Posts by Oh Homer

Rimini Street: Dispute with Oracle is contract law, not copyright

Once again...

Oracle seems to have a chronic difficulty understanding copyright.

In reality I suspect they're just a bunch of delinquent opportunists.

Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? Get this – It's just hit the US appeals courts

Devil's Advocate

I think the purpose of this case is (or at least should be) to demonstrate how ridiculous the entire premise of copyright really is.

It's bad enough that those who claim "exclusive rights" to that which is clearly not exclusively of their making (i.e. is derivative to any degree, which would be all so-called "creative works" throughout history) have been granted this artificial privilege of a state-protected monopoly on their not-really-exclusive "creations", but for them to then claim the "exclusive rights" to something created by a monkey, just because the monkey used their camera, is beyond ridiculous.

Yes, and a weevil once scuttled out of a bag of flour in my kitchen, making a nice pattern in its wake. I therefore claim the "exclusive rights" to that pattern, because ... my kitchen.

Jesus wept!

Web inventor Sir Tim sizes up handcuffs for his creation – and world has 2 weeks to appeal

Re: "Nonsense"

I agree, but sadly the intellectual monopolists do not, and it's their opinion that determines how they choose to deliver their content, like it or not.

Mixed feelings

On the one hand I despise DRM and every other measure that treats consumers like criminals. I also believe that all standards must be open, and more importantly free (as in academic freedom), not something that perverts supposedly "sold" goods into an eternal rental scheme, where your supposedly "purchased" goods magically disappear at the whim of the vendor.

But on the other hand I reluctantly accept that this is the only model that intellectual monopolists will ever use to sell their wares, and if we actually want their "nice things" then we are forced to obtain them on their terms. This either means having a hundred competing and incompatible proprietary standards for DRM-protected content delivery, which only work on certain platforms, or having a single standard built right in to open source tools that can run on any platform.

In short, this is the lesser of two evils.

Extreme trainspotting on Britain's highest (and windiest) railway

Re: "orange haired fuck witted cuntbubble"

Yes, but he's a yuuuuge orange haired fuck witted cuntbubble. The best sort of orange haired fuck witted cuntbubble.

Create a user called '0day', get bonus root privs – thanks, Systemd!

Re: "the advantages of Systemd"

I believe the "faster boot" bullshit was officially dropped by the Poettering cabal's propaganda division, once they discovered that this claim wasn't supportable with any actual evidence.

From the many conversations I've read on the subject, as far as I can tell, the sole reason for Systemd is that Poettering absolutely detests the fact that other distros are not Red Hat, refuse to adopt Red Hat's initscripts and various other distro glue, and therefore are a problem ... to Red Hat. But not to anyone else. Anywhere. Ever.

Obviously the solution to this non-problem is to mutate every distro into the bastard son of Red Hat, by "unifying" the init, and subsequently in the long term all distros, into a single Master Race distro, which for the sake of argument we'll just call "Red Hat".

This will then be followed by an intensive propaganda campaign in which choice is stigmatised as somehow being a bad thing, along with the perverted notions that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

Then the book-burning ceremony begins, followed by tea and biscuits.

Re: POSIX

Quoting Poettering from that LWN article:

what we gain [by pissing all over POSIX] is a smaller chance to create bugs

And how's that working out for you, Lenny?

On the other hand, the utterly delusional Poettering refuses to even accept bug reports, so I bet he genuinely believes it's working out great.

Banking app startups go TITSUP as payment slurper keels over. Again

"we don't [go] into that level of detail"

Translation: "We fucked up and don't want to embarrass ourselves."

Oh, plus it's a financial institution, and can therefore play the "security" card as a bogus explanation for everything, just like the government does every time it breaks the law.

Bonkers call to boycott Raspberry Pi Foundation over 'gay agenda'

Re: "pushing LGBTQI"

The whole "gays are pushing themselves on me" mentality sounds like latent homosexual wishful thinking.

Actually it's just code for "your very existence offends me", to which I'd reply; "ditto, but at least I'm not an insecure bigot, who's so weak-willed that he feels it necessary to shield himself from reality, just to stop himself becoming the object of his own bigotry".

On the other hand, the sort of cabbage-IQ people who are bigots probably couldn't understand that reply anyway, so I'd be wasting my breath.

Personally, my orientation is "trisexual": I keep trying to have sex.

One-third of Brit IT projects on track to fail

Advice from Crapita?

Talk about the blind leading the blind!

Kaspersky repeats offer: America can see my source code

McCarthyism at its most hysterical

Don't panic, but Linux's Systemd can be pwned via an evil DNS query

Re: "Windows. (Bring on the downvotes!)"

Actually, as a dedicated Linux user I can say in all seriousness that I'd probably vote for Windows before Systemd (which, let's face it, actually qualifies as an operating system at this point, albeit undoubtedly the worst operating system of all time).

Re: If THIS isn't a reason to hate systemd...

I'm less interested in hating it than simply getting rid of it, as a very pragmatic matter of necessity, not personal bias. It's a serious liability, as has just been clearly demonstrated, yet again, not merely because it has "a bug", but because this level of exposure should never be allowed anywhere near an init system, and certainly nowhere near something running at PID 1. That's sheer lunacy, a fundamental design flaw that cannot simply be "patched".

It's beyond time that the blinkered Poettering cabal faced the reality that Systemd is an overreaching abomination, created for highly dubious reasons, that is doomed by virtue of its own convoluted design to cause more problems, and of a far more serious nature, than it purports to solve.

Unlike the Poettering cabal, the Unix philosophy is not a fanboi club vying for popularity, it's the advocacy of solid engineering principles in the realm of software, principles that the aforementioned fanbois have completely abandoned. This incident should serve as a warning to them that they need to grow up and start thinking more like engineers, and less like children.

Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe

Re: "wonderful Google"

My lack of outrage at something that has zero impact on my life (or anyone else's life, for that matter, beyond a handful of companies I have no interest in) is not somehow equivocal to an undying devotion to the company that supposedly harmed them. Quite the opposite, in fact, I find fanboyism a rather odd affliction. I fail to understand why anyone would have any interest in the success or failure of somebody else's business.

Equally, I find it very odd that Google should be fined vast sums for something that is, it seems to me, quite trivial, especially when there are far greater corporate crimes that cause significantly more harm to more people (or indeed something that could genuinely be characterised as harm of any sort, at least of the sort that actually matters).

As with any other product or service, if I have an actual need for it then I'll go looking for it. Having them shoved in my face in an unsolicited manner is something I'd describe as abuse, specifically spam. The fact that Google apparently failed to spam me with third party services I have no interest in is something I actually consider a benefit.

Moreover, I really don't see how it can be legally incumbent upon Google, or any other company, to spend money promoting competitors' services. That's just bizarre, frankly.

But anyway, I'm pretty sure the whole point of competition law is to protect consumers, and, like I said, I'm struggling to see how I or any other consumer has genuinely been harmed by Google's billion-euro crime.

How have I been harmed, exactly?

Apparently I've just been brutally violated by some evil corporation, but never even noticed.

Sneaky bastards.

[Checks underpants]

Nope, all my bits are still present and correct.

So I googled for "how has google harmed me today", but just got a bunch of news stories all saying basically the same thing, that Google is evil and must be crucified.

But, for the life of me, I still can't figures out exactly how I've been harmed.

Whatever it was, it must've been pretty bad to warrant beeelions in fines, Shirley.

Australian govt promises to push Five Eyes nations to break encryption

"terrorists and criminals using encryption"

The most prominent examples of which include our own respective governments.

As far as I'm concerned, our "five eye" totalitarian rulers can go and jA0EDQMCeXkH6U63OH7e0kgBTAQqbLCijG9IqlKUP1VRu2C4ivk3nDBe+OtRfJIBLWnfBxZtcj2cLkkNHaHY9A646uMF/MT3DKZbGt/FdZokzxDeEoi09Zs=!

AES-256 keys sniffed in seconds using €200 of kit a few inches away

Definitely not new

See also: Tomorrow's World circa 1985.

US Secretary of State: I will work with Russia on cyber security issues

Keep your friends close...

I see Trump has been watching The Godfather again.

Five Eyes nations stare menacingly at tech biz and its encryption

Re: "we are moving to Canada"

It'll never happen, because no company is going to sacrifice the world's biggest market in pursuit of some ideological cause.

The best we can hope for is that US tech firms reluctantly capitulate to this new totalitarian regime, then lose all their customers due to unpopular government-mandated privacy violations, forcing the government to choose between Draconian "national security" policies or a healthy economy.

In practice I suspect that, sadly, those companies won't actually lose many customers, most of whom will be completely oblivious to the aforementioned government-mandated privacy violations, or worse will be too apathetic to care.

Sounds like...

An excellent way to drive all communications activity offshore and/or underground, beyond the jurisdiction of the five (or any) eyes.

What then, genius?

Is the supposedly "free world" destined to become just another North Korea: fenced in, watched and herded like a flock of sheep, all in the name of supposedly "protecting our Freedumb®", because I really don't see how else our totalitarian rulers could prevent the extrajurisdictional circumvention of their cunning plan?

Telegram chat app founder claims Feds offered backdoor bribe

Re: "Only if people actually study it."

Well I'd expect that, at the very least, the aforementioned security researchers would study it, since that is their sole purpose.

But yes, the general availability of information does not automatically make us informed, it's merely an opportunity to become informed.

Unfortunately, neither proprietary software nor services afford us that opportunity at all, either in practice or even in principle, so they are untrustworthy by design. This is only compounded by a political environment where we may assume, as a matter of near certainty, that the software or service in question is bound to be compromised by a hostile government.

With that kind of certainty, security researchers are more likely to actually go looking for security beaches, especially when it's suspected they've been deliberately injected, but of course this is only possible if the exact corresponding (or indeed any) sources are available, or at least something that can be packet sniffed and/or reverse engineered, and sadly that isn't really possible with a remote service.

Jurisdictional concerns are "nonsense"?

After what we all now know, as a matter of documented fact, about how the US intelligence agencies operate, clearly the idea that anything pertaining to security that comes from the US is inherently untrustworthy, is certainly not "nonsense", and any supposed security researcher who casually dismisses this proven conflict of interests must be gravely afflicted by bias.

On the other hand, open source entirely mitigates such concerns, since any attempt to compromise its security is subject to public scrutiny. It can still happen briefly (e.g. via hacked repos), perhaps even long enough to cause serious damage, but ultimately it will be found out, and sooner rather than later.

But certainly in terms of services based in the US, the only safe assumption one can possibly make is that they are all under the thumb of the US intelligence agencies, and therefore cannot be trusted. I believe that is a very reasonable assumption under the circumstances. Moreover there is absolutely no way to ascertain their trustworthiness, given that said intelligence agencies can not only coerce and compromise them, but also gag them to ensure they are legally prohibited from even revealing this coercion.

Oz government says UK's backdoor will be its not-a-backdoor model

Backdoor model?

Sounds kinky.

Google's news algorithm serves up penis pills

Re: Curious minds want to know...

Not sure what a "but(sic) management Unit(sic)" is (from the story photo), but the top hit returned by Google News on that search phrase is: "Uber advisor outlines what the company should do next". I can certainly think of a few relevant answers, unlike Google, apparently.

Swedish school pumps up volume to ease toilet trauma

Re: "Why are kids nowadays so delicate?"

Probably for the same reason that they're a bunch of hypochondriacs with fictional "disorders", because the prevailing loony trend of political correctness encouraged them to be.

DIY self-driving cars are closer than they appear (and we're not talking about in the mirror)

Criminalising the opportunity to make mistakes

I believe that's called totalitarianism (or more euphemistically a Nanny State), and is equally applicable to the non-autonomous forms of vehicles.

Sorry, but no, the majority should not be treated like idiots and/or criminals just because a handful of us are.

"DIY self-driving cars are closer than they appear"

Yes, about two feet away!

[Boom, boom (crash)]

DUP site crashes after UK general election

Re: "Tory,Labour,LibDem (Against)"

Not necessarily. It's far more nuanced than that.

I'm a lifelong Labour Party member and voter, a socialist and therefore an internationalist, radically opposed to nationalism.

And yet I support Scottish independence.

Here's why: For me (and every "YES" supporter I know) Scottish independence is not about nationalism in the usual (far-right) sense, it's not about racism or xenophobia or even money, it's about getting out from under the thumb of Westminster, a clique of Bullingdon Club graduates that only represents the privileged few, and is completely out of touch with the working class majority.

It's worth remembering that the SNP has long since lost its reputation as the "Tartan Tories", ever since the left-wing reforms of the 79 Group (led by Salmond amongst others). In fact, prior to Corbyn's reign at the helm of Labour, the SNP were probably only second to the Greens (and possibly Plaid Cymru) in terms of socialist policy.

As a socialist, I could easily have voted for the SNP in good conscience, but the opportunity to vote for the only truly socialist Labour leader in (my) living memory was too good to pass up.

But I still support independence, not least of which because it might actually be the only chance we (in Scotland) have to rejoin the EU (Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain), securing our civil and human rights, escaping austerity politics, and fully benefiting from the economic advantages of the single market. Most of all, though, it's about a deeply socialist country finally being allowed to operate like one, instead of being perpetually oppressed and overruled by the intractably right-wing values of Westminster.

Even as a staunch socialist radically opposed to nationalism, I just can't see any way for Scotland to realise its socialist ambitions as part of this toxic union, so clearly the only way forward is independence.

Re: "how often is there a full house in the Commons?"

Usually only when there's a vote on MP's wages.

Seriously.

My unpopular career in writing computer reviews? It's a gift

Re: USB cables

Sort of. In fact the gift is "An invitation to participate in the breathtaking experience of mooring your yacht using Van den Hul's 120 quid per millimetre oxygen free copper gold plated 5mm solid core thunderbolt yacht mooring cables at a time-limited substantial discount, during a presentation to be held at Fordwich Exhibition and Conference Centre (a.k.a. The George and Dragon Pub)".

Re: USB cables

Actually you need an oxygen free copper gold plated 5mm solid core thunderbolt cable to ensure your yacht is properly moored with the correct attenuation and frequency response, according to the 120 quid per millimetre Van den Hul yacht mooring cable literature that came with my free promotional gift.

The open source community is nasty and that's just the docs

Re: "links, please"

Consider the irony of demanding evidence of something that's kept secret by design.

However, it seems you're in luck, as this is sadly a common problem:

• IT profession blighted by bullying
• Startup workers see sexual harassment on 'breathtaking' scale in Silicon Valley
• Amazon abuse of white-collar workers
• Bullying in information technology

Etc.

Re: "they're both absolutely unacceptable"

You misunderstand. I'm not defending abuse, I'm merely noting that it's a fact, whether we like it or not, then considering what sort of environment is more conducive to dealing with it: the secretive world of proprietary software, or the alternative where everything is laid bare for all the world to see.

Asking a forum regular on El Reg how he could possibly know about what happens at software companies is a bit obtuse, isn't it, given that probably 99% of the readership works in tech?

I assume you're part of the 1% that doesn't, given that apparently you've never heard of an NDA, or the prevailing tendency to tolerate abuse in the name of promotion prospects, or the apathetic resignation to the fact that things are the same no matter which company you work for these days (not just in tech), amongst many other factors that suppress formal complaints.

But yes, every now and then some cubicle monkey breaks out of his cage and screeches in public, destroying any prospect he has of ever working again in the process. But hey, at least he got his day in court, and his lawyer struck pay dirt, right?

See also: David v. Goliath. Not a court case, exactly, but more an allegory to the modern corporacratic world of business, and how the humble slave's employee's fantasy of being David is just that, a fantasy.

Meanwhile...

Behind closed doors, in the dark underworld of proprietary software, exactly the same thing happens.

Except, being hidden from public scrutiny, nobody ever sees it.

So which is better: abuse that is subject to public accountability, or abuse that goes unchecked forever?

UK PM Theresa May's response to terror attacks 'shortsighted'

Re: "what did Sweden do...?"

It presented the CIA with the opportunity for yet another false flag operation.

Probably.

Utah fights man's attempt to marry laptop

Re: "serial port monogamist"

Good job he doesn't interface with the thunderbolt port, or he'd have a heart attack.

EU axes geo-blocking: Upsets studios, delights consumers

Re: "if you earn $32,400 a year you are in the top 1% globally"

"According to the Global Rich List" ... which conveniently ignores total assets in favour of measuring only income, which is essentially meaningless.

From that same article: "The threshold is significantly higher if you look at the top percentile by wealth instead of income. To reach that status, you’d have to possess $770,000 in net worth"

Back on topic: People with no assets, earning 32k per annum in a First World country, tend not to have much if any disposable income, since it all goes on basic living expenses (primarily rent), and thus are not particularly well positioned to waste money on the stream of sewage emanating from Hollywood, unless they'd rather live in a cardboard box than pay their landlord.

Re: "everyone commenting in the Reg forums is in the top 1%"

Unlikely. Anyone who actually has to work for a living is probably not part of the 1%, pretty much by definition, and somehow I can't picture the Kochs and Sauds of this world reading El Reg.

Re: "the misery of not being exploited at all"

So the 1% are miserable and would be happier if the 99% relieved them of the burden of wealth?

Excellent. We should begin immediately.

Re: "the removal of geo-blocking will weaken the financial value of content"

Actually this is true, but it's a very good thing, as it means consumers will no longer be getting ripped off.

Most of what is now called "content" is already grossly overvalued. There are exceptions, but the billion-dollar content factories are mostly just mass producing garbage, which sells in high volume purely on the basis of hype. Part of that market manipulation is regional releases, which exploits the novelty effect - a known market phenomenon where anything new makes most of its lifetime sales shortly after release. By having multiple releases, the content factories can stretch out the novelty effect far longer, thus making more sales.

On the other hand, the sort of people who buy things simply because they're new, with little regard to the actual merit of the thing they're paying for, are exactly what drives these content factories to continue mass producing garbage. So anything that discourages them can only be a good thing, as it will drive up the quality of content, producing something that might actually be worth paying for.

As for Hollywood boycotting the EU ... something tells me they're not going to just walk away from billions of euros in sales. There were already titles that only got released (mostly on home video) in the US before this, and will continue to be for reasons that have nothing to do with EU regulations, but no business is going to make itself a martyr for some ideological cause, when its sole purpose is making money, even if it's less money than it might otherwise have made.

Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht denied bid for new trial

Re: Sure, that activity is illegal

Where the "activity" in question includes hiring hitmen to commit murder, and causing others to die from overdose.

Well at least one good thing has come out of this horror, the true nature of the libertarian ideology has been clearly exposed for what it really is: the creed of psychopathic gangsters.

Oracle asks for more time to finish Java 9

Re: Comrades

The bureaucracy in Java is the consequence of Sun moving the reference implementation to OpenJDK, a fact that I'm sure Oracle finds extremely irritating, given their clearly hostile attitude toward open source (and their apparent failure to understand what it means).

Auntie sh!tcans BBC Store after 18 months

Re: "can we prevent every single person not paying"

Did you just compare an entertainment company to the emergency services?

BBC fanatics are utter loonies.

Re: "TV Licensing give me a shiny letter saying I don't need one"

How magnanimous of them.

I'd be inclined to ask why I should have to prove I don't need a TV license at all, particularly to some glorified debt collection agency acting on an entirely fictional debt, where they're merely opportunistically presuming that there may be a debt.

If actual debt collectors operated like that, they'd be shut down and sent to prison.

Maybe Tesco, Halfords and Starbucks should start sending goons on door-to-door harassment campaigns, demanding that people prove they don't owe them any money, then issue shiny certificates when they manage to prove what good little boys and girls they are.

Re: "can we prevent every single person not paying"

Sky does it. Virgin does it. Basically every TV company in the world does it. So why can't the BBC?

The fact that the BBC may claim this is difficult is not my problem. Why should I have money stolen from my wallet just to spare some company the ordeal of competing in the free market, because their business model is predicated upon the preservation of "obscure stuff" that nobody watches, nobody pays for, and therefore must be essentially tax funded?

The world is full of "obscure stuff" of interest only to tiny minorities. Should I be forced to pay for all of it?

RCA's Capacitance Electronic Disc (an ill-fated analogue video disc system from the early 60s) is an extremely obscure but collectable curio that most people have never even heard of. Should we have a "license fee" to ensure that this retro junk remains available for all time?

How about the Volugrafo Bimbo, an obscure Italian car from the 1940s? Should we have a global "Bimbo Tax" to ensure that all three of the world's population interested in this post-war garbage can continue to drive around like a trio of greaseball poseurs?

Only those interested in the obscure should have to pay for it. Frankly, only those interested in anything should have to pay for it. If they don't want to pay for it, then clearly they weren't really that interested in it, so the fact that it then slips into the abyss is no great loss, and certainly nothing whatsoever to do with me.

State protected entertainment

I think this clearly demonstrates that the only thing keeping the BBC alive is state protection, and if it were left up to the democratic vote of consumers' wallets then it would disappear in a bureaucratic puff of smoke.

The question then is: should the largely disinterested majority be forced to fund, through involuntary taxation, something that is apparently only of interest to an economically non-viable minority (as the BBC itself concedes), where the thing in question is merely trivial entertainment rather than some life-or-death public utility?

In other words, let BBC fans pay for it, if they're that passionate about it, and leave the rest of us to decide if, when and who we pay for entertainment.

It was bound to happen: Amazon launches first grocery store

Re: No, just....no

Ordering online but then collecting in person is just silly. It's the worst of both worlds. Surely the whole point of buying online is to avoid leaving the couch/bed/desk. If I'm going to have to travel miles to pick up groceries in person then I may as well just do the shopping in person while I'm there. That way I also get the opportunity to buy the "spoiled" discount items that never make it into the online store, plus I get to smell and feel the stuff I'm buying - a reasonably important consideration when it comes to food.

'Major incident' at Capita data centre: Multiple services still knackered

"Robustly tested"

I hope they "robustly test" the cobwebs with a firm brush first.

Wow, someone managed to make money on Fitbit stock – oh, 'fraudulently'

Re: "Fitibt"

In Scotland that might be a sarcastic reference to BT wasting money on football, when they should be using that money on improving their pitiful rural internet speeds.

Julian Assange wins at hide-and-seek game against Sweden

I wish they'd stop calling it "rape".

Only in Sweden could a condom ripping during voluntary sex qualify as "rape".