Posts by Paul Crawford

I'm still on spinning rust, FFS!

Me too with my ~3 month old laptop. Unfortunately for my work I need ~500GB of data sets on it and just can't afford/justify the resulting SSD price tag.

Re: OOOOohh

Or the boss come to an "arrangement" with the BOFH in terms of dealing with problems he has versus supplies of new equipment and the odd jolly to conference events in high-alcohol areas?

Re: One afternoon in Hawai...

Hi bot,

Yes its a new ultra-secret project codenamed FUCKITOL to improve the NSA's compliance with the US legal system and constitution.

Yours, Edward.

p.s. Please delete all references to this as you are not written in Ada so are not approved for that level of classification.

Re: Legal precedent - and business model

But the point is still valid - if they collected evidence of a crime and it is accessible to Amazon, they should hand it over. The iPhone case was very different, it was not accessible to Apple and they were being asked to assist in breaking the device's security which has much wider implications as it changes what other's get.

Sure, this might become a snooper's gold mine, but following the court case people should know the truth. If Amazon are recording all of this and storing it and that creeps you out - don't get one. Sadly this is likely the reason for the fight - money, not rights.

Re: I bought your tshirt.

Where did "Cash'n'Carrion" go?

Used to have some nice mugs, radioisotope powered glow-in-the-dark keyring, etc.

Re: Whisky

Nah, will be from Laphroaig. It would explain the TCP+ash tray taste...

You are right that HP probably were the cause of the primary failure.

However, the disastrous consequences of such an array failure lies squarely with the management and IT teams for not having a working DR system in place (that includes making sure *all* data is backed up, and that the backups are tested regularly). Even if HP didn't fsck-up, failures can and *do* happen all by themselves.

But the blame shone on the IT team is worrying, but maybe to be expected from this sort of commissioned report. I'm sure all of us have made mistakes, and all of us have jerry-rigged systems to get by, but not having proper DR in place for an organisation-wide storage system is a likely a management failure in terms of not funding and/or not asking the right questions (or being prepared to hear the true answers).

Re: Homebrew

Improve the flavour of what, the mouse or the cider?

Re: your driver accepted in the kernel as a start up company?

Have you tried the same for Windows?

If you are a start-up company how many Linux users will actually have your hardware and need a kernel driver module?

Most specialist hardware companies I know of ship a compilable module for any drivers - that can be part object code if you have IPR to protect, and then end users compile on demand. Yes, its a pain in some cases but you can automate that.

"to appease the non-windows lot"

Let us not forget that the "Widnows lot" had to put up with some pretty shitty stuff as well, restrictions on what version of Windows/java/flash versions etc.

But your underlying point is valid - fix the $DIETY damn management tools and make the work smoothly on multiple platforms.

Re: LINX is lying

There are interesting aspects to LINX's reply:

"nothing in the proposals bans directors from asking members anything"

It says nothing about then answering such questions.

"we recommend creating a special new ability for elected directors to veto a decision by a majority of the Board"

Surely the majority of the board would act legally? What situation do the foresee that would need such an action at all? Since when did any other company have such a special rule for the board of directors that applies rules beyond the normal statuary duty that comes with being on a board of directors?

Sorry LINX, but those answers do nothing to make me think this has anything other than the Snooper's Charter behind it.

True, but in this case it looks like Oracle's propitiatory format is the one biting the dust.

If ever there was a reason to move to a tape that more than one supplier provides, this is it. Plus the nice feeling of not having your gonads in Larry's money-extracting vise.

Re: What kind of code

Unless, of course, Amazon isn't in your jurisdiction, either.

If they trade in the UK they are in our jurisdiction.

Re: @ werdsmith

"Every fecking time someone comes up with these fictional anecdotes"

Who said anything about getting an IT job? Did you actually read the comments?

Many folk, myself included, have found that most users can adapt, look at how the majority of the formally-windows-only users have now got smartphones and no issues with using them. That is the point, if you set up a Linux PC for someone like a grandparent and spend just 5 minutes to show them the key stuff (e.g. web browser, email client) that is enough in most cases. You get almost no examples of them breaking it because 99.9+% of malware won't run on such a desktop and they don't get put off by endless, pointless, indecipherable warnings from AV, etc.

They won't set up a Linux PC, and if they buy a Windows PC it won't come setup in any sane way (from their perspective) either so in a short time will cause you grief (if you care enough to help them that is).

Don't you know? Maybe you could spy on yourself for a while to work out if you are, or are not, actually a spy?

Re: Cashless society

This =>

I would up-vote you many times if I could!

@Linux is secure!

Yes, right up the the point when you have internet-facing ports open with default root passwords...

Re: The Cloud..

Of course if the cloud companies had implemented proper user-side encryption for data storage this warrant would be moot as the companies would never have the keys. However, that would also restrict their ability to whore you to advertisers...

Re: A TPM os good on Chrome, and bad in Windows?

Is a very good point.

The real answer, of course, is secure/TPM boot is good when you have the ultimate control over its use, and not what the OEM has decided you should get. However, I don't know what this Samsung laptop is like to actually answer that. My old Acer Chromebook allowed you to disable it so I could boot Ubuntu, etc, if I wanted.

Re: Windows ME was worse

Tricky, we have:

1) ME was a steaming pile of unreliable crap without any form of security or application isolation that mattered.

2) Win10 whores you to advertisers and any three-letter agency who asks.

Same here, have visited the USA a few times and almost without exception the people I met and dealt with were nice and civilised.

However, that was some years ago and the public image and view being projected by the nation of America is such that I would not choose to go there. Of course, not everyone has a choice as business might take you there, but if you want an English-speaking holiday then you can got to Canada (or UK or event Holland!) and be free of Trumph and the gun-totting idiots that tend to support him.

OK, the UK also has right-wing xenophobic idiots as well, but at least they are not able to get the guns so easily...

Re: cheap bent bananas?

I thought that was our glorious leaders already?

Re: Naive question

It is not naive, in fact it is a very fundamental aspect the most radio courses gloss over!

Basically you have two antenna aspects: (1) "directivity gain" which is a measure of how much a beam is focused (there is no amplification), and (2) "effective aperture" which is a measure of the antenna's ability to intercept the EM flux.

As frequencies go up (generally speaking here, YMMV, etc) you get more easy focusing from a given reflector, etc, so directivity gain increases, but your effective aperture remains the same. To make calculations easier a radio link's "path loss" has a wavelength term, it is more than just inverse-square law spreading with distance, so that at constant flux and constant aperture you get the same signal even though the directivity gain increases with frequency.

So for two antenna pointing at each other, increasing the frequency would lead to a stronger signal due to the higher directivity gain, but at the expense of needing more accurate pointing. Conversely, if you keep the RF flux constant (so you get the same coverage area, same pointing error accuracy demands, etc) then increasing frequency has the opposite effect in that smaller reflectors, etc, are used to keep the directivity down, and so less aperture able to intercept the flux.

Re: Gravity well.

It's astounding, Time is fleeting, Madness takes its toll...

I believe that dried frog pills are also available, and very efficacious in such cases.

Re: Never name a project "Unity"

More so if it is "cold"

Re: @RAMChYLD

"Well, there are still several drawbacks on Linux"

There are several (at least) drawbacks on Windows. The point is you pay your money (or not) and take your choice. If playing games in more important than privacy and security that is your choice to make. You are not me, your goals and priorities are not mine, so it is up to you to evaluate what matters most to you and to act accordingly.