No, Apple peels you no matter where you are.
Posts by Dusty Wilson
17 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Sep 2007
iPhone 5 a no-show at Apple's 'Let's talk iPhone' event
Google brings out new programming language
"Go has been something used only by Google, as far as we can tell..."
I use Go and love it. And I don't work at Google. Lots of people use it. It's a language built for a certain type of developer. If you aren't one, you won't want it. If you are one, you will think it's the best thing out there. Thankfully we have a lot of language options.
One of my favorite benefits of Go is that it carries its own runtime. No need for any of those pesky frameworks to be pre-installed on the customer's machine. And it works for Lin/Win/Mac and has been tested to work on Android (but not as a real Android app (yet?)). It's cross-platform without the .NET / Mono / Java baggage. No need to update your OS (.NET Framework) or reboot (ahem, .NET) or keep installing new updates every damned week (Java). It's all self-contained. Plus it compiles amazingly fast and has goroutines and channels. Yes, this is quite the way I want to code.
I'm not sure why this new language "Dart" should exist. Why not just tack on some libraries to Go? Or is it so drastically different that it needs its own language? I'm skeptical about this one. I feel they did a great job with Go, so maybe they could do well on Dart, but why is a whole new language necessary? I wish to hear more.
Whitehats break out of Google Chrome sandbox
Google says Android 'club' makes phone makers 'do what we want'
Android is open. "Google Android" is not. There is a difference.
The Android OS itself is open (well, whatever version they've released anyway). It's the Google name and the specific proprietary Google apps that aren't open (Gmail, Market, etc). You can use Android without Google's apps and without Google's permission/approval/blessing. It is open. But if you think that Android must come with Google apps, then no it isn't. If you want a market, you can always install Amazon's market (no strings attached) or snag a download of Google's apps through a 3rd party (but don't expect Google to be okay with that if you're distributing their proprietary stuff).
If you think that Google isn't going to be tough with companies that get to stick Google's name on their package, you're fooling yourself.
I do think it's _absolute_ _crap_ that they haven't released code for Honeycomb, though. I love my Xoom, but I want the modders to get their hands on the code so I can have something a bit more beautiful.
Google sued for scanning emails of non-Gmail users
Email is sent to recipient. Recipient agreed to let Google scan it. It's the recipient's fault.
The email is sent to the recipient. The recipient agreed to let Google scan it. It's the recipient's fault. The sender has no complaint with Google. The complaint is with the recipient that allowed the email to be scanned by Google. If you want to sue someone, sue the recipient of the email. I don't think the sender has any right to sue the recipient and definitely no right to sue Google. The plaintiff just wants money from a rich company and nothing more.
Feds asked to probe Google's leaky search terms
Microsoft tells US retailers Linux is rubbish
Why I use Linux (and other complaints)
1) WINE stands for WINE IS NOT AN EMULATOR. It is not an emulator. It's basically a chunk of DLL files that provide the same DLL dependencies in Linux as Windows.
2) World of Warcraft works perfectly well in Linux via WINE. And it's not difficult. Install WINE (no, you don't have to configure it), pop in your World of Warcraft disc (or go to wherever you downloaded it if you don't use a game disc), and double-click the WoW installer. That requires ZERO usage of the command line or anything strange. Easy. If you can't figure that out, you shouldn't be installing things on any OS.
3) My step-mother, father, and fiancée all use Ubuntu. I didn't provide any training. They are very happy. My step-mother is especially happy since her Ubuntu install runs much faster than the XP install that was formerly on the box.
4) I have a ton of customers (I do tech support for a living) that need hand-holding for Windows. A few that I've converted to Ubuntu haven't called in ages for help. It just works. And they aren't techies. The few that I've moved to Mac OS X also haven't called in ages. It just works. But *all* of those people were previously on Windows and did need help all the time. Windows is *not* more reliable or easy. But I lose money (hourly pay!) every time a customer moves away from Windows.
5) I stopped using Windows myself ages ago. I think the last time I used it as the primary OS was in 2005 or so. Every game I want to play works without tweaking and messing about. Every application I need is either already in the package manager (simple click of "Applications > Add/Remove..." and navigating to the app I want) or works perfectly well via WINE. WINE lets me use all of the annoying Adobe products (Flash, Dreamweaver, etc) that I want without fail.
6) I get to use applications that follow proper standards without the headache. No need for the "Adobe Quick-Start Tooltray" (whatever it's called) nonsense. No "quick-start" anything. Everything runs perfectly fine and fast without this pre-loading/memory-wasting junk.
7) Everything that is required to properly use the computer is available and is easy in Linux. If you are trying to do something that requires a techie to figure out, you'll need a techie to do the same thing in Windows. And in Mac OS X. Just because *you* know how to set some special thing in Windows doesn't mean that everyone else does. And just because you don't know how to set it in Linux doesn't mean it's actually a difficult thing to do. It's almost definitely just as easy to set that special thing in Linux. And sometimes you won't even need to do that tweak.
8) When was the last time you had to defrag a drive in Linux? I'll let you spend time thinking about that. Never? Yeah, me either. How about anti-virus?
9) When was the last time you screwed up your Windows install because of some bad/buggy program you installed? With a proper package management system (no, you don't know it exists.. just go to the "Applications > Add/Remove..." thing), you can very cleanly purge anything you don't want on your system. It's just like you never had it installed in the first place.
10) When was the last time your mother screwed up her Windows install (... she doesn't know *how* it happened, of course)? I'll tell you when my step-mother last screwed up her Ubuntu install: it hasn't happened. And she doesn't know anything about computers that your mother doesn't know.
11) Hardware? I haven't had a problem. My desktop computer runs perfectly well with two monitors, NVIDIA video card, surround sound, wireless keyboard, USB mouse, bluetooth-sync'd phone, SD cards, bluetooth headset, gigabit ethernet, wireless card, Sprint wireless card (stopped using it a couple years ago because I didn't need it anymore), bluetooth dialup networking via phone, and everything else I've thrown at it. I have never, ever had a hardware problem in the last three years. On the other hand, when I installed Windows on a spare laptop so my girlfriend (now fiancée) could watch some Silverlight-required thing, I had to use a separate computer to download the wireless drivers, the video drivers, the sound drivers, Silverlight itself, a ton of Windows updates, and had to prove to Microsoft that I didn't steal the whole mess.
And here's some techie extras: (which are completely optional and not at all required for happy computing)
1) On my network, it takes about 5 minutes to install the newest Ubuntu release... with no preinstalled OS nor an install disc. Tell the computer to do a netboot (PXE, for those in the know. Just press F12 or whatever your motherboard likes you to do) and pick "Install: Ubuntu 64-bit Stable" or whatever architecture/version/distro you want. It installs from a local proxy (but fetches new files if there are newer versions). It installs all of the fancy little codecs and plugins and junk that you want. It makes sure you can play encrypted DVDs on your fresh install. No need to install extra stuff later. This single, initial install does it all at once. And as a bonus, a complete computer-phobe could use the installer. And no need to pay for some per-seat or per-computer license for this nice installer system.
2) Want to make your own packages? Go ahead. You don't need to ask the Linux gods or vendors for permission. You don't need a local install server. You even get the bonus of signed, secure packages from your custom trusted source. For my Debian-based and Ubuntu-based servers, I have fancy, custom packages that do everything I want to do. My Debian server usage is very advanced; my packages make it so easy to go from new server to working server doing real work in less than 20 minutes. And that even includes scheduled encrypted, off-site backups.
Two convicted for refusal to decrypt data
@Simon Langley
"The plausible deniability of Truecrypt's hidden partitions is exactly that. No matter how well trained the forensics expert is, it is not possible to prove that a Truecrypt volume contains a hidden partition unless you can decrypt the data. No-one, and I don't care who they are, how much they know or how well they are trained can prove this - it just isn't possible."
Mostly true. If they get a copy of your encrypted device/file at one point in time and then get it again in the future, they can compare the differences to see where the writes have been occurring. If there weren't any changes at all in the front, it's probably got a hidden partition within. No promises that it's always true.
If you know that your encrypted device/file has been observed (eg: cops came to your house and grabbed your computer, but returned it later), you should wipe, reinstall, create encryption anew, and do it over again. That way they have nothing to compare it to. (and don't trust that they didn't modify your binaries! but then again, I'm paranoid)
Boffins guess social security numbers via public data
SSN is not a reasonable "secret" code
@Ed Blackshaw: Well, if you were guessing only one of the digits then you'd be correct. Of course it might be in there more than once.
And to make it more difficult, I only lived in the "SSN State" for an extremely short length of time. I can count the number of people that know which state that is and when it was on one hand. Of course if I was really worried about someone guessing my first five digits, I would have omitted that info completely as they could now (if they knew more info) omit several states from the potential list.
SSN was not intended for this nonsense. If they issued such things these days maybe they'd have used UUID? (FYI: UUID is *not* secure for secrets either, just much longer and more complex.)
Just like Hud Dunlap, my SSN is from a state I wasn't born in.
Just like Hud Dunlap, my SSN is from a state I wasn't born in. At that time, it was normal (seemingly not anymore!) to wait a few years before worrying about SSN stuff for the kids.
The town I was born in is also the town I graduated high school in and it is also where I currently live. If that's all the info you had, you'd assume that I've lived here my whole life. It just happens that I've lived here for only a few very specific milestones in my life that would seem to throw someone off the track. All coincidence, though. Most of my life has been lived elsewhere, much of it out of state. And I'll almost definitely be married here as I'm engaged at this moment. I just hope I don't die here.
So, does anyone want to play the SSN guessing game with me? :-)
Russian rides Phantom to OS immortality
Apple patent points to tablet PC
E-voting outfit confesses vote-dropping software bug
How possibly hard can it be to write voting software?
How possibly hard can it be to write voting software?
1) Show list of choices.
2) User picks a choice, record it.
3) Next user.
... later ...
1) Atomically copy all votes from all voting machines in a safe manner (sign the votes file with that voting machine's signing key, encrypt the votes with a public key that can't be decrypted by anything but the official counting server, and verify the data ended up on that SD card). Don't delete anything.
2) On the official vote counting server, verify that all data is valid and was encrypted with the public key and signed by the machine's key. Don't delete anything.
3) * Do NOT delete ANYTHING *
4) Show the number of votes.
I win. Give me money and I'll write it myself in two days... err I mean six months (if you're paying by the hour).
And why the hell isn't this software's source open for everyone to see? How can we trust it? Oh we can't.. that's why this is even an issue. Open the damned source so we can see where else you're fucking us over.
Date bug kills VMware systems
OpenVZ + Linux
For anyone that doesn't want to use VMware but wants virtualization (or consolidation more accurately), they should take a look at OpenVZ. It's free and works very well. It only runs Linux, so don't plan on using Windows with it. That's actually a feature: you save a ton of money on Windows licenses.
VMware is for the birds.
Is Microsoft's Silverlight evil?
Doesn't work in Linux, I don't want it.
Most importantly: If it doesn't work in Linux, I don't want it. I can't use it. I have no interest. I don't use Windows or Mac and refuse to do so.
Sadly, because the Olympics website requires it, I can't use the Olympics website. If it were to use Flash, like the rest of the world, I could use it just fine.
This isn't me saying that I like Flash. (I hate it and have it disabled for most websites via NoScript, etc.) That's me saying the same thing many Windows lovers say to Linux users: "Why did you choose to use Linux when you knew it wouldn't do XYZ." Why did they choose to use a plugin that is installed hardly anywhere and doesn't work for everyone when they could have just as easily used Flash, which is on pretty much everything, has been tested on everything, and is widely installed already.
Silverlight does not make streaming video better. It does not do anything for the Olympics (or probably anyone else) that Flash couldn't already do.
Google gloats over ISO's OOXML rejection
RE "one document format (ODF)"
I do believe that the name was chosen specifically to be confused with ODF, a tactic Microsoft is well known for.
Though, according to Wikipedia [1] and other sources it's "Office Open XML" not "Open Office XML".
I agree with everything you said in your comment.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML