Posts by DrXym

New GPL licence touted as saviour of Linux, Android

I'm not saying just promotion

I'm saying they should throw their weight behind an alternative. Devote resources, publicize and pragmatically strive to produce a viable smart phone OS alternative to Android in the shortest time posssible. Something that people can run on their phone and perhaps see the merit in using. The problem is the FSF is too fond of whining, politiking and not doing anything to substantiate their position. It's precisely the reason why the world is running Linux, not Hurd at the moment.

Not true

GPLv2 allows a developer to write some firmware, disclose the source code but cryptographically sign the image to prevent someone else replacing it with something else, source or not. GPLv3 would compel them to reveal the key. I hope it's obvious why this is unacceptable for a lot of situations. But to illustrate, a cable TV box might use crypto for it's VOD / PPV / premium channels and the crypto provider would simply refuse to sign off on a box which allowed their software to be hacked with a compromised image.

I cited cable tv boxes but expect the same applies to media players, phones, tablets, TVs and the vast bulk of other embedded things a kernel is used for.

If the kernel went GPLv3 (and it won't for all the reasons Linus has already said) then either the issue would be worked around (e.g. implement a 2 stage bootloader, with 1st stage being proprietary), or the kernel would get forked, or embedded solutions would move to something else like BSD. In no event ever would suddenly the box by open to hackers. The net result would be less openness, not more.

GPLv3

If the kernel went GPLv3 it would simply stop being used by many bits of hardware.

Lots of devices protect their firmware to stop users bricking them, tampering / stealing premium content, jailbreaking etc. Compelling devices to reveal signing keys would simply be unacceptable in many cases.

If it happened (and it won't since Linus thinks compelling devices to disclose keys is pretty stupid), it would likely the kernel would fork with one branch continuing to be GPLv2. And eventually embedders might even jump ship for a BSD kernel. So instead of opening things up it would actually make things worse.

Won't make any difference

If a Chinese no-name OEM is not honouring the terms of the GPL at the moment, what damned difference would it make if it were a more recent GPL? None at all. It's pointless to even suggest an upgrade would do anything. I'd note also that Android's user land is BSD so this is only a kernel issue.

A more pragmatic stance by the FSF would be to promote a rival smartphone OS rather than sniping at one which they don't like. I'm sure MeeGo could do with the support. It doesn't seem far fetched to imagine ROM images that installed MeeGo on former Android. handsets. Think of CyanogenMod but with MeeGo. Who knows, perhaps this might spur a handset maker to actually ship devices with the OS on it for real.

That or the FSF can keep griping.

Coders breathe Android into dead HP fondleslab

Touchpad wasn't underpowered

A 1.2Ghz dual core processor with 1GB memory is not underpowered. It may be WebOS was non-optimal. I bet the kernel was the least of this device's troubles unless it had enabled some stupid scheduler and all the background processes were interfering with performance.

Celebrity Google+rs do need steenkin' badges

Michael Bolton

Pity the poor fools who share a name with a celeb.

iPhone 5 to include Japanese earthquake warning system

Is it not a fair comment?

I have no idea if iOS supports it but it seems a reasonable thing to allow for situations like this, burglar alarms, emergency pagers or pretty much anything which might wish to notify the owner when a very important text comes through.

SMS

Can't you write an app that listens for the SMS warning and sets off an alarm? Apps on android do something similar, e.g. the preyproject app listens for an SMS which enables / disables phone tracking.

T-Mobile JavaScript comment stripper breaks websites

@Sam

Opera Mini is a fast web browser but strictly speaking it is not a browser rather a thin client. A server is browsing on behalf of the client and sending it page data.

Also, there is the rather fundamental point that you are allowing Opera to browse on your behalf. They literally screenscrape everything you browse whether it is over http or https to feed to the client. They know where you're going, how long you stayed there, what links you followed, what sites you have accounts on, how often you check your email, your banks, how often you browse, where your focus falls most on a page. They're in the same business as Google, sucking up personal data to monetize you.

On the flip side, it can be useful if you feel like browsing a site without revealing who you are. To the site, the request comes from opera, not your phone so it is hard to figure out who is making the request.

I use Opera Mini

But not for AJAX heavy sites. The thing tries its best but the reality is it's a thin client serving munged content from a server side renderer. There are limits on how it can behave. From playing around with a few ajax sites it appears to deliver snapshots of content in response to taps which is better than nothing but it wouldn't account for a lot of things sites could do. For example a site which has a ticker, or pops up glasspanes, or otherwise does out of band things isn't going to work too well with Opera Mini.

Yes it is

There is no obligation to deliver human readable JS in your site even if it's under the GPL. At the point that a browser requests and executes it it can be reasonably regarded as a "program" and munged into any form you like, e.g. through a minifier. The GPL requires you to release the "source", which is the input to the program. The site site can provide a link to the source (i.e. the unminified code) somewhere else.

Also, it's not the site's fault if they do honour the GPL and some bloody proxy screws it up. They've met their obligations and that's all that matters.

As I said a more pressing issue is if you minified your JS with the GPL'd code, have you tainted your site. And even if the JS files are separate and running through the same JS instances, does that qualify as a program? What about if the JS comes from one domain and the site is on another. You can see how fraught this is. Which is why AJAX tools generally do not licence with the GPL or dual licence.

GPL

A web site with some GPL'd JS is running as a program, not source code. So copyright messages are meaningless in what it delivers to a browser to execute. I also don't see how it would be the site's fault if something subsequently stripped off the notice if it left the site with the notice intact.

I doubt even the FSF at their most obstinate could reasonably argue that it's a proxy's job to honour comments inside a piece of code or HTML. They might however recommend that if there is a proxy that a user be allowed to choose to circumvent it if they wish.

A more serious question is what liabilities you open yourself up to if you run GPL'd JS on your site. After all you're not "linking" GPL'd code to other content of your site, but it is all being executed in the same JS runtime instance. Therefore you may inadvertently end up tainting your entire site this way. The answer therefore would be to avoid GPL'd JS like the plague. Not that there is much need to use it anyway since the major AJAX libs use another licence, probably for this reason.

Harvey Norman drops HP’s TouchPad

I'd pick one up for $99

The tech might be dead but a $99 browser tablet (as some places are purportedly flogging it for) isn't a bad deal by any stretch. I also expect in time someone will figure how to crack the tablet opening the possibility of hacking it, maybe even running Android on it.

Googlola's closed source Android temptation

We'll wait and see

As I said, I'll reserve judgement. It is semi plausible that the codebase was a bitrotten and abused because of the stuff Android 3.0 does and doesn't do. The new desktop needs backporting, the phone stack needs to be fixed up, changes to apps need to work at various sizes. But the excuse only lasts until Ice Cream Sandwich. That's the great merge and single codebase once more. One would hope and assume that the code is good for public consumption once more. But we'll see.

Ice Cream Sandwich

Android 4.x which supposedly merges 3.x and 2.x will be the defining moment. If Google make excuses why the source is still not opened then its effectively game over on the open source claim.

I think the real reason 3.x was not because the phone voice stack has become a bit bitrotten (though it may well have). It's not because the code might have taken messy shortcuts through the code to make Android 3.0 (it may have done that too, e.g. only bothering to make screens look right at particular resolutions). I think the real reason is they don't want to give an advantage to Amazon who are building a tablet outside their ecosystem, and they also want to have more control over licensees of Android 3.0 tablets.

Not unreasonable things to wish but at some point the excuses have to stop. So when 4.x rolls around, so too must the source code.

Sony: PlayStation Vita will win gamers back from tablets, phones

Gaming on a smart phone...

... is such a painful experience it is a wonder anyone likes it. Touch is fine for simple games, e.g. Popcap style games but beyond that and it becomes a serious issue. Anything which requires thumbstick like controls is virtually unplayable even with "virtual" thumbsticks overlaid on the screen.

I think the Vita will do okay but it depends on a lot of things, especially what else the device can do besides playing games. It's an enormously powerful device, probably more so than any phone on the market. It would be nice if it ran android for example so it benefited from other apps. It would be great for movies or even TV (over a network)

I find it bizarre that they would sell a 3g version of the device which requires a contract to use it. It should be like the Kindle where your 3g enabled phone has access to PSN without any contract at all. Sony passes a cut of the purchase price to the network provider and provides the service free to customers. Just the way Kindle does it. They'd sell a lot more games that way and could always flog internet / multiplayer bundles on top of that for more money.

Perhaps Sony are hoping that phone providers will subsidize the 3g version so it's practically given away.

Google+ bans real name under ‘Real Names’ policy

Don't be silly

"That, and Google's suspend-first-demand-proof-later behaviour is simply that of an ignorant bully. As perhaps is yours."

No, it's recognition that the vast majority of people have normal names that fall into normal categories. You chose to be different and now you're whining that some arbitrary web site happens to reject your name. Boo hoo what did you expect? Perhaps if you phrase yourself in a polite constructive manner rather than ranting they might provide a manual means to override the checks.

@Chris

"To describe a name as "stupid" because it does not comply with one cultures norms concerning what names should look like could count as prejudice."

Google is not blind to cultural naming conventions but this is not a case of a cultural naming. It's a case of someone who changed their real name to be an AD&D character name (FFS) and then going off on a tirade that some website has the temerity to reject it.

Yes it's really that sad.

Duh

"How arrogant of you to decide which names are "stupid and noncorforming" (sic), considering you are using the name "DrXym" on this forum."

Thanks "BoldMan" but in case you didn't get the memo, it's an alias. And no it's not nonconforming since most sites that take aliases or usernames expect one word. Whereas most sites that expect your real name expect two or more words. Comprendez?

Google's rules

Google will (as one might expect) make reasonable accommodations for various ethnic naming conventions. They are unlikely to make accommodations for some hipster who thinks it's cool to defy convention and then acts all shirty when this trips up arbitrary computer systems.

Serves him right really

If you pick some stupid noncorforming name don't be surprised if systems expecting conforming names reject it. I guess he'll have to call himself Fred Stilgherrian or something to keep the system happy.

A more general issue is why Google+ should force people to disclose their real names. I think it's quite reasonable that someone should be able to pick and assign different names to different circles of people and to be completely anonymous to people outside their circles.

The problem with real names (as should be obvious) is that some people don't like getting stalked, looked up by their employer or whatever. Sure maybe Google would like to know who you are but that doesn't translate into letting everyone else know who you are. Now if you had a name like John Smith or Pat O'Brien perhaps it doesn't matter when there are a sea of other people with the same name to hide within. But it sure as hell does if you have a less common name.

AES crypto broken by 'groundbreaking' attack

"Groundbreaking"

Speeding up an attack by reducing a 128-bit key to 126-bits is certainly interesting but it doesn't really mean much in real terms. 2^126 is still an unfeasibly enormous number.

HP confirms faster, paler TouchPad tablet

Maybe they'll open source it

Stranger things have happened.

Many Android tablets are smoking the same thing

People prepared to pay silly money have already bought an iPad. The only way to beat the iPad is by undercutting it. The margins are so obscene that it shouldn't be hard to do. If necessary some of the more superfluous stuff like 3G, compass, GPS, rear camera can all be dumped.

HP murders webOS tablets, phones

More likely

Nokia has leapt in bed with Microsoft. If they're going to produce tablets it is more likely they'll be Windows branded tablets. I wouldn't be surprised if whatever deal Nokia & MS inked includes something about that too.

Firesales ahoy

I think those tablets will be sold eventually. After all they are still tablet devices that more or less do what they say albeit not at a price point that justifies buying them. So they'll get deep discounted to clear them out. I wouldn't be surprised if someone hacks Android onto it at some point either.

Australian bank to run trial with human teller in ATM

History repeating

20 years ago when ISDN was all the rage they were piloting crap like this - video phones, remote learning, kiosks, banks etc. Then it turned out people don't actually like talking to each other much over a video screen so the whole petered out. Yet here we are again.

Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader

Just wait

In the next iOS update Apple will impose a limit on the amount of local storage HTML based apps can use, and how large the HTML, JS and auxillary files can be. And coincidentally these limits will cut the legs off webapps that circumvent their app store.

Fort Knox military cops disgusted with solar patrol carts

And not forgetting

You won't get pussy galore driving one of these things around

iPhone users richer, brainier, more tasteful than Android-ers

Perhaps they're more intelligent

Or perhaps Android users are more modest.

Perhaps we're even seeing the Dunning–Kruger effect in action where more intelligent people underestimate themselves and more unintelligent people overestimate themselves.

In summary, it's a silly survey conducted on self selected participants.

I'm waiting

For these morons to be caught when a stolen phone's IMEI turns up on their registered SIM. I sure hope Carphone Warehouse et al did actually keep a list of stock and IMEIs for this sort of thing...

Piles of unshiftable HP fondle-slabs choke Best Buy

Not surprised

The TouchPad is expensive, doesn't run an OS anybody wants and is flawed. Same problem affects Android tablets to some extent as well, especially the issue of price. There is no reason they should cost so much. When tablet makers stop running in greed mode competing with Apple and start competing with each other they may realise that. The first brand name manufacturer to turn out a sub €300 tablet with a reasonable spec (which is eminently possible) will clean up.

Sony ballyhoos budget PSP

Seems a bit penny pinching

I suppose the PSP never used its wifi as much as it should have but there are still games and apps which take advantage of it. For example the browser, skype, remote PS3, games like LittleBigPlanet, Modnation Racers etc. I suppose PSN is just about accessible through a USB cable but it's hardly an impulse purchase sort of thing if you have to hook your PSP up to a PC or PS3 in order to download anything.

Anyway I guess it does break the £100 barrier and might make it more attractive to some people. The PSP as a platform is pretty much near the end of its life though. It still gets new releases but it's more like the PS2 in its twilight years than a going concern.

Facebook wannabe rioters cop large helpings of porridge

The law doesn't make that distinction

It doesn't matter if nobody acted on their incitement, it's still incitement according to the law. Read the serious crimes act (link in article) section 44 & 46 which they were charged with. In particular 46.1.a "[someone] does an act capable of encouraging or assisting the commission of one or more of a number of offences".

Setting up a facebook page to organise a riot at a time that other riots are occurring seems pretty clear cut case of incitement. I expect if other riots hadn't been going on that their sentences would have been more lenient, but hey ho I don't really have much sympathy for them.

Well they did do something

They incited serious crimes and at least one of them turned up for the riot he was inciting. It may well be no one bothered to join them but that isn't an excuse under the law.

German tap-to-pay telco allies don't need no stinkin' banks

Payment processors still get their cut

In order to top up these payment systems you have to add funds from somewhere, i.e. from a credit card or similar. So they take a hit from the payment processors and then they pass an even bigger hit onto the stores. It's why I think these things are a tough sell because at the end of the day its bad news for stores which already hate processing fees. I think from their point of view they probably would prefer visa / mastercard to run the system because the fees would be lower.

Microsoft begins cagey Windows 8 disclosures

More likely hardware assisted

I doubt you'd ever see an x86 / ARM hybrid. If x86 emulation were ever contemplated it's more likely that ARM would provide some hardware assistance to software emulation rather than full blown support. e.g The Chinese MIPS Loongson-3 supposedly does this.

As for LLVM, the current state of play is it doesn't quite reach native speeds if you compare the output of gcc-llvm or clang vs regular gcc but it's not far off. The difference can probably be chalked up code immaturity rather than any inherent issue. It's not actually as radical as it first sounds because gcc already generates low level bytecode called RTL which is then compiled into native assembly. LLVM just allows the compilation to be pushed out until later.

I doubt MS will use LLVM itself but it would be nice if they have something equivalent.

Just as bad

I doubt Microsoft would particularly like to have to customize ARM to support x86 instructions. I expect in the first iteration they'd prefer x86 didn't exist at all and if ARM took off then it may well be that hardware assisted emulation appeared down the road.

I don't see anything wrong with using LLVM like targets though. The whole point of it is to make the developer not care what architecture their app is running on. The host OS could precompile the LLVM bitcode into an actual native executable and cache it somewhere or it could interpret it on the fly or Just In Time compile it. LLVM was made with small devices in mind - it's what Apple use for iOS development presumably because they can just flip over to some other architecture and take most of the apps with them. As they're making noises about Mac OS X on ARM as well it is likely they have it in mind for that too.

Not a big deal???

Rebuilding and QA testing apps for every single architecture is a huge bloody deal. Not having emulation for the vast amount of in-house, commercial and free software which is never going to be recompiled is a huge bloody deal.

While it may be ARM is too constrained to expect emulation (at least in tablet models) I am hoping Microsoft will realise and learn from past mistakes. If they expect people to recompile apps it should not be to ARM, or x86, or x86-64 or whatever arbitrary architecture turns up in future. It should be to something analogous to LLVM which is converted into native code by the host operating system. That way at least devs only need to build and support one product instead of umpteen.

Chic USB drive leads double life as personal vibrator

What's going on?

My USB key smells a bit funny.

PETA to launch .xxx smut site 'to help animals'

Is it wrong...

... to smash small mammals with a mallet while I rub one out watching their xxx site?

Apple changed shape of Galaxy Tab in court filing

Don't be silly

I don't like Apple one bit but even I am not surprised that they would feel angry about It's not just because it's a rectangle that Apple are pissed, it's because the tab lifts wholesale the aesthetics from the iPad - curves, bezel, colours, hinting etc.

I don't care if Apple lose I might add but I can understand why they're pissed. There are numerous ways Samsung could have styled their tablet. A Xoom looks nothing like an iPad. Neither does an Iconia. Nor an Eee Pad. Nor in fact do many tablets apart from some cheap Chinese knockoffs. Samsung basically just said "copy Apple" and here we are.

Another interesting factoid is that the nephew of Samsung's president has even ripped off one of Apple's accessories - the smart cover which rolls up into a stand. Samsung has certified this smart cover for the Tab surprise surprise.

Naughty Apple

I think it's obvious the Tab is a ripoff of the iPad so I understand why Apple are protective of their iPad here. At the same time I really don't think it helps their case to distort the device to make comparisons which don't exist such as the aspect ratio and dimensions. So if they get slapped down for this then more fool them. As for Samsung, maybe if they stopped trying to rip off designs and produced their own tablet, one which played to Android's strengths (e.g. openess, non proprietary ports), they wouldn't find themselves in this shit in the first place.

HARRY POTTER CHAINED to new Sony reader

Sooner or later

Amazon will capitulate on this. When they start churning out tablets its going to be pretty hard to stop people installing EPUB readers so if they have any sense they'll make their native reader support it at least in its non-DRM form. I doubt they'll ever support Digital Editions though

Adobe Digital Editions

Has been cracked for a long time, as has Kindle's format. At least if you had to compare DRMs, that at least Adobe's is platform and store agnostic, working across a lot of different stores and readers rather than tie you into one. The same cannot be said for Amazon's or Apple's which are designed to lock you into one store and a limited range of readers.

I personally think that DRM has to be used in conjunction with passive measures (i.e. watermarking) to catch pirates, and that the price of books has to be cheaper. The reason piracy is so high has little to do with the DRM and more to do with the fact it takes a few minutes to locate and download a pirate copy of a book. That's what stores & publishers should be competing with. Ebooks need to be cheaper, commensurate with their production / delivery costs. And stores should offer content on a subscription basis too.

More likely

Kindle owners will wait until someone rips the books from the ereader and converts them to mobi format. Which will probably occur the very same day the offer does unless Sony / Adobe / Whoever have been busy beefing up their DRM.

I'd point out however that Sony so far haven't been the bad guys here. Their devices are relatively open and support EPUB which is to books what MP3 is to music. You have far more latitude with the content you stick on their devices and where you buy it from than you have with a Kindle.

That's nice

I suppose it's better than getting some crappy public domain texts with your new ereader which is the current offer.

At the same time, it should be obvious to everyone that Harry Potter was available in digital format from about 2 seconds after it launched in physical format and with less restrictions. So the publishers have basically lost 3 years of sales to pirates because they couldn't be arsed to produce their own version.

I also expect when it does appear it will enjoy the same piss taking markup that all ebooks suffer from. Perhaps when ebooks appear in a common format (epub), preferably with no DRM or at least an industry standard (Adobe digital editions) and are priced reasonably, more people will be inclined to purchase content than to download it.

Europe's PC mountain barely dented in price slash bloodbath

Where are these bargains

I haven't seen any conspicuous price cuts. Someone care to point out where they're happening?

Son of Solaris raids Linux for KVM hypervisor

PAE

Windows Server 2003 and up support up to 64GB through paged address extensions (PAE). So unless you were using some crappy ancient version of Windows with ancient hardware and limited physical memory you wouldn't have been restricted to 3.5GB to start with. It's seems likely to me they're stuffing 2-3x the amount of physical memory into the box over what the virtual machine sees and using it as a honking big file cache in some way. Which IMO is cheating really. If a hypervisor does that then so too could the actual OS just by letting it see the memory in the first place and tuning it accordingly.

Has Google wasted $12bn on a dud patent poker-chip?

Nothing wrong with Eclipse

I agree Eclipse is a heavy weight app but it's also one of the most powerful IDEs in existence. I practically live in the app for Java development and it has incomparable functionality for refactoring, formatting, debugging and a host of other features. Not even Netbeans gets close.

That's not to say it's without its faults of course and I could spend a post ranting about them. But for example the IDE can be pretty complex, sometimes maddeningly more so than Netbeans but on the flip side it's also a lot more powerful.

If you keep your plugins down to the ones you need (e.g. don't install the J2EE eclipse if you only J2SE functionality) it works pretty well. I think some versions of Eclipse, such as the commercialized Websphere developer editions are so laden down that they are borderline unusable.