Posts by Antonymous Coward

Microsoft pledges Linux boost for Windows Server and Center R2 duo

Re: Microsoft FAIL

Erm, you know that whole "TCO" marketing drive has been thoroughly debunked now?

>I'd like to reserve the right to try to have a serious discussion on matters MS and Linux related on the Register...

>I know, it's an aspiration, but this polarised tribalism really gets on my wick.

Yet you won't even post your little marketing burps without the cover of being AC. Please go away RICHTO. This endless whining hypocrisy is getting on MY wick.

I realise everyone needs to make a living but can't you find a more honest, respectable job suited to your particular talent? Lawyer, politician, used car salesman, telesales, insurance agent... there must be something out there for you.

Oi, Google, you ate all our Wi-Fi keys - don't let the spooks gobble them too

I wonder If the omnipresent Google corporation has thought to share slurped WiFi keys with their WiFi data slurping Google Car programme?

Privacy experts have urged Google to allow Android users' to encrypt their backups in the wake of the NSA PRISM surveillance flap.

Strange place to put an apostrophe.

Ubuntu boss: I want to make a Linux hybrid mobe SO GIVE ME $32m

Re: Got mine on order.

There's only one model, they just offered the first 5000 orders at a lower price.

Re: I suggest you read the crowd funder campaign again

Canonical is keeping schtum on the RAM and processor. Shuttleworth said instead his company would "benchmark the silicon as it comes out of the manufacturing process".

It also says:

We’ll protect that gorgeous display with something vastly tougher than glass: pure sapphire crystal, a material so hard only diamond could scratch it. For a phone to run a full desktop OS, it must have the raw power of a PC. We’ll choose the fastest available multi-core processor, at least 4GB of RAM and a massive 128GB of storage.

So that'll be "at least 4GB of RAM" then.

Laser-wielding boffins develop ETERNAL MEMORY from quartz

Re: Chemistry / Geology fail.

Came to say the same.

Also, rather oddly, while the article flounders between silica and calcite, the image lifted straight from the good boffs refers to glass. Methinks perhaps our courageous churnalism soviet doesn't understand what glass is made of?

Oh thank God!

At last a "revolutionary new storage medium" which looks like it might actually be capable of producing backups/archives with a chance of outlasting the primary medium!!!!!!one!

...and fast too!

...and using cheap media! Lumps of common glass no less!

Absolutely fantastic! Wonder how it'll be done. Spinning glass cylinders with the read/write heads running along a track like the very early wax gramophones? Or thick discs more like contemporary stuff?

I hope I live to see something come of this!

WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

Oh bugger. That's me on another twelve lists.

Re: Censhorship

I have a very strong suspicion that the wishes of the media corporations are to take a very distant second place on this one. A distant second behind compliance with D-notices and other such important matters of national security. You'll access what your government permits you to access and nothing more.

Nothing you can do about it. The fix is in.

What do you think it is the government *really* care about? *REALLY* care about... more than what you look at while you fiddle with yourself... more, even, than immense bungs from corporations... what's the one thing people in power care about most of all?

Oh hell... "David Kelly" and "dossier" in the same sentence! Can you hear the helicopters yet?

Well at least you didn't also type "Hutton" and "whitewa

Re: Gesture politics at its worst

Not *completely* pointless.. Think of it more as a first step.. A toe-in for proper censorship.. Like the other media. Whitehall's wet dream.

Once in place, accepted but practically useless, what next? Must make it better. Think of the children. You're not a paedophile are you? It's a good first step but not perfect - must constantly work to improve and adapt it. Slip in a few little important and not-so-optional anti-terrorism extensions perhaps? Who could object to fighting terrorism? Then surely we must do something about " the paedophiles' " obscure anti-censorship tools?

I fear we've just started to slide down a very long and slippery slope.

French boffins: Regard, our record-breaking long, fat, wet pipe

Re: Not if

I don't have any objection to this whole (optional) porn and violence filtering drive IN PRINCIPLE. Perhaps a bit surprisingly as I'm generally of a rather liberal bent. The old interwebs can be a bloody gruesome place and the IDEA of protecting the kiddywinks form the worst of it seems rather worthy. Bit of a bugger for the ISPs to achieve though, I'd imagine... and I rather hope that a bit of a bugger for the ISPs doesn't translate into a thumping great price hike for the poor plebs at the end of the wires who (always) pick up the tab.

I also can't imagine it being terribly effective.

So it'll all probably amount to nothing more than another ineffective PR stunt resulting in higher bills. Wicked.

I'm concerned there's something insidious and rather evil lurking behind these sort of initiatives though. Once in place, we're all protecting the children. Fine. As far as it goes. All optional, at the bill payer's discretion. Lovely jubblies. Then... oh noes!.. The wee rascals are being groomed into using anti-censorship tools to corrupt themselves. The poor wee souls are exposing themselves to filth and badthink despite our wholesome filtering. We must outlaw these obscure and depraved programs immediately. Think of the children.

Suddenly we're all trapped in Whitehall's walled garden nirvana and the government once more has full control of the public media. Just a couple of little twiddles with the not-so-optional "national security" bits of those child protecting filters....

Wrong link?

According to analysis from Extreme Tech, one major smut site funnels out filth at a rate of 100 gigabytes per second, or 800Gbps. This means that the new underwater pipe could handle about 40 top-ranked grumble merchants at any given time.

...is linked to this:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/96827-the-secret-world-of-submarine-cables

Perhaps this was the intended destination?..

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/123929-just-how-big-are-porn-sites

I bet Paris Hilton knows a thing or two about distributing porn.

SIM crypto cracked by a single text, mobes stuffed with spyware

Re: Blimey

Curios thing is, this doesn't seem to be an attack against DES at all. It looks like (yet another) gimped protocol implementation. Not cryptography/cipher related at all really.

Makes me wonder:

1) Which brands of phone on which networks are programmed to give up their keys this readily.

and

2) Why not 3DES? Is it that only old (pre 3DES adoption) handsets do this?

Name & shame please!

Ubuntu forums breached, 1.8m passwords pinched

Re: @ Destroy All Monsters -

Sorry DW, didn't mean to pull the rug out from under you, just had forgotten to mention AK's NSA angle!.. a bit rude I thought considering I'm replying to him!

Yes, really.

Are you seriously suggest that murder is a better approach to monopolism than a spot of remote and trivial (as you seem to consider it) FUD slinging? Haven't you any knowledge of how MS has operated throughout its history? It has phorm for exactly this sort of crap you know. Convictions.

Or is your argument that a giant software company which has spent the last decade hurling billions of bucks into desperate bids to muscle in on the mobile sector, with no significant success, couldn't have any interest in the (F)OSS "cancer" (as its CEO calls it) entering the market?

They've even fucked their current Windows (the family jewels) cycle in their desperate drive to shoehorn their userbase onto their cloudtastic vision of the future. Gimped it into some sort of me-too app based chimera of what iOS/Android does. Cloud based subscription services. Apps. That's how the others... the successful growing players are doing it. Subscription services are the only way MS has an consumer future. Make Windows like them. Lock mobile devices onto "Win"RT, its self locked onto the MS app store. Eureka!

Microsoft's traditional desktop stronghold is shrinking. Mobile is eating it alive. MS appears to have bet the farm on imitating the mobile incumbents. So far this has failed but it still seems to be plan A, B and C. MS hasn't got there yet but they're certainly still trying! They've got $billion writedown THIS QUARTER to show for it.

MUST. GET. THE. PLEBS. ONTO. AN. MS. APP. STORE. SUBSCRIPTION. MODEL.

So the prospect of an OPEN mobile OS without the appstore-lockin mechanism becoming established in the sector BEFORE Microsoft makes any inroads couldn't threaten MS's me-too survival plan? The "cancer" COULD well be about to "disrupt" the mobile market, making Microsoft's heir apparent obsolete before it even takes hold. Ubuntu and Mozilla have been attracting significant interest within the industry and among the public. They have OEM and carrier outreach projects which seem to be attracting more interest than MS's! No one at MS could have noticed this? No one at MS could feel their plans for the future might be threatened by this? No one at MS might want to nip the cancer in the bud, before it infects the mobile sector? Pull the other one. They'd be negligent if they didn't. So what can MS do about this very real THREAT? Buy them out? That's always worked throughout MS's history, from the origins of DOS to present... not so great with (F)OSS "cancer" though, is it: You buy to smother, they fork and invest your beeelions into their new project. Bugger. So where does that leave MS? Well, they've always had one other tactic: FUD. So this can't possibly be FUD. How "paranoid". The pixies must have done it just for the lulz. The timing is just a coincidence. No possibility of any other explanation. We can all sleep safely in Stepmond again tonight.

Anyway, enough rambling on about the bleeding obvious. How is the suggestion that MS might be up to something underhanded even contentious these days, after 30 years of it?

I'm not posting as AC by the way. Not that AC anyway.

Re: @ Destroy All Monsters -

Interesting timing. Just as Ubuntu Phone seems (seemed?) to be starting to pick up some momentum...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQxNTg

The Forum isn't the only thing to have been taken down. The "Ubuntu Edge" countdown timer (which was to end TOMORROW) has disappeared from the ubuntu.com homepage.

Coincidence? Course it is. There couldn't possibly be any possibility of any connection between "Sputn1k" and Redmond's (or Cupertino's) FUD dept... Could there?

Must. Destroy. Evil. Communist. GPL. Software. Cancer.

As for any possibility of any NSA interest... well, as we all know, the incumbents (Apple, Google & Microsoft) bend over backwards to give the NSA access to all our data. So clearly the NSA couldn't possibly have any interest at all in the possibility of some (F)OSS upstart upsetting the status quo.

/trolldessert

Re: Wouldn't have happened with Windows 8...

I think you will find that Windows 8 already has a couple of orders of magnitude more users than Ubuntu....

"Accidentally" confusing (downgradable) landfill licences with "users" again RICHTO?

Paris cos she probably has more users than Win8

UK gov's smart meter dream unplugged: A 'colossal waste of cash'

Re: I'm gonna need a bigger house@Magister

So we're replacing 23 odd million gas meters at a cost of about £6bn to save £138m a year in manual meter reading and call centre and billing costs for incorrect bills.

I'm old enough to remember when Labour policy was to squander obscene sums of OUR money on demented schemes to artificially create jobs and thus keep people in work. Now instead they squander obscene sums of OUR money on demented schemes to artificially destroy jobs and thus put people out of work? I think, if I had to choose between the two, I prefer the old policy.

Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, world+dog urge NSA transparency

Are US companies to be *required* to report *all* surveillance *truthfully*? Thought not.

Problem:

The whole world *knows* that US companies are passing *all* our data to the US goverment, for it to (ab)use however it deems fit. This knowledge is deterring us from using those NSA honeypots

Solution:

The Digital Millennium Subterfuge Act 2013

Companies shall be permitted to annually publish anonymized surveillance statistics

Effect:

Microogle Annual Surveillance Report

This year Microogle Corp. Inc. received 11 orders to disclose the data of US citizens and 39 orders to disclose data of foreign citizens. This resulting in the arrest of 29,375 terrorists and the prevention of 840 terrorist atrocities. [Honest. You can trust Microogle Corp. Inc. - we work for the NSA]

Five bods wrongly cuffed thanks to bungled comms snooping in UK

Re: It's the numbers that amaze

The new adaptive badthink prediction algorithm analyses all your previous communication to extrapolate what you're abo

Re: I had nothing to hide!

It was for your own good.

Former CIA and NSA head says Huawei spies for China

Re: "How do I know China would use their major telecomms mfg as a trojan horse into systems"

Interesting. Transmit all your data to NSA in duplicate... hmmm... perhaps if we all chained up dozens of routers on all our busiest pipes we could DDoS the NSA?

Microsoft's earnings down on slow Windows sales, Surface RT bust

Re: and the followers

So it would appear that nobody wants a device locked onto running a hamstrung derivative of an OS which nobody wants.

Gosh.

Hooda thunked.

Perhaps MS should try putting out a few RTs loaded with Android. Just to test the market. They could even sell them a bit cheaper as they'd no longer have to waste resources pissing about with OSs.

Re: Mixed metaphors...

>OK, this is why Orwell argued that mixed metaphors are so bad. Are you aware of the image you just created, by using the phrases "wiggle room" and "cock-up" in the same sentence?

Given the subject is Microsoft's business practice, how could it be any more apt?

Samsung lifts lid on 1.6TB flash whopper spaffing data at 3GB/s

Interesting link...

$250GB < 2*$120GB

$500GB < 2*$250GB

and... for the top of the line 1TB drive...

$1TB < 2*$500GB!!!!!!!!!!one!

I'd love it to come true but I can't imagine that glaring badthink making it past the whalesong and cocaine department.

Hackers crippled HALF of world's financial exchanges - report

Re: Everything has a reason

"Economic warfare" I sboze.

>"I sat down with a top-ranking general,” said MacDermott, “and I asked what kept him up at night. He told me that when he was in the military, warfare was simple. You stood on either side of a field, marched into the middle and fought.

Eh? How old was he? 400?

Submarine cable capacity doubled with flick of switch

Re: Marxists FAIL

>Governments don't tap into submarine cables.

The ones that *don't* enter their territory they do.

Websites stagger to feet, Network Solutions wears off DDoS hangover

>Unlike compromised home PCs, there really is no excuse for compromised web servers.

Incompetence.

Admin, code or often both. Was it "nimda" or "code red" that infected hordes of servers when a software vendor advised customers to install an emergency patch from their (infected) servers?

1953: How Quatermass switched Britons from TV royalty to TV sci-fi

Not I

Notice how it's spelled, not with a single "b" like the cricketer but with two. Perhaps it's a reference to "Hob" which was an old name for the devil.

Is it safe to come out from behind the sofa yet?

ITU readies gigabit G.fast standard for copper's last wild ride

Re: Vectoring, vectoring! Wherefor art thou vectoring?

Only a fleeting allusion to its (lac of) range too. A stop-gap for telcos which can't be arsed to run fibre beyond their cabinets perhaps but worse than VDSL2 over meaningful distances. So probably very little use *in the long run* ;-)

Paypal makes man 1000x as rich as the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE

Re: (I didn't bring up basketball as it's canadian)

As is "American* football."

*America being a pair of conjoined occidental continents. Canada being the American nation which spawned that rugby variant featuring forward passing and *lots* of little rest/doughnut breaks.

Did Canada invent all the "American" games?

Pure boffinry: We peek inside Nokia's miracle cameraphone

Re: "The concerns of real engineering innovators..."

>There are adverts on El Reg?

Yup. You're commenting on one right now.

Battery-boosting breakthrough grows on trees – literally

Re: Being slightly less cynical for a moment.

Careful arounding those corners there Katie... you're sailing dangerously close to lawsuit reef.

Samsung isn't alone: HTC profits take a huge dive

Re: Nokia are you watching let loose the Lumia 520 & 620

More like time to unleash "plan b". Sadly time is running out for Nokia.