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Authored by: SilverWave on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 11:25 AM EST |
Had my first brush with a Win8 install this week...
Me: Win8...who
recommended you install that!?
Him: Ah our IT guy... thought it was a bit
odd... he is just
about to retire...
Me: Ah well that explains it
:-)
Christmas gift for
someone you hate: Windows
8
Learn
Windows 8 in 3 minutes (OK, it's really 4)
Win key+X gets
anything you need for support purposes. --- RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
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Authored by: squib on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 02:19 PM EST |
News pick link
[PJ: I haven't seen any
analysis on this, but it occurs to me, is it possible that Microsoft's products
are now so weird because it signed a patent license agreement with Apple and
promised not to copy anything exactly?]
Here's my
analysis:
Good OS's come from hybrid vigor
Weirdness
comes from : A result of inbreeding
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 02:19 PM EST |
Ekiga has a free SIP option (see link on their site).
And, someone commented in the linked to NewsPicks Article
that there is a way to encrypt the calls with another tool
that can be used with Ekiga 4.0.
Interesting.
These days, all VOIP calls should have encryption options
built-in by default.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 03:36 PM EST |
I have always believed that writing software is no different
than writing a story. I believed that because that was how
I did programming. You work out the story line in your head
and the code just flows via the keyboard. Often one has to
make revisions to make the plot work. Of course, you have
to be familiar enough with the language you are using such
that you think in that language. Stories and plots don't
get patents, why should software? Software is just an
expression of an idea born of free thought.
Just as software causes the bits in a computer to change,
reading a story cause the neural patterns in the brain
to change. Therefore, any story, speech, music, or any
other form of human expression should be patentable. I'm
sure already "they" are working on that one.
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Authored by: kg on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 02:22 AM EST |
Am I the only one who thinks it's ironic that the US bans
online gambling, along with some other online activities,
but is vehemently opposed to other nations seeking to
enforce their own mores and legislation within their
borders?
Yes, yes, it's about political repression, but what about
the US strong-arming other countries over IP/copyright
infringement issues that may not exist in said countries,
such as bit-torrent trackers, etc? The other countries
propose that they should be able to block content within
their countries. That at least is an honest recognition that
they can't pass laws that are valid globally. Not that I
agree with their laws, of course. I just find it very
ironic.
I hope the US and our allies are able to shut down this
attempt to strangle online speech. At the same time, it
would be nice if we would work to practice what we preach,
and not just apply it to other countries when it suits us.
---
IANAL
Linguist and Open Source Developer[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: YurtGuppy on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 10:46 AM EST |
One correction to the ITU article.
ITU is not just Telco. It also oversees radio (wireless), particularly
international spectrum allocations.
---
a small fish in an even smaller pond[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- ITU and control - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 10:55 PM EST
- Wireless Telegraphy - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 10:58 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 12:28 PM EST |
Slashdot has a story on the Darling Project that allows users to run unmodified
Apple OS X binaries on Linux
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/12/08/2330225/darling-run-apple-os-x-binaries
-on-linux
Why would anyone want to do that? Are there any serious Mac programs left not
available on Windows?
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Authored by: Gringo_ on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 06:34 PM EST |
link
The BSA needs
to be put out of
business. They are racketeering.
Check out the cast of
characters behind
this criminal organization and
you will find the usual
suspects, like
Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 07:51 PM EST |
Newspick
Avoid the Snow White syndrome,
thedroidlawyer
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Authored by: celtic_hackr on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 10:19 PM EST |
Since when is Germany "some countries"? Maybe I missed it, but the only
injunction I remember was in Germany.
News on the Apple Samsung war, and Judge
Koh's attempt at World Peace, here. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 03:50 AM EST |
[PJ: BT Chat is Bluetooth Chat. It's fun, no doubt. But I'm not sure
one can rely on the privacy of Bluetooth 100% in open court. It depends on who
else is there, how much they know about tech, and their ethics. It's said to be
about as effective as WPA2, which is good, but not
unbreakable.]
Perhaps I am out of date and somebody can point me
to more recent information. My impression was that currently there are no known
flaws with WPA2 and that if if you used 256 random bits for your passphrase
probably even the NSA couldn't crack it. (At least not until their Utah
facility is up and running. :-/ )
I am aware that monitoring a computer
authenticating with WPA2 using tools such as aircrack-ng will yield
information with which to do an off-line dictionary or brute-force attack on the
passphrase and that with modern GPUs or by using Amazon's EC2 a lot of fire
power can be thrown at that task. But I thought 256 bits of entropy (search
space > 10^76) was still a bit much to crack in a reasonable length of time.
Of course, if a passphrase of English (or any other language) words is used,
all bets are off.
(Just for the record, I have used base64 encoding of
output from /dev/urandom for passphrases. Then the argument becomes how good is
the entropy in the pool and whether the algorithm in the kernel is adequate.) [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 04:21 AM EST |
If sheer market numbers mean win then so be it.
Android Won, Windows Lost
I don't yet feel comfortable that
the stability or security of Android is really better than all others. I know
the headline says Windows Lost, but the article discusses all other brands as
also ran. The stability and security of the Android app market is also still
developing. More worrying tho' is the suggestion, picked up by a couple of
commentors, that when Google
rules the world I will get messages telling me how
to vote?![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 04:23 AM EST |
If sheer market numbers mean win then so be it.
Android Won, Windows Lost
I don't yet feel comfortable that
the stability or security of Android is really better than all others. I know
the headline says Windows Lost, but the article discusses all other brands as
also ran. The stability and security of the Android app market is also still
developing. More worrying tho' is the suggestion, picked up by a couple of
commentors, that when Google
rules the world I will get messages telling me how
to vote?![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: tiger99 on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 08:08 AM EST |
Link Well, that is a rather long and comprehensive summary of what
many of us have been expecting to happen soon. Comparison with the failed Kin,
for instance, and mention of the tipping point, which M$ have now very
clearly passed. If Ballmer does not have some new and revolutionary technology
up his sleeve, I predict that he will be seeking gainful employment elsewhere
very soon. The declining M$ will follow the example of SCO by suing
competitors and even customers in order to try to survive. As has been well
demonstrated, that road leads to Chapter 11 in about 6 years and Chapter 7
liquidation in less than 10. But Apple have passed their tipping point too,
and are well into the phase of suing their competitors and suppliers, so the big
question is, who will be gone first? There should be more than enough there to
keep Judge Gross in gainful employment, when the bankrupcies happen. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: 351-4V on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 09:17 AM EST |
It will lead to things like deep pocket
inspections...
Now there's a Freudian Slip for you.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: davecb on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 09:49 AM EST |
At Slaw, the Canadian legal blog, Omar Ha-Redeye analyzes the facts and law
behind Australian Wins Defamation Claim for Google and
Yahoo Search Results
The thing that jumps out at a techie is that
the judge distinguished Google's text search from the image search, and found
the text search results non-defamatory.
Justice Beach noted
that the Google Image search result was a cut and paste of its own creation. If
Google's submissions were to be accepted, there would be no original publisher
of the images at all. In obiter, Justice Beach indicated that the text snippets
of the text results were not dissimilar. He emphasized the fact specific nature
of this analysis, and distinguished this case from the others cited. Google
could not claim to be an internet intermediary here, and played a less passive
role,
This suggests that, if one knows what the difference
was, one could change the search algorithm to avoid accidental defamation
...
--dave
--- davecb@spamcop.net [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- But the big fail - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 02:23 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 11:52 PM EST |
As does mine, but I am not sure we have anything better than another
outlier in the case cited.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 11 2012 @ 01:48 PM EST |
> paper packaging for audio tapes.
Aah, Apple, the truly twentieth century company.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 11 2012 @ 02:36 PM EST |
Several of the Newspicks on this topic are holding a US-centric
view that overlooks some historic facts. In many countries the
government is the telco. Even until recent years (late 1980s)
in all British Commonwealth countries the government was the
telco. These governments are unwilling to give up what they
see as a God given right to control telecommunications
across their borders.
An interesting diplomatic question arises when the US
attempts to change the policies of these governments by
applying pressure in a technical forum like the ITU.
The ITU as a UN organ runs on one nation = one vote. This is
the UN that grew from the ashes of the Second World War
determined not to repeat the mistakes of the League of Nations
after the First World War. If voting were on a population basis
BRICS would wipe the floor with the rest of us.
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- WCIT and ITU - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 11 2012 @ 05:04 PM EST
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