* Posts by corestore

419 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jul 2007

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Coming soon: the girl with liquid eyes

corestore

Damn..

You beat me to it!

Android's Gingerbread finagled onto iPhone

corestore

Put iOS...

On Nexus One, if you're clever. Then I'll be impressed.

FBI 'planted backdoor' in OpenBSD

corestore

I'm skeptical

1. With many eyes, how could the backdoor have escaped discovery?

2. The consequences of discovery would be severe for all concerned; not worth the risk.

Show me the code, or I'm not buying this.

WikiLeaks' Assange to be indicted for spying 'soon'

corestore

No, you don't understand...

A conservative Supreme Court is *more* likely to stick to the guns of the first amendment; few things are more sacrosanct in the USA than the freedom of the press. A more liberal SC, they would be the ones to see the Constitution as a 'living, changing document' and more likely to reinterpret it to suit the mood of the day...

corestore

A British plane?

Pan Am? British? American, packed full of Americans.

Primary school miss flashes porn vid at kiddies

corestore

Still wrong...

"The "stunned class ... stared open-mouthed at the screen as they watched porn stars engage in an explicit act", the Mail fapped".

That's nailed it...

ICO makes mincemeat of nativity data protection piffle

corestore

I would have arrested...

...the head teacher for 'conduct likely'!

NASA sells PC with restricted Space Shuttle data

corestore

No news there...

Not so long ago, I bought an SGI Onyx on eBay. Previous owner had never managed to get it going due to not being able to boot SU due to hardware password. I, being more of a hacker, removed the HW password without too much trouble, got it booted... and found it was a server from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, with a LOT of interesting stuff on it!

Apple says no to Android-oriented iPad mag

corestore

When did you last see...

.... an advert for a BBC show on ITV?

Difference is of course, ITV don't own your TV; Apple control the horizontal and the vertical...

VAT fraudster gets 9 years for refusing £40m bill

corestore

This is supposed to be justice??

So, this guy, who has committed a non-violent 'paper' crime (a large one, admittedly), against an institution rather than an individual, gets a total of 24 years - apparently because the victim is HMG and they didn't get the money back. Boo hoo.

Does anyone else see a slight problem with this? 'Justice', for instance? That's literally more than many murderers and almost all rapists end up serving!

'Super-secret' debugger discovered in AMD CPUs

corestore

Single-step & trace...?

That's no bloody fun without blinkenlights!

Comet bomber flyby pics show spaceball belching ancient dry ice

corestore

I don't believe you.

"Professor Jessica Sunshine"??

You made that up. Admit it.

The forgotten, fat generation of Mac Portables

corestore

If you want to be really retro....

...and review an even worse machine, dig up an Apricot Portable.

They tried so hard... even built in voice recognition. I gave up on that very quickly, when it mistook 'fuckoff' for 'format'...

Still have it, still works as badly as ever: http://www.corestore.org/ApricotPort.JPG

Steve Jobs chucks Apple server biz from pram

corestore

If Apple pull the plug on hardware...

... and won't sell you any more, I think that gives businesses who have invested in Apple server systems the *right* to port OSX to new non-Apple hardware, to keep running - and damn their restrictive licenses.

EFF backs political site's Righthaven counter-suit

corestore

This sounds like...

... a similar business model to that of ACS in the UK. Whilst they may be able to get away with it in the UK, it strikes me as an activity that could be quite personally dangerous in a society where most people own guns...

ACS:Law's mocking of 4chan could cost it £500k

corestore
Grenade

On another note...

... the information commissioner has said that he can't close them down but he can fine them 500k - as has been reported.

Excuse me, don't you need some kind of license from the IC to handle sensitive commercial data like this? No license, no more ACS Law...

corestore

I'm sorry for...

...the feckless tech(s) who exposed the backup. Mr. Crossley sounds like he could be a nasty piece of work, and now he's been made a laughing stock; this is not a good combination, and bodes very ill for some unfortunate individual(s).

Nutter repairmen scale 1,768ft TV mast

corestore

I'm a fireman...

...and my dad was a linesman all his working life. He taught me there are only two heights; those that are enough to kill you, and those that probably aren't. 100ft or 1700ft makes no bloody difference at all. It's all psychology; what climbers call 'exposure' - you can get used to pretty much anything.

Craigslist: no plans to revive adult ads in US

corestore

How long...

...before US prossies figure out they can post their ads to overseas CL servers, and US punters figure they can find what they're looking for on those same servers?

ID fraudsters sell stolen Aus house

corestore

.uk vs. .au

As I recall, from the dim and distant past, Australia has a peculiar real estate system where the equivalent of the land register is ALWAYS legally right, even when it's wrong - this principle is written into their laws. So even if it was sold totally fraudulently, the innocent new owner is indeed the legitimate owner, and the original 'real' owner is indeed stuffed - stupid system IMHO, and arse about face from the UK system.

I still don't see how they can be out of pocket tho - there must be a whole raft of people they could claim the money from, or force to buy the house back for them - from the estate agents to the solicitors to the land registers, all of whom accept fraudulent paperwork.

First SMS Trojan for Android is in the wild

corestore

Maybe I'm being dumb but...

If this is happening without your knowledge or consent, how on earth can you be liable for any charges resulting? That's nonsense; no legitimate telco is going to be prepared to be seen as being party to scamming their customers that openly.

Blog service shut down by order of US law enforcement

corestore

Backups!

Offsite bloody backups! How many times must I bang that drum? If the host pulled the plug, for any reason or no reason... well there are thousands of hosts out there. Restore the backup and get the bloody thing back up. If your backup is incomplete, hack something together and start again. Not rocket science and doesn't take long. If the site is still down it means that either the admins WANT it down, or the admins have been FORCED, somehow, to keep it down. There's no site so toxic that no-one will host it.

I'd never heard of the site before now. Just saying, you know...

Kent police bring obscenity charge over online chat

corestore

I'm so glad...

...I got out of this bloody country and moved to America years ago. Now America has its faults too, I'd be the first to agree - but at least it has the 1st Amendment. The UK could seriously use one of those.

In fact, looking at what the authorities obviously think they can get away with in this case - an *obscenity charge* for words used in a *private conversation* (!!!!) - I'd say you need a 2nd Amendment too!

Pitchman fights to avoid jail for egging on supporters to spam judge

corestore

How can that be allowed?

"This apology cut little ice with the judge, who held that Trudeau had acted in contempt of court and sentenced him to 30 days behind bars and a fine."

I know nothing of Trudeau or the case, but... how in God's name can that be allowed in a so-called justice system? That is effectively - no, literally - making the *victim* the judge, jury, and prosecution. How can that be legal/consitutional?

If the judge feels there has been a criminal contempt of court, let the facts be reported to the prosecuting authorities. They can then, if the evidence is sufficient, bring a prosecution before a DIFFERENT judge and jury!

The notion that, in this day and age, a judge can effectively say 'He's pissed me off - lock him up!' is abhorrent.

IBM tears up open source patent pledge, claims FOSS

corestore

Couple of points...

1. "They published an entire Redbook chapter explaining how to use it. Then they deleted that chapter and came out with their own (much slower) mainframe emulator to compete with Hercules."

The lower orders in IBM loved Herc; the senior management took a very different view. They pulled the Redbook chapter in 2003 IIRC - it was many years later that zPDT was released.

2. re. Amdahl etc... IP licensing was a big issue there. I remember being told the tale of how ?Amdahl? at one point had to pay IBM some huge sum of money in order to *officially* look at one single page of IBM IP, *the contents of which they already knew*!

corestore

This goes back a while...

IBM are not showing their true colours, as some people have put it, for the first time. Way back 8 years ago there was the saga of the redbook, as I pointed out in this thread:

http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-390@vm.marist.edu/msg03989.html

If IBM *do* follow through and try to enforce patents against Hercules, the enmity they will earn from the FOSS community will be deep and not soon forgotten. 'Peace, Love, and Linux' my arse!

corestore

Your are...

You are Phil Payne and ICMFP :-D

Apple's draconian developer docs revealed

corestore

Pretty rich...

...from guys who got started phreaking the phone system

Wiseguys net $25m in ticket scalping racket

corestore

Dirty sneaky nasty...

...blatant profiteering, but I don't see where the actual crime has been committed; they bought and paid for the tickets, no fraud there; the promoters and artists got paid. They resold them at market price; no fraud there; the punters got the genuine tickets they paid for. They just charged what the market was willing to bear. Unless there's more to the story than has been printed, I can't see how this can be twisted into a criminal matter.

Racist content on US server 'within UK jurisdiction'

corestore

If a racist rants in a forest....

... and no-one is around to hear it, have they committed any offence?

"the offences of displaying, distributing or publishing racially inflammatory written material do not require proof that anybody actually read or heard the material."

On this perverse ruling, it would appear that they do. Proving it would be trivial; all it needs is a police officer to stand up in court and say 'yes I looked at the website and this is what it said..'. So why stretch the point with this ludicrous ruling?

Steve Jobs in secret NYT meet

corestore

Want...

...pics!

Apple's iPad - the tablet with the data center soul

corestore

Alan Kay...

I think the title says it all. Will this be a Dynabook worth criticizing? Kay was talking about the computer as media when the rest of the world thought it was a glorified calculator.

Steve Wozniak, your time is up

corestore

Jeeze what did Woz ever do to you?

Must have been something terrible. He's a geek, he's a nerd, he's a hacker. He wrote a LOT of early Apple software too, don't forget. And he was pretty fcked up after a plane crash in 1980 or so - cut the guy some slack, will ya. He's enjoying a life you or I would enjoy, if we were talented enough to do it.

Novell stacks Linux and Mono for mainframes

corestore

Excuse me?

"IBM has 100 per cent share of the IBM-compatible mainframe market at this point"

Tell that to Hercules; last I heard, somewhere between 20% and 25% of mainframes were Hercules emulators.

Unused phone lines to be taxed for rural broadband

corestore
FAIL

Two points...

1. How do they think they'll make people who only use the phone for voice, and have never had internet in their lives, pay a levy so others can have faster internet?

2. What do you think the chances are that the telcos will go along with this, given its blatant discrimination against fixed lines and in favour of mobile operators - who won't pay any levy at all? All phones or none! The telcos will keep this tied up in court for years before it gets implemented (if ever).

EFF seeks answers from Facebook police

corestore
Black Helicopters

Hmmmm

I've reveived (but NOT accepted) a couple of suspicious friend requests from very attractive women, with whom I had no friends in common and no obvious connection. I suspected some kind of spam or scam operation but... I wonder what they think I've done!

Gov demand for Governator to terminate PunterNet

corestore

Sorry Harriet

Unfortunately we have this tiny detail called the 'first amendment'. There's no such thing in the UK; Harriet would hate it.

Mainframe emulator goes commercial

corestore

Various points..

@ Matt Bryant: the nice thing is that Herc is open-source; it can't be killed or buried.

@ AC: The other indication of how IBM feel about Hercules is in how they handled the 'Redbook Saga'. IBM produced a Redbook on how to run Linux on S/390. This writer made use of Hercules in figuring out how to do this, and the book made quite a few references to Hercules. There was an entire chapter dedicated to running Linux on Hercules, for those who couldn't afford a real mainframe. A few months later, a revised version of the Redbook was issued. Silently; contrary to normal practice IBM did not increment the version number of the book. The revision consisted entirely of the systematic excision of any reference to Hercules, including the whole chapter. Go figure. Or see: http://www2.marist.edu/htbin/wlvtype?LINUX-VM.25658

Ammo rationing at Wal-Mart as panic buying sweeps US

corestore

For the record...

An 'assault rifle' is a fully-automatic rifle, usually of intermediate power as has been stated. Examples would include AK47 and M16. They've been heavily regulated in the USA since 1934 by the National Firearms Act, and several states ban civilian ownership of them completely. I don't own any.

An 'assault weapon' isn't a gun at all, it's a term coined by the anti-gun lobby to describe a weapon they have decided is 'politically incorrect'. They're essentially normal semi-automatic (one shot per trigger pull) rifles, but with extraneous features anti-gun people don't like. I own several of these.

Mike (expat Brit in the USA)

Apple and Snow Leopard take-downs - just say no

corestore
Black Helicopters

Never a truer word...

“If the Church of Scientology went into consumer electronics it would be Apple" - Dan Lyons.

(How to piss them both off in one sentence; is that the sound of black helicopters full of lawyers I can hear...?)

X-51 ordinary-fuel scramjet to fly in December

corestore

Another great Scottish invention

The Waverider concept was developed in the 1960s at Glasgow University and ASTRA, by Professor Nonweiler: http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~portwin/ASTRA/Waverider/waverider.html

Apple sued over shrink-wrapped Mafia death threats

corestore
Black Helicopters

He IS the MI5 guy...

AICMFP

Hackintosher to open US storefront

corestore

No, Mr. Ramsay...

Mr. Ramsay: go and look at the link to the Autodesk case I provided. Autodesk swore blind to the court that their software was licensed, not sold, and that the license included a 'no resale, not transferable' term; they tried to shut down a guy who was selling used copies of Autocad or whatever on ebay.

They failed. The judge ruled that the claim that the software was only licensed was a fig-leaf; there was no expiry date on the license, for instance, no further payments were due, the entire transaction looked like a straightforward one-time once-and-for-all sale. So the Doctrine of First Sale applied, and the Autodesk license terms restricting what the purchaser could do with the software after they bought it were invalid.

In view of this judgment, I think the 'Apple-only' term is distinctly shaky legally - in fact, I think the whole rather odd 'licensed, not sold' business practices that the software industry seems to have invented may need some rethinking, if the view that 'first sale' applies to shrink-wrapped software survives any possible appeal.

corestore

Not quite so clear-cut

"Mac OS X's Software License Agrement (PDF) is quite plain when it says "This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."

We're no legal eagles, but that seems rather straightforward to us."

I'm no legal eagle either, but while the license agreement is plain enough, there's no suggestion that it's inevitably valid or enforceable. A recent case involving a chap who resold Autodesk software on ebay; a Federal judge eventually ruled that this was ok, as, though the software claimed to be 'licensed' rather than sold, this legalese didn't change the fact that it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, and the Doctrine of First Sale applied; the chap did in fact OWN the software, and was free to resell it or do whatever he liked with it.

I can see how a similar judgment could quite easily result in a case involving OSX. You buy a copy of OSX, you own it - Apple doesn't get to tell what machines you can and can't run it on.

See: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/court-smacks-autodesk-affirms-right-to-sell-used-software.ars

Subsidized netbook model could sweep away 20 years of PC history

corestore

Cable boxes

"Take the simple case of US cable operators. Customers can only use the set tops they deliver and as a result the customer experience stays the same for an entire decade – with no innovation whatsoever. Also, cable packages are always so rigid. Do you want 100 or the 150 channel package – you can never just choose channels. You cannot decide how many tuners you have, and the prices are jacked sky high by the set top manufacturers who control the Conditional Access systems – and these systems are used to deny device competition."

So totally true. I've felt for some time that there's definitely a market for an 'open', probably open-source, STB/DVR; imagine if ReplayTV had build a system capable of accepting cable TV access cards, acting as competition to the established STB makers? Someone really needs to take a run at this market. I could do some serious ranting here, but I'll forbear.

Bloggers could squeak out of court reporting restrictions

corestore

More coverage of silliness

http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2009/03/press_and_google.php

Secret Aussie blacklist leaked

corestore
Flame

OK, next...

High time someone leaked the IWF blocked list...

Scareware scammers Rickroll Digg

corestore
Flame

WTF??

"As well as driving surfers to maliciously constructed domains, the trick also boosts the search engine ranking of hacker-controlled websites"

Excuse me, you should be worried about any website that ISN'T controlled by hackers!!

Would have thought the Reg knew better....

25 years of Mac - the good, the bad, and the cheese grater

corestore
Happy

The original, still running.

Here it is, not a Plus, not a 128k, just a plain original Apple Macintosh from the Corestore Collection, still booting and running on the 25th anniversary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_E4TaKtY4s

Mike

SonicWALL licensing snafu short-circuits protection

corestore
Pirate

Imbeciles

If that had affected my business, I would unhesitatingly reverse engineer the software involved and *rip out* the function that disables the software.

1. If you don't control your software, your software supplier controls YOU.

2. If a 'glitch' could cause this to happen, how long before blackhats have an exploit that lets them spoof the firewall into dropping?

Imbeciles.

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