Posts by DuncanLarge

Twitter sues Musk: He can't just 'change his mind, trash the company, walk away'

Re: I'm generally a fan of Elon Musk but

> we need him to push the status quo

Push the status quo?

What dream are you in? He didnt push it, he steals it and claims it as his own.

Hyperloop, stolen. An ancient, already attempted idea in the public domain. Ignored by anyone with sense, stolen by a man who can make idiots believe he thought it up.

Tesla, stolen (if you talk to the original creator).

Fired by Paypal for incompetence.

Unable to get a rocket up into orbit before it blows up because they tried to re-invent the wheel and didnt think about asking NASA if they already knew how to do something, then tells everyone in SpaceX that SpaceX will be gone very soon if they cant have a launch every 2 weeks.

Tesla claims to have autopilot, which is nothing of the sort, more like auto-kill mode. Google have self driving cars, Tesla dont yet claim they do with Musk saying it loudest.

The man even thought that he could replace a plane with a rocket, like its the 1950's or something. Totally ignoring the fact that the plane would beat the rocket in price, economics, efficiency and pollution. All he had was "fast fast fast" as a selling point.

Then he makes a boring boring company (seriously who the hell signed off that name), claiming that he can dig tunnels cheaper than anyone else, which ends up to be a lie as his tunnels COST THE SAME when you scale them up. The only way he can make them cheaper is to make unsafe tunnels with no infrastructure, like stations, escape routes, ventilation. Funny that, if you build less of the stuff needed in a tunnel it ends up cheaper. Not to mention that he then claims he invented the idea of a subway in the first place.

Oh, and the Tesla battery, not made by Tesla, is revolutionary! Musk pushed the boundaries and made batteries store more charge!! How, how did he manage this miracle?

Tesla made the battery cells bigger... Funny that, bigger cells store more charge. Ooh Musk must be a genius.

The only improvement he can claim to own is the redesign of the battery cell contacts allowing more efficient current drain. And that aint rocket science to be honest! (pun intended)

The man also publicly insults experts as they try to save the lives of children, simply because his ego got bruised as the experts poo poohed his tacky idea on how to help. and he used his monetary clout to get away with it too.

The man is an arsehole, a faker, a manipulator. He wastes money, wastes time and loves it. To think what could actually have been achieved had the money he swindles from people and governments and companies that should know better went to proper real causes and investments.

I hope this is the beginning of the end of this fool.

Oh and where are the Tesla trucks? They were promised years ago. And where is the Mars colony? We should be up there by now according to his dealines. Did they solve the problem of how they would actually survive there yet? Maybe that is the hold up, reality came knocking.

No wonder

No wonder Paypal fired his ass

Microsoft tests CD ripping for Media Player in Windows 11

> If microsoft are feeling nostalgic, they might as well add ripping for 78rpm vinyl and 1/4 inch reel-to-reel tapes.

Being pedantic: They already have such support. Audio input + record button ;)

> 78rpm is easy to rip using Audacity

Although I just found out that in many cases it is dead easy to mod most players to spin at 78rpm, even direct drive models!

So forget Audacity, take a stab at a fun project too!

mp3?

Na you want OGG. Where is the ogg support eh? (vorbis)

Choosing a non-Windows OS on Lenovo Secured-core PCs is trickier than it should be

I see your optimism.

The servers will be fine.

But these developers will be told to use WSL or older hardware.

Re: Well well well, who would have guessed.

> there have always been options to buy well-supported Linux machines

But who makes the MB's that go into those machines?

In another reply to someone who asserted that we will always have the option to turn off secure boot I described the reality of the situation and it applies here.

No matter how many pre-built systems we buy that come with Linux, we will never tip the balance enough to guarantee such support in the hardware used to build these machines. Now, besides laptops, I avoid pre-built, I just upgrade bits as I go in my PC's but I will be affected there too eventually especially if I cant buy PC components anymore as the markets seem to be going (PC parts are increasingly regarded as enthusiast PC-builder stuff, as long as gamers buy such things we can too).

For a while we will have the ability to turn off secure boot or in this case re-enable the cert. Till the MB manufacturers remove support, say in 10 years at a stretch.

They will do this because they will need to save money and they wont want to employ someone who knows how to test stuff that isnt windows just to satisfy a minority of what are considered hobbyists?

MB manufacturers barely even supply a UEFI that can BOOT Linux. Thats because they test it on windows only, as long as the worlds main OS boots, requirements are satisfied. Some MB manufacturers actually supply a UEFI that corrects a linux boot option, because it is clearly a corrupted windows boot option, isnt it HP?

So if MB manufacturers cant be arsed to develop and test a UEFI to the specification, which would boot Linux happily, why do you think they will continue to support a little used feature, that of re-enabling the cert, if the vast majority of "real" customers dont need it. They already dropped the CSM that provided BIOS compatibility for so many other OS's that dont support UEFO not to mention hardware that need the CSM to hook in their BIOS. All of that was/is being dropped because windows dont need the CSM and heck neither do the tiny amount of Linux users out there.

Thus we would have to make our own motherboards and UEFI's, maybe we will find a way to reflash broken by design UEFI's with our own to gain control.

Chances are, we wont be using many x86 systems if this goes the way I see it trying to go. We all will be using RISC V systems.

The problem with your assertion, that because MS has not decreed secure boot should never have an option to be turned off, that this means it is up to the manufacturer thus we will have options to turn it off, is that you assume that manufacturers see beyond the MS borders.

You have to realise that most MB manufacturers are lambs and MS play the role of Mary.

MS dominate the x86 desktop/laptop architecture. That is more than enough incentive to not have the off option, as MS windows requires secure boot thus why have an off option? (note that I didnt suggest the server market, that has a very different mix).

The option to turn it off will thus become "unsupported" by most MB manufacturers as they design their hardware to work with windows. They test their hardware to work with windows. They warranty their hardware to work with windows. And windows REQUIRES secure boot, so supporting and testing an option to turn it off is surplus and only will be utilised by a small minority anyway, some of which will do so by accident and create noise on the support desk.

Take the BIOS for example. The UEFI has essentially replaced the BIOS, for MOST operating systems, and certainly the main one. But the BIOS is still required by any number of older operating systems and older hardware that require the CSM in UEFI to function. Yet many UEFI's dont have a CSM anymore, why? Windows dont need it, thats why. And if the manufacturers even considered the Linux minority, even WE don need it. But does QNX boot on UEFI? Does DOS? Why did I mention DOS? Well there are plenty of DOS installs out there that can continue to do their DOSsy things controlling breweries etc on modern hardware, if only they can boot.

Backwards compatibility for the BIOS was recently sacrificed for the sake of reducing support requirements, because the majority (windows) does not need it and has not needed it for a long time.

So yes, I think your assertion that MB manufacturers will maintain and support the ability to turn off secure boot is wishful thinking at best. Only if it is mandated by LAW will such a feature be maintained, just like it was mandated by law that MS did not lock down the X86 TPM. Nothing stopped them locking down the ARM TPM, find me a ARM based windows machine that has the option to let a user control or even disable secure boot...

Lets not forget that MB manufactures only develop and test their UEFI boot process to SUPPORT WINDOWS. The UEFI specification is very clear as to how it works and how any OS can be booted but there are plenty of manufacturers who only test it boots windows and some that actually actively try to "correct" the Linux boot entry because it must be a corrupted windows boot entry, HP I'm looking at you. So if Linux isnt even properly supported by the UEFI boot process in so many cases, today, what makes you think secure boot will be any better?

Well well well, who would have guessed.

I used to be quite a MS basher but have mellowed in recent years as Gates left, thus letting go of the reins and the FUD and Halloween documents were a fond nostalgic memory of a time when GNU/Linux was so scary and revolutionary to the big wigs, what with windows refund days etc, the creation of Open Source to help rebrand elements of Free Software to win over business execs that care about profit, saving money etc vs freedom.

Then Trusted Computing reared its ugly head, threatening to lock down computers to the point that they would be queried for their trustworthiness as a function of merely browsing to a website, and the big OS giants (OK, giANT) already had cornered the vast majority of PC use thus had no intention on trusting anything other than their own OS. It looked like there was a future where I, a Free Software loving Richard Stallman fanboy was thinking of hoarding "free" motherboards before the d-day of trusted computing made it impossible to run GNU/Linux. I was ready to buy as many boards and cpu's as I could to have spares all my life. I still have a hoard of old laptops recovered form the IT skip where I worked just for this reason. So what, if in 30 years my machine was going to be slow and unable to communicate over the trusted internet? I would be free to use a computer it for my own reasons, offline with spares to last decades.

Then Trusted Computing got its balls kicked in!

As the plans of the giant(s) lay on the floor clutching its nether regions the TPM came out as a mere shadow of what it was supposed to be. Apart from on ARM, MS rules there.

The TPM was required to be under full user control, even turned off if desired. No website today says "Your TPM is not enabled". Now the TPM is a useful cryptographic store and a very good random number generator which adds high quality randomness to Linux's random pool. The user can even create their own certificate chain and self sign anything they wish. As stated in the article, MS even supplied a cert for signing a shim for other OS's to use. Why? Well so that secure boot can be kept on, to help fight the virus', which is one of the reasons why a TPM was wanted in the first place, besides the ability to allow censorship.

But here we go, my old self, the MS bashing one, seem to be more active recently. Sure he was placated by MS loving open source this and that, bash in azure, WSL and more hints of a different MS but he is still a bit of a cynic. The recent announcement of the banning of sale of anything that can be seen as FLOSS on the MS store, with that pathetic attempt to explain it away, rattled him too.

Now we have it all over again. A dominating giant, creating a TPM replacement (why??), blatantly locking out other OS's. Eliminating competition. All very familiar territory. Sure a user can re-enable the third party cert, but for how long? Who is making it clear to MS that this cert, even if disabled, must be supported going forward as a requirement? Or are they merely just going to eventually say "this machine is designed for windows" and wipe their hands of any responsibility of maintaining compatibility when they finally delete the cert for "security reasons".

Microsoft used underhanded tactics against business and school children alike to become the dominant OS on the x68 platform. Competition was driven almost underground, and thats how GNU/Linux looked back then, as an underground breakthrough OS seemingly coming up from beneath the floorboards with MS execs jumping onto tables screaming like in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Those days were fun but the execs stopped screaming and started learning up on extermination. Many years later, co-existence looks like the norm, MS being the main dominant choice and GNU/Linux the enthusiast one, which MS was happily bringing parts of into their own offerings.

It feels like the old days again, MS have embraced and extended, now they look like they are setting up the ability to extinguish. WSL may be the only way anything Linux like will run on such machines in the future.

Graphical desktop system X Window just turned 38

Walaynd is not relevant going forward

Wayland throws out the network aware client server model.

This will make it essentially DOA as it prefers a holdover from a bygone age of RDP and VNC. Yes Wayland developers/fans, your love of RDP and VNC is, well, too funny. You want to know what is obsolete, RDP and VNC and anything that works like they do.

The client/server model needs to be EXTENDED. Sure X needs cleaning up, so does OpenSSL, so clean it up already. A replacement should replace and extend the original, not move backwards to do what toy operating systems such as windows do, with sending compressed screenshots around the network.

Plan 9 has already shown us the way, no compressed screenshots there and a simple elegant fully network agnostic process space. My ENTIRE desktop of running apps may all be remote, running on multiple separate machines, yet appear to all be local to my smartphone. So Wayland, you have the chance to implement the 9P protocol and move beyond X. Take it. But you wont, you will just let it sit and rot as everyone uses RDP and you say "well someone else can implement 9P if they really want to". Do it yourselves. If you want to replace X, actually replace it.

So RDP and VNC? surely that must be a joke? Seriously, to use a remote application/program I must launch a RDP or VNC client, enter an IP address, enter a password, then use f*cking scrollbars to navigate around a live image of a remote desktop?

Anyone who thinks that is good has no idea of what it means to use an X client over the network.

Wayland thus seems to only exist because someone cant stand the headache of debugging X, so they in their limited scope decide to chuck it away totally ignoring the main feature set that they should be extending as we all know that what Plan 9 does is the future of computing.

True cloud computing, where local and remote resources, client UI's and even processes and HARDWARE will appear all together locally in your hand or on your desk. Sure, some things will NEED to be actually local, like the flash drive you just plugged in, or the printer in the house, but your applications may not even be running on your machine, or may only be in part. Wayland with RDP totally breaks that, yet X, the old bloated beast that we know it is, does it just fine.

Just think about it. Why have a powerful GPU when you can use a remote GPU? System builders like me will love a nice GPU sure, but why cant we let a mobile phone on a train use the computing power of a remote GPU, as if it is local? No, use your laof, I dont mean that we UPLOAD a job to a remote SERVICE, then download the result, the remote GPU will be LOCAL and exist in /dev so we open it like any really local GPU.

So tell me Wayland, if you cant (dont want to) do the simple act of letting a remote program render its UI locally to me, without sending screenshots of a desktop to me, how do you think your project is relevant going forward considering what we will eb able to do with what I described above?

We don't really use the network features of X enough yet. But we will. Windows etc will have to migrate to this new paradigm to remain relevant, it will happen on mobiles and tablets first most likely. Linux, with X will just need a little shove to get going, heck Linux will be used to develop it for the mobiles anyway so the shove will probably be a tickbox on the distro installer. But with Wayland, yeah, wont happen, not without someone coming along and re-implementing a network aware GUI protocol. If we are lucky, Wayland will take it from Plan 9. If we are not, some windows gamer kid will write something that looks cool and windowsy.

Re: What I like about X

> The client/server model is deprecated as far as they are concerned

Yep, I totally agree.

Re: What I like about X

> Or you could carry on using X

Hang on a second, we are being told exactly the opposite!

> If Microsoft can do it I assume others can too, using RDP remotely too if they wish

Microsoft cant do what X does. RDP presents an image of a remote DESKTOP. RDP and VNC have no ability to allow a client to render its UI on a remote machine. If it did then I should be able to launch notepad on a machine that has no graphical capabilities (which we know is not possible in windows, well unless its a specific version but lets assume we dont have a gui) and have that UI presented to me on my desktop, as if it were running locally.

Operating Systems like Plan 9 take this even further but basically I should not need to know that my application is NOT running locally. RDP and VNC are old fashioned and popular methods from the days when users were forced to be aware that an app was running remote.

Unless RDP or VNC has the ability to render the remote apps UI, locally, with no remote desktop, menus or notifications from the remote machine then it is a major step backwards. Wayland seems to think that full screen, full desktop remote control is ok, well it is not. I HAVE a desktop already, use THAT. Remote programs should use my local desktop as their own, which is what X does. Should not have to see a remote desktop at all.

Wayland insisting on "remote desktop", god it makes me laugh, is like getting rid of the paradigm of having one directory tree when drives, remote and local are mounted into it, so that users and processes don't need to know or care where or on what system those files are on. Thats how it works NOW and if wayland were to be for the filesystem as what t is for the GUI we would be told that we will be mapping drives to drive letters. It is totally mad, we should move forward not back!

X may be old, but the replacement moves backwards in that regard.

Re: What I like about X

> Wayland leaves it to the window manager to implement RDP or VNC

Please god NO. Plan 9 where art thou?

> GTK and QT

I have very little that uses anything KDE or GNOME based.

Re: What I like about X

> But fret not, since if you want X, you can just run XWayland

Or save the trouble and just run X perhaps...

It's like installing a bluetooth smartlock in a house but having a spare physical emergency key under the mat.

Re: What I like about X

> The vast majority of code is already Wayland friendly because GTK and QT

I hardly have anything on my system that uses wither of those

Re: What I like about X

> It is X that runs on Wayland. You don't even have to recompile your code.

So why not just use X then? I thought the idea was to get rid of stuff no longer being used, but if XWayland is X on wayland then it must essentially be the same as vanilla X no?

Or is XWayland the tidy up of X that everyone probably really needed instead of Wayland itself?

Re: What I like about X

> Provided that you can do a complete re-implementation of the toolkits to use Wayland, in theory you don't need to change the applications. Just re-link the application objects with the new toolkits, and off you go. You may even be able to do this with dynamic linking at run-time, rather than compile time.

That would be acceptable for me.

Re: What I like about X

> it allows an application to tell the desktop that it wants to create a surface, and that it wants to render its surface

Which is why I dont like it. Besides providing the assets, client apps have no business actually rendering the pixels of a button!

Re: What I like about X

The problem with Wayland is it doesn't actually exist.

It is a specification, thats it. This may work but it leaves way to much of the low level stuff to the clients. Each program with a UI now has to handle everything that X once did, and they ca do it in their own way.

It reads like a back of the envelope agreement, so generic that it can be interpreted in all ways you can imagine.

I don't like that. I like substance, a standard that everything that talks to it will expect the same behavior. Instead we will have UI elements rendered by the client, in why which way it fancies, different from the rest, a complete mess. Like someone fitting smart bulbs in their home that all are set to different settings and each talk their own implementation of the protocol so one app can talk to all but they don't look the same when you tell them to be blue.

It's much better ti use a lampshade.

RISC OS: 35-year-old original Arm operating system is alive and well

Re: So much to do

> bring it back to a usable state is massive

Define usable. I have many use cases that riscos on Rpi's serve.

Record players make comeback with Ikea, others pitching tricked-out turntables

> gear from your average municipal tip.

I'm so jealous.

In the UK taking something from the tip is a criminal offense. I have seen all sorts of things I would love to have, even retro computers.

Re: Not unexpectedly..

Actually I think the poster is referring to the headphone jack on a CDROM drive, of the correct vintage.

Those were the days, and yes, it sounded pretty decent in my headphones. The volume control was quite loud too!

Re: Not unexpectedly..

> "Even" a CD is degraded from the original recording.

No it isnt.

You dont understand what sampling is, nor why the rate is high, nor why the CD at it's rate is as prefect as the higher rate.

Re: That vinyl sound

> When you digitise, you lose information, based upon the sample rate.

Well to be exact, the sample rate dictates the band limit you can capture. In the case of 44,100Hz that is everything from nothing up to 22,050Hz.

Within that bandwidth, everything is fully reproducible. You lose nothing, no waveform of any kind.

Anything that IS lost, is above 22,050Hz, and is unwanted and would have very likely been filtered out anyway so as to no ADD distortion, which is known as aliasing, because there is a chance that one of your sample points will fall onto part of a waveform above 22,050Hz, but as it is beyond your band linit, you only have part of that waveform, thus trying to reproduce it adds aliasing.

Thus you filter it out. Well actually, we dont...

What we do is record at a HIGHER sample rate that what is needed. Thus we can capture the junk above 22,050Hz with NO NEED to filter any of that out at all. We edit at this higher sample rate also, any noise and junk we add due to that editing again, gets pushed beyond 22,050, like sweeping crap under the carpet. Sampling high really does make that capturing and editing process so easier to deal with the noise. Then when we are ready, we downsample to 44,100Hz.

This literally sends the crap above 22,050Hz into the void. Giving us a nice small file (our master is at 192kHz and is much bigger) and perfect reproduction of ANY WAVEFORM that existed at the time of recording, but not higher than 22,050Hz. Nothing is lost apart from what we dont want, and cant even hear. Nothing.

In fact, we do it when playing back too.

CD players, when they say 6x Oversampling, well that isnt just a "wank feature" but a very good way of playing back the waveform. The 44,100Hz samples are upsampled to 6x 44,100, resulting in a sample rate of 264.6kHz.

Now, sure there is nothing in there. Above 22,050, there is nothing, because we already dumped that crap, but the CD player now can deal with the noise that it adds during conversion. The D-A converter and filtering stages can now be designed to filter out any noise added by the CD player itself using much simpler and gentler filters.

An old CD player that does not oversample will have a harder filter at 22,050Hz which is harder to make and more expensive.

So: Nothing at all is lost that we want. Nothing. Everything that is lost, was not wanted in the first place.

> Can you prove information isn't lost?

Yes, we can. In fact you can see it on youtube. You can do it yourself. In a band limited signal, nothing is lost when converting to digital samples and back again. Nothing. Each sample is like a dot in a connect the dots picture, the dots make the picture, they can only make that picture. The only solution, is the exact original signal that was recorded.

"Perfect audio forever" is not just a tagline. This technology nailed digital audio in the 19 bloody 80's. No matter how may audiofools want to think otherwise.

Re: That vinyl sound

All microphones are analogue.

Some have a digital interface attached to them or built in, but still analogue.

GPL legal battle: Vizio told by judge it will have to answer breach-of-contract claims

Re: There Oughta Be a Law

> That's pretty much digital now. So you'll need software to decode it and convert it to a format usable to run the physical display

Still doesn't need to communicate over a network (over the internet I'm saying), nor does much of the work need to be done by software, it can be done by ASICS.

This is how my older than 2012 sony freeview recorder does it. Yes it has an EPG etc and software to burn discs but much of the work especially with decoding is done by dedicated decoder chips. The OS basically just responds to the remote.

My TV however, slow and outdated it may be (so slow and old that iplayer and netflix are not even worth starting on it anymore) it still connects to the wifi and still pulls down adverts and still uploads strange things.

True, but the most important thing that has happened here, ignoring the fact that it may come to nothing as GPL2 does nothing against tivoisation, is that this case proves that the GPL is more than just a copyright license that "gets it wrong" as Vizio suggested, but also that its is a contract.

Thus from now on, GPL defense will be easier as both copyright and contract law apply. Vizio were trying to wiggle out of compliance by saying that the GPL is a copyright license, which means it (as they claimed) was invalid as it added extra restrictions and conditions. But now, the fact that this is the contract side is set as a precedent.

Thus Vizio may not be breaking copyright law, but they are breaking the terms of contract set out i the GPL.

Thus even if this doesn't amount to much with the TV, the GPL suddenly got a bigger pair of balls.

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

Re: Try Scooters in Madrid

> "I pay my taxes too, mate", and toddle along at 15MPH

I agree but, they dont pay road tax.

Also "toddle" along is subjective, depending on your point of reference. IN a car you are faced with a toddling speed, but yet if you are another cyclist or a pedestrian then the many cyclists doing 15MPH are a menace for the opposite reason.

Re: Try Scooters in Madrid

> This is the mess we’re in, we have compressed our lives’ timelines so much that we require cars to function properly

Yes, but it has been like this for over a hundred years now considering that cars have been about for ages and you have the trains too that have been about way longer.

If everyone switched to bikes, well there wouldn't be enough room anyway, but lets say they all did. Well that would be like having to "go back to the good ol' days" a hundred years or so ago when everyone used horse and cart or simply walked.

I agree with your point but I think it's damn near impossible to roll back the clock so far and silly to think this is anything new.

Perhaps it is more useful to think about reducing the distance needed to travel to work more than extending the time needed to travel there.

Debian faces firmware furore from FOSS freedom fighters

Re: What do you mean nobody reads the source?

>> -> I read the source. OK, not all of it,

< = You do not read the source.

How did you navigate that weird logic. Even if the poster read only 1 function or whatever, then that is reading the source. How can the poster, read the source of just 1 function, without reading the source?

Explain...

Re: ROM

> I would contend that there is almost no ROM in your computer

EEPROM Is a type of ROM

Flash is a type of ROM.

We are not only considering mask ROM here, they are all ROM. Well, ok flash is much more writable than you would expect ROM to be so it may fall into your argument, but not EEPROM

Re: Devuan

> So for a programme to be able to run on a systemd system, it must be linked to the systemd core libraries. And once that's been done, then it can't be loaded if that core library isn't there

That is false

Re: It's a curious distinction to make

> it seems reasonable to me to assume they trust the vendor

Yet people dont think of that as a consideration and if they did they proably wont trust the vendor.

What did you do with your Huawei kit?

Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place

> If it means I have a working computer, so what? Some people just don't get it. It's more important to me to have a functioning computer than an earful of pedantry about firmware which I will NEVER look at.

Ah, so you are the type who would sign away anything if it is convenient for you.

Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place

> but you can't argue that Nintendo haven't added value doing that

Yes you can.

It is in the eye of the beholder.

DO your kids NEED that switch or is it YOU need them to have that switch?

Do I need a switch (yes, I have one). I don't need it. I need a front door, yes, but I don't need a switch. It merely fulfills a role which many things can do instead of the switch.

So it can be argued whether Nintendo added value or not, because that value is entirely arbitrary. You can get the same value from any computer. If you only look at it as a form of entertainment, you could replace the switch with anything from a board game to a cardbaord box.

Kids existed and played just fine before the switch. My C64 was perfectly fine, before that my books and a football worked fine.

Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place

> GPL is a horrible licence. Pick the BSD licence instead

What is your problem with copyleft?

I have yet to hear anything that is convincing and not just about being the most free.

Society is full of freedom, plus rules that curb that freedom in certain circumstances. Those rules are there to cover exceptions. For example. I'm free to walk anywhere I like, but private property laws still exist, I can still be done for tresspass. In some countries you can own a gun, but you can not do certain things with it. Ok, a gun is an extreme example but it still is one, I don't have to shoot it but I'm still going to be in a worse off position if I were to wave an unloaded gun about during an argument.

Lets have another example, I have the freedom to own as many telescopes, binoculars and cameras as I like. I can take all sorts of photos ranging from the stars and moon, to the birds in the tree to people out on public property. But, I cant freely use such things to take covert photos of certain sensitive things like military bases. Nor can I take photos of someone on private property without the permission of the property owner. In fact if I do take a photo of someone on public property, which in most cases I would be free do do so, I still don't have the freedom to use such a photo commercially without a model release form (where the person can be identified). In fact France are even more strict, not allowing any public photography of anyone without permission.

So.

Why should a developer be free to remove freedom from users?

You could suggest that firmware could be loaded into the devices via the UEFI.

Originally the BIOS would bring everything up and hand over to the BIOS' on cards etc. Well I don't see why we can not leverage the UEFI somehow to load the latest firmware into such devices, thus helping being those devices up and ready for the OS, which then can be allowed to ignore the firmware issue.

BUT this wont be the case with USB devices. I would imagine the OS having to load in that firmware, makes sense as they are removable. I'm speaking about the firmware for devices that are non-removable, such as the wifi or SATA cards/chips. Not something a user will pull out every day.

Doesn't solve all the issues

First rocket launch from UK soil now has... a logo

He doesn't need to be 18 to drink a pint, nit by a long shot.

Epoch-alypse now: BBC iPlayer flaunts 2038 cutoff date, gives infrastructure game away

Re: (not sure why they are broadcasting both series at the same time!)

> Indeed, I re-read the Verne original very recently -- in fact, just after thinking "I don't remember any of that" during Tennant Ep.1).

Pretty typical for adaptions of the book.

As a kid I remember learning of the existence of the story by watching an annoying cartoon of it with a Lion playing Fogg

Re: A fix for this

I have always wondered about the connection of Bee's to sewing and spelling.

Re: A fix for this

> Or paying a subscription to watch streaming services without adverts

That's not always true. Paying a subscription does not stop you from being forced to watch the adverts.

Example: Babylon 5 on Amazon Prime. Adverts automatically inserted at the most annoying moments. Broadcast TV at least makes it clear where they go and when they are coming but on Amazon Prime you are there watching the action unfold as the Vorlons finally attack the Shadows and boom 3 adverts. The SAME 3 adverts you see, over and over and over.

Unskippble, even if you have ALREADY watched them because you got distracted and had to wind backwards to re-watch that action.

Microsoft veteran demystifies Abort, Retry, Fail? DOS error

Or when you are like me and install DOS 6.22 in Qemu one sunday morning for fun. Then fiddle with freeing up as much conventional memory as possible to let you run a game that you just pkunzipped from a shareware CD-ROM image that you have, only to find that you now know why turbo buttons were invented and why you should have uses DOSBox in the first place.

Russian 'Minecraft bomb plot' teen jailed for five years

Upgrade

I think the FSB may want to invest in some obsidian bricks.

Feeling virtuous with a good old paperback? Well, don't. Switching to traditional media does not improve mood

> The beginning alone is basically child abuse done in the name of training.

What do you want on an alien planet where they do things in a very alien way?

Care bears?

Final PCIe 6.0 specs unleashed: 64 GTps link speed incoming... with products to follow in 2023

Blasphemy!

Insurance giant Lloyd's hires DXC to migrate org off legacy mainframes to AWS cloud

Re: Mix and match

> make a profit from you

The number of times I have trawled through our Azure storage accounts looking for "forgotten" files etc.

They (MS) charge loads for keeping forgotten files and they dont make it easy to find them. I wonder why :D

Canon: Chip supplies are so bad that our ink cartridges will look as though they're fakes

> Even it's just a transparent window in the cartidge combined with an LED + photodetector?

Just like how brother multifunction machines do it

Another Debian dust-up with Firefox dependencies – but there is an annoying and awkward workaround

How the heck did you get yours to not auto install the update?

What is this /opt/downloads nonsense?

Oh, you are making it up.

Re: Mozilla's four-weekly release cycle

> That does seem a tad too frequent

You'd be surprised. Its a dangerous fast moving world out there keeping up with security vulns is a nightmare, and thats only for the ones that are known about.

I just keep backups and dont run as root