* Posts by JohnFen

5648 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2015

Uncle Sam to its friends around the world: You can buy technology the easy way, or the Huawei

JohnFen

Re: Open Source

Two major computer security companies I've worked for have had nations as customers. In both companies, Russia and the US each required examination of our source code as a condition to winning the contracts. This isn't an unusual requirement.

JohnFen

Re: @Yes Me Let's not beat around the bush

It's not ironic, really -- that's just how naked capitalism is. Remember "capitalism" is a different notion than the "free market". The end goal of all hardcore capitalists is monopoly, with them as the monopolists.

JohnFen

What I find amazing

As an American, what I find amazing about the US government's campaign against Huawei is that they have yet to offer any real justification for it. Yes, they've made general accusations, but where are the specifics? Where is the evidence? Are they really thinking that "trust us" is an argument that works anymore?

Take your pick: Linux on Windows 10 hardware, or Windows 10 on Linux hardware

JohnFen

Re: Ramble warning - Microsoft

"to provide tools that enterprises will be needing."

Speaking generally, this is Microsoft's wheelhouse, and I really wish they'd just stay there. At least then their influence would be limited to the enterprise, where it won't affect me too much.

JohnFen

Re: Neither, please

I'm not saying that ARM-based laptops are worthless or anything, just that they aren't of interest to me, personally. I can understand how they would be interesting to others.

JohnFen

Neither, please

I'm not interested in those ARM laptops regardless of what operating system they're running, and I don't see the point in running Win 10 on anything, let alone on something like the Pi.

One click and you're out: UK makes it an offence to view terrorist propaganda even once

JohnFen

Re: I would argue...

"That the term word 'terrorist' and its associated forms should be expunged from the legislation"

Yes. Considering that "terrorist" and "terrorism" are words that have been applied to such a wide variety of things that they are essentially meaningless now, I have to agree.

JohnFen

Insanely broad?

So looking at stuff "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism" is forbidden? I'm sure the law must be more specific than this, but summarized like that, wouldn't just about anything qualify? Information about where tourist destinations are located, information about how to take public transportation or to drive, even just plain reading and writing itself would all be useful in committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism, for example.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine not a boot stamping on a face, but keystroke logging on govt contractors' PCs

JohnFen

Just no.

You literally couldn't pay me enough to put up with that sort of nonsense.

Hold horror stories: Chief, we've got a f*cking idiot on line 1. Oh, you heard all that

JohnFen

Re: Telewest

Heh, that reminds me of the time when I was sitting in an ice cream parlor with my (then high-school-age) daughter and someone decided to publicly scold me then and there for "robbing the cradle".

JohnFen

Re: Help desk

I know that's the perception, but I think it's wrong. Support is both a profit center (increasing the likelihood of future purchases by the customer) and a loss-prevention center.

JohnFen

Re: I've been on the receiving end of this

This. I have to admit that I've fired more than one customer in my day. In my own businesses, not as an employee in someone else's.

Google's stunning plan to avoid apps slurping Gmail inboxes: Charge devs for security audits

JohnFen

"in terms of spaffing user data to the four winds of the internet, they currently seem to be the least worst of the bunch."

Just wait. They're only now getting into the wider online advertising business, and have already shown every sign that they'll be no better than Google, Facebook, etc.

JohnFen

$15,000??

That's an insane pricetag.

Never mind that naked selfie scandal... Brazil lights the, er, kindling, dot-Amazon saga roars back into life

JohnFen

Re: I love these new TLD's

Heh, I do this as well! The new gTLDs are also worthwhile in terms of helping me to avoid dodgy sites -- if it's using one of the new gTLDs, I know to avoid it.

After Amazon's Bezos exposes Pecker, National Enquirer pushes back, promises to probe itself

JohnFen
Joke

Re: I've respected Bezos for risk-taking

"many men (and I'm one) do tend to think with the smaller of their two heads"

As someone once told me -- men have two heads, but only enough blood to run one of them at a time.

JohnFen

Dodging the accusation

“American Media believes fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr Bezos."

This is an interesting statement, as the accusation is not that AMI acted unlawfully in its news reporting. It's that AMI acted unlawfully by attempting to engage in extortion.

Methinks they're trying to move some goalposts here.

Apple puts bullet through 'Do Not Track', FaceTime snooping bug and iOS vulnerabilities

JohnFen

Re: The utter lunacy of Google

"I will consider sharing data with Google, Facebook and all the other grubby e-stalkers (not allow, mind, just think about it) if their executives make all their own personal data available publicly"

Not me. They can all fuck right off. I have no interest in seeing their personal data. I just want them to stop spying on me.

JohnFen

Re: End of Chrome?

"Adblock plus will stick work"

Sortof. Under the new scheme, even Adblock Plus will be more limited, as the new API seriously restrict the number of rules that can be used.

JohnFen

Re: Google DNT

Here's a reliable source -- Google itself: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2790761

"Most websites and web services, including Google's, don't change their behavior when they receive a Do Not Track request."

JohnFen

"I'm glad that someone is killing the thing because checking that box probably provided some with a false sense of security about the whole business."

Yes, getting rid of that setting is absolutely the right thing to do from a security standpoint. I don't often wish that the rest of the industry copies Apple, but this is a case where I do.

JohnFen

There's far too many to name and shame them. For any given site, if you simply assume that it ignores DNT, you'll be right far, far more often than you'll be wrong.

LibreOffice 6.2 is here: Running up a Tab at the NotebookBar? You can turn it all off if you want

JohnFen

You say that like it's a bad thing!

Compared to what most "modern" user interfaces have become, having a UI that is "a bit last-decade" is a desirable feature.

National Enquirer's big Pecker tried to shaft me – and I wouldn't give him an inch, says Jeff Bezos after dick pic leak threat

JohnFen

Re: The Enquirer..

" makes its living publishing "authentic" photos of bigfoot, UFOs, whatever conspiracy theories can be invented by its 3rd-rate "journalists""

True, but that was back when they had many more scruples than they have now.

JohnFen

"I was wondering whether it's even legal to publish a (stolen) picture of someone's penis without their authorization"

If a reasonable argument can be made that publishing the picture is legitimately newsworthy, then I believe that doing so would be legal even without the subject's authorization.

But I am not a lawyer...

JohnFen

It depends. Activities with journalistic merit have a much wide leeway than purely for-profit activities. In any case, this isn't that -- they didn't publish this information, so they can't have broken that law no matter what. Instead, they decided to engage in blackmail/extortion, which isn't legal under any circumstances.

JohnFen

Re: I have some questions

Right, but that defense didn't work so well when the old mob bosses tried it. I don't think it will work so well with these mob bosses, either.

JohnFen

Re: I have some questions

Perhaps, but it seems that the laws against extortion would unambiguously apply. Extortion is covered under multiple statutes, but here's one that seems on the money:

18 U.S. Code § 875. Interstate communications, paragraph D:

"Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

JohnFen

Re: I have some questions

This.

Assuming they didn't break any laws when obtaining the information, then they'd be on very safe ground if all they did was publish it. However, that's not what they did. They attempted blackmail instead.

JohnFen

Re: I have some questions

"Isn't blackmail against the law in the US?"

Yes, it is. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

One complicating factor is the fact that the owner of AMI is also a very close associate of Trump and has used their influence to support and protect him. Trump may have AMI's back on this.

JohnFen

Re: balls

But we can't take Bezos' balls. They're just too large.

JohnFen

Who says he didn't? Reporting blackmail to the police does not protect you from the blackmail. The best way to do that is to reveal the "damaging" material yourself, thus depriving the blackmailers of all leverage. You can do that and report it to the cops at the same time.

JohnFen

Good for Bezos

Although I think Amazon has become a negative force and should be avoided, and have an increasingly dim view of Bezos as a result, his response to this attempt at blackmail was perfect, and I fully support him on this.

Good on Bezos!

Leaky child-tracking smartwatch maker hits back at bad PR

JohnFen

Re: Iceland

I assumed he was referring to population, not land area. I still disagree with him, but Iceland is indeed a tiny country population-wise.

JohnFen

Re: "regular" people wouldn't be able to do it, and if they did, it didn't really matter.

"Yes it's a problem but what's the actual immediate risk here?"

Who knows? But if it were my child, I would absolutely not let them wear something like this. Perhaps the risk is low, but it still greatly exceeds the benefit.

JohnFen

Effectively an admission

Such weak and ridiculous defenses tell me that they can't come up with even a halfway reasonable-sounding defense. That's essentially an admission of fault.

Defaulting to legacy Internet Explorer just to keep that one, weird app working? Knock it off

JohnFen

Re: boggles the mind

"why do companies still cling to it?"

For the same reason that lots of companies run emulators for antique mainframe systems that stopped being menufactured or supported decades ago: it's cheaper and safer to do that than to have to rewrite a crapton of working code.

Treaty of Roam: No-deal Brexit mobile bill shock

JohnFen

Re: "retard ratio"

Yes. But even then, she would have won if she hadn't run such a horrible and insulting campaign. She did win the popular vote, after all, just not by enough to overcome the electoral college.

JohnFen

Re: Um, guys, only 1 month left

If you want to feel better about the conditions of your roads, take a look at the ones we have in the US!

Only plebs use Office 2019 over Office 365, says Microsoft's weird new ad campaign

JohnFen

Re: Nothing like having your work day extended a few more hours because 'The Cloud' is unavailable.

Yes, the enterprise has different rules, and whether or not a product is EOL can make a huge difference there. For home users, not so much.

JohnFen

Re: Nothing like having your work day extended a few more hours

In this case, my attitude is not coming from a "hate Microsoft" place. It's coming from a "hate software-as-a-service" place.

JohnFen

Re: Nothing like having your work day extended a few more hours because 'The Cloud' is unavailable.

I made my comment with the utopian assumption that updates never cause malfunctions. The reason that I consider continually-updating software to be bad is because it can change at any time in ways that make you alter your workflow. Anything that changes workflow is something that shouldn't be foisted on users unilaterally. Users should be able to choose if and when they want to make that change.

Service packs rarely changed workflows. They mostly fixed bugs, instead. That sort of update is fine.

JohnFen

Re: Horlicks

That's normal for Microsoft -- they long ago perfected the idea of having numerous licensing options that are so difficult to understand that Microsoft has to provide specialist consultants to help you figure them out.

It's almost like they're intentionally muddying the waters, hoping that you'll end up with a more expensive license than you really need.

JohnFen

Re: Nothing like having your work day extended a few more hours because 'The Cloud' is unavailable.

"Why go to a product, keeping your dependencies on said product that is essentially EOL."

Why not? If the program continues to meet your needs, does it matter if it's EOL or not?

JohnFen

Re: LOL

"But you have to price things carefully to avoid outright soaking of customers"

Who is doing that, though? With the subscription services I've seen, the total cost of the subscription is always greater than the cost of the same software as a native application. Even more so when you consider that it makes it impossible to decide to stick with an old version and no longer buy upgrades.

I certainly haven't seen all of the subscription offerings available, but I haven't actually seen one that doesn't seem like it's soaking the customers.

JohnFen

Re: LOL

"$10/mo for 1TB of cloud storage isn't a terrible deal."

It isn't? I don't use cloud storage, so I don't know the going rates, but $120/yr sounds horribly expensive to me.

JohnFen

Re: Microsoft office had everything I needed about 15 years ago

As an added bonus, 2003 doesn't have that damnable ribbon...

JohnFen

Re: Nothing like having your work day extended a few more hours because 'The Cloud' is unavailable.

"Do you want the continually updating Office 365 version of the client or the stationary Office 2019 version of the client?"

Stationary, please. Continually-updating anything is very ungood.

JohnFen

But it needs to connect to the internet at least once a month, or it goes into a "view only" mode.

JohnFen

If I had to use Office

If I had to use Office, I'd absolutely go with the native application rather than 365. With a native application, I can make sure that the application doesn't update (and therefore change) underneath me, and can do the update if/when I'm actually ready for it, providing greater stability in terms of usage patterns. Also, I don't need an internet connection, and I am more able to control whether or not the application phones home.