Posts by h4rm0ny

Re: Shame it's just the website

"Also vastly, vastly out-numbered by both counter-protesters (10-to-1!) and old Bill. And yet several of them still decided to try beating someone up in the street: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-20279687

I've just read your link and nowhere does it say that several (or any) EDL members beat someone up on the street (or anywhere else). All it says is that two people were arrested on "suspected public disorder offences" which is par for the course - the police often arrest some people at protests and then later let them go without charge. Another person it says, was arrested on "suspicion of assault". Nowhere does it say whether the alleged perpetrators were members of the EDL or members of the counter-protest that outnumbered them ten to one and assembled with the stated objective of stopping them getting to the City Hall. It could easily be the other way around to how you have assumed. There have been several instances where anti-EDL protestors have attacked EDL members. In one instance, attacking their bus.

Re: EDL != Far Right

"The only people who claim that people beleive that "criticism of Islam is rascist" are those trying to defend a rascist postion themselves"

If I parsed the above correctly, then I disagree. It is quite possible to be critical of Islam without being racist. I don't think that really needs supporting here, but for example, I greatly dislike Islam's position on homosexuals, I dislike its practice of animals having to be concious and feeling when killed and that they must die through bleeding to death. Unless you're going to be incredibly strict on your interpretation and exclude vast bodies of Islamic tradition, then I also greatly dislike its prescriptions on the role of women. Yet I have actually dated people of races that are traditionally muslim though they themselves are non-practicing to the point of heresy, and got a long mostly fine. And I've spent time in muslim countries without feeling antipathy or contempt for the locals. Criticism of Islam is not by itself racist.

But it's certainly the case that when you criticize Islam, you will find people leaping to accuse of racism, bigotry, etc. It's unfortunate, but it does happen. I cannot accept that criticism of Islam is racist, else you rule out ever criticising Islam (or religion in general if you apply the principle fairly).

Re: Not Helpful

Actually, furthermore, there is a physical risk to both people and property involved here. Members of the EDL have been attacked for their membership or attendence at events. Circulating a list around like this (and assuming it was actually genuine - good luck proving you're not supposed to be on it), is circulating a list of targets for some.

Re: Not Helpful

"I'm sure EDL members will have no problem with it anyway, as I'm sure they'll be proud of their membership"

Then you would be wrong. How would you like it if your place of work or prospective employer could look up your political history and use that as a basis for hiring you or not? Though I expect a double-standard along the lines of you would make an exception for groups that you personally don't approve of.

Re: Shame it's just the website

"There are videos on Youtube of various EDL supporters on marches being interviewed and they really don't know why they're marching."

Having had a fair bit of experience with the media when I was protesting against the Iraq war and in a few other cases (such as when I worked in the NHS), I can say confidently that most papers and the BBC, when interviewing a hundred people able to put a reasonable point across and a couple of people who prefer to rant incoherently, will normally choose to show the latter. Remember that massive image of a man in a balaclava kicking in the window of a McDonalds that was splashed across most newspapers some years ago? Over a million people marching in overwhelmingly peaceful protest, and that was the image that was on every front page.

The media shows what the media wants to show. Most people who have ever been interviewed by the mainstream media can tell you a story about that. Same goes for your YouTube videos. What is a critic going to post, an EDL member clearly putting a point across about how slaughtering animals without stunning because of a religious edict against it is wrong to them, or the bloke who went along because his mates were on it?

Re: Magic!

"Now they've got that out of the way, maybe they can get round to fixing some of the more pressing issues in the Android version"

And now you see why when Skype appeared and began to kill off open VoIP networks just as they were starting to emerge, many of us raged against it. People shouldn't have adopted it, but they did. Now we're all going to have to sit around waiting for the EU to mandate that the Skype network be broken open before someone can write an Open Source client.

"For you to think your use case of Skype is the general case is equally ignorant."

Logically not so. Putting up their counter-example of their needs differing doesn't show that your needs are less valid, but it does undermine your assumption that it is fine for all users. Which I believe was their intent.

"I don't see people complaining that their phone is 'always on' for phone calls and text messages. Being always on for Skype is fine, ON A PHONE."

I do. When a client txts me at midnight to ask a question that could have waited till morning, it's very annoying. The problem is that there's no group control in Skype (unless it's been added to a later version than I'm running on my Desktop). That means I need to have different Skype accounts for work and non-work. Something that isn't really possible as I can only run one instance of Skype on my phone / computer and the times I will need them will overlap.

The reason you don't see people complaing that their phone is always on as often (though it does happen), is because when it's just a phone number, people don't normally take your availability for granted. When you have something that says: "Available", they assume that means you're just sitting there hoping they'll come and ask you questions.

MS should have focused on Lync as that is far superior to Skype for business use (and personal, I guess). I just hope they never take that away in favour of Skype.

Re: Free speech?

"Free speech, I'd imagine there would be a fair few people who know or knew people being honoured by the poppy who would love to express there free speech in burning this chap alive"

And were they alive, and did they try to do so, I hope you would join me in condemning such people as psychopaths.

Re: Free speech?

"What;s your view about peeing on a cenotaph - guess that's acceptable?"

My view on it is that it is different to making a political statement on a website. And if it's a political gesture, then it should be punished only to the degree that urinating in some other public place is punishable, not extra punisment heaped upon it because it causes offense to a segment of society.

Causing offense can be punishable when it's harrassment. If you send offensive messages to the widow of a soldier, that's punishable. Making broad political statements, even if some don't like it, is not harrassment.

This whole veneration of the dead, reminds me of who upset people were by Chaser's War on Everything where they made a very well put point (to music), but upset quite a few people. Sometimes it is okay to speak ill of the dead. I fully expect people to do it about me!

Re: @Jemma

"Whilst I might agree with you about volunteer soldiers, it's worth remembering that a great majority of soldiers in WW1 and WW2 were conscripts, who had very little choice"

Modded you up, but logically, doesn't that make the enemy of those who died their own government?

Burning a poppy could be regarded as a political statement of all sorts of things. Quite probably, the gesture is meant that the burner sees the poppies as a legitimizing of war and burning it a rejection of that. If that's their position, it's perfectly acceptable as a political statement (though obviously not acceptable to some). Poppies are for rememberance of those that died. Maybe the burner feels that invading far away countries such as Iraq or Afghanistan and killing tens of thousands there is something that shouldn't be put forward as a symbol of heroism. Again, a supportable point of view.

Maybe they were just trolling and wanted to cause offense? Who knows. But this should not be anything they get arrested for.

Re: No sympathy

I don't think they're particularly crying for sympathy. From one of the posters in the thread linked in the article:

"All this aside, I have to emphasize that I think the Surface, with the Windows 8 live tile interface, is a technological generation ahead of iOS and Android. I'm extremely satisfied with the device and would never think of exchanging it for any other tablet. Let's hope we don't get quoted out of context again by some in the media that lift our posts."

Something that was missed from the screaming headlnie in the Register. Every day, they get a little more like the Daily Mail or the Sun in their pursuit of clicks.

Re: It just keeps getting better,

"Lets see, I'm a disabled, lesbian, atheist living in America and you ask me why the Tea Party's sorrow and Mitt Romey's failure fills me with soft joy? Really?"

Not really, no. I was asking why you expressed pleasure at seeing people suffer from defective products. "Schadenfreude" was the word you used. I.e. pleasure in other's misfortunes. You threw in the jab at Republicans yourself and I'm neither interested in that aspect nor sure how you expect me to know that you are disabled, lesbian or atheist.

"As for Microsoft, I spent 20 years fixing their junk. I earned my right to enjoy their sorrow, they certainly profited from mine"

Presumably what you actually earned was money and if you spent twenty years doing it, I can only assume you must have got some satisfaction from it (if only the joy of complaining) else you would have done something else - twenty years is plenty of time for you to have re-skilled and, for example, come over and joined us on the UNIX side of the fence.

That aside, your bitterness is not a good reason for present enjoyment at some other people's problems. It doesn't exactly lead to a better world. Presumably you think that MS replacing a few keyboard covers is a step toward their destruction. They had to do a lot more replacements of Xboxes some time ago, and the Xbox is very popular today, is it not?

Re: It just keeps getting better,

"I'm already having schadenfreude overload watching the Fox Newsies cry about the election, now I get to watch the Surface pull itself apart?"

Why do you enjoy seeing other people have problems?

Re: On fire?

"I would buy a Nexus 7 that was currently on fire before any sort of Surface"

Well if you actually meant that, I would happily buy a series of Nexus 7's, set fire to them and exchange them on a one to one basis for SurfaceRTs with you and by your value system you would be coming out ahead. But I suspect you don't actually mean that. If you do, just let me know... ;)

Re: Any commenters here have their CC hacked?

"Additionally, I suspect part of the plea deal is the US gubmint gets his services on an on-call basis in perpetuity."

Trust me, the US government does not need the services of middling-level script kiddies. His value is limited solely to his ability to turn in other criminals. An ability that one supposes is quite limited now he is publically compromised and any information he does possess already obtained.

"Were any laws actually broken?"

That's for the court to decide but as she's not actually one of Morgan Stanley's customers, I'd say that severely diminishes her ability to sue them. They give advice to their clients and if a third party gets hold of that advice and acts on it, I'm not sure she has a legal basis to sue.

I started off being semi-sympathetic when reading this story (even though I and many others were all pointing out that Facebook was a disaster waiting to happen and everyone should have been clearly warned by it's insane P/E ratio). But that sympathy took a second substantial hit when I saw that the figure sued for includes $1million for suffering. No doubt it was really horrible thinking she'd lost all that money, but (a), it's a pretty ill-defined thing to sue for and (b), if you invest $1,000,000 dollars and a shareprice drop wipes out $100,000 (the compensatory damages figure), you still have $900,000 which is a figure many of us would like to have.

Re: Surface is not the same as Windows 8

"Win8RT is to Win8 what iOS is to OSX, except that you can run Win8RT apps under Win8."

WinRT is a lot more fully-featured than iOS from what I've seen. For one easy example, can you run a multiple windowed Office suite on iOS?

"Its stripped-down version of Office uses the desktop, nothing else is allowed to. Presumably a tacit admission that TIFKAM simply isn't suitable for non-trivial applications"

IE can still run on the Desktop, as does file manager, control panel, the vastly improved Task Manager... As to "non-trivial applications", is a browser non-trivial? An email client? Probably there will be a MUI version of Office one day, but re-coding the whole thing to run that way must be an epic task.

Re: Another article from the Windows "Bubble"

Didn't we just do this dance in the last article's comments section with you trying to find all sorts of reasons why Powershell was inferior and Windows was rubbish? Having cut my teeth on HP UNIX 11 over a decade ago and been working on Unix or Linux platforms of one kind or another pretty much ever since, I find it rather patronising to be told that if I look at UNIX I "might even understand why those advanced features of Power Shell are essentially useless." Seeing as on Monday you didn't even understand some of the features of Power Shell and were commenting that it was rubbish even then, you seem to have merely made up your mind and now adopted the position that maybe it can do some new things, but they're rubbish so you're still right.

I've used Bash and I've used Bourne before it and have been doing so for a long time. Power Shell has taken that and built on it with some nice new ideas as well. Maybe a couple of years down the line Linux will take some of the features Windows has brought in and incorporate them, just as MS have built on the design ideas of Bash. It's called progress. And your patronizing comment on how if we read more about Unix we'd value that progress less, is pretty much insulting to the principles that made UNIX what it is.

Re: duh

"if they weren't backed into a corner, would they have completely sidelined the interface they've been working on since, well since they gave it the name Windows?"

You have an unusual definition of the word "completely" seeing as the Desktop is still there and all the programs that were working on Windows 7 are still usable in Win 8 in the same way on any desktop machine.

Re: So can anyone suggest a realistic alternative....

"C++ to parse "semi-structured" data? You must be a masochist. "

He's willing to wade into the pigsty and argue with all of us zealots, fanboys and general nutters. I'm going with masochist.

(Nice article, btw, even if I disagreed with several parts).

Re: duh, 92% of desktop O/S

I note the use of the word "if" in your last sentence there. Whilst it's not about absolute numbers as you point out, nor is it entirely about the delta. The fact that Microsoft products are ubiquitous means that there is a steady turn over of opportunities regardless of whether it rises or falls. For developers in the UK and USA, by far the largest factor in availability of opportunities is the coming online of India and other nations. Something that both increases the size of the market, but also impacts on local developers due to pay differentials between countries.

"I get the impression (partially from the lack of discounting) that Apple offer nearly zero margins and people only stock them to try to sell some accessories/warranty with them. I don't think MS will get away with that trick!"

Good. Nor should Apple. But at least neither is actually subsidized. What I'd really like to see is the same tear-down analysis applied to things like the new Kindle or that Chromebook, so we can see exactly how much money Google and Amazon need to get back from people in order to break even on these things.

I actually have a Surface. Been using it for over a week now. Honestly, the screen is fine. Everything is very clear and it's extremely easy to read text on it. Haven't used it for video much yet, but it's good so far.

Re: New proof-of-concept bootkit targets UEFI

"Now, does it need "root" or hardware access to be installed? If yes, why should an attacker bother with that. If he has root access he already won."

Because the attacker wants the malware to persist on the system and therefore it must be installed somewhere that it can be run and run again. The attacker does not want to trick the user into granting privileges (for a trojan) or have the visitor visit an exploit containing site every time that they want to subvert the purpose of the PC. You may only get one shot at the PC so you use that access to install your malware.

"The "invisibility", which is pointless as it's common sense to boot virus scanners from a separate removable disk, doesn't bring much advantage to the attacker."

It's not common at all to launch virus scanners from a separate removable disk, it's so massively inconvenient to most users that it also wouldn't be done and unless you're actually booting from the separate removable disk, then you only have the boot processes word that it is launching the anti-virus software on the other disk correctly. And if you are booting from the removable disk then who is to say that this wont get infected? All you have done is put your boot partition somewhere less convenient and gained nothing.

Re: That's not why hackers dislike Windows 8

"So how much code does it take to read an object of a pipe in power shell? How much code does it take in Pascal, or Fortran, or Cobol? Then think how much software supports the power shell?"

"object of a pipe"? The objects are what is passed. I honestly don't know what you're trying to say. Are you trying to say that Bash is better because there is less source code than in powershell or that the binaries are smaller? Quite possibly as powershell does some things that Bash cannot. But it's a strange criteria to assess things on else you might as well say that Bash is inferior to the Bourne shell because it's larger, even though it's a lot more capable. And really, why are you trying to find reasons why Bash is better than Powershell in the first place? You should look at two things and work out which is most suited to a purpose, not decide and then look at them to find ways to make them fit your conclusion. Or are you trying to say that you could emulate the object passing in Bash. I don't believe you can - not in any short, elegant or flexible way.

"The beauty of the Unix shell is that it is programming language agnostic. I can read the data with scanf in C or readln in Pascal without any extra work. It simply works with the standard input facility in your programming language. Nothing needs to be ported"

Bash has its own scripting language. That's all that you can use to write a "Bash script". When you call an executable from a Bash script or from the CLI, you're running an executable. That much is the same as in Power Shell. It's no different in principle if I write a script in Bash that calls Python or some other program, than it is if I write a script in Power Shell that calls Python or some other program. You're not under the impression that you wouldn't be able to pass a string with Power Shell, are you? What exactly is it you think can't be done or requires "porting" for Power Shell. And why is that a major issue for most people? It makes as much sense as me saying Bash is inferior to Power Shell because Bash doesn't have native support for .NET. Different environments, different user bases and in both cases, little to do with the relative merits of the shells themselves.

Seriously, where is this obsession with OS vs. OS and trying to prove Bash is better than Power Shell? A question was asked "name one thing that Power Shell can do that Bash can't". Well there are a number of things so I picked a couple of the more interesting. Now you just keep posting more and more bizarre stuff in an attempt to show Power Shell is inferior.

Re: Secure Boot

"This is my point: Secure Boot is a solution looking for a problem"

There are whole families of malware that work by infecting the boot process and which Secure Boot protects against.

"Surely if the OS is secure, it will be impossible for something to write to the boot sector?"

If you make it impossible to write to the boot sector, how do you ever install or upgrade your OS? I note that you are replying to Richto's comment about Win8 RTM being immune to the exploit "CVE-2012-0159". I'm not sure how you got from that to never being able to write to the boot sector from within the OS.

Re: That's not why hackers dislike Windows 8

"My beef with PowerShell, regardless of how actually good the language is, is that it is often shoved in my face as the Microsoft answer to the Bourne shell common on Unix variants."

How is it "shoved in your face"? It's not being installed on any Unix or Linux systems so far as I know so it's only superceding cmd.exe and batch files on Windows. If you're one of the very small fraction that install cygwin, well, Powershell doesn't magically appear in place of whatever other tools you've installed. You make it sound as if MS are installing it in place of Bash. (And you keep referring to Bourne shells. - Bourne was replaced with Bash a long time since). If by "shoved in your face" you mean that Windows users are saying there is now something equivalent on Windows, well I'm sorry to inform you, but they are right.

"The two are nothing alike. Bourne shell is popular for one reason, it is everywhere. Just about every Unix and Unix-clone you can think of, will come with some variant of the Bourne shell."

No. Bash is popular because it's a good tool. And again, what has popularity to do with comparing the features of Power Shell and Bash? You seem to just want to indulge in OS vs. OS wars. Which is just damaging and unprofitable.

"By all means, include a "better" script shell. But for heaven's sake include something that is backward compatible with what everyone else uses!"

If someone can manage Bash, they can manage Power Shell. There's very little to be gained by trying to make a shell environment on Windows 7 and 8 backwards compatible with a shell commonly used on a very different platform. It wouldn't even be possible without limiting Power Shell from some of its nicest features (e.g. the passing of fully typed objects through a pipe).

Re: Disappointed?

"Relationship between MS and manufacturers poisons the Forum."

Well at this point, you're just insisting on your case whatever the evidence. Even if MS wasn't on the forum with a dozen major-league hardware players, you'd insist that a commercial relationship made MS the shadowy controller behind it all. Presumably you also consider HTML poisoned because MS are on the W3C, renounce Javascript. I bet you even think Linux is poisoned since Microsoft have contributed to the kernel - I mean it doesn't matter how small MS's role in something is, if they're outnumbered and out-market capped by all those hardware manufacturers, they're on the forum so it's poisoned.

Honestly - someone says MS produce UEFI. I point out that it's actually an open project of numerous hardware manufacturers, but no - MS have poisoned them all.

"When you say this, it sounds positive to you?"

Yes it does. I want to see Red Hat and other distributions maintain security parity with Windows. Competition is good. If MS are willing to sell their signing services to Red Hat for cheaper than it would cost Red Hat to manage all the infrastructure and process themself, that is a good thing.

Re: Disappointed?

"While UEFI is not a fatal block to installing Linux on a PC, computer manufacturers should have told Microsoft in no uncertain terms that while the basic technology to prevent boot sector viruses and the like is a good thing, no version of it would go into production that was not 100% operating-system-neutral, that didn't put Windows and any other operating system offered for x86 computers on an absolutely equal footing."

There are a number of fundamental misconceptions in the above. Firstly, UEFI is not the same thing as Secure Boot, any more than Car is the same thing as Steering Wheel. UEFI is a replacement for BIOS. Secure Boot is one of many features that the UEFI spec supports. UEFI is not a block to Linux. It actually provides features that Linux already takes advantage of, such as GUID Partition Table. This fundamental misunderstanding in your post makes me strongly want to tell you that you need to go back and read more about this stuff before you comment.

Another big misconception in the above is that Microsoft is responsible for UEFI. The UEFI Forum is made up of all the major hardware manufacturers and some OS representatives such as MS. UEFI comes from Lenovo, Samsung, Apple, HP, Toshiba, AMD, Intel and all these hardware manufacturers. Microsoft are merely one of the first to make use of Secure Boot. No Linux distribution is really taking advantage of it but they should. (Red Hat and Ubuntu are using it for their boot loader, but not more than that). Secure Boot is useful and contrary to your post, it is OS neutral. Any OS producer could go to any hardware manufacturer and get their software signed. Red Hat has gone to Microsoft to get signed because Microsoft will do it cheaper for them. Also, MS have required Secure Boot to be disableable by the user on x86 as a condition for Win8 certification. You may not like this, but MS's requirement protects Linux against being closed off.

"As that did not happen, government intervention will now be required."

Your initial argument is based on misunderstandings, so the above conclusion is not shown.

"But Linux doesn't make profits with which to pay for an antitrust lawsuit."

An antitrust suit would fail because it would be groundless. Secondly, Red Hat has an annual revenue of $1.1bn, I have no idea how much SuSE's owners make. Linux is profitable.

"bare-metal hypervisors, like ESXi from VMware, I presume, aren't locked out (or turning off UEFI is no issue for them because hypervisors don't get directly attacked)."

Both parts of the above show a serious lack of understanding of how either Secure Boot or hypervisors or both, work. Seriously, and politely, you don't have the knowledge to be commenting on this and should do some more reading on how it all works.

Re: debugger?

"These extended Javascripts are not going to fly until they offer debugger support in their languages and on most major browsers. The mental overhead of writing in one language and debugging in another is too high."

This exists for Chrome. I'm presuming for Firefox also. It uses a technique called "Source Mapping" which comes from Mozilla (which is why I presume it exists for Mozilla also). Here is the implementation for Chome:

TypeScript Source Mapping

It's very clever and it lets you debug the TypeScript source code from the running Javacsript. It's one of those things that makes me smile just to see such an elegant solution. The designers of TypeScript built the mapping into it for just this purpose, though as far as I'm aware, only Chrome and Firefox have it implemented so far. (Which should also help drive home to some of the more zealous anti-MS posters here that TypeScript is actually an open standard despite their paranoia).