* Posts by RJ

78 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2010

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FSF slams Mozilla for 'shocking' Firefox DRM ankle-grab

RJ

Re: I can see where the FSF is coming from

How can you carry on the fight by giving in?

By giving in to this and h.264 they have shown that they are not the idealists they claim to be and that they can be cowed now, so why not cowed in the future?

All you have to do is threaten them with marginalization and they will fall like a house of cards.

Apple seeks anti-snoop display patent

RJ

Mouse?

Because ALL my mice have video screens on them, if only I had a transparent hand...

Schmidt explains the Google way to self-erasure

RJ

Scroogle is nice but.

Scroogle is very good but if you want to hide yourself from google all the time and are using Firefox check-out the 'Google-Sharing' extension.

It works on the main search site but also every time you interact with google (say, for example when you run across their analytics web bug)

Sky-high web app performance gauge reaches into browsers

RJ

Force of habit

I usually post anonymous, force of habit.

You mentioned the list of monitoring apps but when I asked for a few examples you didn't give an answer apart from "Oh, there are loads of them".

I know there are loads of them, I know most of them can be scripted up and modified, If you want you could even write some scripts to pull it all together into one system.

I do not believe you can do all the above to the same level of quality without lots of faffing about. In your case you didn't mind the time expenditure, in my case I do mind. Give me a well integrated setup anyday...ok, usually.

Javascript: Again each to their own on that one, compared to the plethora of other JS stuff on the modern web ta few pings is small potatoes in my mind.

The GUI: This goes back to the time / faffing around aspect but I highly doubt you could match their current GUI functionality without a very significant time investment.

I was going to list each point but again I keep coming back to the thought. How can you make a decent comparison without having experienced it from both sides?

We have used various unix tools (including tail!, sorry for not listing every possiblity under the sun), various open source apps (Nagios + plugins etc.) and we have also used this site (and scoutapp for other ones).

From our perspective this beats the previous setup hands down, and this is coming from a bunch who HAVE done both which was why I replied to your original post in the first place.

RJ

Maybe

but they have two big disadvantages to my mind

* Not integrated into one slick User Interface.

This is the huge one for me, if you haven't used the RPM interface then it may not be obvious but a smooth UI makes things so much easier.

* Not SaaS

In this case is quite important I think because I do not want to spend my time maintaining servers not directly used by my primary applications plus all the overhead of DBs, storage etc.

Having said that I would be interested to know exactly what free in-the-repo applications you think are comparable to New Relic, maybe I will learn some new ones.

DARPA wants weapons-grade military cloud computing

RJ

so....

Take a normal cloud, declare it "milspec" and up the price by 1000%?

CERT warns of critical industrial control bug

RJ

Define "Ain't broke"

Yes, I was half-joking. I can easily imagine the circumstances in which they were written.

However after Stuxnet I would hope these companies would be making security a hell of a lot tighter and things like using ActiveX would count as "Broke so bloody well fix it"

RJ

ActiveX?!

Oh christ almighty, why?

Nvidia dollars lifted by Intel's Sandy Bridge ramp, payola

RJ

Hehehe

Love the quip about buying the hachet in AMD

FCC commish to lobby for Comcast-NBC giant she OK'd

RJ

Heh...

Not even trying to hide the corruption anymore.

Tim Berners-Lee: Coalition mustn't be 'lazy' on open data

RJ

Prat

I was going to go into detail about why security wasn't needed or even envisioned to be needed back then (hint; it is the same reason email spam exists so easily) but I think I would be wasting valuable neurons.

So I shall just sum it up by saying:

A) that "the web" as it was back then is not "the web" we have now

B) You are a berk.

So, what's the best sci-fi film never made?

RJ

And the other one

I never managed to get into that trilogy.

I think that Pandora's star and Judas Unchained would make a fantastic series though.

Android book-scan app tames untidy tomes

RJ

Heh

If your first-editon Gutenberg Bible is sitting on a shelf amongst a plethora of other books you have a bigger problem than a possible sticky label :p

Facebook 'open sources' custom server and data center designs

RJ

Not being a data center expert

Is that some sort of basic airlock in a hot isle / cold isle setup in the second picture?

Anonymous hacks Sony PS3 sites

RJ

Much as I usually enjoy the actions of Anonymous

Their bombastic "Thou hast gained our attention, tremble brief mortals" spiel does make them look bloody stupid.

Google 'clamps down' on world of Android partners

RJ

Uh

All he said was that you get consistent quality which is what McDonalds offers.

He never made a commend on how good that quality was...

Man Utd sues supporter over corporate client 'data theft'

RJ

If you take security very seriously

You stop it getting nicked in the first place you twunts. Not Streisanding (Yes I am inventing a new verb; Don't worry, I am British and therefore have the right) the material after the fact.

Play.com spam points to malware downloads

RJ

Wow

They really want me to be assured don't they.

If they really want me to be assured don't partner with muppet companies that give out my details through incompetence!

ECJ gender ruling 'could throw insurance into turmoil'

RJ

It is simple

In the beginning the insurance companies will just assume the worst case and gouge people for premiums.

For example all drivers will be treated as male when applying for driving insurance.

All like insurance applications will be treated as female.

After that market forces (if you beileve in that sort of thing) should sort out those with the better algorithms who can offer the lower premiums.

Pensions going to be a bit of an arse though.

Google and Facebook named as Twitter suitors

RJ

Oh bloody hell

A pick between Mephisto and Beezebub...

Surely there will be some anti-trust checks before either of those two buy it? Facebook & twitter is basically the entire western social-network ecosystem

Oracle and Java: Mobile dev FAIL dooms Ellison's future

RJ

Ruby on Rails is not a language

Ruby = Language

RoR = Web Framework written in and for ruby

C'mon reg hacks, it aint that hard.

Disabled dude demands EA improves gaming access

RJ

Because the game must support it

We used to get keyboard remapping for free in practically every PC game....remember those days? Now that half of them are console ports we seem to have forgotten that.

Programming a game to allow input remapping is not difficult and will benefit many people apart from those who need it due to disabilities.

Regarding special inputs. Let me see, it would require expensive custom hardware (I doubt the market is very big) plus a software layer sitting between the OS and the Game to intercept commands and change them to what the game expects.

So you would have to create profiles for every game.

And on a more technical note, which I am not entirely familiar with. How would anti-cheating mechanisms react to an application intercepting game inputs?

There are so many problems with doing it outside of the game that I think it is worth asking the game devs to pull their fingers out and add a simple feature in the game layer where it belongs.

Microsoft lands big handbag on Google's copy kisser

RJ

Very good point

How do microsoft et al who do this know that the data is legit and coming from their toolbar rather than Mr. hax0rs botnet sending bad data from zombie PCs in an attempt to improve linking.

I can only assume that they cannot and have to use a server side algorithm to judge if the incoming data is kosher or not.

Aussie advertisers call for more bloat in web ads

RJ

NBN?

Er.....what?

Yahoo! kills its stuffed elephant

RJ

Reasonably good example...

You watching this Oracle?

Oracle promises to obey own OpenJDK rules

RJ
Stop

Fool me once...

...shame on me for trusting a company like Oracle the first time around.

Sat-spotters find secret payload launched by giant US rocket

RJ

There is no title

Ok, spooky as spy sats are I have to take my hat off to the black humour of the mission patch, very amusing.

(I am of course assuming the "devil" is referring to the older satellites rather than telling us that the devil is "American spy sats" rather than other ones.)

Tunisia plants country-wide keystroke logger on Facebook

RJ

They may be able to generate SSL certs

but, unless there is something special about Tunisian browsers these certs are not in the main browsers default trusted lists so they cannot stealthily spoof the SSL.

Mind you, the fact that any CA can issue SSL certs for any site is pretty much the defining problem of SSL and the Internet (The introduction of "Extended validation" due to greedy companies cocking up the original goal non-withstanding.)

Website with 10 million users warns of password theft

RJ

Bah

There should be a law that makes storing plaintext passwords illegal and a fine of X * number of accounts.

UK.gov descales public data with new corp launch

RJ

Yes Minister

All I can see in my head is the final episode of Yes Minister when Sir Arnold informs Sir Humphrey that he is going to take up the post of head of the "Center of freedom of information" to make sure that "It doesn't get misused"

Lawsuit says Oracle pilfered source code from competitor

RJ
Coat

I dont need no steeeenking title

As immature as this may be.

Please let them be guilty so Ellison looks like an even bigger pillock, Please let them be guilty so Ellison looks like an even bigger pillock, Please let them be guilty so Ellison looks like an even bigger pillock, Please let them be guilty so Ellison looks like an even bigger pillock, Please let them be guilty so Ellison looks like an even bigger pillock, Please let them be guilty so Ellison looks like an even bigger pillock.

That is all.

Gawker tech boss admits site security was crap

RJ
Go

Personally...

...I hope this ruins them and bankrupts them after they are unable to get the subscriber base back and advertising revenue falls through the floor.

Nothing personal, I don't use any of their sites and don't really care much about them in particular but hopefully if they crash and burn other companies will take note and actually spend some cash on their security and infrastructure which leaders to a generally stronger website ecosystem.

To Paraphrase Sir Humphry. The principles of good business sometime requires a human/company sacrifice.

'Blitzer' railgun already 'tactically relevant', boasts maker

RJ
Grenade

Title..title, I think I have heard of titles

When the depleted uranium / other heavy heavy stuff projectile is going at mach 5-7 You don't need explosives, kinetic energy does the job.

Salesforce wants some Ruby love

RJ

Well done Heroku

Not bad for 3 years work.

The website is a work of art as well.

Here is hoping Heroku influences Salesforce rather than Salesforce influencing Heroku

British troops in A'stan find festive minutes in Santa's sack

RJ

Voice...Data

It all uses satellite bandwidth so "just use skype" doesn't make it cheaper (compression aside).

Depends how the squaddies are billed I guess.

Popular sites caught sniffing user browser history

RJ

Gravatar

Maybe StackOverflow uploaded your avatar to the Gravatar service and linked it to your email?

White House forbids feds from reading WikiLeaked cables

RJ

Remember

This memo applies to home activities as well. Not just at wrk.

Ten... dirt-cheap voice phones

RJ

Voice phones?! As opposed to the non-voice phones?

Come on, can't we find a better, sensible name for non-smart phones?

Fujitsu shoots low with BX400 baby blade box

RJ

Eh?

875 quid for a wheelie stand?!

97% of INTERNET NOW FULL UP, warn IPv4 shepherd boys

RJ

Because it isn't instantaneous

Assuming we could get them all back, for the majority of them It would take at least months, probably years to

A) Get over the legal wrangles

B) Give the companies time to sort their networks out so that the reclamation doesn't destroy them.

Which means that, optimistically we would be getting a trickle of reclaimed /8s rather than a flood and we would already have run out before most of them were reclaimed.

Now, if we could instantly reclaim them all tomorrow, that would be different.

RJ

Oh for gods sake

This comes up again and again whenever this topic is talked about,

Even if every one of those very large legacy IP blocks were released by their companies it would gain us, at the current rate of allocation, an extra 3 or 4 months maximum.

Hardly "rolling in addresses"

Airport face-scan gate unilaterally imprisons traveller

RJ

Almost as bad as the iris scanners

"Please look at the screen"

"Please move closer"

"Please move back"

"Please move closer"

"Please move back"

"Please look at the screen"

"Please move closer"

"Please move back"

"Error, please check with staff"

Still, it gave us lot in the normal queue at Heathrow a good show as we watched all the business men playing Simon says.

Free software repository brought down in hack attack

RJ

Unsalted?!

Unsalted MD5? Muppets.

Yea yea, legacy app blah blah blah, should have updated the second the Rainbow tables were released.

Security and complacency do not mix

New RAF transport plane is 'Euro-w*nking makework project'

RJ

I love the fact

That you can refer to someone as the "Dark lord of the Sith" and have a large percentage of the population know who you are talking about.

Oracle sues partner after multiple break-ins

RJ
Grenade

Much as I hate oracle

It does seem that the warehouse management were complete muppets (Only securing the broken window first time around gave me a hearty laugh) and frankly deserve to get sued and lose, even if it means Oracle benefits.

Spin-out OS33 uncloaks in puff of cloud, lets tools hang out

RJ

Wait, what?!

"This WEB interface to OS33 is designed to work from Windows or Mac clients."

Er.....Do I even need to explain my confusion at this line?

Tory councillor arrested over 'stoning to death' tweet

RJ

Or just maybe

He is standing by his principles? You know, that the whole thing was a total miscarriage of justice based on the utter utter stupidity of a a broken system.

He got a CRIMINAL RECORD for gods sake! Not a fine, or a slap on the wrist, a CRIMINAL SODDING RECORD!

Motorola lands 16-patent countersuit on Microsoft

RJ

Yea but...

Their cases take place in courts that could be used to sort out proper criminal cases.

The Judges are not paid for by the suing companies right? They are paid from our taxes to preside over these cases arent they.

It adds to the backlog of legal work that the courts have to deal with.

Please correct me if I am wrong on any of the above; I try not to get too into legal administration.

RJ
Stop

God, it is like infants...

...getting into a temper tantrum fight then running to teacher to tell on each other...

If I were a judge I would seriously be getting pissed off at the burden the legal system is put under to sort out these cases.

Actually come to think of it, I am paying judges good money to preside over these colossal wastes of time and effort.

Child porn victims seek multimillion-dollar payouts

RJ

Leave it to the politicos!?

They will cave in because they dont want to be soft on kiddie porn

Best leave it to the courts where it can get a fair assessment.

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