* Posts by Henry Wertz 1

3137 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

Japan enacts two-year jail terms for illegal downloading

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

One correction...

As far as I know, in most countries *downloading* as much stuff as you want is not illegal. It's the uploading that is copyright infringement. People get caught up because they p2p such as bittorrent, so they in fact ARE uploading. (Laws like the one in Japan are unusual in this regard).

FREE mobile data – if you dance for our advertisers, monkeyboy

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

For the US this is a steal, since data here is a ripoff

The local Casino here... charges for Wifi! Yes, it's ON the gambling floor, where people are already shoving huge wads of cash into the machines as fast as possible, but they then want additional money to check E-Mail (the cell service inside is poor.)

Anyway.... VZW's minimum is 1GB a month for $20, AT&T's 300MB for $20. Overage? You don't want to go over -- although there even more expensive plans have $10/GB overage, *these* ones... well.. AT&T's is $68.20 a GB ($20 per 300MB) overage... VZW $15/300MB ($51.15/GB) overage. Damn! Oh, yeah... US Cellular also has 300MB for $20 (but their 2GB is $25). I wonder if anyone seriously tries to save that $5/month?

So, in comparison this is a steal. Actually, you can get MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) service through these very same carriers and get data for like half the cost. But it's still more than this costs.

Ubuntu 12.10: More to Um Bongo Linux than Amazon ads

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

*shrug*

*shrug*, as long as it can be turned off I don't care too much. That said, I'm not about to use Unity anyway.

WTF is... VoLTE

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

4G LTE in reality

"Circuit switching is a lot less efficient than packet switching, that's why it's not the best for data and ultimately why it's not best for voice either. When some technical person hands their boss a piece of paper in the future indicating that they can support 10-20% more users by going entirely to packet switched VoLTE they'll see savings and do it."

CDMA and UMTS already effectively do this. I mean, you have a voice "circuit" but really it's not a dedicated timeslot or frequency, it's all virtual; the actual capacity of the cell site is interference-limited, not circuit limited (there is a limit on # of circuits but it's unreachable unless you intentionally load the site down with dead-silent phone calls). There is a symbol to indicate a whole frame is silence, and with variable bitrate voice background noise will not be transmitted full quality while your voice will. Forget 10-20%, they actually increase capacity by over 40% this way! VoLTE should still save since LTE is more efficient in terms of bits/mhz however.

"Is it just me thinking that yet-another-technology will be destroyed by commercial interests, deliberate incompatibilities, differing pricing structures and lack of co-operation?"

Frankly, I think the plan is to just keep billing voice and data just as now. Unfortunately, here in the states... MetroPCS has publicly stated they are intending LTE to lower their costs, which they plan to pass to the customer. Verizon? AT&T? US Cellular? They have increased data pricing significantly as they roll LTE. USCC for instance went from $30 for 5GB to $30 for 2GB.. ouch!

As for delays or whatever.. I have an LTE phone now. From what I've read, Verizon DOES run IMS over LTE, using CSFB to CDMA-1X for voice calls. What can I say? I don't have a 2-4 second delay; I just dialed my voicemail and it took approximately 1 second. Maybe CDMA kicks on faster than UMTS?

As for 4G<->whatever handoffs.. I guess the plan for voice is CSFB. You should realize, though, the chances are good that for the few moments the handoff takes it should be possible to run the 4G and (3G or 2G) *simultaneously*, known as a soft handoff in CDMA/UMTS world. I think this is one reason VZW is not running VoLTE, this type of handoff would require digging into both networks and without this type of handoff it'd be dropped call city.

As for data, my 4G drops back to 3G seamlessly, the 3G will kick up to 4G seamlessly due to some rig Verizon calls eHRPD (I think extended High Rate Packet Data?)...in general. I have had this not work though, instead the 4G will fade, there'll be a huge 15 or 20 second time period with no data, then the 3G will kick in. Kicking into 1X (in roaming areas -- Verizon effectively has at least 3G over their whole network...) takes about 15 or 20 seconds too.

That said these are NOT a significant problem -- we listened to slacker on a road trip (about ~1100 miles each way), I had 4G about 1/3rd of the way and on average had to reset slacker maybe every 300 miles.

JK Rowling's adult novel arrives on ebook full of FAIL

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Facepalm

Laaaame ebook pricing

As jai already says, a 20% VAT (although high) is no excuse for this cost. EBook publishing costs very little (I'm not going to say "it costs nothing" because there's still labor costs to make sure the EBook looks good and all that...) EBook publishers know this and typically kick back a much higher percentage of the cost to the publisher compared to paper publishing (which really is quite expensive, especially with high paper costs of late.)

I've read both sides of the coin...

Those who "get it", they'll have a $10 or $20 book, but the EBook is like $3-$5.. sometimes it's more, but usually not more than half the cost of the physical book. They make good money selling the EBook if the book is any good, they don't have to worry about remaindered books being shipped back from book stores, or getting into those stores to begin with, or distribution costs, and so on for those EBooks, it's esentially pure profit.

The others will be like $12 for the book, and like $11.50 for the EBook... sometimes they consider the EBook "premium" and charge MORE for it than the physical book! They don't sell many EBooks, and just think EBooks are a bad market, rather than realizing the market is great, they've just priced themselves right out of it.

You know which category I think Rowling is in here.

Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
FAIL

Fuck you Microsoft

There's loads and loads of techs within the US, and (just like most of the economy) high unemployment. They do not need to bring in thousands of people from outside the US to do this. Companies here in the states have been abusing the H1B system for years, typically they just assume they will bring in all these foreign workers and can pay them less (rather than there ACTUALLY being a shortage of skilled workers, which is what H1B program is meant for)... problem being, they are usually so sure of this, they will not even offer the lower pay and see if any locals will take it. Fuck you Microsoft for playing this game.

Of course, Microsoft MAY have problems getting people to work for them. I sure as hell wouldn't. But, nevertheless, there's been such an abuse of this system, I certainly don't feel it should be expanded, even with them paying per person. There's no accountability whatsoever, no necessity for businesses to demonstrate a lack of local skilled workers, and no oversite from whoever is supposed to run H1B to point out "hey, there's loads of locals just waiting to work this kind of job, no you don't need more H1Bs."

H1B has it's place, I've read that Siemens trains top-notch nuclear technicians in Germany, so they are employed anywhere that has a nuclear reactor; I'm sure chip foundries, hard drive component building, etc. have specialized needs where LG, Samsung, whoever will have people already trained and would rather bring them in via H1B. There are legitimate uses for this. But programmers? No.

US gov on track to miss its own IPv6 deadline

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

It's called a proxy...

The excuse "federal IPv6 deployment has lagged due to a lack of support from government contractors who still use the old standards" doesn't fly.

It's called a proxy! Note they just demand that *external-facing* stuff is IPV6. So, if their gov't contractors are stuck in the 1990s, no sweat! A proxy can trivially be set up that will accept IPV6 connections and forward them to your IPV4 gear. Since it's just passing through connections, as long as you keep Windows Server far away from said box you don't need high-end kit either. Maybe I should come up with a box like this and charge the gov't huge sacks of money for them.

Satellite broadband rollout for all in US: But Europe just doesn't get it

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Re: There's simply no capacity

"Yes, it does have coverage, but capacity is a serious problem. Even with beam-forming, the spots are still dozens of kilometers across. Capacity of those transponders is also quite limited. At most you get a few gigabits per spot which you need to share with the rest of your town."

The assumption is you do not buy this in your town, you get cable or DSL. Those areas without cable or DSL tend to be more rural; splitting a few gbps among 10,000 people could get pretty bad, splitting it among 100 is probably not. Keep in mind once you get in the sticks you can have cell sites that also cover... well, in the western deserts here in the US some have a 50 mile service radius, but 10 mile radius is not uncommon at all. That'd also be horrible in a city but works fine in the countryside.

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Oh but the cap!

Outside some big cities, the broadband pricing in the US is atrocious, my parents pay like $38 a month for 1.5mbps DSL. *BUT*, (other than latency that others have already brought up), there's two major caveats here:

1) 10GB cap! 5mbps service is USELESS if the cap is that low. Web pages, E-Mail, etc. will easily work on 256kbps service, not needing 5mbps at all, while the Youtube (and especially Hulu and Netflix) that make faster service useful will blow your cap anyway. The devil is in the details though -- after 10GB, does DishNet start sucking huge wads of cash out of your wallet, or is it throttled at the cap? (To answer my own question, it appears they may be using Exede, which throttles at the cap, but has a midnight-5AM period that doesn't count towards your cap, for people to run their downloads and junk in.)

2) Until it's actually available for sale, it's vaporware. One of the existing satellite services was "going to" come out for $30 or $40 a month, and ended up coming in at $70 a month by the time they actually started doing any installations. That said, I just did some googling and indeed, base satellite plans are down to like $40-50 these days from several providers. Verizon's got increasingly widespread 4G and several carriers have huge amounts of 3G. The prices are generally a ripoff, but low enough that if satellite cos still charged like $80 a month, they'd only get those few people out of range of cable, DSL, *and* cellular data (whereas now they can undercut cellular a little bit on price.)

Climate sceptic? You're probably a 'Birther', don't vaccinate your kids

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Yeah they're called Fox News viewers

Yeah, they're called Fox News viewers. The Fox TV network, it's up to each local station to have news or not... Murdoch-owned newspapers here in the US have a certain political stance, but Fox News stands alone. In all seriousness, I don't know how it is overseas (other than the phone hacking scandal), but in the US this channel has the most distorted information I've ever seen concentrated in one place. They did in fact espouse Obama being born overseas -- even after the certificate was released and verified to everybody else's satisfaction; that global warming is false (see below); the vaccination thing (again, after it was both proven false, and furthermore they made sure not to mention that newer vaccines have had the mercury-based preservative removed anyway); and the WMDs -- they STILL bring up every now and then how they were obviously there, just hidden or destroyed. They have been known, when some piece of information they aired is PROVEN to be false, instead of a retraction they will bring it back up again, with THEIR OWN PREVIOUS COVERAGE as some kind of support "proving" it's true, because after all it was aired on a national news network.

To paraphrase a partciularly ridiculous exchange I saw on there (when my dad was watching it -- and yes, despite being a scientist I've found he eats it up and is gravely misinformed on numerous topics):

(during a cold snap in the US)

(some ditzy "reporter"): "So, this seems to disprove that whole global warming thing, doesn't it? The whole country's cold!"

(climatologist): "Well, no, we are having a cold snap in north america, but the whole planet has not cooled off, and on average temperatures have increased over the last xx years."

(ditz): "Well, I think this proves the falseness of global warming. I guess we'll just agree to disagree, why is your point more valid than mine anyway?"

(climatologist): "Well... I'm a climatologist, I study this for a living."

(ditz): "I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree."

Yeah!

LONDON iPHONE 5 MADNESS: 'You must be CRAZY to buy Apple'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

I'd feel like...

I'd feel like some kind of asshole (that's arsehole for you brits..) having people start cheering and clapping just because I walked into a store to buy a product. Just saying.

EMC puts a bullet in its XAM storage access

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

So....

So.... does that mean there is an open market here for some kind of middleware, i.e. a daemon or library that accepts... well, XAM, or something, on one end, and the dozen proprietary methods on the other? Or, do the people that buys these things become so phobic of changing vendors that this is not an issue?

I could see XAM not catching on if a) It was a "standard' that other vendors were *expected* to support, but in actuality was only supported by EMC. b) If XAM was pants (either bad by design -- i.e. hard to use, not feature complete compared to native libs, etc.... or, bad in terms of the implementation being slow and/or buggy.) But otherwise, I know for sure I'd rather code so my app is not tied to one vendor's product if feasible.

Verizon CFO: 'Unlimited' data is just a word

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Doesn't matter

That's right, they aren't selling unlimited plans any more (for data -- they are for voice and text). But, then, why are they even talking about unlimited "just being a word" then? The thing is, other's DO have unlimtied -- Sprint has true unlimited, locally IWireless has true unlimited, and T-Mobile has both MUCH cheaper per GB costs AND just throttles when you hit that cap instead of charging cash overages (i.e. "unlimited" if you're not in a big hurry.)

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

US cell co situation.

So to enlighten anyone across the pond about the data situation here...

In general, Verizon and AT&T have operated as the "top tier" but have been pretty expensive. Sprint and T-Mobile are much less expensive but have less extensive networks.

Verizon has a pretty good network. Their 3G is slow in some markets (and it's EVDO so it won't top 3.1mbps under any conditions.) The 4G rollout is fast and expanding rapidly (over 75% by population, and probably 30% by area, of VZW's network is 4G, and the rest is all 3G.) But, they had $30 unlimited. Then $30 for 2GB (and more for more data, up to like $80 or so for 10GB).. Now, for "shared data", they charge (above the usual $10 a line) $20 a line for normal phones or $30 for smartphones, just to access some shared data that you also have to purchase -- and not at a substantial discount compared to the previous 2GB through 10GB plans. Luckily I picked up a 4G phone on the last day you could get a subsidized 4G phone and keep unlimited.

AT&T is similar now with high cost data and shared data plans, they do not have as much 4G (actual 4G LTE... they claim a lot of 4G by calling their 3G network 4G now). They have lots of EDGE out in the sticks still, some reportedly quite slow.

Sprint has true unlimited, reportedly their 3G network can get rather slow. They are moving their 4G from Wimax to LTE.

T-Mobile has no concrete 4G plan as far as I know (probably LTE), but they are achieving 4G-like speeds by running 42mbps HSPA+ in some markets, with the rest being 21mbps. Reportedly it's pretty fast; they have a lot of EDGE though. It's not true unlimited, but instead of charging cash overages, they throttle your data when you hit your limit. You can buy more data to get your speeds back up if you want.

In my local area, Verizon has 4G, US Cellular has 4G, Sprint, AT&T, and IWireless have 3G. IWireless still has unlimited everything for $50. Sweet. US Cellular had always done $30 for 5GB, now it is $30 for 2GB.

----

Now that that is out of the way -- The crux of the problem to me is these carriers are installing technology that makes the cost per byte lower, then charging more for it. I do realize true unlimited is really not feasible -- at 512kbps (which is a modest speed) that's 150GB a month, at 10mbps you could suck down over 3TB a month. I've seen a peak of 58mbps off 4G when i was in the northeast (Verizon owns the fiber so I'm sure the sites get fat pipes), and driving through several other cities the 4G was up in the 20s or 30s. Locally I get like 5-10mbps in some areas and 20mbps in others. Still better than a kick in the nuts.

So it'd be easy to use ridiculous amounts of data. I should note my highest use ever has been 8GB, so I'm not someone wining about unlimited because they want to use huge amounts of data.

I do think a throttling setup ala T-Mobile is quite customer friendly.

Another nice setup that at least one satellite internet company here uses is buckets. You get a xMB/day bucket that fills at yKB/sec. Overnight, they turn the bucket off and you get whatever your "full" speed is. In the morning you get a full bucket, and get full speed until you empty that bucket, then yKB/sec. When your use drops off the bucket refills.

Redmond promises emergency IE bug fix on Friday (zero day + 5)

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Actual vulnerabilities

Well, not really. I didn't find the Trend Micro Analysis terribly useful; it just lists numbers of vulnerabilities patched, while not mentioning severity. The fact of the matter is, in IE blackhats and researches keep finding one hole after another that completely subverts security, sometimes even in kernel mode. The vast majority of the Firefox holes were like "We found a potential problem in the source code" and it's fixed without necessarily even knowing if it's exploitable.

Dropbox drops JavaScript, brews CoffeeScript

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

CoffeeScript looks good to me

"(having not played with CoffeeScript ) I would imagine debugging has to be done at the JavaScript level which may more than remove any benefits writing in your favourite language gives you."

Not really. To me, it appears CoffeeScript is just Javascript with cleaned up syntax... it's just making some bits that in Javascript are unnecessarily verbose much less verbose. (just go to the coffeescript.org site and you'll see what I mean, there's a short code sample right on the main page in javascript and coffescript side-by-side.) It's not like writing in python or perl and having your code converted into completely different Javascript, you'll just have the occasional one line of CoffeeScript that is blown out into 5 or 10 lines of Javascript. So, if the Javasript threw an error, I think it'd be pretty easy to find the equivalent line(s) in the CoffeeScript original.

Google to axe IE 8 support, cuts off Windows XP lifeline

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Megaphone

Use a better browser

Use a better browser, problem solved. I'm not going to chew anyone out for using XP instead of 7, because 7 is not any better (you should switch to a better OS if you're going to bother switching at all, not just a newer one.) But IE has never been a good browser, and still isn't too good*. Almost any other browser on the market (Opera, Firefox, and Chrome for sure) are faster, more standards compliant, and have had better security track records; and all are available for XP

*The last review I saw of IE10, it was much better than IE9 but still both slower and less standards-compliant than any other browser they compared it too, besides it's obvious lack of cross-platform support.

CIOs urged to take BYOD pleas with pinch of salt

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Trollface

People seem to believe in "one size fits all"...

a) Some people don't need a device. These businesses like the fantasy that they can have people on call 24/7 without paying them for it. I think in some cases, it lowers a psychological barrier where someone who wouldn't dream of "calling you at home" will think nothing of calling a Blackberry (or messaging it expecting a quick response) while they also know you are at home. I'd shut the Blackberry off the minute I left work. Others will want a device but it'd be a waste of money for them. I don't know if I'd figure it's a cheap amount to spend to keep those people happy, or just point out they never get E-Mails and such outside business hours and please suck it up.

b) People who are forever handling sensitive data. These are the ones where you simply have to tell them, "hell no, you get a Blackberry and you'll like it", keep it all locked down, or they get nothing at all. Banks, hospitals, and so on will have certain people in this category.

c) Everyone else. They should be able to get E-Mail and so on on whatever device they want. If the device refuses to cooperate, you know I'd have to tell them "tough luck" but anything can do POP or IMAP or whatever these days, so it shouldn't be an issue.

The problem I see is friction with companies that think every singular person has sensitive data, they don't do either one of 1) Giving people a sensitive E-Mail account that DOES NOT go to any computer outside the business, and a second normal account that does go to the phone or whatever. 2) Recognize that some people's E-Mail is never going to be proprietary or privileged info, it's going to be "Did you finish that thing Thursday?" "Yeah I did", and these people like to feel connected.

How to be a Puppet master: Make Amazon, VMware dance for you

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Very cool

Very cool. I've never heard of Puppet. But it sounds like a nice "swiss army nice" automation tool, which is something that (although also useful for cloud as discussed here) would be useful for all sorts of uses. Having it also work on OSX and Windows is all the better.

HGST floats helium for low power, MASSIVE capacity HDDs

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Trollface

Why not hydrogen?

@handle, I have not seen a drive where all the heads are not rigidly mounted together (so they are on a different platter but reading the same track.) MB/sec can increase, but random access times do not.

@Jim O'Reilly, yes those who choose SSDs do it because the IOPs matter. Well, for some purposes the cost per GB for SSD is far too high, and the storage capacity far too low. SSD is close to an order of magnitude more expensive than a hard disk after all.

@AC re "Price of helium?", in actuality, the US strategic helium reserve has been ordered to be sold off between 2005 and 2014 -- a reserve built up over the course of about 70 years (originally for blimps) being sold off in 9 years. This has caused other helium production to stop -- the natural gas refineries have helium as a "waste" gas, which was filtered and collected, but now is vented into the atmosphere never to be seen again. The prediction with current production and use rates is that in 20 years a balloons worth of helium would cost like $100, and it'd run out in 25 years. Yeah, that'd drive up the cost of a helium-filled hard drive 8-).

I wonder why not use hydrogen? I would not think a hard drive would hold enough for a titanic situation to be too likely after all, and production would be quite easy of course.

Intel builds 'can't be built' working digital RF transceiver chip

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

If I'm not mistaken...

If I'm not mistaken (and I could be) the XCeive XC5000 already did everything the Intel guys claimed were impossible like 5 years ago (it was already on the market by early 2007.). It's a single chip multistandards TV tuner, basically an amp and set of DSPs. Even the bandpass and notch filters are software defined (i.e. so it can handle both 5mhz and 6mhz channels.) Of course it does not run at microwave frequencies. Of course it is not operating at microwave frequencies; nevertheless, I have the feeling the Intel guys may have spent a tad too much time in the lab as opposed to seeing what people are already doing.

Windows Server 2012: Fickle pricing smacks Europe, Oz, Japan

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Doublespeak

"Our overarching goal is to maintain price stability for our partners and customers."

Doubleplusungood doublespeak.

Of course they can charge whatever they want. But this was the most ridiculous canned response I've probably ever read.

Judge: Apple not liable for dropped, broken iPhone screens

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
FAIL

Fails all around

Well...

a) The judge is a numpty. It *is* a well-known fact that glass can crack. But, the IPhone doesn't use glass, it uses Gorilla Glass. Both Apple and Corning have made a big deal about how tough Gorilla Glass is.

b) Nevertheless, Apple doesn't owe dick. People have an option of buying insurance against damage from drops and such. If they didn't buy it, that is tough shit. I cracked the screen on my Droid 2 Global (uninsured). (This was after quite a few launches out of my shirt pocket). I didn't sue Motorola over it, it was an accident and it happened. Suck it up and pay for a repair like I did. (Well, then I replaced the phone with a newer, shinier 4G LTE model.)

Microsoft: 'Update your security certs this month – or else'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Well....

I would hope there would be some registry option or whatever for those who are utterly unprepared. That said, *shrug*, I was already over-riding ssh (of old's) default 1024-bit keylength like 15 years ago, using 2048-bit keys instead. Back then, the 16-mhz boxes (or so) that I had would actually take extra few seconds at key-exchange time due to this. These days, there's really no reason not to use a long key length. Hopefully anyone unprepared won't go to a 1024-bit key -- remember, that is bare minimum these days.

Apple and Google in talks to end patent war?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Rhetoric aside...

I don't support Apple in this (particularly with any evidence of one Samsung model being kept out of the trial due to Samsung filing the evidence late). But, if Google and Apple sign some cross-licensing perpetual license or whatnot then that lets OEMs not worry about a repeat of the Samsung situation. Most likely Apple violates some Google patent or other too. I'm sure cash will go one way or another (due to what I'll call "corporate ego", Google would probably pay Apple even if Google had loads of violated patents), they are both wealthy companies.

Number-plate spycams riddled with flaws, top cop admits

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

numerology....

7.6 billion *is* "over 7 billion". This is a standard technique here in the US politicians and such use to massage figures... going from a hard figure to a "soft" figure which makes it sound like something unpalateable has been reduced, or a "soft" figure that makes it sound like something is happening more than it is. If there's, say, 8.2 billion records now, and 7.6 billion then, some would say that 8.2 billion is "over 7 billion." Others may make it sound like the cameras are running overtime, they could decide to call that "almost 9 billion" or, why not, "almost 10 billion".

Disable Java NOW, users told, as 0-day exploit hits web

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Other choices...

First, I must admit, I have not been to much that uses Java. But, I do have java installed. I'm not worried about malware though. Why?

1) Linux uses an executable bit. It's Windows where you (well, "they") can download an .exe and just run it. Also my copy of Firefox does run under AppArmor so potential malware would be contained.

2) *I'm not using Oracle's JVM*. Due to Oracle's licensing, Ubuntu dropped Sun/Oracle Java even as an option a while back. I thought I was screwed, because Eclipse says it requires Sun/Oracle Java and is incompatible with OpenJDK. Not so! It may have used to be true, but I've been running Eclipse on OpenJDK (with IcedTea6 browser plugin), and have coded, debugged, and published a signed Android app onto the market. No sweat at all.

So, if you are using Java, I would try OpenJDK and see if it works. What can I say? At least if people find OpenJDK holes they are not on a every-4-months release schedule! 8-)

Apple: You'd want hi-fi streamage from us, not poor-people Wi-Fi audio

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

DLNA codec problems

Problem with DLNA was that Microsoft intended and assumed that everyone would just be using Windows media formats for everything. DLNA takes care of throwing a file at a device, giving the device the file size and (if the server supports the file) it'll tell a little extra info like FPS, resolution, video codec, audio codec, etc. The player can also indicate which codecs and resolutions it supports. But, I'm not sure DLNA actually mandates support for any given codec (and if it does, it's like 10 year old Windows media codecs contemporary with when DLNA came out.) And generally DLNA servers don't transcode either. The PS3 receives firmware updates, and essentially is a general-purpose multi-core CPU, so it is pretty flexible in playback support compared to something like a TV, which'll have a MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoder chip but probably doesn't have the muscle to decode anything the chip can't handle (noteably, I doubt many can do H.264).

Anyway... we'll see. I'd guess some of these TVs that have like youtube and facebook and such on them will slap on the proprietary Apple stuff as well. There's lots of plain-jane tvs and radios still for sale that I'm sure won't. And I'm guessing at least Samsung (given Samsung and Apple's spats) may simply tell Apple to piss off and implement actual industry standards, not proprietary Apple stuff. At least I hope so, I don't want to give Apple money for stuff I'll never use.

Ten netbooks

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Windows is the enemy of netbooks

First, I want to say (despite the excessive Windows) that these are good reviews, it's good to know there's still some netbooks on the market instead of just those stupid Ultrabooks.

@Jerry, sounds like Windows failed to me, not the computer! Windows 7 is bloated. And your driver experience is typical; people tend to have this mythical belief (based on pre-installed copies of Windows) that it supports all sorts of hardware without drama, when the reality is as you've found that the out-of-the-box driver support is quite lacking. I bet if you ran a LiveUSB (yes, Ubuntu will install off USB stick) you could boot and find everything works out of the box.

"When netbooks first came out three or four years ago, they were £229 or thereabouts. And they are STILL that sort of price. They've got slightly better specs - but that's all. They seem to be the only form of computer life which doesn't go down in price. I cannot see any good reason why they shouldn't be sub-£150 these days."

Blame it on Windows. I have a Dell mini 10 with a Atom Z520 @ 1.33ghz on it. It had 512MB of RAM. I upgraded to 1GB solely so I could run the occasional copy of VirtualBox (yes I'm serious.) Ubuntu runs great on it. So this was like $300-400 new (I bought it used) and would probably be well under $200 by now if it were on the market. The original netbooks like this, people would either put XP or Windows crippled edition on it, then bitch incessently on how underpowered they are (phrases like "barely adequate for basic tasks" were bandied about back then) and of course about how crippled the crippled version of Windows is. They are not underpowered, Windows is just too bloated for it! (Well the CPU *is* weak, but I don't have to wait for it even if I have a video playing as well as everything else.) They started phasing out the Linux models, then the specs started going up and up and up... dual core processors, higher clock speeds, more RAM, more storage, faster chipsets, and so on, instead of more modest increases but a decrease in price.

"It would be interesting to see what would happen if Asus or Acer were to produce a fairly minimal spec box for £149. I reckon it would fly off the shelves."

People would bitch at how bad 7 runs on it, instead of running ones with Ubuntu or something that would run great on it. I'd love this too. My ma just got a Asus with a single-core 1.6ghz Atom, 512MB (I think?) for $120 at the pawn shop. It was less than 6 months old, they ditched it because the copy of 7 crippled edition ran like absolute shit on it. I immediately wiped it for Ubuntu and it ran fast and supported all the hardware right out of the box. I do wish that Penguin Systems or someone did just this, sell some nice cheap netbooks with a nice cheap Linux distro on it.

Cook's 'values' memo shows Apple has lost its soul

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

IBM revisionism

""When IBM made the x86 PC platform popular and Compaq made it affordable, sensible minds decided neither could charge a tax on the development of the platform."

Revisionist historians have forgotten how IBM applied their patent portfolio to extract fees from PC clone makers. The popularity of selling PC parts, motherboards without CPUs, originated by those looking to bypass IBM's license fees."

Actually that started when IBM started producing Microchannel computers -- ISA-based systems were intentionally kept fully open. For the XT, IBM even provided the BIOS source code in a printed book (Compaq had to clean-room reverse engineer it though since it was copyrighted.)

On an unrelated note, glad to hear Apple does donate something even if it's employee matching.

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Lost" it's soul?

"Lost" it's soul? Apple has ALWAYS been a HIGHLY litigous company. They've tried again and again to sue for things whether Apple had anything to do with them or not -- the infamous "look and feel" suit of the 1980s for example, where Apple tried to sue for the very concept of a desktop GUI, despite the fact Apple ripped large portions of it off from Xerox. They sue people over product leaks, they throw out cease and desists against people merely discussing hardware flaws (even if they are working on a workaround rather than just slagging off Apple!), the list goes on and on.

I think (while we're talking about the so-called "soul" of a company) that Apple is well-known for being perhaps the only firm in Silicon Valley that does not donate to any cause. To me it does seem silly for some hard-up Silicon Valley company that is on the verge of bankruptcy to feel they should still give that $10,000 to the local museum or whatever, but they do. Except Apple.

UK kids' charity lobbies hard for 'opt-in' web smut access

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Pr0n already is opt-in!

These numptys of course want a national-level censorship regime in place, which is absurd. Pr0n already is opt-in, in fact they'd prefer to have your credit card information as well. I'm all for having those few sites that don't already have a fairl plain front page, and a "Porn ahead! Only click this if you're over 18!" type warning to adopt one. THAT IS OPT IN, and most sites already have it! But of course that is not what these people REALLY want at all.

Office 2013 to offer one-off apps on demand

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

No office fan...

But I do have to admit that sounds pretty cool. Extra kudos if it's not some sort of IE-only hack (i.e. perhaps a remote desktop viewer, and the 15 seconds to 1 minute is to cache graphical elements to make it all faster?)

Microsoft denies Windows 8 app spying via SmartScreen

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Microsoft denied nothing....

They said they "eventually" delete IP addresses. "Eventually" can mean 1000 years. They do not deny your app list is sent to them, which is the heart of the problem. I'm quite sure the SSLv2 thing was an oversite, and I wouldn't hold that against anybody. I'm glad I don't use Windows though, knowing they plan to send lists of your software to themselves. None of Microsoft's business!! Indeed, the right way to do this (if they bother at all) is to update a blacklist locally, NOT to send everything to Microsoft to compare against Microsoft's blacklist.

Court confirms $675,000 fine for sharing 30 songs

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Re:"Just stop buying recorded music". Done and done. But, the assholes at the record companies claim sales are dropping ONLY because of piracy, not because they release loads of drivel, and people don't want to buy CDs from these dinosaurs. And the talking heads on the mainstream media parrot that line, ignoring numerous studies showing this is simply not true.

Anyway, simple solution -- so $675,000 is supposedly not excessive. Well, following this logic, surely a 22,500 year term to pay off those fines is entirely reasonable.

Akihabara unplugged: Tokyo's electric town falls flat

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

That's a shame.

That's a shame. When I was younger, I wanted to eventually go to Akihabara. Now, not so much.

Police mistake reveals plan for Assange's Embassy capture

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

He's a douche but still...

"No, he's a douche because he's a self-publicising arrogant twit who would step over his own dead grandmother for a pot of tea if he thought it would get him an advantage and more publicity."

In fact I do get the distinct impression he's a douche. Sorry (for everyone else) but whether he's doing important work or not, I do simply get this distinct impression off him.

"He's skipped bail on very serious charges"

He left when he was told he was allowed to, then didn't respond to an improper extradition request.

"refuses to defend himself"

He's defended himself. I mean, I hope you don't mean in court, because there are no charges against him, just vague accusations (reportedly, the accusers themselves requested any potential charges to be dropped, and were refused.) There's been a smear campaign against him, of course the television media is not going to give him a chance to defend himself in the so-called court of public opinion.

"claims he's being persecuted by foreign governments"

Umm, yes, he's not just some guy. Government officials have talked about how worried they are about wikileaks, how it should come down, talking about espionage charges and so on. He IS being persecuted by foreign governments!

It's standard procedure for the US (and some other governments I'm sure) when they don't like somebody: 1) Try to pick them up. 2) Didn't work? Smear campaign. (I think this is where things went wrong this time -- clearly the plan was to make Assange out as a rapist. A lot of people believe it. But, enough people now do not just believe what the nice talking head on the news says, but verify their news, that this was not fully effective.) 3) Try to pick them up again -- people are less likely to help a dirtbag hide. 4) Try to use legal procedure like extradition, either using "information" from the smear campaign or a just plain fabricated charge.

"and all the while pushing himself forward as the saviour of mankind, whilst those who did the actual work are languishing in jail or go completely unacknowledged."

Well, firstly, there's an attempt to extradite him (and at that point probably either disappear him or spring the REAL charges on him and toss him in jail). But secondly, yeah, really what you say is quite true, he's at least a bit of a douche for talking wikileaks up like it's 100% him when without his contributors (some of whom are in jail) there'd be nothing there.

Drilling into Amazon's tape-killing Glacier cloud archive

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Yeah indeed...

Indeed, the bandwidth issue is major, as Nate Amsden covers so well. The other part of that, STORING the data is $0.01/GB/month. This does not cover transfer fees to get your data in and out of that storage. These fees may or may not be quite high.

Also as Paul Crawford begins to allude to, I could see significant regulatory issues with this for a lot of people that are using tape.

Sacrebleu! Googleplex insists Bush is still le président américain

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

What bothers me...

is that it's not a proper translation. I'd guess that phrase means "the American president". It doesn't mean a specific American president, so the translation would be incorrect even if it translated as "Obama".

Networking industry to collaborate on TERABIT Ethernet

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Nice...

I'm glad that newer ethernet standards continue to come out.

But, are those speed figures accurate? I mean, I've never seen a single 10gbps link in operation, and I work with computers quite a bit. Well... wait... I guess I was going to post about how I'd expect 10gpbs at data centers, peering points, etc., but expect loads of 100mbps and gigabit links used at homes and small businesses; but, I suppose in many cases the home ethernet cables have been replaced by wifi.

Google launches Octane JavaScript benchmark suite

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Javascript and 16-bit color

"'Hope no one here is retarded enough to run computationally intensive code written in Javascript on their web browsers."

I don't really have a choice, I don't design the pages I use. Some pages have absolutely bloated quantities of Javascript. I don't know what the Google Play Developer Console does but the actual page completes almost instantly, then the CPU burns along for seconds (almost a minute on the phone) to just tell me how many people have my app and draw a couple little pie charts (I hope those are client-side, otherwise I REALLY don't know what it's doing.)

"Who cares about 5ms time saved while page rendering, especially when it's a benchmark by Google themselves that says so. All browsers are already good enough."

I take issue with that. If I wanted mediocrity I'd just run Windows. I want to use software where the developers worry about performance, and try to improve it all he time; not just "Oh, just buy a new computer every year or two and it's fine."

Regarding the 16-bit color in Mobile Firefox -- 1) I must admit I'm surprised to read Firefox is doing this, and find it an odd decision. 2) I wonder how many phones have a 24-bit LCD? It used to be real common for them to be just 18-bit. These are supposed to dither so banding isn't noticeable though.

SimpliVity: Your legacy IT stack sucks, wanna switch it for our box?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Yup, true...

as dic.usa alludes to, there are already mainframes that do all this.

That said, if you have enough requirements that even one of these is reasonable, it sounds like it'd be nice. I don't know how well this company will do, because normal people are not going to rip out and replace their whole infrastructure just because the replacement is cleaner. But, for a new deployment or when it's replacement time for your current kit, it sounds like this'd clean things up nicely. Of course the devil is in the details -- some systems sound great in theory but in practice they turn out to be a bug-ridden disaster, or clunky, or slow, or whatever (see certain fiber channel cards for a prime example.)

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love IPv6

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

I'm using IPV6...

First, I enjoyed the story. Thanks!

I'm using IPV6 specifically for it's capacity to traverse NAT, I'm running Miredo (a free Teredo implementation) at home, along with an account on the only Dynamic DNS service I found that supports IPV6 AAAA records (freedns.afraid.org -- they have other domains though, I'm under linuxmaniac.net). I don't have control over my upstream to just set up port forwarding, so every once in a while it's real nice to be able to ssh into my home systems anyway. Teredo is incompatible with certain types of NAT (for instance, trying to contact one of my home machines now randomly craps out, while another works fine.)

I've found as well, Verizon Wireless hands out just an IPV4 address (used to always be public, but now sometimes is NAT'ed) on 2G or 3G. But 4G you get both an IPv4 address (usually NAT'ed) *and* a public IPv6 address. (Actually you get 2 IPV6 addresses; although Verizon Wireless doesn't support VoLTE (Voice over LTE) -- voice calls run over CDMA -- the texts, picture messages, and actual call setup run over LTE on this extra IPV6 address, so the CDMA radio only has to turn on when you're actually in a call, or of course when you're outside the LTE service area.) It does seem to me that when you're having to roll out a new network anyway would be a logical time to start implementing IPV6 -- in this case LTE, but if someone was still going from EDGE to HSPA+, I'd hope newer HSPA+ equipment would do IPV6 too.

Verizon wins approval for $3.6bn cable spectrum swap

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Glad some is going to T-Mobile

The cable companies have done this on almost every auction -- they give some vague lip service to maybe allying to build another telecom provider, they buy a chunk, then sell it to some telecom later.

But I'm glad some is going to T-Mobile -- although I have service from VZW, they and AT&T are the two largest cell cos in the US, they both tend to buy up spectrum "just in case" (i.e. they sit on it so nobody else can use it), and both keep rapdily raising prices as their costs to do business actually decrease. So I'm glad T-Mo is getting some instead of VZW just sitting on it.

ZTE gives LTE a lift with multi-mode data card

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Yup, LTE is great...

LTE is really pretty great. There's paper speeds and there's real speeds -- Verizon Wireless' LTE on paper will do 80mbps. A few people have reported over 60mbps. Personally, I haven't seen that but I can get 12mpbs any old time of day, and have seen 20-30mbps a few times. And the city I live in is big enough to have a university campus and loads of dorms and apartments, but small enough so there are very busy cell sites every mile or two, not cell sites every block like some cities have. The 4G is maybe 20% completed (by area), but luckily the rest is 100% 3G (3.1mbps EVDO Rev A), with real speeds of about 1mbps typically (2mbps+ in those cities that DO have a cell site every block.) They claim to have the 4G completed by 2013 -- it seems like a lot to finish, but a lot is those areas out west where one site may have a 50 mile range, so those last 80% might be like 10% of the cell sites.

One thing to watch for -- don't let 'em say "Well, LTE is expensive so we'll jack up your data prices!" I'm grandfathered on unlimited data for $30. Well, for a while they reduced it so the same $30 would get just 2GB, and NOW they have this family plan where an extra $30 per line gets you **0** data, that extra $30 a line is JUST for the privilege of sharing that bucket of data that you then have to pay through the nose for! I realize unlimited data is unrealistic (since some few are going to be a smartass and pull like 1TB a month) but why not just either 1) Provide unlimited but throttle heavy users. 2) Use the T-Mobile technique, when your data is used up the throttle kicks in. Those who want to pay for more data do, and the rest don't get a rude surprise when the phone bill shows up.

Twitter API outrage: Break our rules and we'll break app kneecaps

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

web services can change at will - especially free ones

Jeff11 beat me to it. I love free services such as twitter and gmail (not facebook so much). But:

1) If you have not paid anything for a particular service, there isn't any contract and they have no obligations towards you. If you don't like changes they have made, you really don't have any say in the matter (individually). Collectively you may have a say, but that is up to whether the provider is worried about general public opinion and keeping non-paying users happy, or if they are decided to focus on paying customers. It doesn't matter one bit if you put a lot of effort into this service -- as a user, setting up a big wall or contact list or lots of photos or what have you; or as a developer putting in a lot of effort developing a nice app or service or meta-service or whatever. That's a lot of effort on your part but on it's own doesn't make the service provider a penny.

2) Web services really are not like desktop software; if you don't like a particular software upgrade, you can choose to keep using the older version of the software. Not so for web services (in general... of course as you move from gmail or yahoo to some php software sitting on you web server, you CAN keep using the older version.. just be careful you don't run software full of security holes!)

3) They may even go out of business, or discontinue your service! I don't see twitter or gmail going down the tubes any time soon, but I've seen several cases where someone is like 1) "That was the only copy of my website!" (after Geocities went down), 2) where someone made online backups but the backup company went tits up, 3) where someone bought rights restricted audio (from Major League Baseball!) and once MLB decided to end that experiment, they didn't even keep the rights restriction server up a single extra month, OR refund the money for the audio!

Fisker Automotive probes second flaming eco car

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"If you are used to 5l plus V8 + engines then yes, I guess a 2 litre 4 cylinder engine is small, but for the average world user 2 litre is still at the larger end of engine sizes"

Yup these are being sold in the US. We like our big engines. Also, the Karma is sold as a luxury sports sedan, they didn't want it to fall flat because of the battery running flat.

"Reading their blurb, if the engine is only used to drive the generator, why does it need 2 litres?"

Well, since the batteries are flat by this point, the only source of power is the engine. Probably there's considerable battery weight as well.

"didnt the GM EV1 work just fine in the 1990s? "

Not particularly, it used lead acid batteries and was VERY heavy. There were considerable concerns about battery life (more so than for more modern batteries.) The range was 70-100 miles, if you want a straight electric car you can get a Leaf, but I'd rather have a little engine (not 2 liters -- actually little!) just in case my juice runs out.

Apple's lone wolf approach to security will bite it in the rear

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge
Happy

"Indeed, as much as I and others have criticized Apple for its obsession with controlling the end-user experience from software to silicon, this same approach may actually make its systems more secure than more open approaches."

Well, security through obscurity doesn't work. But, by traditional definition IPhones are not even a smart phone (a smart phone allows you to install your own software, as opposed to IPhone that only permits software via an app store. And, if you say "installing from an app store counts", then almost every phone Verizon's sold the last 10 years is a smartphone, including Motorola Razr and a whole raft of generic flip phones. However, this restriction in app source does reduce the available sources of insecure code.

"What rubbish. It is the NT based OSs that are designed with 'security baked in' and UNIX that has to bolt on things like proper access ACLs and SEL to provide full security. Windows passed things like FIPS certification almost out of the box whereas Linux required massive changes to be made."

Not rubbish at all. The NT kernel had ACLs all along, but they were not used properly for about a decade (out of the box). One specific version of NT4, services turned off, no network connected, on a specific Compaq server, met a mid-level FIPS -- FIPS requires the EXACT software, hardware, and configuration or the FIPS cert is invalid. This was not a practical setup (an NT4 server with no network connection?), it was just put together since certain gov't contracts required the mid-level FIPS certification. That Linux version with "massive changes"? That had a *higher* FIPS certification than that NT4 version could achieve; to acheive the mid-level FIPS rating that NT4 got, more or less for Linux you just have to turn off unncessary services then spend loads of money to have someone certify it (then, technically, never patch it since the FIPS cert is only as-shipped). Highest FIPS levels are not really useful for a general purpose system; they do not even permit the system to tell you things like the amount of RAM available, CPU load, or free disk space, because these numbers could be modulated by an app as a rogue communications channel.

Realistically, UNIX is as secure as it is now because UNIX had it's "Microsoft moment" (viruses severe enough to disrupt entire networks) in the late 1980s. So they made sure to *use* ACLs, privilege seperation, and such and make sure the shipped default is secure then; Microsoft didn't have their big virus problems until 10 years later, and got to a much later start shaping up the rest of Windows to take advantage of the NT kernel's security. UNIX did tend to encourage following reasonable programming practices more than Windows of old, though; I'm sure Microsoft has had a bugger of a time increasing security without breaking each and every 1990s-era Windows app that people are still using.

"This is largely why Linux servers are a much larger security risk than Windows ones: http://www.zone-h.org/news/id/4737"

This post has nothing to do with the rest of what you are talking about; ok, so some random kernel bugs were exploited. No amount of ACLs and such will help if your smashing the kernel stack or getting your code to run in kernel mode or what have you.

Text-and-drive teens ratted on by AT&T mobe tech

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

insurance problems and texting

"Actually, more like 'You can't hand your can/bottle/&c. to your passenger when you see blue lights'"

Oh no, when the cops here are bored enough, they've even tried hassling people for passengers for having open cans of SODA (although the "open container" law is obviously *meant* for alcohol, it doesn't specify it here...) Some police or other will abuse any law passed, so please be careful about what you pass! Thanks.

That said...I'm all for some way of preventing texting while driving. It's incredibly stupid and should not be done. (I've not seen anyone doing it here, except at a red light; I don't care if someone is texting when they are at a dead stop.) To prevent temptation, the simple thing to do (much simpler than AT&T's plan) is probably an app to start up when you are about to drive, that'd simply suppress text/tweet/facebook notifications, then there is no temptation to respond. It's store-and-forward, they'll all be waiting when your drive is completed!

As for insurance... yeah, I doubt these black boxes are particularly valid either. I mean, there are some people who gun it at every light, swerve in and out of traffic constantly, and so on, and this is probably less safe than normal driving. But, two HUUUUGE problems:

1) There's these old farts here who are completely oblivious. They drive 10MPH under the speed limit in town, and about 20MPH under on the highway. At stop signs, they'll look if an intersection is clear, then pull out like 10 seconds later (even if by then the intersection is no longer clear!) They pull right in front of cars (then don't try to accelerate to match their speed), change lanes without looking, and so on, completely oblivious to the near accidents they almost constantly cause. BUT, they are driving slow and smooth -- BAM! LOW INSURANCE RATE!

2) I tend to accelerate briskly onto the interstate -- it's safer to have a little extra speed and coast at the end than to find out you don't have enough speed to match the flow of traffic and find a gap. Some jerks will slowly cruise up this ramp, and try to merge into 70MPH traffic at 55MPH, ignoring the yield sign at the end of the ramp. These cars who fail to yield to the 70MPH traffic would get a lower rate because they are not accelerating "excessively", AND would cause insurance penalties to the cars on the interstate who have to abruptly brake or change lanes to avoid the badly driving car.

Nokia CEO: No shift from Windows Phone

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Android has NDK too...

"With WP8 allowing native C++ apps it will run even quicker than now. Virtual Machine crap doesn't have any place on a mobile device, code that compiles to ARM machine code will always be faster and use less battery. It's just not as easy to write."

*shrug*. Android has NDK (Native Development Kit), allowing native apps. Straight ARM code. Of course, then your code will not run on the MIPS tablets (those like $80 tablets run MIPS CPUs.) I have a video player on my phone that uses some heavily optimized ARMv7 code to do the actual video decoding; it'll play a video at like 20% usage that maxes out the CPU using the normal player.