Posts by Quortney Fortensplibe 168 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2015
For all their professed longing for the advent of The Year of Linux on the Desktop, I reckon most penguinistas secretly live in fear of such a thing coming to pass.
It's a bit like the 'Kewl Kids' at school who will like a band up until the point they become successful, at which point they will decry them as "sell-outs" and drop them like a shot –before going onto the next suitably obscure and therefore street-cred-worthy 'beat combo'.
You can already see this phenomenon with the folks who, disgusted with Linux's share of the desktop market topping a dizzying 1%, have fled to one of the BSDs, in order to keep their geek credentials untainted by such rampant commercialism.
I have no love for Microsoft whatsoever. But, in this instance I say, fair play to them.
"...Michael Olmsted .... said he thought it was hypocritical that the Irish government supported the warrant..."
Though not a surprise to anyone. If you think the UK's sycophantic and supine attitude to the US is nauseating, don't ever travel to Ireland. Their puke-making adoration of all things American positively makes the Brits look like they're playing hard to get.
"...at least they make something..."
Came here to say something quite similar.
Albeit that all tech stocks seem to be suffering at the moment, I too was surprised to see that companies who actually make 'stuff' like Western Digital & Fitbit [hardware], and Atlassian [software] are tanking even more than companies like Twitter and Facebook, whose only contribution to the planet seems to be selling advertising space on peoples' boredom.
The steam-powered Charles Babbage Difference Engine in my cellar has been running non-stop since 1834 and –apart from a brief period during the miners' strikes of the mid-1980s, when I had to put it into standby mode, owing to the difficulty in obtaining sufficient quantities of coal to allow its boiler to operate at full speed– it hasn't missed a beat.
Phew! –this cyber warfare is getting bloody!
"...ISIL claims must be mocked and disproved as soon as they are made..."
Following on from Obama's call for everyone to refer to ISIS as DAESH, because it annoys them, I think this will leave the 'terrists' reeling. All we need now is for Cameron to call for "A major, and I mean MAJOR leafleting campaign" and it'll be game over.
I've been a LastPass subscriber for a few years now and, the odd site aside, I can't really fault its performance on desktop.
However, on Android, it's a completely different kettle of haddock:
* Sometimes it logs me in without a problem
* Sometimes it mistakes random form fields on websites for password fields and throws up dialogues asking me which password I want to use for that field
* And, a lot of the time it just does nothing. Just sits in the background, scratching its digital arse while I click in and out of password fields and switch back and forward between my browser and LastPass, trying to spur it into action. Until, finally, I have to resort to copy/pasting my details from LastPass into the browser –which I could do with a bloody text file of my passwords and save myself the annual LastPass subscription.
If DashLane can make a better fist of it than that, I might give it a go.
Incidentally, the most user-friendly password manager I ever used was 1Password but [at least when I was using it] it was OSX and iOS only. So I had to find an alternative, when I got me some Android gadgets.
Someone over on HN contacted Jide about this and they replied:
"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. In full disclosure, we utilised the language (relevant to China and China only) and copied it over to the EULA for our international ROM. Our legal team has now reviewed this and has removed all language pertaining to legal and moral rights of the data as well as anything that mentions the Chinese government as this is not relevant to non-Chinese users. This is a very serious matter and will be corrected in all future releases of the EULA."
"..We have also reached out to the X.org Foundation..."
Well, I don't think I was expecting the new Whale-Song and Joss-Stick flavoured Reg to manifest itself quite so soon.
To quote from the commentardery on the linked article:
John Brown (no body): I may have missed the phrases "going forward" and "hit the ground running" in the article. Or maybe the writer miraculously managed to to avoid them?
Quortney Fortensplibe: I was similarly disappointed not to be "reached out to" by the article.
[The one with vomit all down the front, thanks]
I dunno much about Philae's innards but, if by "flywheel" they mean a flywheel in the conventional sense of the word, as in: "a big heavy bastard that spins really fast and can be used to aid stability and/or store momentum" –I would have thought that's the last thing that would be likely to function, given Philae's presumably deleted power banks and the amount of energy needed to spin up such a large mass.
Methinks that, when this manouevre is tried [and if sound travelled in a vacuum], those in the neighbourhood of the comet might hear a noise not unlike that of someone trying to start a car with a flat battery, on a cold winter's morning.
That said, I'll still have my fingers crossed they pull it off. Might as well give it a go.
[Icon because, if you squint a bit, it looks like a comet]
"...I've never heard of the guy till his death was reported on CNN, and while I think I >might< have heard of the band I can't be sure...."
"...If your [sic] going to name it after a singer how about "Mikunium" after Hatsune Miku? She is way cuter... "
You've never heard of Lemmy or Motorhead, and you masturbate over cartoon characters? Are you sure you didn't mean to post AC?
The Gimp is fucking awful!
I'm chomping at the bit to abandon OSX and move to Linux full-time. But the total lack of any half-decent graphics software to replace Photoshop and Illustrator is a complete deal-breaker. Every few months I'll read an article about how great the new version of The Gimp is, or "How to set up The Gimp, for Photoshop users" and get my hopes up for a while. Only to be disappointed again, when I find it's still as much of a barely functional mess as last time I looked at it.
Non-Destructive-Editing coming in a "future release" WTF?! Photoshop has had NDE for years. I have free throwaway apps on my phone that can do NDE —and the so-called no.1 professional image editor on Linux still hasn't implemented it. Just take it out the back and shoot it, someone!
As regards:
"...As much as I'd like to use PHOTOSHOP I find the learning curve too steep to dedicate enough time to learn to use it. Whenever I've tried to use it for something simple it leaves me scratching my head. I wanted to knock up a little map to help someone find our house but couldn't even figure out how to draw a straight line..."
Sounds to me like you're using the wrong tool for the job. Photoshop is primarily designed for photo/video type image manipulation. For creating graphics/logos/diagrams/maps and the like, you'd be far better off using something like Illustrator [or Inkscape, it you want to continue on the self-flagellation route]
"...I've been through a fair few decent watches in my time, and the only brand I've found that keeps to acceptable levels of accuracy is Rolex..."
I'm struggling to think of a real world scenario whereby one watch being a second or two more accurate than another watch, over the course of several days [or even weeks] justifies it costing tens or hundreds of times as much —and wondering in what circumstances such outlay is necessary in order to have "acceptable" accuracy.
Do you combine very precise appointment making: "I'll meet you at 23 seconds past twelve forty-one, next Tuesday" with very impatient friends: "C'mon. Let's go. It's 24 seconds past twelve forty-one. He's obviously not coming! "?
"...There is lots of details about the issues on their status page..."
Yes. That's great, once you know there's a crisis. However, when you're wrestling with your VPS, wondering why it's behaving like a slug on mogadon and naturally assuming it's because of something daft you've done yourself, because Linode haven't bothered to tell their customers what's going on —it's not such an obvious source of help.
It's not the first time either: a couple of months back, I got an email from them saying they were about to take all my VPSs offline as I had an outstanding payment. This was odd as I have my account set up to pay by direct debit every month. I emailed support to ask how I could be in arrears and, a few days later got a reply, basically saying "Ignore that previous email. It was a mistake in the payment processing system at our end". The point being that, as with the current crisis, they didn't bother to tell anyone their systems were playing up. You only found out by opening a support ticket.
I don't mean to come across as a complete Linode basher in this thread. Present crisis aside, I have no complaints as to the technical quality of the service I've received from them. However, when I choose to give my custom to a company where my only contract with them is via the intarwebs, I do expect that communication to be reliable, for those inevitable times when things go wrong. Of late, with Linode, I'm starting to have doubts.
"...Basically you're pissing me off with the unfounded and demonstrably untrue accusations, to the point where I'm seriously considering a downvote (haven't decided yet)..."
No! Please! Have mercy! Not a... a... "downvote"! How will i ever live down the shame? My life will be ruined.
"...Disclaimer: I am not being paid by Linode; nor am I a current customer..."
Well, I am a current customer and have been since 2009. Which I'd say gives me every right to complain about how they've dealt with this.
"....And, if you read this article, only two or three passwords were found..."
Sez Linode. In which case, it's strange that they're requiring everyone to set a new password —unless the reality [or the fear] is that many more passwords than "2 or 3" were leaked.
What ongoing trust in Linode?
* Suffering a DDOS is one thing
* Not contacting your customers to explain what's going on is another
* Being unable to mitigate said DDOS in over a week is yet another
But, finding out that, in addition, Linode has been leaking customer account data, is starting to look like incompetence.
With Marshmallow, Google has made rooting the device a lot harder, as system integrity is checked at boot time. Luckily the clever Mr. Chainfire has managed to come up with a systemless root to get around this.
Unfortunately these new checks mean you have to return your rooted device to stock recovery before attempting to apply or manually flash any Android updates. There have also been reports of devices boot-looping after applying updates, if the user has previously disabled any of the built-in Google bloatware.
So, on the one hand, Google releases timely security patches, but on the other, they make it increasingly harder for the end user to apply these patches to a rooted device [or to root the device in the first place], or to a device where the Google bloatware/spyware crap has been disabled.
And, to pre-empt the inevitable "people who root only do it so they can run dodgy software" remark, I root my Android devices for one reason only: so I can use the excellent Ad-Away to customise my hosts file and block advertising and spyware [which is potentially a far bigger security threat than many of the ones these patches address].
So, there's the Catch-22: Do you wait [possibly in vain] for your device manufacturer or carrier to get around to rolling out these patches, or do you root the device so you can do the job yourself today —knowing that increasingly the "vulnerabilities" these patches are addressing are the very ones which allow you to root your device and apply timely security patches in the first place?
"...(one of my main criticisms of most of the web is that there appears to be no way to turn all that white to something more soothing like green, or even yellow...
How about something like f.lux? I use that on laptop and desktop, to subtly tint the screen as evening approaches, so that white takes on a creamier hue.
On my Android devices I use Twilight which, while not quite as polished, is the nearest equivalent I've been able to find.
"...I don't like the way the first comment (however dumb) sits at the top..."
If only it were as simpe as that. Comment ordering is probably my single biggest annoyance with this site.
The first comments appear in chronolical order. Then replies to each comment appear pseudo-threaded under each of those individual comments [but with nothing like indentation to show what is an 'original' comment and what is a reply to a comment]. Then, there are comments which are held back for moderation, which are added in after vetting and so [if a reply to an earlier comment] then appear after all the non-moderated comments which have been submitted in the mean-time.
This makes for some very disjointed reading –especially if you return to a story later to see if there are any new comments to read, as [if replies to previous comments] they will be mixed in with ones you've already read, with no indication whatsoever as to what's new and what isn't.
The only comments system I can think of that's even more idiotic is Disqus, whose default setting [which 99,9% of site owners never change] is to show newest comments first, which must be great for people who like to read their books backwards, but is beyond retarded in my opinion.
Oops! –sorry, Forgot El reg is going PC: %s/retarded/differently able/g
... What does it mean? I kept thinking "I'll just read one more paragraph to see if they get to the point... " and then realised I'd arrived at the end of the article none the wiser.
BTW —for the first time ever, reading the commentardery, I find myself in agreement with almost everything those before me have said and minded to give everyone an upvote.
I do hope this sensible debate isn't another symptom of the proposed changes.
Where's Jake when you need him to chip in: recounting how he once founded a successful IT website built entirely upon sexism and racism and wrote all the articles in morse code whilst parachuting into occupied France on his way to assassinate Hitler?
Now their Frankfurt and Singapore datacentres are supposedly "Operational" again –those were the ones that were getting hammered earlier today– but their main Linode Manager and API have now gone titsup, so no-one can access their Linodes anyway.
If I didn't have all my websites running on Linodes [thankfully only blogs and suchlike –nothing financially critical], I'd almost consider pulling up a comfy chair and a bag of popcorn for this. The words "fuck" and "cluster" are marching inexorably towards each other.
This is going to really damage Linode's reputation as a dependable VPS provider.
Ironically I only heard about this via El Reg after picking today [of all days!] to fire up a new Linode VPS [at their Frankfurt datacentre] and wondering why my SSH connection to it was behaving like a slug on mogadon as well as dropping the connection intermittently, whilst my existing VPS [also hosted in Frankfurt] was as responsive as ever.
As regards Linode's handling of it, I totally agree. Not even so much as an email to warn customers about the outages [as I said, I had to find out about it through El Reg] and, when [in my ignorance of events] I tried to set up a new VPS today, not only did they fail to warn me that it might not be a good idea at the current time, they had the cheek to ask me to pay upfront the $10 outstanding on my account [which goes out automatically in a day or two anyway] before allowing me to add another Linode to my account.
I know that neither Linode nor any other VPS host can be blamed for buckling under such an attack, but how they respond to it means a lot when it comes to customer goodwill –and mine is evaporating rapidly. I've been a customer of theirs since 2009, but I think it might be time to look around for another provider.
Any suggestions, anyone?
The worrying thing is that they're not just "The US Police". As recent court cases have shown, they're The World Police, because US law applies globally. So don't think you're safe from this kind of treatment, just because you're not unfortunate enough to live in the US.
"...I'm not talking about fraud, but he's been an idiot for leaving that door open too) or at least morally dodgy, but insists on pointing at the US for being the baddy and protect Dotcom as a sort of proxy for themselves. Hypocrisy, thy name is Internet..."
The nature of the "crime" fatso allegedly committed isn't the point. The point is that the USA believes its laws apply to *anyone* *anywhere* in the world, even if the 'accused' isn't an American citizen, has never set foot in America and the alleged "crimes" were not committed on US soil.
The US also believes it's legally acceptable to use kidnapping [sorry "Extraordinary Rendition"], torture [sorry "Robust Interrogation"] and detention without trial in pursuit of this global jurisdiction.
And what is the rest of the world doing about this?
Are national governments howling about threats to their sovereignty? Are they refusing to extradite because of the USA's human rights record? Are resolutions of censure being debated at the UN? Are trade sanctions being imposed? Nope. Everyone's just bending over and saying "Fuck me harder, Big Boy!" —because it's the good ol' US of Grandma's Apple Pie and they've got lots of money and shiny things and they say "freedom" and "democracy" a lot and speak the same language as us. So they can't possibly be evil, can they?
That might not bother you, but it frightens the shit out of me!
I'm glad that you're finding entertainment in the fact that your country is joining the ever-growing list of those voluntarily accepting that US jurisdiction applies in your territory. You must be so proud!
Perhaps some of those new flag designs you Kiwis were showing off recently, to highlight your shared cultural heritage should have incorporated more 'starsy' and 'stripey' motifs?
"...Ditto for Siri and Google of course. After all, we don't want everyones phones waking up at the same time so a personalised wake-up phrase seem like an obvious and easy to implement requirement to me..."
And while you're at it, could we have more choice of voices?
Google's default UK English female voice sounds like a Kwik-Save Mariella Frostrup after a particularly heavy session on the Benson & Hedges. I know us blokes are meant to find the "husky" female voice sexy, but I'm afraid the "I'm gargling half a pound of phlegm here, while talking to you" sound doesn't really do it for me.
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