* Posts by Quxy

417 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Oct 2009

Page:

Amazon Workspaces: A dish best served later

Quxy
WTF?

"Remote desktop"?

Erm... who would use a dog-slow pixel-copying remote desktop (or VNC) protocol between any two machines supporting X? Sure, I use RDP for accessing Windows desktops, but there's little use (and a lot of contraindication) for it otherwise.

Ex-NSA guru builds $4m encrypted email biz - but its nemesis right now is control-C, control-V

Quxy

Re: Missing the point

What I meant by "secure" (without using the expressions "web of trust" or PKI) is a high level of confidence in establishing the authenticity of the binding between a public key and its owner. Is Virtru proposing to set themselves up as a CA?

Quxy
Facepalm

Missing the point

In my experience (even my computer-illiterate relatives have been using email encryption since the early 90s) there are two major "user friendlyness" issues with existing public-key email encryption that have limited its widespread adoption:

1. Secure distribution of public keys.

2. Anonymising meta-data (e.g. headers).

Since Virtru doesn't claim to address #2, and doesn't seem to do anything to make #1 easier, it's hard to see what this product does, other than introducing more proprietary, unvetted technology into an already Balkanised email ecosystem.

Snowden leak journo leaks next leak: NSA, GCHQ dying to snoop on your gadgets mid-flight

Quxy
Unhappy

"I am not a number! I am a free man!"

Unfortunately, as Huxley noted, the alert minds which correctly note this creeping tyranny "fail to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. Western society has already become obsessed with conformity to mass consumerism; conformity to police-state dictats should be relatively easy, as long as the growth of social media and popular entertainment doesn't slacken.

Hey Linux newbie: If you've never had a taste, try perfect Petra ... mmm, smells like Mint 16

Quxy
Pint

Re: Oldskoolers?

"Old school" for desktop environments probably means the Common Desktop Environment, not a newcomer trying to look like Windows 95. Gnome has its points, but CDE has been stable for several *decades* longer than Gnome 3...

Microsoft: Here, we'll make it easy for you Gmail lot. Meet our Outlook.com movers

Quxy
FAIL

Re: Proverbial move.

Indeed. I'm obliged to use Outlook 365 at one of my key clients, and while I can access it with a better MUA, it is still slow, unreliable, and generally painful to use. I can't see it being attractive for anyone who isn't already a diehard Outlook lover.

Dr Wolfram touts coding language to revolutionise mankind ... just like Wolfram Alpha did

Quxy
Facepalm

Re: Language?

"It's a programming language, Jim, but not as we know it"...

Hyenas FACEBOOK each other with their ARSES: FACT

Quxy
Coffee/keyboard

"a collection of hyenas' bottoms"

How appropriate. Mister Cat, you owe me a new keyboard!

Call yourself a 'hacker', watch your ex-boss seize your PC without warning

Quxy
Unhappy

Yes, it will be overturned...

...but by then, Corey Thuen and his company Southfork Security will be history. That's the whole point here: Battelle's legal team knows exactly what they're doing.

It's NOT an iPad - but that's FINE: I learned to LOVE Microsoft's Surface 2

Quxy
Thumb Down

Re: ring ring

You mean that hefty tablet with two cooling fans, twice the price of the Surface 2, and half the battery life of my laptop? Double meh.

Quxy
Thumb Down

Meh.

Nicer hardware with the same old software limitations. Call me when I can install the OS and applications that *I* choose, and then I'll find a good use for a six-pack of them in my office.

Surface 2 MYSTERY: Haswell's here, so WHY the duff battery life?

Quxy

Re: @Quxy "occupied by competitors who both have OSes....."

I was only running 64-bit Windows 7 (one standalone, one in a VM), and my browser was Chrome in both cases. No flash (although the OSX flash problems seem to have eased up lately). But most of that time was spent in CAD software (i.e. lots of little files) and Microsoft Office, not web browsing. The improvement in power management must have been provided by the host OS, not by the applications.

Quxy
Unhappy

Must Try Harder

As an speed test experiment, I installed Windows 7 on both a bootable partition and as a VM on my MBA. While I found that most benchmark speeds were about the same between the two (graphics is slower, file access is faster), battery life varied remarkably. While I get 8 hours of battery life using the VM, I get less than 6 hours booted into Windows 7.

My impression is that Windows has always had lousy power management, but simply comparing one Windows laptop to another provided no real frame of reference (quiet down there in the back, you penguins). But Microsoft is attempting to enter a field occupied by competitors who both have OSes with several iterations of serious power management refinement behind them, so it's hard to hide their (relative) inexperience in mobile computing.

Fraudster bought names and address from Experian, says Krebs

Quxy
Pint

One downvote?

My sincere apologies to the one lawyer reading El Reg!

Quxy
Unhappy

Credit bureaus give lawyers a good name

The headline should read "Experian got caught selling names and address to another fraudster".

Unfortunately, with most of middle and upper-class Americans in their (presumably compromised) records, this has the potential to turn into a *much* bigger problem than it is at present...

Hybrid Windows laptop-slash-tablet fails to halt toilet-bound PC market

Quxy
Pint

Re: hybrid cum-tablets demand

...and don't forget water resistance and easy washability!

So you want to develop for Windows 8.1? Visual Studio 2013 is HERE

Quxy
FAIL

Re: It's almost as if Microsoft doesn't want developers

Free? Who said anything about that? As I said, I *own* the Microsoft development tools needed to do the job.

It's just that trying to use VS to quickly write a simple USB driver and device GUI is like using a city bus to drive to the corner store. It's possible, but a bicycle is quicker and easier.

Quxy
Unhappy

It's almost as if Microsoft doesn't want developers

It's hard to fathom why Microsoft sets the bar so high to software development on Windows. Between killing third-party tools and raising the price (and complexity!) of their own bloated offering, I get the feeling they're trying to lock out everyone but the developers who *have* to develop for Windows and those who see a bigger reward for Windows programs.

Just today I had to quickly write a simple GUI to control some weird USB devices we received. Although I have a VS licence, it was quicker and easier to install Linux in a VM and use Qt and libusb to develop an application. Total time: about 4 hours. Why must every bit of code in Windows turn into a huge, fscking development project? Even OSX is easy by comparison.

Torrent site isoHunt to close

Quxy
Unhappy

"Remained faithful"?

isoHunt has been pretty useless for the past year or two. Google and private trackers have been far more useful at finding the vast array of (e.g. Japanese) content "not available" in region 1.

Microsoft saddles up for a ride on Sky Giraffe

Quxy
Facepalm

100% buzzword compliant

No indication of what they actually DO, but they tick all the IT manager boxes:

"Sky Giraffe can generate a powerful task-specific app in 15 minutes and immediately deploy it to specific end users to increase productivity... Our platform is built with best practice encryption standards in order to protect all of your sensitive data... Employees with different mobile devices, versions, and operating systems are no match for SkyGiraffe... The SkyGiraffe Studio, Mobile App, and Cloud components all work together in concert to provide exceptionally powerful and up-to-date information to your workforce."

Screw Internet-of-Things: Boffins build Internet-of-Sound UNDERWATER

Quxy
Pint

Re: Radio

No kidding. I designed wildlife telemetry gear back in the 70s, and the best that we could do for fish (a common requirement) was HF frequencies that only worked when the fish were near the surface.

More recently though, I put together a proof-of-concept system using audio-frequency OFDM modems, and we were able to get 14,400 baud TCP/IP over PPP for several km in the north Atlantic. That's certainly the tack the UB researchers are taking.

However, given the attenuation issues we ran into, I suspect that the (~1 baud) submarine VLF folks aren't feeling threatened yet.

Kids hooked up with free Office subs at Microsoft-addicted schools

Quxy
Thumb Down

Microsoft education grants?

Yes, I'm quite familiar with these "grants", having worked on several school committees to apply for them. They *always* have strings attached, which *always* involve formally exposing students to Microsoft products.

As an AC recently remarked, Microsoft's primary responsibility is to their shareholders... and it shows.

Quxy
Pint

Wow...

That's a somewhat more vivid image than the proverbial camel's nose under the tent...

Quxy
Unhappy

Many tools for the job?

Students that have been taught to THINK will easily figure that out for themselves!

But of course that's more work than training them to use the latest office software -- and Microsoft isn't going to fund actual education.

Laptops Snowden took to Hong Kong and Russia 'just a decoy'

Quxy
Pint

le Carré?

Too late, he already published "The United States Has Gone Mad" in 2003.

Quxy
Facepalm

Enraged Congressmen?

For the past couple of months they've been so busy poking *each other* in the eye (sorry, but I can't keep images of the 3 Stooges out of my mind) that they have no idea what is happening outside of the USA.

Quxy
Thumb Up

Re: Character assassination

Ah... when security fails, fall back on the things at which you *are* an expert...

Microsoft Office on iPad: U can't touch this (yet) says Ballmer

Quxy
Thumb Down

OneNote?

If Microsoft expects to drum up any interest in their touch-enabled Office apps, they're going to have to turn out something several orders of magnitude more advanced than OneNote. I gave it a try, but compared to something like the popular Note Anytime app, OneNote feels more like an example from a "how-to-write-touch-enabled-apps" programming tutorial than a real product.

Ballmer intends to remain on Microsoft board after end of CEO gig

Quxy
Pint

Works for me!

The post is required, and must contain letters.

Dell ‘xpands XPS line with 'WORLD-FIRST' MEGA-RESOLUTION laptops

Quxy
Unhappy

Re: WTF? Quad HD?

Normal marketing specmanship.

2560x1440 = 4 x 1280x720 720P "HD" TV resolution.

Quxy
Pint

Yep!

When it came time to retire my T61P (1920x1200), the best replacement I could find at Lenovo was the heavy, expensive W520, with a lower-resolution (1920x1080) display. So I switched to a 15" MacBook Pro, with a 2880x1800 screen, better build quality and battery life -- at a lower price. Fedora installed and ran without any issues... the only downside is working around the lack of a middle mouse button!

CERN releases retro 'Line Mode' browser

Quxy
WTF?

Retro?

What is so "retro" about a text-mode HTML browser?

I use Elinks on a daily basis (even with X, graphical browsers suck at the other end of a 50ms link) and find it an indispensible tool.

NSA: Yes, some of our spooks DID snoop on overseas lovers

Quxy
Pint

It was a test exercise...

Those without the requisite skills to adequately cover their tracks were relieved of their espionage responsibilities, on the grounds of incompetence.

Microsoft keeps Skype content safe from police data slurping - for now

Quxy
FAIL

Nothing but weasel words

When you parse their actual statement, it becomes clear that it's nothing more than meaningless noise:

"not yet" (but they're just about to)

"handed over" (because it's self-service)

"the content" (but metadata is fine)

"any Skype conversations" (what about video and text messages)

"to regular" (of course, no one who asks is "regular" LEO)

"law enforcement" (but the NSA isn't a LEO)

"requests" (why make a request when you already have a back door)

"in the last six months" (before that, well...)

Chinese building orbital lab by 2023 to make 'space medicine'

Quxy
WTF?

"Not for weapons, honestly"

The subhead is a bit incongruous, innit? The Middle Kingdom has long had its human rights issues at home, but since when has it ever showed particular interest in weapons proliferation? The USA and Russia are (by far) the big weapons manufacturers for the world. OTOH, China seems to be more interested in leapfrogging the West on emerging technologies, so space medicine seems perfectly reasonable.

US House Republicans: 'End net neutrality or no debt ceiling deal' – report

Quxy
Unhappy

The corporate plutocracy

Sigh... Congress (especially, but not limited to the Republicans) used to at least *pretend* that its proposed legislation was for the benefit of the average person. Now they've even dropped the pretense. Guess they figure that with single-digit public approval ratings, the PR isn't worth the effort.

Microsoft: Surface a failure? No, it made us STRONGER

Quxy
Facepalm

"superior hardware-software integration"?

Gah... What about USER-software integration?

Jury reckons Motorola wasn't 'fair and reasonable' to Microsoft

Quxy
Thumb Down

Re: "a Washington jury had agreed with Microsoft's claim"

The USA is a republic of largely self-governing states with widely divergent cultures and parochial self-interests. In the US, local and state interests will almost always trump national interests. For the Seattle-area jurors, Motorola and Google could just as easily have been Korean, when compared with well-known and admired hometown companies like Microsoft.

Quxy
Facepalm

"a Washington jury had agreed with Microsoft's claim"

Well, imagine that! I would hardly expect them to disagree with Boeing or Amazon either.

Qualcomm reveals 'Toq' smartwatch

Quxy
Facepalm

So amazingly primitive...

... that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

'Kim Jong-un executes nork-baring ex and pals for love polygon skin flick'

Quxy
Unhappy

Re: @ Quxy: Why I'm Skeptical.

Yes, from my contact with Christians living in Dandong, I'm pretty sure that Hyon Song-wol and her colleagues were shot because of the Bibles. I seriously doubt if there's any pr0n involved at all.

Quxy
Unhappy

Re: Propaganda

Trust me, it's even more bizarre than reported. Like Jake, I have ties to DPRK, and the information that emerges quietly is stranger than what is published in the media. We all know that it's just a matter of time before it implodes dramatically; but everyone's question is how many innocent people that process will take with it.

NSA: NOBODY could stop Snowden – he was A SYSADMIN

Quxy
FAIL

Embarrassment != Damage

As Obama inadvertently pointed out, it's all about "our need to maintain the public trust"; which is almost completely unrelated to any immediate or potential danger to the citizens of the US, who these clowns are ostensibly elected to protect and support.

Intel ships high-powered C++ compiler for native Android apps

Quxy

Read the linked FAQ

"No. The Intel C++ Compiler for Android OS produces code that runs only on Android devices that use Intel processors."

Happy birthday MIDI 1.0: Getting pop stars wired for 30 years

Quxy

MIDI's odd baud rate

31,250Hz was chosen because it was a unit fraction of the 4MHz clock used in the cheap 8-bit MCUs of the early 80s. I designed several commercial instruments with MIDI interfaces, and recall that we didn't use a separate UART chip (which required odd, higher-frequency crystals), but simply divided by 128.

YouTube Wars: Microsoft cries foul as Windows Phone app pulled again

Quxy
Trollface

Re: Another Executive Order Coming?

On that basis, I think that Google's got this one covered...

Quxy
Pint

Despise nothing more than a hypocrite?

Then you must *love* Microsoft's "one API for us, a different one for you" SOP.

Quxy
FAIL

#WindowsRage

Honestly, after Microsoft's recent anti-Android campaigns and scorched-earth litigation against Android OEM licensees, what sort of response do they *expect* from Google? Why would Google offer them any concessions whatsoever, instead of strictly following the letter of their published rules? I'm no particular fan of Google, but it's rather rewarding to finally see Microsoft come up against someone that they can't simply push around.

Feds arrest rogue trucker after GPS jamming borks New Jersey airport test

Quxy
Facepalm

"Dangerous and antisocial technology"

In Newark, GPS jammers are the least of your worries in *that* category...

Page: