Posts by rcxb

Poor old Google. Its cloud division only brought in $8.9bn last year. So it's chucking a few billion at US offices and data centres

While Google is too much of a monster as it is, I'm all for them cutting-in on the Amazon and Microsoft duopoly, since it doesn't seem like anyone else will. Facebook might be a good candidate to break into the same market.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

Re: What an incredibly stupid way to die.

Reminds me of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Reichelt#Eiffel_Tower_jump

AMD takes a bite out of Intel's PC market share across Europe amid microprocessor shortages, rising Ryzen

It takes just as long to buy an AMD based PC as an Intel one, ditto installing Windows, apps, etc. Other than creating a new master image with the required drivers I don't see what is different and you would need to do that for a new range of Intel based PCs anyway.

It's not more expensive to sell AMD PCs than Intel, but it is more expensive to have to sell BOTH, slightly different models.

For your home PC, you just put something together, and if it seems to work, you go. For big vendors, all their hardware gets extensively tested and certified as compatible with all the major software out there, and full compatibility in all the edge cases with all different possible (supported) combinations of hardware is tested as well.

Businesses that buy thousands of PCs from a vendor in a go don't expect to get something that works most of the time. If they want to stick a SCSI controller card next to high-end video card, it all has to work.

I remember my old PC Chips motherboard... If a case screw happened to make contact with the metal plating around the holes, the second IDE channel would freeze. Worked perfect out of the case on a bench for testing (as the seller told me when I returned it), but in a case, it would go wonky. Even with good, name brand gear, there's still all those edge cases where it doesn't always support every configuration somebody might try.

Your McDonald's demo has expired. For full functionality, please purchase a licence or try another fast-food joint

Fill me in on your new vision

Wake me up with indecision

Help me trust your mighty wisdom

Yes I eat cow, I am not proud

Web body mulls halving HTTPS cert lifetimes. That screaming in the distance is HTTPS cert sellers fearing orgs will bail for Let's Encrypt

For internal sites, I've already changed everything to self-signed, or rather our own certificate authority, because while a wildcard cert is cheap, the two year lifetimes are unnecessary maintenance burden.

The big reason we pay for certs for public facing sites is:

A) Doing it once every 2-3 years is manageable and poses less risk of something breaking when LE's auto-renew every month doesn't work quite right.

B) LE moved to be "more secure" which means dropping legacy browser support, which actually means making the web less secure for users who have good reasons to be unable to upgrade, and we certainly don't want to be unable to take their money due to browser choice.

Apple wants to eliminate both. The only real problem here is Apple. The best solution is to tell our Apple-using customers to switch to Firefox because Safari is broken. If that becomes untenable, then switching to LE is suddenly the least terrible alternative, and quickly, all other certificate authorities die out.

Assange lawyer: Trump offered WikiLeaker a pardon in exchange for denying Russia hacked Democrats' email

It's a tough one. Trump is perhaps the only public figure in the western world with less credibility and more insane conspiracy theories than Assange. Can we get Putin to weigh-in, too?

Shipping is so insecure we could have driven off in an oil rig, says Pen Test Partners

Where's the Da Vinci virus when you need it?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a flying solar panel: BAE Systems' satellite alternative makes maiden flight in Oz

Lightning is more likely to be of serious concern:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper-atmospheric_lightning

AT&T insists it's not blocking Tutanota after secure email biz cries foul, cites loss of net neutrality as cause

All in the Wording

"Blocking" is such an unkind word. Instead, let's say AT&T is encouraging customers to explore alternative service providers.

Netgear's routerlogin.com HTTPS cert snafu now has a live proof of concept

Re: Unintended consequences of Browser Fascism

Actually, it seems it was:

On January 20th at approximately 6:39 am UTC, [Entrust Datacard] received a notification from a third party that one of our customer’s private keys had been exposed. As such, we were required to revoke the certificate due to key compromise within 24 hours, in accordance with BR 4.9.1.1.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1611241

Re: Is this really a big deal?

No. Normally SSL/HTTPS/TLS connections will offer you a high degree of protection from such code injection and modifications. In this case, the private key is public, so anybody can do nasty MITM with routerlogin.com.

Re: Unintended consequences of Browser Fascism

Why didn't the issuing authority immediately revoke the cert, after finding out the private key is in the wild? Thereby giving Netgear an even bigger problem than a self-signed cert?

There's got to be Huawei we can defeat Chinese tech giant, thinks US attorney-general. Aha, let's buy stake in Ericsson and Nokia

Cisco and Juniper do NOT make 5G equipment. There's no benefit to either of them. It's a very strange conspiracy theory people keep repeating.

The fact that Barr is suggesting US investment in European companies who DO make 5G equipment is proof enough that there are no US competitors in the 5G space.

Team China: Nation's biggest mobe makers link arms to battle Google's Play Store

The Play Store is a nightmare. Try looking for simple apps, and you're inundated with ad-infested crud.

Until Google allows users to filter irritating ad-supported/spyware apps from their search results, the Play Store is largely unusable, and any competitor could come along and jump into the gap. However, I'm going to bet Huawei isn't any more competent than Google in this regard, and won't figure it out, and won't be any kind of a success.

Bypassing the Play Store means foregoing all of Google Apps as well. Many users will be irate about an Android phone that can't run the native gmail, youtube,etc apps.

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

"I personally think it's outdated and sexist to require women to wear a short dress and heels"

Agreed. They should have required the men to wear a short dress and heels...

It's called equality.

He’s a pain in the ASCII to everybody. Now please acquit my sysadmin client over these CIA Vault 7 leaking charges

Re: CIA - Crime Inventing Agency

How else would there be anything at all in the "memory" of the computer to leave the tracks as claimed?

Perhaps a swap or hibernate file?

RIP FTP? File Transfer Protocol switched off by default in Chrome 80

Re: Active and Passive

Do either of those have "dir" "mget" and "mput" commands?

Active and Passive

The low-level details of FTP are ridiculously complex. It opens a control channel on port 21, simple enough. But then when you want to transfer a file the server side makes a request to port 20 on the client... Which modern firewalls (or NAT) don't allow. So PASV mode was invented, which lets the client make a second connection to the server, but on a RANDOM PORT, so that makes it a nightmare to reasonably firewall the FTP server systems. Most firewalls get around this by running an FTP proxy right on the firewall, because there's just no other way... No other protocol in use today is so crazy and convoluted. The old rsh/rlogin/rcp commands/protocols are a good candidate, though, but almost extinct, where FTP keeps going.

It's a shame nobody ever put together a command-line file transfer client for HTTP transfers. HTTP has got more error/status codes than FTP, supports uploads and downloads, authenticated and anonymous connections, etc. HTTP/1.0 was a perfectly simple protocol, too. Would love to have command-line file transfers over HTTP, without crufty old FTP design decisions.

I used FTP just yesterday. com.mbapp.ftpserver.apk (WiFi File Transfer for Android)

How would YOU transfer half a gig of data to an (Android) Fire TV stick? Put it on a web server then try to type in a URL via on-screen keyboard and remote control in a rather limited web browser? Nope.

There is SimpleSSHD (which includes "rsync), but the encryption overhead on Android (Arm CPU) devices sure slows transfers down.

com.mbapp.ftpserver isn't riddled with ads, doesn't have file-size limitations, and doesn't require a modern web browser on either end. Just run the app on one end, and copy the files via the command-line FTP client on the other.

Virtualization juggernaut VMware hits the CPU turbo button for licensing costs

Re: not great but relieved it is not much worse

I took some time to get comfortable with the HTML UI as well, but it's more logical and easier in some ways. Now I wouldn't go back, despite the rough edges. Its biggest sin is being quite different, with no attempt to ease the transition.

Re: VMware

Why would anybody use VMware for virtualisation in more than a Lab/SMB scale?

- Xen and (even better) KVM cost nothing in license fees and scale much better, the HCL of KVM being ... close to everything ever built on x64.

You need to bolt high-availability monitoring and migration capabilities onto your Xen/KVM installations, whereas vSphere just has it as a check-box.

Legacy systems run far better under VMWare, so just a few of those can steer the decision.

Many advanced VM backup systems are built around VMWare, which don't have equivalents in KVM/Xen. In fact the changed-block tracking or whatever they call it is a licensed feature.

VMWare's vSAN offers HA with distributed storage instead of proper SAN.

You're not completely off the mark, though. If the price goes up much, there are several cheaper alternatives that many companies will be able to make-due with, with only modest sacrifices.

VMWare deserves credit for giving away ESXi for free. That's got about the same level of features you get with free KVM/Xen, so free VMware is an option in there, too.

Things I learned from Y2K (pt 87): How to swap a mainframe for Microsoft Access

"it can be a surprisingly effective tool in the right circumstances."

The same can be said of a toilet plunger. Many of us can say we've had to use it at some point, but that's nothing to put on a resume.

The BlackBerry in your junk drawer is now a collectors' item: TCL says no more new keyboard-clad phones

You can get a lot more work done with a physical keyboard, than without. Same goes for smaller screen sizes you can keep a solid grip on while operating one-handed. Seems everyone with huge glass phones are just watching videos on them and not doing any real work.

The KeyOne came along at the right time, when my old slider was showing its age. Perhaps I'll get a Key2, and stick with it for years, waiting for the next phone with a keyboard to come out. Might not be a huge market, but it's a dedicated one. I think a slider (portrait keyboard) will get much more interest than a traditional Blackberry bar. But besides that, the KeyOne and Key2 didn't exactly get widely advertised. Give it to Apple, EVERYBODY knows when a new model is released.

Star wreck: There's a 1 in 20 chance a NASA telescope and US military satellite will smash into each other today

Re: Recycling

Yes, indeed. The better option is to slingshot a wad of bubblegum attached to a length twine at the dead satellite in question.

Use our stuff for free and sell your application? That's Qt. Time to give something back

Re: Annoying

I prefer FLTK anyhow.

Don't forget that license restrictions on QT are the only reason the GNOME desktop environment (based on GTK) was created in the first place, otherwise KDE would be the defacto full-featured DE for Linux users.

Ever wondered what Microsoft really thought about the iPad? Ex-Windows boss spills beans

Re: 10 years!

Tablets are a HORRIBLE form factor for most everything, only games and a bit of book-reading benefit from the form factor. Their popularity was just trendy and people too foolish to realize otherwise.

For serious work, you need a keyboard, and a stand. Plus, the limitations of the low-end and low-power CPU, and very limited software selection really hobble its utility even in the best case.

Smartphones work nicely. One-handed operation. Ability to quickly look-up some info. But nobody would claim they can do their work productively on those. So if your smartphone isn't able to do it, you upgrade to a full computer (or laptop).

The in-between size of a tablet, with most of the same limitations as a smartphone, just makes no sense for almost anybody.

You're always a day Huawei: UK to decide whether to ban Chinese firm's kit from 5G networks tomorrow

This is nothing to do with security and everything to do with propping up failing American companies like Cisco who've taken their eye off the ball.

A band on Huawei 5G equipment would help Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung (none of which are domestic US companies last I checked), not Cisco.

Cisco just isn't one of the big competitors in the 5G space. Cisco and Huawei are competitors in core routing/switching equipment, and banning Huawei's 5G equipment won't really help them, there.

Free Software Foundation suggests Microsoft 'upcycles' Windows 7... as open source

Re: Do they know an open source Windows would be the death of Linux?

Windows 10 is already free, as in zero cost. You can download the ISO from Microsoft.com and use it without ever inputting a valid license key. It stops you from changing the theme, background, etc, through the normal interface, but is otherwise entirely functional.

That's entirely different than Open Source, however. There you could actually fix all the things that are wrong with Windows, have a WINE that works with every bit of software out there, etc.

The WINE improvements might be good, but otherwise I wouldn't be interested. All that massive bloat, crippled UI, etc. No way would I go back to that.

Judge snubs IT outsourcers' plea to Alt-F4 tougher H-1B visa rules: Bosses told to fill out the extra paperwork

Eliminate the H1-B system entirely. If someone has valuable skills, then make them a full citizen in short order, without the indentured servitude work restrictions.

Chrome suddenly using Bing after installing Office 365 Pro Plus... Yeah, that might have been us, mumbles Microsoft

This is the real danger of software subscription or cloud services. They can change the deal at any time, and you can't opt to keep using the old version without the invasive changes.

Switching to standardized formats is the best long-term solution. Even if funding and development of LibreOffice stops tomorrow, people will keep it running on modern systems for years to come. And there will be absolutely perfect conversion plugins for any other Office suite out there which wishes to do so.

I've made slow, gradual progress at my company getting more and more systems switched to Linux when hardware upgrade time arrives. The cost is minimal... A very low-end PC upgraded to SSDs runs Linux incredibly well, and avoids the cost of Windows, Office, and a bevy of others. They've required 1/10th as much maintenance and support. And most of it is just that an Office document here and there doesn't convert perfectly.

Are you getting it? Yes, armageddon it: Mass hysteria takes hold as the Windows 7 axe falls

Re: one would think

They are going to slowly migrate over to Linux. Windows is not where their money is anymore.

Windows on the desktop PC is still a money maker, but there's more on the enterprise/server side and more importantly that is the core component that allows them all their software lock-in.

Last I saw, Windows on PCs earns them about $15bb/yr:

https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/msftrev2017-630x472.png

Not a market to shun, even if it's not their most profitable segment.

Microsoft Office for Linux is an also-ran. SQL Server on Linux has tons of competition. XBox got popular because it offered game developers DirectX they were using on PCs. Their cloud service is popular because they can hand out cheap Windows server licenses. Without their proprietary/monopoly advantage from the OS, Microsoft's whole profit model breaks down.

It's a no to ZFS in the Linux kernel from me, says Torvalds, points finger of blame at Oracle licensing

Re: The problem is not Oracle (for once)

Thus the GPL gives you the protection from nasty people taking advantage of you and removing your freedom.

In what way is someone opting not to release their modifications, "removing your freedom"? Your definition of "your freedom" sounds like indentured servitude for everyone else.

Back up a minute: Private equity outfit coughs $5bn for Veeam

Re: Great products

Veeam is really great software, unless you want differential backups, incremental tapes, etc. There's a surprising number of missing, WONTFIX features.

Quite possible those gaps are why adoption of Veeam has been limited, and not their country of operation.

Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

Daemontools isn't a drop-in fix. You have to have a split between your daemontools processes and their scripts, and your init processes and there scripts, while never the twain shall meet. systemd just needs one line in the config to maintain a service.

Daemontools also goes wrong, plenty of times... leaving processes running it was supposed to stop. systemd is much smarter and more robust. It also has other modes of monitoring the health of a process, not just waiting for the PID to quit, handling crazy forking processes, etc, etc. You should have at least said "monit" rather than daemontools.

NOTE: I dislike systemd as much as anybody, but the old init system was long overdue for improvements, and something like upstart is worse than systemd.

No Motorola Razr comeback orders in 2019: Costly foldy nostalgia mobe pulled back

Re: 128GB of ROM?

By "ROM" they mean disk-type SSD storage (in contrast to RAM). A common misnomer with smart phones.

You can certainly go through 128GB of storage on your phone. Throw your entire music collection on there, plus several graphics heavy apps/games and 128GB doesn't look very big.

And if you store any video locally on your phone, you'll run out mighty quick.

You leak our secrets? We'll leak your book sales, speech fees – into our coffers: Uncle Sam wins royalties fight against Edward Snowden

Re: Use a different publisher?

If said foreign publisher buys/sells/owns ANYTHING in the US, or even needs to transit anything through the country or aboard US flagged ships, those assets will be subject to seizure, until the full amount is reached.

Is your computer doctor secretly a racist? Two US senators want to find out the truth

Re: Some illnesses and treatments are race specific

I can't see how, unless you're accurately gathering that data at birth...

You need to be able to distinguish between the shades of brown of a fairer genetic groups (e.g. Irish, Scandinavians) who have gotten lots of sun exposure to those of darker genetic group (e.g. Africans, Indians) who have gotten very little sun exposure. There's sure to be overlap in the skin shades of those quite disparate groups with differing UV radiation exposure levels.

Register Lecture: Can portable atomic clocks end UK dependence on GNSS?

Re: Interesting

My phone often has a skew of rather more than that on its clock and yet can get a decent satellite only location fix via GPS.

Your phone doesn't need accurate time to use GPS (though it helps). But the GPS satellites, themselves need to have incredibly accurate time. So too, any time signal used for location calculation.

Welcome back GEE / LORAN-C

Xerox: Prepare to say cyan-ara, HP Inc. We're no paper tiger. We're really very serious about that hostile takeover

Re: I wonder why Xerox is so fixated on this HP merger.

Sounds like a desperation move. When fortunes are declining, a big PR stunt can get a brief influx of cash. Plus they have a bottled excuse for their declining fortunes... the merger isn't doing its magic just yet, maybe next year. The gigantic mess would be cover-up Xerox's own problems for a while.

RISC-V business: Tech foundation moving to Switzerland because of geopolitical concerns

Re: So obvious, why doesn't everyone do it?

I don't understand why so many open source projects are incorporated in the US.

Most startup angel investors are US based, and most top high-tech companies are as well.

The US is so large of a market that the vast majority of multinationals have a business presence there, anyhow, and are already beholden to and complying with the laws and regulations there. So call it lowest-common denominator mutual commonalities.

Gospel according to HPE: And lo, on the 32,768th hour did thy SSD give up the ghost

Next time HPE tells you about their Next-generation reliability*, you'll know exactly what they mean...

* From HPE ProLiant DL560 Gen9 Data Sheet Pg.2

Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues

A dune buggy and a ute (or El Camino) had an ugly child...

Satellite operators' shares plummet as FCC plumps for public 5G spectrum auctions

Re: A side-effect

making their devices with an assortment of a few bands selected at random and, if necessary, making six different versions that are tailored to the frequencies used by one particular provider. The result of this is that it is hard to move devices on to or off of a provider whose band isn't one of the most typical in use.

While the number of LTE bands grows, 2G bands have been dropped, and 3G bands are imminently to be dropped, allowing some bands to be dropped... OR reused meaning they can stop using other newer bands.

Your experience with handsets is not mine at all. ATT and T-Mobile phones have each other's bands quite well covered (if not completely). The latest new bands the provider is pushing may lag behind in phones from the other carrier, but they get there. If nothing else, carriers want their phones to be able to roam onto the networks of others, where necessary.

As for Verizon and Sprint, their 2G and 3G radios are completely incompatible with everything, anyhow, so they're a bit of a walled-garden. Give it a couple years, once 3G CDMA is shut-down and they'll start looking pretty standard and interoperable, too. They already have the main bands because, again, they want to be able to charge their customers lots of cash for time spent in roaming areas.

HP to Xerox: Nope, your $33.5bn bid falls short of our valuation

Re: "not in the best interests of shareholders"

I don't feel anyone should be entitled to a "good paying job in nice conditions" if they don't produce more value than they cost.

That's never been the problem. Money-losing companies go away soon enough.

The problem is when a good, solid, stable business is making plenty of money, but since other companies (perhaps less steadily and reliably) are making MORE MONEY, QUICKER at any given point in time, something is wrong with the otherwise good and profitable business, and drastic moves to turn greater profits MUST be done. Laying off good and profitable employees (i.e. eating your own seed corn and guaranteeing less profitable future quarters) is often Step #1 on the list.

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

managed to lock myself out with the keys inside one night

Door knobs should NOT have locks. Get ones without. You can't forget your keys and lock yourself out with a dead-bolt... Though you could of course lose your key while outside.

Canada's OpenText buys SMB backerupper Carbonite for $1.42bn

Carbonite certainly ran AMANDA into the ground via years of neglect, when they acquired the commercial arm of what was the most popular open source backup software project. I'd consider Carbonite a toxic asset, myself. Here's hoping they'll see the same treatment and cease to be a nuisance in the future... It's just a shame they made some money out of it all.

Gas-guzzling Americans continue to shun electric vehicles as sales fail to bother US car market

Re: "plug-in hybrids, full electric or fuel cell cars"

All of their energy ultimately comes from gasoline.

Not if you have yours towed to the top of a parking structure / mountain / etc.

Before you high-five yourselves for setting up that bug bounty, you've got the staff in place to actually deal with security, right?

In what has become a running joke of sorts in the infosec community, jobs labeled as "entry level" often ask for years of experience and arbitrary certifications. This not only leaves businesses short-staffed, but excludes a potentially massive pool of smart folks retraining or wishing to retrain from other industries

That's typical across all of IT, and other skilled industries as well (like doctors). NOBODY wants to hire the fresh, untried kid. Everybody wants some other company to train them and break them in. And it's not actually helpful, because every company wants somewhat different skills and has different needs and cultures.

Everyone wants to get the experienced pros, but at entry-level wages. So they have unfilled vacancies, lots of turnover, and pathological liars who know HR isn't actually going to put in the work to check their background. The companies who are actually willing to hire entry-level people and do a bit of training, have no shortage of staff, keep salary costs low, have plenty of skilled people, and those people tend to be loyal and stay around much longer.

Pro-Linux IP consortium Open Invention Network will 'pivot' to take on patent trolls

Re: Fundamental Question

You're restricting your response to the hardware, and avoiding the actual question...

Compare analog video signal encoding systems such as Japan's MUSE versus the digital (i.e. software based) MPEG-2. Or analog audio encoding methods like Dolby Prologic, NR, etc., versus MP3, AAC and AC-3.

Of course the stance on software patents in EU countries is a bit insane... If it's a software program on a PC, not patentable. But once you flash that software into firmware on a non-PC device (which may just be a PC with less end user control) THEN it's hardware and the soft