Re: Ummm
Screwdriver fanboy! Microsoft Hammer(TM) is ideal for putting up shelving.
Posts by Geoff Mackenzie
744 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2007
UK gov sets rules for hacker tool ban
US Army loads up on Apples for 'better security'
Wednesday 2nd January 2008 07:59 GMT
Secure operating systems
One word (or at least a series of alpha characters without whitespace): OpenBSD. Anyone who doesn't already know this is the only serious choice as far as a modern, usable operating system with good security is concerned needs to learn some industry basics. That the military haven't already standardised on OpenBSD boggles the mind, frankly.
(Note: before anyone has any digs, I'm not actually an OpenBSD fanboy; I only use it on my firewall, where I'd be a drooling moron to run anything else).
Microsoft warns on Home Server bug
Wednesday 2nd January 2008 07:54 GMT
Re: Steven Hewittt
I'm not a Linux 'fanboy' at all. All I want from my equipment is stability, reasonable performance and extreme ease of use. I'm not stupid, just incredibly lazy; if an OS takes more than 10 minutes of my time (not including time the machine is busy working away without any user interaction) to install, I can't be arsed with it. If a system needs more than 30 minutes of maintenance a month, it's flaky and I won't use it. If I can't intuitively figure out how to do something within about an hour a system is inadequately documented and I'll use something else.
I'm unnecessarily cruel, I know. There are probably tons of great pieces of software that I won't give a chance to shine. It's a shame. But I don't have the luxury of a lot of free time and need my machines to just do their jobs and get on with it without much intervention from me.
Which is why I run Ubuntu Server on most of my servers, Ubuntu Desktop on my workstations, and OpenBSD on my world-facing machines.
A lot of people will tell you one particular system is great, or one particular system is awful. All I'll say is that the above recipe works for me, as an incredibly lazy person who wants everything to run itself. I don't care about politics, I just want machines to work for me, not the other way around.
It's been a great many moons since I paid much attention to MS.
Xbox gamers urged don't get smashed
Click here to turn your HP laptop into a brick
Monday 24th December 2007 09:48 GMT
Lol @ Paid Linux Zealots
All it takes to get my vocal support is a good, dependable system. Microsoft buy more astroturf than anyone else in IT. Linux doesn't need to.
Of course if Mr. Shuttleworth would *like* to pay me, that'd be just fine. In the meantime I'll be happy to take a polished, stable, dependable OS as payment.
(PS: Not an Ubuntu nut personally but it's so slick and easy to set up I've become lazy and developed a tendency to install it by default unless I have a good reason to use something else, like the occasional OpenBSD firewall or Slackware box. Ubuntu is definitely the distribution I'd recommend to my computer illiterate friends, or to a business for use on desktop machines etc.).
Monitor maker aims s.book sub-notebook at Asus Eee PC
Friday 21st December 2007 15:11 GMT
Nah ...
I'll stick with the cheap n cheerful EEE PC, and its cheap n cheerful mascot :) I can usually wait until I'm at my desk before I do any real number crunching, or leave the big jobs running on the server at home, just keeping in touch with it over the web.
Re: 10hr battery life: I don't care what colour my car is, or about top speed, or number of seats, or interior features, as long as it gets three light years to a thimble of petrol... Heh. Seriously though I've been waiting for ASUS or another runt-laptop maker to take a leaf out of Nintendo's book (a dog-eared leaf from some time ago) and supply an optional external battery. That worked pretty well for the likes of the Game Boy; can just plug into the AC adaptor socket. When you don't need it, you can leave it at home, and it can be small and neat enough to fit into a pocket or bag anyway. Maybe someone will make an aftermarket one, or hack one together out of a more standard Li-Ion battery or something. That would be interesting...
MIT in pedal-powered 'super' computer stunt
Gov departments need better data systems, NAO says
Anti-virus protection gets worse
MS to bundle 'broken' random number tool in Vista SP1
Tuesday 18th December 2007 23:53 GMT
Re: Microsoft 'standard compliance'
Standards exist so that everyone can do something the same way. This is great for documents and protocols but there's no compelling reason to define a standard for random number generation. As long as your numbers are random, your method is not important, and when someone suggests we all agree on a method of generating pseudorandom numbers surely you've got to wonder who stands to benefit from the adoption of that standard?
Conforming to standards is always in someone's interest. Shame Microsoft only seem capable of managing this feat when it's not in their customers' interest.
PS: Isn't amanfrommars doing well these days? If it wasn't for that gibberish about 'good answer' in response to petitions to the Prime Minister that could have been a Turing Test beater...
HMRC mislays 1.5kg of Bolivian marching powder
Dutch gov blows open standards raspberry at Microsoft
BBC pinches hot new columnist from Microsoft
NeoScale web man posts Better Off Dead invoice
Friday 14th December 2007 07:02 GMT
Re: Shurly
The debt to this guy counts as a liability and since they didn't buy liabilities they don't owe him. But somebody does - and that somebody just sold an asset that wasn't really theirs ... it all depends on what the contracts involved look like.
Actually I think they're treating this website defacement surprisingly decently.
Honda shows off space-dwarf robot butler capability
Microsoft readies seven patches for Tuesday
The day Microsoft 'embraced and extended' Java
Counterfeit Vista rate half that of XP
Wednesday 5th December 2007 09:41 GMT
Re: Vista not worth pirating comments
Well, that *is* Vista's new piracy protection. Nobody steals my car either - its primary line of defence being that it is a ten year old Metro. :)
Go to disagree with the "Everyone loves XP" comment though - it's the better of the two by an enormously long shot but it still stinks to high heaven. I only use it where contractually obliged to do so and the crawl it slows my unnecessarily powerful (or so I thought) laptop to never ceases to amaze me. My 433 Celeron is more stable and responsive than this running Ubuntu.
Ugly view mars Windows Vista birthday
P2P file-sharing recognizes no borders
Vista provokes user synaptic collapse
Thursday 29th November 2007 17:02 GMT
Re: if you can't handle such a simple message..
I don't think you've tried Linux...that's certainly not my experience. It rarely matters what distribution you're using, I've not had to recompile the kernel since the mid nineties and I've never heard of anyone having to change a filesystem to get something to work!
Your explanation doesn't make sense either. "You tried changing permsisions. EY your current privilige [sic] level is not high enough to do that..." - actually, according to the message itself it is. You tried viewing the permissions; that's what you're not allowed to do.
There is a sensible case of a thing you are allowed to set but not see - your password, when you're changing it. For such a situation to arise with respect to file access is bizarre and pointless. If you are able to change the permissions in such a way that you are allowed to view them, then this is just obstructive red tape and hoop-jumping.
Turkey probes The God Delusion for 'insulting religion'
Thursday 29th November 2007 01:25 GMT
Re: I agree with the Turks - and the comment about racism
Dawkins didn't just write about religion. He's an evolutionary biologist. I wouldn't lightly call a man with his achievements 'pointless' - have you read The Selfish Gene? Heard of it?
...Now to the comment about racism - I think you've taken the posts here a bit too hard (understandable though - if I read your post correctly I take it you're Turkish; if I was, I think I'd have felt the same to be honest). I think this is more about careless wording than racism.
I mean, I could easily be wrong, but I don't think people here are suggesting that Turks are crazy religious fanatics and shouldn't be allowed to enter EU countries. Some people here strongly object to the Turkish government's apparent attitude to what amounts to polite criticism of ridiculous views held by a subset of the population, and do not think it's a good idea to allow Turkey as a country to join the EU.
Personally I disagree - I don't really see a problem with allowing a relatively religious country or a country with a relatively religious government to join. After all the UK is a fairly christian place (not something I approve of; 'broadly christian' worship sessions being required in schools is frankly bizarre. I was raised an atheist and found it a little confusing as a young child being told that there was an afterlife and a god that my parents hadn't mentioned to me by people who couldn't back up their claims in any way, but people I generally trusted and was expected to believe, in other contexts).
Anyway, I digress. My point really is that I don't think this place is full of racists; don't worry about it. I suppose it would make sense to speak carefully when one's words might offend.
(Actually come to think of it, I'm not sure what the hell "I'm not a turk, I'm a human being" comment meant; racist or not it's a bizarre and apparently nonsensical comment!)
I do think though that it's a bit much to say that racism is worse than human rights abuses. I think it's a subset of them. Obviously I'm not condoning it, but I think to suggest that human rights abuses in general are less serious than racism in particular is a bit of an odd assertion.
UK database of children delayed
Nigerian keyboard firm sues One Laptop per Child
Wednesday 28th November 2007 22:39 GMT
Oh holy hell
What a shameless rip-off! Imagine using Alt Gr (originally intended to shift into the alternative character set, back when that had meaning) to alter the appearance of characters generated by keystrokes! A stunning innovation such as a keyboard with four shifters (mine only has control, shift, alt and alt gr after all) surely needs to be protected. The term 'intellectual property' hardly seems adequate for such a revolutionary creation. Surely, this 'fourth shift key' is a gift from some sort of deity?
Hmm. Or perhaps not. Is the copyrighted magic fourth shift key *normally* connected up to the keyboard controller in a different way from Alt Gr? Or has the whole world been violating this piss-ant company's IP since before it was founded?
Google preps magic GDrive
Wednesday 28th November 2007 09:43 GMT
@ Peter D'Hoye
I was thinking the same thing. Could have multiple mirrors on a few local hard disks so that the files were accessible offline at more than one location as long as the machines were online to sync up from time to time.
Does sound kind of funny though. Great new service from Google: store files on your own hard disk, accessible offline! It's a revolution!
Second jellyfish pack moves on UK
Tories call for mobile phone ban in schools
Crypto guru warns over random number backdoor
US man dies in Taser incident
NZ bans Brit immigrant's overweight missus
Monday 19th November 2007 14:09 GMT
Twice the space, twice the price
Not really the issue here, but I agree - if you take up two seats, pay for two. When I fly and take my guitar with me, I pay for two seats. (Unfairly, Ryanair doesn't give my guitar a baggage allowance or allow it to bring its own hand luggage... I can just picture an obese person booking a flight inquiring as to whether their right buttock got to bring its own suitcase...)
Asus Eee PC 4G sub-sub-notebook
Friday 16th November 2007 22:04 GMT
Waterproof!?
I hope you're joking! It's got a fairly standard laptop keyboard, speakers, etc.; it's not as rugged as a mobile phone and would definitely let water right through it. Don't harm your eee PC! There should be an organisation preventing cruelty to these little beauties.
Oh ... and, Windows XP? Got to be kidding. It'll get discontinued shortly for Vista anyway, and THAT bloated shit will never run on an eee PC. Why would you want buy a nice, neat unit like this and install that bag of turds? I prefer my nice, new machines to work.
Alicia Keys hit by MySpace Trojan hack
Monday 12th November 2007 01:48 GMT
Re: Spellcheckers
Grammar checkers could be handy too... "It's unclear how many page have being affected" is, shall I say, an interesting way of putting it. :)
I know we're creeping into Slashdot pedantry territory, but I think it's fair enough to pick apart such issues in the articles themselves rather than the reply posts. It is a slippery slope, however ... after all smart-arse posts like these are just crying out to be picked apart by other readers ...
Wave power prototype sinks after seven weeks
Petty crimes, 150,000 kids and a million new records
Microsoft fires cannon at counterfeiters
DARPA selects 11 robotic grunts to take driver's license test
Met Police guilty in de Menezes case
Thursday 1st November 2007 19:28 GMT
Jeez, some people ...
Can't believe these comments implying that this 'illegal immigrant' somehow did it to himself, or that the police shouldn't be fined, or that the family's dissatisfaction with the outcome and desire for another trial is somehow hard to understand.
If I got on a tube train, pinned down a guy and blew his brains out at point blank range, I'd be pretty surprised to be accused of manslaughter, let alone a breach of health and safety regulations! Isn't that a bit like trying gangsters caught burying a corpse in the desert with fly tipping or littering?
All this talk of systemic failures, poor communication etc. is a smokescreen too; would it really have helped if the police on the platform, in what has been described as an agitated state, were in radio contact at that stage with people who knew nothing helpful?
I'm not saying that I know exactly what went on or who is to blame, but imagine this was a member of your family, people - maybe then you'd understand why the family are not content with a fine for a health and safety breach.
Buzzword bingo for Microsoft's Oslo
More gnashing of teeth after Microsoft update brings PCs to a standstill
Monday 29th October 2007 09:47 GMT
@Brian
"Business's want software that had support" - I think the past tense and bad grammar speak for themselves. There's plenty FOSS software, and non-free software that runs on FOSS platforms, that does enjoy commercial support if you prefer to pay than hold it together yourself (which nobody denies a lot of businesses prefer; outsourcing support is much better for the buck-passing that is far more important than service for most IT departments). Microsoft's support is overrated anyway; how often do businesses actually use their support for XP? An IT department that functions effectively is far more likely to resort to reimaging a desktop (about half an hour's non-work) rather than trying to fix bizarre issues with it, spending hours on the phone to a disinterested support person at MS.
The usual fear of FOSS in businesses seems to be largely based around the learning curve caused by some kind of insane mass switch-over to open source alternatives. Nobody's suggesting that any business should immediately switch to a pure open-source setup. Where there is an open source alternative, it would be a good idea to use it. Where there is not, obviously don't.
The fact that many IT departments can provide no Linux expertise is not a downside of open source software. If the IT department's lack of skills is beginning to cost the business money, the solution is training, or hiring one or two Linux or FOSS specialists. Since a Windows shop is likely to introduce FOSS slowly, one or two individuals with appropriate skills will probably do, to start with, and will often be happy to help with knowledge transfer to the rest of the department.
Monday 29th October 2007 00:29 GMT
Linux business software
Some of the pro-Windows posts (Chris C's is a good example) seem to be suffering from the same delusion that most people in charge of IT purchasing decisions seem to be suffering from: that business software that runs on an open source operating system must necessarily also be open source, and that all proprietary software must necessarily be Windows only.
This is simply not the case. Microsoft's software tends to be Windows only, but consider Domino, Oracle, Sybase Adaptive Server and hundreds of other proprietary products that can be run on Linux systems. Businesses have been locked into Windows because they have standardised on MS Office and, more seriously, because they have written in-house software using Microsoft technologies like VB.
Some things are really a pain to port, but others are not so bad. Sybase Adaptive Server is a huge improvement over MS SQL Server for example, and porting the SQL side of a client/server application from MS SQL (a bastardised SAS anyway) to SAS is, while not trivial, perfectly doable and quite worthwhile.
Companies that lie down and accept that they're tied to this expensive and defective platform remind me of the sort of people who borrow money to cover debt payments. Rather than accepting that they need to take a little pain just now for the sake of the future, they prefer to list the problems and then stare at you blankly (or worse, smugly) as if those are brick walls, not mere challenges.
Ah, there's no convincing some people. They'd rather bury their heads in the sand and say clever-sounding things about ROI and TCO based on a few duff studies funded by software vendors.
Hey, never mind. Darwinism will sort this out. If, as I firmly believe, it is a genuine advantage (no pun intended) for businesses to run FOSS, the bottom line will reflect it eventually. Of course there are lots of other factors, but if businesses that use Linux are systematically better off than those who use Windows, it's only a matter of time.
Incidentally, FOSS tends to sneak in through the back door anyway because the loudmouthed, self-satisfied naysayers are not bright enough to realise the number of devices and appliances that have Linux kernels in them. I work for a "Windows shop" which at this point uses hundreds of Linux devices, largely because nobody mentioned they used Linux during the purchasing process. Soon enough, the powers that be will have to admit that they need some Linux people, and then the TCO claptrap will go out the window finally and maybe I'll see some Linux servers appear.
Pentagon: Electromagnetic pulse bombs from 2012
Man who urinated on dying woman for YouTube glory jailed
Monday 29th October 2007 00:35 GMT
Re: Strange?
True, that's weird. Laws relating to killing people or destroying things with vehicles are bizarrely lenient - maybe people would drive more carefully if they weren't? Maybe the leniency is a reflection of the fact that driving is fundamentally one of the most dangerous and reckless things an average person will ever do. If you or I ever kill anyone, statistically speaking it'll be with a vehicle.
Back on topic - got to say there are some pretty extreme views going around in this comments page! Granted what the guy did was atrocious and I don't have a problem with the sentence (apart from the usual problem with the fact that in the UK he'll probably serve half of that, if he doesn't escape from a Reliance van in a couple of weeks) but this mob mentality helps nobody.
When I read the story my gut reaction was really just one of disgust; the first thing I imagined was having a free shot at this dipshit with an iron bar. But that's confusing revenge with justice and anyway it's just not the point. In a way the root of this is making this one individual the scapegoat for the fact that our society produces a few people like this. Quite a lot of people, if my general impression is correct.
How's that happening? Whatever punishment is inflicted on this guy, he's probably going to be a worthless fuckwit for life. Whatever extreme lengths we go to, this poor woman's still dead. (On the plus side, from the article it sounds like she may well have been comatose and unaware while this sick attack was going on; we can only hope).
The problem is that our society produced this guy and if we don't figure out why and do something about it, it will keep producing people like this and they will keep doing things like this.
Oh, and just to clarify: I'm not advocating genocide or eugenics, and I'm not making excuses for anyone's behaviour or suggesting we should blame society for this. My opinion falls somewhere in the middle.
What should be done to this guy is whatever we as a society (or our representatives in the court at least) think would most effectively correct his behaviour. Unfortunately as far as that's concerned we don't have a lot of options (I wonder how many people have emerged from prison in the UK reformed and honest citizens?) but if that's what they've decided to do, fair enough, that's their role.
As a society though we need to work out where this human pus is coming from and fix the underlying problem.
Racist Reg ignores Nigerian helicopter pioneer
Monday 29th October 2007 00:29 GMT
Re: It'll never fly! comments
That's what they said to Orville and Wilbur. Anyway;
No tail rotor - has been covered (even in the shitty picture you can see it does have one).
No variable pitch - granted, sounds like this attempts something similar using the throttle, which is a little hairy.
Only able to hover - not according to his description of how it's piloted. I can't make out the details in the picture but I see no reason to doubt his description.
Ground effect - agreed, that sounds probable, but it's still a pretty neat vehicle that could have its uses. Still more ground clearance than a hovercraft, too, so it's distinct enough to be of interest.
I'm no expert but (ooh, always a danger sign when a sentence starts like that) wouldn't ground effect actually help with stability too? If the main rotor blades are angled up slightly from the 'hub' (like I say, not a helicopter technician; rotor head?) wouldn't you get some extra lateral stability analogous to that which makes little high-wing Cessna fixed-wing aircraft tend to rock back to straight and level naturally (from the depths of my memory the term 'dihedral angle' seems to bubble up, as though relevant...)
Anyway, I don't know, I just think it's a nice example of someone actually having a crack at something. He doesn't appear to be dead, so he must be doing all right :)
It may not be a real heli, but it's worth bearing in mind it's a hell of a lot cheaper than one. Best of luck to him. To be honest I'm fighting down the sour grapes - if only I got my finger out and did something like that! Mind you, if I did, someone would be along in about ten seconds to condemn it, impound it, destroy it and fine me. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
Microsoft sics worldwide braintrust on XP vuln
Record industry pushes ISPs to cut off file sharers
Thursday 25th October 2007 22:59 GMT
@Smell My Finger
1. You like a fast Internet connection for downloading MP3s of music you have no intention of purchasing.
As I said in my post, I run a Tor proxy, which is why I like my fast 'net connection. It's also nice for downloading ISOs. Just because you can't think of a better use for it doesn't mean the rest of us can't.
2. You don't believe that people that produce this music have any property rights
Yes, that's correct, I don't believe that people who *re*produce this music have the right to control further reproduction.
3. The fact you claim to use P2P just for downloading torrents of Linux distros is dishonest - it doesn't excuse the fact most P2P traffic is for bootlegging
It's only dishonest if it's not the case. My legal use of a P2P servent (hypothetically - as per a previous post, I don't actually run one) has nothing to do with anyone else's illegal use, and my use is not in any way obliged to somehow make up for their illegal use.
4. Your arguments about fighting against the record industry is really just a mountain of bullshit to try and legitimise the fact you're stealing music. You aren't freedom fighters so let me just pop that bubble for you. You're just thieves.
Nope. I'm not a thief. I hate the record industry because they shaft artists and consumers and offer no service that any real musician could possibly need. There was a time when they were useful - when it was difficult and/or expensive to record and reproduce and distribute music, but now they're just parasitic lumps of shit.
5. Pay up or piss off.
Fuck you too.
Google funds hold Firefox fate (for sure)
Thursday 25th October 2007 15:23 GMT
Re: The two aren't compatible
That's nonsense. There's no contradiction between being open source and pushing ads or acting in favour of a particular company. It might strike a lot of people as unpleasant behaviour, but it's not antithetical to open-source.
Of course one of the nice things about the fact that Firefox is open source is that if it really bothers you you can compile your own variant that doesn't in any way push Google... but as others have pointed out, Google's ads are so inobtrusive I can't say I mind them.
As for ad revenue being essential to certain websites - I don't see how ad blockers are a problem from this point of view. The small (as a proportion, large in number) minority of web users that actually click banner ads probably don't run ad blockers. Those that would run ad blockers would presumably rarely click the ads anyway, to phrase that differently. Until ruthless ad blocking is a core feature of Firefox, enabled by default, it's not a threat.
Ubuntu's latest OS not so Gutsy
Wednesday 24th October 2007 17:36 GMT
Got to say ...
I am an unashamed Ubuntu user and have to admit that my eager pounce on 7.10 may qualify me as a fanboy, but I have to say, this post on the forum goes very nicely with the signature...
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I get this error 2
__________________
Anything Windows can do.....Linux can do better
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Guess I'll hang onto Feisty a little longer then. :)
MS and Turbolinux ink patent, single sign-on deal
Korean software firm sues Microsoft
Wednesday 24th October 2007 16:12 GMT
Re: access to MS source code
Generally speaking it's not MS source code that third parties are really after - like Apple and the Open Source community - but documentation of their file formats, APIs and protocols. Not such an unreasonable request.
As for the law-suit - I'd say the justification for it is dubious, but all the best to the frivolously litigious tat-peddlers anyway! Get the boot in! It's not like MS could object to being sued on a whim; that would be a bit hypocritical.