Posts by whitepines

The completely rational take you need on Europe approving Article 13: An ill-defined copyright regime to tame US tech

Re: EFF, Wikipedia, Google...

The easiest way to avoid that -- plus half an hour of advertisements and other crap -- is to either download the movie or rip the disc.

Nowadays they like to throw on "Piracy isn't a victimless crime" or similar in front too.

Well guess what. DRM and stealing from the public domain (by preventing a DRMed/streaming only work from ever entering the public domain) aren't victimless crimes either.

In fact, as I tend to mutter when presented with such rubbish, copyright in its current form isn't a victimless crime either. It may be only a moral crime for now but a crime nonetheless (copyright shouldn't give you the right to tell me when, where, how, and if I can view a copyrighted work once sold, nor should it create multi generational dynasties of content hoarders like Disney).

Re: "and that group makes all the decisions on copying and sale."

Frame challenge: should work for hire be allowed? Should the corporation really be getting the legal benefits that were passed into law only "to help the poor starving artists"?

Why shouldn't the corporation have to pay the artist and the artist's estate continually for the duration of the copyright?

Or, why should a corporate copyright be life of the artist plus insane years? Maybe assigned / work for hire copyright should only be 20 years like a patent?

I'm not sure the A/C was contradicting you, just saying what the Big Media approach would be.

Oh I know. I was responding in kind, if I was talking to Big Media that's the response I'd love to give (but would in reality bite tongue in favor of an incremental approach more likely to make useful gains, were I ever able to talk to certain C suite folks).

Without the financial backing the studio puts together the film wouldn't get made.

So the artists are contracted by the studio to make the film with studio equipment, and before the movie is made everyone agrees as equals how the profits are to be divided up etc. Things would be much the same as before except "Hollywood accounting", as it's known, would cease to exist and artists would get more money overall vs. the studio. It also neatly breaks up the monopolies we see forming (Disney) since each group of artists would have to decide to sue over similar works, vs. the blanket "scorched sueball" policy employed by monopolistic rent-seekers like Disney.

Re: Who should pay for the content filters?

Aside from the fact this is against Berne and therefore cannot be implemented, you have half an idea here. My issue is the option to register after lapse -- I think this should be disallowed. Once a work is in the public domain it should stay there, plus it prevents a large commercial monopoly from not paying fees until the last minute, lulling people into using the works, then paying the relatively small fee for the specific works used by organizations that they think they can sue for the most money.

Patents don't work the way you described either -- once lapsed, they're lapsed for good. Make the publishers have to put some skin in the game, bother to be selective about what they copyright and keep under copyright, and I'm on board! This would also prevent the strange lottery phenomenon where, by paying absolutely nothing, a studio gets lucky with changing tastes and suddenly gets a windfall for zero work on an old film. If we're good with that concept, the state should be giving out free lottery tickets to everyone else to make things fair.

The pesky Berne convention makes this entire scheme impossible though.

Re: Really?

As for the media companies, what's to stop them copycatting or covering?

The same thing that stops them now -- lawsuits. Especially in the movie realm you can get sued just for making a movie similar to someone's obscure book. Music is a different beast entirely, it has the same problem but now you pay the mafia general media licensing fees before you try to publish any music. That's normally enough to stop the problem and, if it wasn't the mafia, all of the artists would get a share of the profit too.

What I find really interesting is how everyone eventually starts trying to work around copyright and some of its insanity with a form of communism. In the music industry, it's "pay your cover charge to get into the commune -- once in the club, popular songs float all boats". In the software industry it's free software. Maybe if people have to resort to such extreme measures to get anywhere the system is broken?

Re: "and that group makes all the decisions on copying and sale."

There's nothing saying there can't be a contract stating how profits are to be divvied up before the movie is made, but copyright should indeed remain with the artists that created it. If the artists feel they are getting a bad deal they can hammer out a new contract. Good luck doing that with a Hollywood studio.

When 1000 “artists” make a movie, it is the studio that finance them. Why would anybody finance a movie if it will belong to a gay who is only good at pretending to be someone?

So the crux of the argument is that no one would make movies if a commercial enterprise didn't make it? So the main concern is commercial, not artistic?

And here I thought the copyright extensions were all about paying artists their fair share (after all that's how they've been sold over and over again). If those extensions are just corporate welfare in reality, why are we putting up with it at all?

Re: EFF, Wikipedia, Google...

You, evidently, are someone who never produced anything and just want to exploit other people's work for free.

Nice try. Actually I have quite a prolific career spanning both academia and industry, but not going to give specifics lest my veil here be breached. Let's just say that if I can invent an important piece of equipment and only get 20 years maximum protection with having to pay sizable fees to keep that protection, something seems very wrong. Why should I have to pay you and your great grandchildren forever to see your precious work while you get to steal and pirate (to use your language) my inventions for free?

Fundamentally, if you try to take ideas that belong to the public for yourself for 200 years with rent seeking and DRM, I'll happily "pirate" a copy of your work with a squeaky clean conscience. If you make your work available for sale in a non-expiring, transferrable, non-DRMed form, I'll happily buy the work and fund the creation of more. Do you see how this works?

Your power comes from the people, not from some magic moral right to hold information hostage. Do you pay your dead predecessors and their great great grandchildren when you steal their ideas from what we call the "public domain"? Didn't think so. Isn't it convenient to shape law the way you want it for maximum personal gain? As your power does come from the people, so too shall it be removed with continued abuse -- no population can take a boot heel in the face constantly without eventual revolt. And that's exactly what your cronies in Hollywood are doing -- live your live the way we want it or we won't allow you to make any movies. No different than what they do to consumers -- watch the way we allow it (paying our cronies for a compatible player and giving us money plus personal data) or we'll sue.

Bad laws, especially those that go against moral law, are made to be broken, just like prohibition in the US in the 1920s, just like the various laws over here criminalizing people by ethnicity in WWII. Until you get full Big Brother surveillance capability you really can't do anything about it. And when you do get that capability, your works have a > 50% chance of being deemed critical of the state and being outlawed. Or was that part of your history education copyrighted and not taught due to lack of funds to pay the authors?

Welcome to reality! I know it's hard, but you can always fall back on the pastime of most artists -- see icon!

Re: Really?

I remember hearing that the first copyright laws were established to protect the authors from the editors.

It's even worse. Copyright started as out and out censorship for stability of Church and State against a potentially educated public. And we're going right back there too, sadly.

"The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers. ... Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information In 1559 the List of Prohibited Books was issued for the first time." *

See how easy that was to educate the world? Made possible in today's copyright-infused, controlled, monitored world only thanks to the permissive copyright ("copyleft") of Wikipedia as adopted by its content creators. If Wikipedia didn't exist, just like if copyrighted works were the only source of knowledge past 1920, your erroneous view would have spread like wildfire and history would have been rewritten.

As a historical tool of censorship, copyright as we know it needs to disappear or be severely curtailed (making money is fine, absolute control of ideas and works is not). Whoever makes this happen will probably be regarded in the same historical light as those individuals that helped shatter the Dark Ages.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law#Early_developments

Re: EFF, Wikipedia, Google...

Right. The EFF that would like people to host their own stuff on their own computers. Wikipedia that is a collaboration of unpaid people reacting in the only way they can under insufferable copyright -- creating an archive of human knowledge that can't be turned off in a single decree or when a single copyright owner decides it wants to turn out the lights for humanity (literally).

Which studio do you work for? Disney? Or is it a software thing and you're at Microsoft? Or, most likely, you're one of those terrible rent-seeking people that thinks you hit it rich by creating a third-rate work of fiction that probably draws heavily from the public domain, but you're too conceited to see that and think you and your great grandchildren should just have money flowing in forever from the general public for your great work.

I guess Disney then, huh?

@Big Media,

And you wonder why people "pirate" your stuff.

Until you take a more reasonable stance, just think of those billions of dollars you are "losing" to those "evil thieves"...when some simple reasonable behavior would net you those billions in pure profit!

On a less fanciful note, to a lot of people you ARE the evil thieves. That should keep you awake at night, AI (to make media) and Free Software (to replace copyrighted software) keep getting better and better and if this continues unchecked, your rent seeking days are numbered. Trying to stop your inevitable replacement might just lead to a full on revolt and widespread, actual copyright violation that you can't contain (try as you might, you can't jail the entire population of the western world).

You can win in the short term. In the long run you will be remembered like the Catholic Church in the Dark Ages for your anti-intellectualism and holding the human race back from its true potential for centuries.

Unless of course you manage to stymie human development long enough for uneducated, resource-desperate governments to turn the planet into a nuclear fireball in some form of WWIII. In which case, seeing as you're stuck on this rock alongside us normal people, good job, well done. <slow clap>

Picture a world where you have to post copyright protection bond / proof of copyright violation insurance to post a video. Or where all user videos are assumed to be stolen so you have to provide proof of license before uploading and pay for human review.

Too far fetched? What if YouTube and maybe a couple of other centrally controlled "competitors" are the only option, with all other video being blocked due to potential ISP liability?

At what point has government given government level control to an unelected, unaccountable, faceless, profit-seeking group of corporations? At what point does the populous demand that the elected government remove said unelected quasi-government from power? At what point is the elected government weaker in real power than the unelected quasi-government?

I don't actually want to know the answers to those questions. Finding them out would cause untold human pain and suffering. But I gather the masses, the same masses that accepted multigenerational (i.e. permanent) copyright as a form of knowledge control, are not going to rise up and fix the problem while they still can. More's the pity.

I've said it before and I'll say it again since this is a great time to actually fix the underlying problem:

Limit copyright to 20 years. Full stop. If a work is DRMed strip it of copyright protection -- only works that are allowed to enter the public domain should be protected under copyright. Prohibit transfer (or effective transfer) of copyright -- if 1000 artists make a movie, copyright remains in that group, not the studio, and that group makes all the decisions on copying and sale.

Then let's see if Big Media keeps its multigenerational anticompetitive rent-seeking Big Brother tentacles in our daily lives or not (I bet they will, but at least there'll be an option for the rest of us tired of being told what we can and can't do, being spied on because we might break copyright law, forced to provide free storage in our minds for Big Media crap but not even allowed to discuss the bits we like with examples after the media is pulled from online streaming).

Before the flood of "you just want free stuff" comes in, yes, I want free stuff. I want to be able to pay a content creator ONCE for stuff that I am free to read, consume, alter, resell, remix, lend, and otherwise engage in all forms of fair use with no restrictions. Barring that, I don't want to pay the rent-seeking creator a single dime, and I don't want the work on the market stopping others from exploring the same concept. If a shorter copyright is the only way to make that happen, so be it.

Techies take turns at shut-down top trumps

Re: colourblind

What's "touch this button and die, coward!" translated into Klingon anyway? Something short I'm sure.

Because as any real geek knows, to use the button correctly would be cowardly and worthy of death. To use the button incorrectly means being blown out of an airlock and then some for both sheer incompetence and crippling the commander's vessel.

Klingon computer rooms are most definitely not Elf 'n Safety compliant!

Who pressured WHO to put gaming on a par with drug addiction to help silence political dissent? Oh hi there, China

Your first paragraph seems to resent that fact that we have to pay for games.

No, not at all. I resent the fact that I have to pay over and over and over and over for continued access to or progress in the same game.

I shelled out full MSRP (quite pricey for the time actually) for some of the great titles in the mid 2000s and earlier. The kind that came on a disk with a license key and didn't need online activation. Most even had a trial available so I could see if I would like the full game, thus causing a purchase instead of a pass on the title. And after liking the game(s) even bought more copies for relatives so we could all play together. Those purchases I don't regret one bit, I could have resold the disks (after deleting the game) if I got bored of it but the reality is I hung onto the titles because they're fun and playable even now, in some cases long after the vendor has ceased to operate.

No, the "purchases" I regret most are the ephemeral leases on Steam, for games that have so radically changed that I no longer play them because they are no longer fun. Instead I comment to friends that "didn't <X> used to be a great game, wish we could play it again" and they nod, all of us fully understanding it is literally impossible to do so.

It's the latter leased, controlled, DRMed, microtransacted, epehemeral aspect that has much in common with drugs. The original, one time purchase model was closer to collecting art or music and in many ways self limiting as I described above.

Just because you think that a.) you would just steal things or b.) you're one of those copyright hoarders that think you can rent-seek for eternity in ways beyond the right of first sale originally granted to you by society via copyright, just because of your "precious contribution" to the sum of human art, doesn't mean I would do or be either one of those. And if you're in camp "b", know that in 50 years your locked, DRMed "art" will, with virtual certainty, be lost forever, while my contributions to the sum of human knowledge will still be around!

Hate to say it, as I used to enjoy casual gaming before everything went into the cloud, but the WHO is right here. Modern games are pay to play with a rental license, microtransactions, loot boxes, DRM, basically there isn't much difference between paying a drug dealer and paying one of these modern game companies. As far as I'm concerned, the same thing exists with Hollywood and streaming-only videos.

When you actually own a copy of the game/movie, it is actually possible to tire of playing it / watching it, or you're using it as a social activity with friends (which lessens the addictive properties quite a bit). When you're limited in gameplay or views by money, it does increase the addictiveness factor a tremendous amount. Why do you think the arcades in the '80s made so much money with "insert quarter to continue" type stuff, or why video gambling is so popular? It's exploiting a relatively serious bug in the human psyche*, and that's why addictive products are regulated and/or outright banned in many countries.

The game studios (and Hollywood, when their turn comes) have no one to blame but themselves. Make your business model most closely resemble a drug dealer or casino, and you will be regulated as such.

* The bug is multifaceted, but for a real eye opener look up the "Rat Park" drug experiment. Isolating the rats made them use more drugs to compensate -- what is modern media doing? Isolating each individual viewer / user with pay per play and pay per view on individual accounts, thus taking them away from the group that would otherwise moderate the behaviour. It's a simple exploit, but quite powerful.

Stop us if you're getting deja-vu: Uber used spyware to nobble dial-a-ride rival, this time Down Under, allegedly

Uber devs allegedly compromised GoCatch systems, and installed a tool dubbed Surfcam

That's called a virus. If true, this should lead to the devs and their bosses that signed off on it (up to the C-suite if necessary) going to jail. I thought the FBI tended to prefer raids when organized computer crime was discovered? Maybe a pre-dawn heavily armed visit to Uber headquarters and CEO/CIO homes is warranted?

Dead LAN's hand: IT staff 'locked out' of data center's core switch after the only bloke who could log into it dies

Re: It can become cost prohibitive

Or better, the CEO's secretary, as that is a person that can usually be entrusted, but would never think of abusing the power that has been let with them.

So you've seen this too. It's an interesting phenomenon, some form of "absolute power corrupts" I gather.

One organization I worked with was effectively run by a very competent secretary (that was also a force to be reckoned with if you did wrong). Her "boss" was a miserable twat....

Re: It can become cost prohibitive

Instead, the organization can outsource it completely and it's no longer a problem.

Of course then you have an entirely new set of problems starting with GDPR compliance, data leakage, cloud providers deciding you're last in line for a fix, connection troubles, being held for ransom with rate hikes or mandated software "upgrades", deciding your app isn't worth supporting any longer, etc.

When just making sure the CEO had a copy of all passwords available would have fixed this at no extra charge.

But don't let that all get in the way of your cloudy sales pitch!

Android clampdown on calls and texts access trashes bunch of apps

Aah, the pitfalls of an open system.

On what planet is Android open? I can't even load my own version of it on "my" own phone unless I make sure I spend more to get one of the very few models that offer an unlocked bootloader any more. Even then there's 100MB+ of closed crappy firmware, drivers, etc. that can't be replaced.

The pitfalls of a TiVoized, centrally controlled system perhaps....worst of both worlds since Google gets to claim they don't have responsibility (guess what, locked loaders mean you DO have responsibility on e.g. the Pixel, let's dish out some GDPR fines until you get that through your thick corporate skulls....)

Re: This!

And nobody tell me about how Android means that Linux is winning or provides us with a wonderful Linux system. I will fight you.

It would be like saying Linux won because it was on every TiVo/Netflix box (with a suitably locked bootloader) while all desktops were locked (again via the bootloader) to run Windows. Very strange definition of "winning".

I still wonder if Torvalds thinks it was a good idea to keep the kernel GPLv2. Right now it sure looks like corporates took Linux, said "this is for us and us only", and are busy making sure they are the only ones that can change, compile, and run a kernel. You know, the entire reason most of us got into FOSS in the first place??

Guess we needed that Ubuntu Phone ecosystem after all. Too bad most phones sold outside Asia and the EU come with crap locked bootloaders (and too bad Ubuntu Phone itself was kinda crap).

With Google running the show and locked bootloaders stopping OS replacement, Android is NOT open. It's a walled garden with a back door propped open, but if I can't replace the OS it is NOT open like the PC ecosystem was in the '90s. Time to stop propagating the "open" myth.

* Yeah, I got hit by this "feature". It basically disabled my VoIP app and is trying to push me into uploading my data to Google. Pigs will fly when I let that happen, so my phone is now less useful. (yes, the loader is unlocked, but the app developer removed the functionality, so unless an open app is created that can add it back in, fixing the OS won't fix the problem).

Sorry, Linux. We know you want to be popular, but cyber-crooks are all about Microsoft for now

Windows next iteration will be MS365. Your ipx boot will point at a URI and will require that your hardware be registered with MS

Not too far off, but MS doesn't want to pay for that bandwidth to boot the OS when they can do the same thing with locked bootloaders and local storage. And I imagine the per year is just the base rate, with burst billing at peak times for the actual cloudy bits?

Best part? All they need to do is flip a switch in the existing Intel/AMD ecosystem to do this....the frogs are almost (but just not quite yet) done boiling...

What OS does anyone suppose that hardware came with?

Don't assume that:

a.) The hardware came with a valid license. Changing a motherboard is enough to effectively require a new license, and hardware resold from corporate use would not have a valid license attached.

b.) Windows 10 Home has the needed features (or doesn't have unwanted features like slurp).

I've got valid Windows 10 licenses for all of my non-obsolete Linux machines, but... no, just no.

Exactly. Windows 10 is cyanide in a jelly baby. If you give all your data to Microsoft anyway just go rent space on their cloud like they want, don't waste your money on Windows locked hardware or software licenses on top of it.

Maybe Windows and Intel are just easier to hack and install APTs on? Heck if the vendors (who are often not known for being all that tech-savvy, ironically) are installing firmware based nasties, maybe those locked, game-console like machines run by users that have tech skillz barely a step up from a teenage gamer make a nice juicy target with lots of ROI for criminal types?

Sure, Linux users do stupid things too, but they tend to not all do the same stupid thing as their counterparts, making automated probing / hacking more likely to fail. Plus, not limited by hardware and license fees, they might just be more likely to have things like a proper firewall active if there's anything worth stealing on their machines. And if not, then they might be in that camp of using Linux because they have no money -- not bad for users without income to legally get an OS in that case, but no incentive / ROI for hacking that machine either.

IBM servers crashed in Q4 – just sales, not the mother of all outages

Well, they do sell the only modern CPU that doesn't come with baked in backdoors, so that's something. Power servers from various OEMs are relatively new (e.g. Raptor, Tyan, Wistron, etc.) and are really pushing the open systems / open firmware angle. These are the same line of CPUs in Sierra and Summit.

Or you can keep buying buggy Intel/AMD systems with mandatory backdoored firmware required via hardware signature checks. Just remember, they have no responsibility when your data flies out the window, see EULA...

I would definitely stay away from Lenovo or even IBM badged servers though -- they're all Chinese rebrands without the open firmware advantages and shoddy hardware half the time.

Ransomware drops the Lillehammer on Norsk Hydro: Aluminium giant forced into manual mode after systems scrambled

insecure by design

How much do you want to bet they were using Windows 7 / 10 on Intel systems?

That's like building a city in the middle ages to encourage rat population growth. Dumb dumb dumb.

Hey, US taxpayers. Filed your taxes? Good, good. $500m of it is going on an Intel-Cray exascale boffinry supercomputer

Re: Yeah, but ...

Since it's Intel...why not just use one of the ME exploits and try it?

Icon 'cause while (sadly) this might just be feasible with Intel's nightmarish swiss-cheese "security" systems, don't try this at home unless you like rotting in Guantanamo Bay....

Just look at Q! Watch out Microsoft, the next Android has a proper desktop PC mode

Re: Watch out Microsoft?

I don't expect the market for these devices to be large initially but I guess the companies that should be really worried are the PC makers: the few that are left just got even more competition.

This also spells the end for Linux as we know it. Most of those phones have locked bootloaders, and Facebook and Google can both spy through as much of these people's new "desktops" to their hearts content. Not to mention such fun features as:

Fully enabled DRM (i.e. time bombed movies etc.)

Always on cell signal (along with remote bricking per Cali law etc.)

Really it sounds like this is final push for all technology being converted to enslave people instead of empower them. Try bricking the normal desktops of political dissidents, etc. (or burning libraries) and see how far that gets before some other nation steps in with their military. Just deleting the controversial files remotely from the phone, or wiping them from the cloud service probably won't get that kind of response.

I wonder if Torvalds is regretting his decision not to GPL v3 the kernel yet.

For the first time in a long time I'm genuinely terrified of the future.

Click here to see the New Zealand livestream mass-murder vid! This is the internet Facebook, YouTube, Twitter built!

Re: Why share?

They are trying to decide which bits they like best. The shooting outside? The shooting inside?

This made me both want to retch and wonder what in the world is wrong with sociopaths like that. Thinking about it a bit I came to the following conclusion:

We allow people like that to walk around free in society solely because we decided a long time ago that every viewpoint had a place in a free society. That the majority would invariably find such a viewpoint abhorrent and keep the general structure of society in line with the morality of the majority.

Two points follow from this:

1.) If we have given up our freedom and privacy in the name of "convenience", "free stuff", and "safety" already, then the only reason for allowing such evil speech to go free in society has been removed. Drop the pretense and arrest them before they go on and execute what they oviously think is not only acceptable but, *shudder*, likeable and entertaining.

2.) Have we really become such an isolated, siloed, ridiculously non-social society that not only is this allowed but the rest of us civilized folk don't essentially shun people like this? Liking people being murdered in cold blood should give anyone looking to lease a flat to those proto-terrorists, hire them, or even associating with them serious cause for concern.

It's a sick world out there but we're supposed to be more civilized than this. Thanks for the stark reminder of what a mess things really are.

Re: Your "nutter on a rampage" is China's "Tiananmen Square"

I definitely agree. That being said, how does free society handle the case of the nutters in an earlier post using this as entertainment? If we're expected to just deal with it because we're a free society, then treat us all as adults and stop all censorship and micromanaging of our lives. How absurd is it that we accept heavy restrictions on our lives to (as an example) stop something as relatively inconsequential as piracy (via DRM), yet allow cowardly murder to be used as free-for-all entertainment?

Something's very wrong here but I can't put my finger on it well enough to offer up a fix -- all I can see is the massive disconnect. Somehow we understand that media censorship is a red line not to be crossed, even when not crossing that line leads to some degree of abhorrent behaviour from a (thankfully small) minority. At the same time we are perfectly happy to restrict behaviour in other areas that are of almost no consequence in comparison (leading to minimal harm, if any, to surrounding folk if the rules are violated) to protect corporate profits.

What a world we live in.

El Reg follows common sense!

whose name isn't worth publishing

Thank you for not giving this jackass its 15 minutes of fame. It's a disturbing trend we see all too often in today's media to make these idiots out to be rock stars.

"People" (note I use that term very loosely in this case) that stoop to this level should be covered exactly twice:

Once to show the event and how it didn't engender any lasting terror (bonus points for people standing up saying they are not afraid)

Once again with all the intimate details of the next 60 years of this degenerate's controlled, subjugated, monitored, and in every way horrific life until it dies unwanted in prison.

It's alive! Big Switch stitches together an open-source Network Operating System

and it was a completely closed system. ... with x86, it opened a whole new set of innovations

Hahahahaha. x86 is one of the most closed systems available. Come back when you realize having one chip vendor legally owning the entire ISA and prohibiting anyone else from licensing it (AMD is a legacy quirk, a reminder of a smaller gentler Intel that actually lost in court once) is just as bloody closed as the mainframe model was.

That's how we get the ME, boot guard, and various related problems -- network / lock in effects when combined with Microsoft being dominant for so long.

How many Reg columnists does it take to turn off a lightbulb?

Re: Long way around the barn!

I've spent the last 10 days with a my Boots Advantage card in the power slot of my Hamburg apartment

Being an EE by trade I figured that one out almost immediately on a business trip in the Netherlands. As soon as I felt the telltale single "mush" of a basic pair of contacts, in went the first convenience card I found (to shops they didn't have of course, so relatively useless). No more worrying about phones not charging, laptop dying etc. for the rest of the stay.

I get power is expensive, but will the hotel be paying for my overpriced standard fare after my phone dies due to not charging? Or for lost contracts after I don't meet with the clients I'm there to talk with? Didn't think so.

Cloud atlas: Oh dear. Now Adobe has mapped out a slowdown

Re: Probably losing a lot of out-sourced graphic design shops

Ahh... a kindred spirit. I'm not sure if you've had a chance to take a look at the DVD release of Finding Dory at some point [1], but the first things I noted were:

1.) Wow! I haven't seen something new that is this intuitive, pleasing on the eye, and easy to read for a decade or more. (Yes, flat monochrome dark icons on a dark background with dark text in a trendy font, I'm looking squarely at you. Ditto for light text on white background with monochrome light grey icons.)

2.) Why aren't all DVDs like this?

3.) You know, the overall design reminds me of Windows 2000/XP. With some of the advertising from the '60s thrown in.

4.) Oh, right, there used to be actual design standards. From people that made a living at this and thought about how to convey information in a useful but still eye catching manner.

5.) Where did Disney dig up this kind of UX person in today's day and age? They still exist?

Icon 'cause it's about the opposite of your Instagram star.

[1] Since Disney appears to have released not only the interface I'm referring to, but another one that's every bit the obnoxious hard-to-use typical DVD experience, here's a direct link to some screenshots:

http://dvdmoviemenus.com/dvd/?mid=4/003096

Just seeing a readable font in reversal isn't all that common any more.

Windows XP point-of-sale machine gets nasty sniffle. Luckily there's a pharmacy nearby

Re: XP still flying here ... and I'm building a Vista system.

He should try Linux Mint or similar. It's not like the learning curve is less steep from XP to W10, and the Linux distro might actually support his old hardware out of the box.

Facebook blames 'server config change' for 14-hour outage. Someone run that through the universal liar translator

Re: Workplace down too

Anonymous? And you use Facebook?

Oh the irony....

This is the Send, encrypted end-to-end, this is the Send, my Mozillan friend

Re: The article says the key is in the hash part of the URL

bonus points if they paste it straight into the Google search box instead of the address bar

On some systems (including Linux-y ones) those are one and the same. Makes me cringe every single time I watch someone typo part of the URL and it goes straight to the Google slurp machine for permanent, completely legal recording and tracking.

Chrome for one, though that's snooping through your entire hard disk in the name of "safety" and "security" lately. I wonder what happens when it starts deleting people's "illegal pirated files" (that happen to be neither illegal nor pirated, e.g. original content or open media) and what the legal ramifications would be (probably none, see EULA?)

Take Note: Schneider's teeny-tiny Galaxy VS li-ion UPS set to explode onto data centre scene

Re: Fire Risk ?

I do note they say 100kw but no mention of runtime. Energy density is what's important here...if we're talking whole-facility backup for smaller installations (what a 3-phase 100kW unit can do) with runtime measured in tens of minutes, that's not just a firework -- that's a bomb with thermite mixed in and then some.

Keep that chunk of lithium well away from the servers, offices, car park, etc., and DON'T put it in a basement that could flood -- water and burning lithium together are about the only thing worse than a chunk of burning lithium!

And about that smartphone app. Please tell me the Internet connected bits are physically isolated from the controller bits, otherwise they've just created a ticking thermite bomb waiting for a hacker to find their way in. At this risk level I start to think legislation may be needed -- minimum security standards for equipment that could be installed in densely populated areas and pose a significant risk. Part of that standard should be the vendor accepts all liability, including damages, for any malfunction if they connect it to the Internet or recommend it be connected to the Internet.

Think about it: most of the civilized world requires insurance to drive because you might not be able to pay up in the event you cause damages. Maybe vendors of dangerous IoT stuff should be required to purchase insurance for their products just in case they go belly up at the first significant claim?

Back to ASICs: Nvidia coughs GPU-uge $6.9bn to scoff Mellanox

Already hearing rumors we'll be switching away from Infiniband for new deployments as a result. We've used Infiniband for over a decade, but unless Nvidia publicly states they are keeping the tools and drivers open source Ethernet is probably going to replace them.

Remember this is the same company that makes you agree to telemetry, including personal information upload, just to use their GPUs. Security already banned Nvidia GPUs from our systems over that little item...

Radio gaga: Techies fear EU directive to stop RF device tinkering will do more harm than good

Re: Gonna ask what may be a stoopid question here...

Electric heater and arcing mains socket? Parasitics can be fun.

Fundamentally those fancy arc fault interrupters pick up on the very strong RF signal generated by such setups...so that icon doesn't happen!

Re: Gonna ask what may be a stoopid question here...

The difference is you have to understand how to make a radio, not just download from the internet

Not really, no. The info on how to make said interference source is not only really easy to find online, it's in (probably) every library and several real world museums. And the result is not a radio, nor is it complex. Yet for some reason we don't have real world terrorists running around blotting out signals with this thing. Why do you suppose that is?

As an aside, much of the development of RF technology has been how to cram more data transfer into the finite amount of spectrum available, i.e. make things finer, more sensitive, etc. That does not mean the original transmitters that could obliterate the entire spectrum from DC to practically daylight stopped working, they were simply outlawed. Not by banning parts for them, but by banning their operation..

It's impossible to stop all idiots, but a large part can be hindered with little effort.

We already have Internet filtering. Throw up a filter on known ready-to-use illegal radio firmware. Simple, non-technical folks effectively hindered without any collateral damage, and technical folks know better than to try something that stupid. (or if they do, it's one of those risk/benefit things and they deserve to be located, arrested, and fined).

Re: Nonsense

I'm of the opinion a few high profile arrests and trials stemming from someone "just using that firmware that makes my radio work better since it doesn't harm anyone to remove the limits" might do the trick, provided there was proper press coverage stating why the trial was happening. We've got the technology to track unlicensed users down fairly quickly, find someone stomping on a military allocation to watch their cat videos and watch the sparks fly!

Right now it's perceived as no worse than piracy, i.e. some kind of victimless crime (see erosion of law due to widespread disregard for bad copyright / DRM laws) when in fact there really is a victim many times for RF interference -- the licensed user of the spectrum being directly impaired in their licensed use of that spectrum.

The RFI from cheap chinese ballasts in the US is so bad, I'm told, it obliterates parts of the AM broadcast band. I can't imagine the ballasts here are much better, since they're coming from the same factories in Asia. Do something about unintentional radiators first, arrest a few of the most egregious "illegal firmware" users*, and watch the problem sort itself.

* I hesitate to say "illegal firmware", but when you're talking about compiled software that is designed to cause your hardware to emit substantial RF on frequencies that you have no license for, it's pretty much illegal to use by definition outside of a faraday cage. Sadly I'm not sure politicians would understand that; it's a semi-miracle we still have the Amateur service allocations.

Re: Yet Another Bad Idea?

Do you see that here though? I sure don't. I see the vendor and various black hats able to modify the firmware at will, not the device owner.

Semi-joke: if they're going to pass this, mandate the radio firmware be a real ROM with zero, and I mean provably zero, update functionality. Defect? Manufacturer recall....

Re: Gonna ask what may be a stoopid question here...

Oh it's worse than that. Better ban beer, tinfoil, batteries, and mains power, since all you need to make a very powerful interference source (think orders of magnitude higher than a stupid AP) is:

An inductor (coil of wire)

A capacitor (beer bottles and tinfoil)

A spark gap (wire)

An antenna (wire)

Mains power or a nice battery array

Note to the average citizen of Blighty: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME. Even those cottoning onto what I've listed here (a couple critical assembly steps are missing, but the parts list is 100% complete), if someone is dumb enough to build this and actually operate it they'll be tracked down and jailed really quite quickly.

Which brings up the interesting point of: why aren't the out of bands devices located and confiscated? If examining the device shows the owner modified it to TX outside the allocated bands, there are fines and prison sentences for willful interference already on the books. It's not like your device transmitting by itself on some other band at high power isn't already a bloody beacon!

This could make Raspberry Pi (and their ilk) devices illegal

Not to worry, since the law won't be in effect long.

Main question is who takes over the EU once its population regresses to drooling subsistence farmers (since all them high tech gubbins are just off limits to plebs lest they hurt themselves). Russia? China? Regardless of who it is, the existing law won't be any concern whatsoever at that point!

I'd use the joke icon, but I don't think people really get the danger to the host nation of a non-innovative, technically ignorant, uneducated society in today's world. In the worst cases it can actually reach levels sufficient to implode said nations (see Venezuela).

This will be handled the same way it always is: locked, signed bootloaders. Nope, that device is a brick without vendor approval.

Sigh. Feels like going back to the bloody dark ages...wonder if we'll see the Internet cafe (wired style) come back?

Well, if they really do this, I guess consumer folk will just have to come up to what enterprise operations do (or at least should be doing, I know this varies widely based on how idiotic manglement is at the operation in question):

Treat the ENTIRE RF device as a snoopy, buggy, insecure, dangerous piece of poison that should never, ever see:

1.) A connection of any type to the public Internet

2.) Unencrypted internal data of any sort

This means the access points go on a private, dedicated, cabled network (no VLANs or, *shudder*, shared cabling with the WiFi on a different subnet) with a single host visible: the gateway to your VPN. Yeah, it's a nuisance and yeah, it costs more, but really the other option (everything wide open -- no, "passworded WiFi" doesn't count when the firmware is a hackable black box) isn't exactly a secure option in today's always-connected, always-hacked IoT world is it?

This also means that either phone technology will need to adapt or people need to stop bringing their favourite little spy along to every private location and conversation. Expect more businesses to start banning phones from entire properties (this is already the case in many locations), and maybe people to start telling other folks their phone isn't welcome in their flat -- after that, I wonder just how popular this new law will be. Probably the only way to fix this is to make an RF module that's isolated from the rest of the device and standardized / swappable, but that would need to be legislated as a requirement along with this new proposal.

And WTF on the environmental assessment? Of COURSE this will have an environmental impact. Even the knock on effects of people leaving their mobile behind and communicating / travelling less efficiently would increase carbon emissions, plus the glaring elephant in the room of throwaway phones and laptops like our cousins across the pond.

On my side: if I can't compile and install an OS for my phone, it's not really my phone, is it? And if it's not really my phone, I don't really want to pay to carry around a spy no matter how convenient people say it is. Maybe some convenience comes at too high a cost.

From hard drive to over-heard drive: Boffins convert spinning rust into eavesdropping mic

"suggest hard drive makers sign firmware cryptographically "

Sigh. This old fallacy again? Anyone interested enough to target a particular individual will get the keys for the signature one way or another (and in some cases the vendor will assist creating the malware, e.g. Chinese companies under state order), and if widespread attack is desired again somehow they keys will be obtained or a bypass found.

It's time we looked past "one key unlocks millions of computers" vendor signing stuff. In fact stated that way it really sounds like a back door of sorts, no? Not in a remote access sense per se, but in the sense of having a lock on a door of your house that you can't control...

Icon 'cause it represents how such critical keys are normally handled in commercial operations...pasted on a sticky note on the boss's secretary's desk.

Unless you want your wine bar to look like a brothel, purple curtains are a no-no apparently

Re: Take a look at the 2nd photo in the Cornwall Live article

Was wondering that myself. Perhaps a "gift" from one of the townsfolk?