* Posts by Oninoshiko

1937 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2008

Wireless industry bows to 'bill shock' rules

Oninoshiko

normally, I wouldn't disagree

but users who don't want to deal with it, should have the option of saying "I don't want data at all" or "I don't want sms at all." Then if someone inadvertently opens something that would incur these fees, it would just refuse the traffic.

US military debated hacking Libyan air defenses

Oninoshiko
WTF?

WTF

They where concerned about if they had to notify congress, but weren't concerned with the idea that launching missles from drones wasn't a "hostile" act because it was from drones?

I have not the words...

Verizon users must 'opt in' for privacy

Oninoshiko
Devil

WHAT?!?

Fuck privacy, if i read this right, they are altering the content of my website.

When I send packets, I expect them to arrive, unaltered. when I receive packets, I expect them to be the packets which where sent, unaltered. This is a MITTM attack, and they need sued over this.

SEND IN THE LAWYERS!

Three questions that could put out Amazon's Fire

Oninoshiko
WTF?

Question

and admittedly I haven't been following this product, but why would I even want to browse on the cloud? Given that it's an awfully bizarre thing to want to do, why would their spying matter?

It sound to me like the someone has too much free time. Maybe they should do something about some of their REAL problems...

Drone nerve centre malware was Mafia Wars' infostealer

Oninoshiko

why would they play games?

While I didn't read that as they where playing mafia wars, I read it as "this is the same type of malware one uses to steal mafia wars (pronounced "facebook") passwords (ie a keylogger).

But, I wouldn't be surprised to find our troops playing games in there off time, they do it for the same reason large chunks of elReg readers play them (which I leave determining the purpose of as an exorcize to the reader)

Google takes buzz saw to Buzz, other appendages

Oninoshiko

hmm...

Anyone else thinking this might be the beginning of the end of Google?

Google always took from the Edison school of development. Spray everywhere and hope something sticks. Historically they have payed an awful lot for R&D on random things, but it keeps people interested in what they are up to.

I'm not saying they are going to be irreverent tomorrow, but a decade or two? This kinda shift in corporate culture is going to be hard to make, it could be their undoing.

Sixth of Britain's cellphones have traces of poo on them

Oninoshiko
Unhappy

on the flip side, those auto-dodgy-matic sinks don't exactly make a proper wash easy, either.

(grr.. I hate those things, nothing ruins your self-esteem for the day like being declared unworthy by a machine)

Wannabe Obama replacement tried to hire Ballmer

Oninoshiko
Coat

Actually...

Yes, as a matter of fact I *HAVE* used Lotus Notes, use it every day at work.

Current versions are no worse then Outlook.

Mines the one with the pamphlet "Better living through lower standards" in it.

Astronomy crowd spots PLANET KILLER!

Oninoshiko
Boffin

miles as a unit of measure

nothing is any more wrong with miles then furlongs.

(you might do well to note, this is UK site, so "miles" should probably be considered about as archaic.)

AmEx 'debug mode left site wide open', says hacker

Oninoshiko

AmEx

does charge the retailer more then most of the other card issuers for transaction, and this is why many places do not except them. This, though, is how they can afford to offer the vary nice concierge services they do.

My company maintains an AmEx account, and except for the places that don't accept it, it's vary nice, but we also have Visa for just that reason. Their web site sometimes has issues, but I seem to always be able to get a vary nice customer support rep on the phone quickly to make them go away.

This Dianamania is a slur on Jobs

Oninoshiko

Wow, just wow. I may not exactly have been Jobs biggest fan, but comments like this reflect on the author.

RMS' ability to be a nutter and an ass never cease to amaze me.

Intellectual Ventures wages patent war on Motorola

Oninoshiko

Lets comprimise

Idiot Vultures

Gay.xxx sells for $500,000

Oninoshiko

It's legal.

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked

Oninoshiko
Stop

This is a collection of facts, and I claim no copyright on it

These guys actually have less of a leg to stand on then Fred Worth did while suing Parker Brothers over the game Trivial Pursuit. Fred alleged that Selchow & Righter Company copied many of it's facts from his books "The Trivia Encyclopedia," "Super Trivia," and "Super Trivia II." Selchow & Righter Company countered that these where just collections of facts, and therefor the facts contained therein are copyrightable. To quote the opinion of the court:

"Factual works receive distinct treatment from fictional works under copyright law. Landsberg, 736 F.2d at 488. Indeed, facts, like ideas, are never protected by copyright law. Cooling Sys., 777 F.2d at 491; see also 17 U.S.C. Sec. 102(b) (1982) (expressly excluding discoveries from the scope of copyright protection). Because authors who wish to express ideas in factual works are usually confined to a "narrow range of expression ..., similarity of expression may have to amount to verbatim reproduction or very close paraphrasing before a factual work will be deemed infringed." Landsberg, 736 F.2d at 488. Fictional works, in contrast, which may be expressed with "infinite variations," enjoy a broader protection; a verbatim copy or close paraphrase is not a necessary element to establish infringement. Id. Worth cannot prevail in his claim without showing that the Trivial Pursuit game cards derived from his expression "something more than what 'must unavoidably be produced by anyone who wishes to use and restate' the facts that form the greater part of the work." Cooling Sys., 777 F.2d at 492 (quoting Landsberg, 736 F.2d at 489).

It is clear, then, that the use of the factual content in Worth's books does not constitute infringement. "The discovery of a fact, regardless of the quantum of labor and expense, is simply not the work of an author." 1 M. Nimmer, supra, Sec. 2.11[E], at 2-169. The verbatim repetition of certain words in order to use the nonprotectible facts is also noninfringing; the game cards' repetition of words used by Worth to describe places, persons, and events constitutes "mere indispensable expression" of particular facts or ideas. See Frybarger, 812 F.2d at 530 (emphasis in original). If we were to hold otherwise, we would, in effect, extend copyright protection to the facts contained in Worth's books. See Landsberg, 736 F.2d at 489 (noting that because of the unavoidable expression required to restate the nonprotectible ideas in plaintiff's work, a finding of infringing similarity of expression would effectively grant a copyright in the work's nonprotectible ideas)."

furthermore, SCotUS ruled in Fiest v. Rural:

"While Rural has a valid copyright in the directory as a whole because it contains some forward text and some original material in the yellow pages, there is nothing original in Rural's white pages. The raw data are uncopyrightable facts, and the way in which Rural selected, coordinated, and arranged those facts is not original in any way. Rural's selection of listings - subscribers' names, towns, and telephone numbers - could not be more obvious, and lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression."

Expect both of these to come up in court, expect judgement to be quick, expect the appellate court to decline to review. (although I am not a lawyer, maybe you should see what the RESULT is before lambasting the courts for something they haven't yet ruled on).

http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/827/569/3179/

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=499&invol=340

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivial_Pursuit#Fred_Worth_lawsuit

Future Firefox to slurp updates silently

Oninoshiko
FAIL

@Peter Gathercole

Actually, this convention is nowhere near universal in the UNIX (and UNIX like) world. MANY of us recognize that allowing users to install executeables is a risk. many of us mount /home with noexec to combat this.

Users should NOT install apps. Shame some self-declared admins couldn't learn from history.

Ecclesiastical judge tells church: Let there be Wi-Fi

Oninoshiko
Joke

Is it bad that I read that

"A .god damnain"

Crazy pot smokers get high on wireless power

Oninoshiko
Go

It's not as silly as it sounds

The wire-less-ness of the mouse is to keep the wire from getting in the way. Because the pad is fairly stationary most of the time, there is no need to worry about it as a limiting factor. Even so, taking it off the pad wouldn't cause the mouse to stop working, just to stop charging... AFAICT (who knows for sure? maybe I sleep-surf!) every night my mouse sits stationary on the pad.

Boffins prove Queen ballad 'world's most catchy song'

Oninoshiko

now I have that in my head

Fortunately it's a good song.

(interestingly enough, it is apperently the first posthumus chart-topper.)

PCIe flash performance: Your mileage may vary

Oninoshiko
Thumb Up

Not in the review,

but I have worked with TMS before. They are good guys, vary willing to support their product.

(I am in no way, shape, or form affiliated with the researchers or author of this article)

US lawmakers call for FTC probe of supercookies

Oninoshiko
Stop

Why bother?

They aren't going to do anything about it.

Apple loses bid to trademark 'multi-touch'

Oninoshiko
Stop

Didn't work for the (older) Apple Records (any of the number of times they sued).

New flash RAM tech promises 99% energy drop

Oninoshiko

if it's like the other promised new memory tech...

I'll wait to see it in a retro-futurisum art show.

Ten... all-in-one inkjet printers

Oninoshiko

For photos

No laser of any quality (none I have ever owned) emits a "noxious stink." I'll admit though, I don't sit around trying to huff printer-fumes.

How often do you print photos? I can't tell you how well it prints photos, It's not something I normally do. Frankly, the cost of ink (everyone I know who owns one with that logic, ends up having to replace the cartage EVERY TIME) and the right paper, that makes it not worth the cost to keep a second printer around that is crap at everything I normally do. It's normally cheaper to just take it by the nearest photo-lab.

Oninoshiko
Devil

people stull use inkjet?

I pity you.

I went with a nice brother colour workgroup laser printer a while ago. Yes it cost more, but it's been more then worth it, just on not having to toss out dried up ink cartridges.

Google unfurls Dead Sea Scrolls

Oninoshiko
Stop

why ARE the athists so fired up?

Even if you aren't religious, the dead-sea scrolls are a important find of HISTORICAL significance. Even if you don't believe what is in them, they still are as big a deal as Egyptian records, Greek records, Roman records, or any other historical document of religious or secular origin.

If they can do it, I think they should make display the oldest copy of the Koran too. Maybe some Shinto and Bhuddest texts. This isn't just theology it's also about history, and anthropology, both secular studies.

FCC's net-neut rules now official

Oninoshiko
Thumb Up

Re: correction

I stand corrected. My point was that it is the legislature that decides, and a court that interpenetrates.

Oninoshiko

And YES, reasonable discrimination *IS* ok. we call it "traffic shaping" and have built protocols into all of our routing gear. Your bulk-transfer of Ubuntu disks via BT (because you aren't doing anything illegal, definitely not) should be sent at a lower priority then <insert whatever the current FPSes are> traffic. One is bulk traffic, it doesn't have latency requirements, the other does. It is completely reasonable to take this into account.

"Lawful" traffic is that which has been deemed legal by a court. In practice, this means that end-users would have the ability to make claims their provider was blocking "lawful" traffic. The provider then needs to explain why the traffic is unlawful, AND THE USER CAN CHALLENGE THIS.

CERN's boson hunters tackle big data bug infestation

Oninoshiko
Stop

here's what I want to know, why didn't anyone investigate the "false positives" and "correct" them. I have found many problems in porting F/LOSS code to other platforms that once you clean up all the "warnings" seem to magically disappear.

All programers should have this drilled into their heads, "Compiler warnings ARE bugs."

Amazon settles sales tax spat with Governor Moonbeam

Oninoshiko
Stop

Actually, it is still collected for out of state purchases, but it's collected by the BUYER not the seller (in theory). Most states have a form you are supposed to fill out (almost no one does, but that's not exactly Amazon's fault). They "get a pass," not because they needed to build up business, but because the seller isn't who is being taxed, the buyer is. Brick and mortor stores collect it as a convince. The buyer is taxed because California has no right to tax someone from Texas.

Amazon's stance isn't that the taxes shouldn't be paid, it's that they are not who it gets collected from and not their responsibility to collect it, and according to US (federal) law (which trumps California law), they are right. In the end, they would likely win as this is a logical extension of the catalog-sales ruling, but it's probably cheaper to get a clarification from the legislature, and it's too bad. I hate to see a new law written when there is a perfectly good old one.

Lady Gaga loses squatting complaint

Oninoshiko
Boffin

.org is no longer required to be non-prof, hasn't for some time.

Unfortunately.

Google plan to kill Javascript with Dart, fight off Apple

Oninoshiko
WTF?

Overheating?

Sure, that's a flash problem, not improper thermal design.

Yes, flash is intensive on the Mac, but that is because (as adobe has pointed out repeatedly) Apple won't provide similar interfaces to what MS provides to accelerate it. That said, no matter HOW intensive it is it shouldn't overheat. If it is, then it's a manufacture or design defect in the hardware.

Windows Server 8 plays catch-up with VMware and Unix

Oninoshiko
Thumb Up

indeed.

Can they get someone to look at the Office licensing under VDI too? I'd love to be able to provide Desktop as a Service, with MS Office but "that's not a part of the service privileged program."

Oz authors join book scanning lawsuit

Oninoshiko
Boffin

Still alive?

Even if the authors are dead It has no bearing on copyrights, or can I freely copy mickey now?

There are aspects (perpetuality) of copyright law that i dont like, but EVERYONE needs to be ruled by the same laws, not one rule for google, and one for us little-people.

Hacker defaces Irish Catholic paper: 'Gotta love false hope'

Oninoshiko

Re: live and let live

Amen.

Evangelical atheists give the real atheists a bad name.

Two Larrys to go head-to-head in Google-Oracle case

Oninoshiko

Shiver me timbers

considering the fellows involved, I think it's always talk like a pirate date..

Arrr.

W3C announces web-tracking privacy protection group

Oninoshiko
WTF?

The problem isn't

the 8 bits. The problem is it doesn't DO anything. So you send 8 bits which say "don't track me" and the Russian mafia giggles a litte and tracks you anyway. If you can't trust the other end enough to let them track you, why do you think you can trust them to NOT track you?

A better way would be to sandbox everything the browser does and delete that file(s) every hour.

Parliament has no time for 100,000+ signature e-petitions

Oninoshiko
Megaphone

Translation

we never thought any of the petitions would ever reach 100,000 signatures, and should therefor not have to fulfill promises we never intended to have to keep. Sucks to be you.

Al Gore wants to borrow your Facebook and Twitter accounts

Oninoshiko

I wont be holding my breath

for the banning of "Mr Internet"

Burned by DigiNotar, Mozilla tells cert cops to audit security

Oninoshiko

I believe it was required from day one, they are just requiring it be re-audited.

(which should be being done yearly anyway)

Double-barrel net infrastructure hack threatens ecommerce

Oninoshiko
Boffin

No need to check every query.

Just use prepared statements. Personally, I think the library maintainers need to remove all other methods of running a query.

Three in ten Americans urge feds to read their email

Oninoshiko
Headmaster

@Graham Marsden

The TEA party's is against any new taxes. That's what their name means "Taxed Enough Already" while also being a play on the Boston Tea Party (an event in US history where the soon-to-be USAians tossed a bunch of tea in the harbor).

Any beliefs beyond this are on a individual basis, and applying them to the entire group is disingenuous at best. Most of the people I am hearing it from appear to have an obvious political agenda.

Oracle suit outs Google's closed source Android tactics

Oninoshiko

no, they are only obligated to offer to give the source to anyone they distribute a binary to. Because they only gave beta binaries to their partners, they are only obligated to give source to those partners.

Any shipping of it on end-user devices is up to the individual vendors, who should have copies of the code. If they cannot distribute under the GPL (because they cannot distribute the code, for whatever reason) they cannot distribute the code.

Even then, as long as the offer is made, if noone has taken them up on it, they don't have to do anything.

Oninoshiko

More money then god?

I'm not so sure... I mean I suppose if we ONLY count cash, I guess, but if you account for the value of the art and historical artifacts in the possession of the Holy See...

Oninoshiko
Boffin

I dont understand the problem with...

closed development with a periodic code drop (at the time of release). Every major "free software" license I can think of permits this, many vendors do it.

Apple seeks product security boss after iPhone loss

Oninoshiko
Thumb Up

AMEN

Everyone involved in this little stunt should get walking papers, plus ATLEAST one level of management up. I am a firm believer that if your immediate subordinates do something it reflects on you as a leader.

That's on top of whatever legal hot-water they are going to be in before this is all over, of course.

Righthaven struggles in court and at home

Oninoshiko
Stop

Is this article correct?

"Notorious patent troll Righthaven"

Uhh, what? I don't think Righthaven has ever done anything with patents.

Repeat after me:

Patents are not copyrights are not trademarks.

Christ appears in phone advert, secular authorities act

Oninoshiko
Paris Hilton

Why would they have an athist day?

When assigning days for religions? Damnit, ARE you guys a religion or NOT? make up your MINDS.

(personally, I'm perfectly happy classifying it as a religion, as you-all seem to be as evangelical as everyone else)

NASA releases stunning new moon-landing snaps

Oninoshiko
Joke

There is no helping

those who get their "science" from Andy Kaufman.

Microsoft: Our clouds are cheaper than VMware clouds

Oninoshiko

Interesting....

MS is say "we are cheaper! we are cheaper!" They have been making this claim since at least 2008.

VMWare are saying (I was talking with them recently) "We can do maintenance non-disruptively, we have better built in monitoring and management (saving you on staffing costs), we can run more VMs on the same hardware, and we can be used to virtualize PCI, HIPPA, SOX, as well as other regulated workloads"

Oninoshiko
Go

It already is depricated

ESX has been removed completely now that 5.0 has entered GA.

I would STRONGLY recommend you at least look into ESXi if you are seriously using VMWare's line.