intros skinny, low-weight ThinkPad

Geoff Mackenzie

@simon

This Dell laptop is nearly 35mm thick! I can't use it!

Just think of what it would do for the machine's portability if it was thinner, but measured exactly the same in the other two dimensions! It would be a /revolution/ I tell you.

HMRC pays criminal for 'tax dodger' discs

Geoff Mackenzie

A feel a Perl script coming on

I'm sure I could produce a list of names that I can sell to HMRC on false pretences. If they pay up front, and especially if they can't rely on the bank's co-operation, they should be an easy mark.

Well, at least they're showing a tough approach to medium sized tax evaders. Big ones are still fine though.

Of course, it's not news that tax money funds organised crime. Just because we call the biggest organised crime family in any given location the "Government" doesn't change their underlying nature; they extract money and enforce arbitrary rules with threats (nice liberty you have there, would be a shame if anything was to happen to it), primarily to maintain their own dominant position.

cDc automates Google Hacking

Geoff Mackenzie

IE blocking

I prefer a more generous approach; allow users in, but add a warning for their eyes only that their browser is broken and don't allow them to submit bug reports relating to the markup. I don't code for IE any more but I agree that shutting out IE users entirely is a little excessive.

Airline pilot sacked for 777 Top Gun stunt

Geoff Mackenzie

@Chris C

9.8m/s/s; where do you get that figure from? Bear in mind even without the engines, it would glide, not drop like a brick. And the passengers weren't ordinary airline passengers as far as I can see.

I'm guessing a very experienced pilot was pretty confident he wasn't going to plant the plane, and bear in mind he did seek permission (and get it) from the tower, who have a reason to care, just not the management.

I other words he followed the rules, just not the company rulebook. If what he did was reckless the folks in the tower need asked a few questions for authorising it too.

Judge greenlights lawsuit against Microsoft

Geoff Mackenzie

Vista Capable

Isn't that an oxymoron anyway? Like Windows Security or Microsoft Works?

Ofcom auctions off high frequencies

Geoff Mackenzie
Joke

I'll bid £200 for 14KHz-20KHz

All the really annoying noises are in there.

Vista SP1 kills and maims security apps, utilities

Geoff Mackenzie

Ha, ha!

Seriously, if they don't stop this soon I'm literally going to split my sides. Another reminder as to why I'm a linux 'fanboy'.

Doctors back more tax on booze

Geoff Mackenzie

Carrot and stick

When are they going to start offering tax breaks on healthy (or otherwise to-be-promoted) activities? Rather than slapping monstrous tax hikes on 4x4s, tobacco and alcohol, why not subsidise small vehicles, excercise and fruit juice?

Microsoft opens APIs and protocols to all

Geoff Mackenzie

@Eric

The Open Source community doesn't need to write better, open standards that work everywhere. They exist. The Open Source community, by and large, tries to conform to existing standards. If Microsoft can't manage to conform to those same open standards, that's not our fault.

Developers (not Open Source people exclusively) wanted access to Microsoft's APIs so that they could compete on a level playing field on Microsoft's platform. That's how this will open the market up to competition and allow better software to be produced by Microsoft's competitors on Windows - which will mean Microsoft might actually have to get their fingers out and produce some decent software instead of the horrendous bloatware their customers have had to satisfy themselves with so far.

I disagree that "OSS is still nowhere close on the desktop, and the server leaves much to be desired" - could you back that up with any supporting evidence?

What you don't seem to realise is that those who want access to Microsoft's APIs and those who detest their shitty software are two separate, though overlapping, groups. I for one am more a member of the 'their code is shite' crowd and this release of API and protocol documentation makes no real difference to me personally since I don't run their crap anyway and wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Geoff Mackenzie

OK, Thanks ...

Now let's have the source, and redistribution rights. Otherwise this is not 'the bell tolling' for OOo or any other Open Source project; this is still a substandard product and I won't be using it just because the documentation is finally being released.

It's nice that MS Office will soon support ODF, but OOo already does that, is cheaper, and runs on my chosen platform.

Robocopter gunship abandons sinking warship project

Geoff Mackenzie

Logical extreme

Soon wars will be fought entirely by robots, against robots. Then we can move them into simulations to avoid the environmental impact and collateral damage. Then we can just switch to chess and save CPU time too.

Mozilla opens the doors on Messaging subsidiary

Geoff Mackenzie

I might be out of the loop

...and this may already have happened, but being able to use Thunderbird as a client on a Domino server would be excellent. I could finally ditch that Notes client at work...

Facebook loses a few bitches

Geoff Mackenzie
Joke

@eddiewren

"Useful for keeping in touch with odd people."

Odd people always seem to manage to keep in touch with me fine, no matter how hard I try to shake them. :)

Redmond puts key Vista update on ice

Geoff Mackenzie

@David Hixson-Ward

I also run XP because my employer requires me to. But only on one machine - I prefer my machines to just work, so they're running Ubuntu 7.10. Works with all my devices - some old, some obscure as hell, some bleeding edge - and required absolutely no tweaking on any of my systems.

This whole idea that people who use linux must love tweaking it, and that linux requires a lot of dicking around in the console to keep it running, is a few years out of date. My 7.10 machines require a lot less dicking around than my 'work' XP machine.

Geoff Mackenzie

Ha, ha ha ha ha ha, etc.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I've never had a problem on an Ubuntu box, update related or otherwise*. And yet the fact that my XP laptop BSODs every time it shuts down (harmlessly, but still...) I'm expected to treat as normal. The fact that despite its dual core CPU and 3Gb of RAM it runs like it's wading through treacle despite primarily running software that ticks over fine on an old PII NT4 box (e.g. Visual Studio 6) - that's also normal and what I need is more hardware.

The box is an absolute flying machine running off an Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD and a useless toaster running XP. I'd hate to see this hardware defiled with Vista. That would be an insult too far.

--

* I tell a lie. I did have one Ubuntu box that was a little unstable occasionally. It did have a faulty motherboard though so I'm impressed it ran at all. And back in 2005-ish I had a Fedora box hang on me - but it ran fine with mem=128M (and after I replaced the RAM, with no fruity kernel options). Nice to have the use of the system despite RAM faults with a mere software option though...

--

I mean, come on, Windows users - the facts are pretty clear. You're using a vastly inferior system. It would be nice if people could be less confrontational about it - really even the most belligerent and anti-social linux 'fanboys' are just trying to help. It's not a matter of horses for courses - Windows just really does objectively suck. The only reason anyone runs it at all, in reality, is that too many game developers are still targeting it, and too many people are wasting time playing games to the detriment of their general quality of life. Get a console, and get real work out of your computer.

Excuse the rant.

Microsoft releases latest XP SP3 build

Geoff Mackenzie

@Dan Paul

Hopefully this isn't seen as fanboyism (who am I kidding, of course it will be) - but the nice clean GUI-fied Linux you're looking for might be Ubuntu 7.10. I'm not saying it's perfect, but if you haven't tried it you might be surprised how slick and easy it is - seriously!

I'm not a Linux geek either; I run Ubuntu because my machines just work under Ubuntu and are easy enough to configure and use that I don't have to think about it. Well, I won't ramble on, but I recommend you give a 7.10 live CD a spin and see what you think. It might not quite be the thing for you yet but it might be, you never know, and it costs nothing to try it and find out.

MS + Yahoo! = Microhoo! - Official!

Geoff Mackenzie

Damn

I was rooting for YaSoft! - never mind. Nice logo though, and the pun wouldn't have worked with my favoured option.

US cruiser nails crippled spy-sat on first shot

Geoff Mackenzie
Joke

You fools!

That was the Hubble Telescope!

Opera CTO: How to fix Microsoft's browser issues

Geoff Mackenzie

Break the internet?

If IE went standards compliant overnight, it would only break a few shitty sites. Web developers, by and large, take one of two options; either they code for standard browsers and try to use a workable subset that will also render OK on IE (this is a minority approach, but some people do it - it's what I do and there must be others) or they code for standard browsers and then painstakingly go through the code adding hacks to make it work in IE too (the only way to make flashy looking sites - no pun intended - but not worth the hassle in my opinion).

Therefore if IE went standards compliant, all those sites would continue to work - IE would just naturally start using the code that was written in the first place, for all the other browsers, and ignoring the hacks. People still browsing using bad old IE would still be OK a while since the hacks would still be there; some people would continue to maintain the hacks and use them in new sites for a while to support the people who had been left behind. So the shift would be gradual in practice.

It's not the internet MS fear would break; it's the intranet. Plenty of companies that 'standardised' on Windows on the desktop have built internal web apps that only work in IE. Mind you, there's no problem there either - just keep the broken old rendering engine and allow users to turn it on for a list of crap old sites and the problem is solved without pissing on anyone's standards.

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