Well, no
"You have to admire Apple marketing. Trying to attribute falling TV to their products."
No, you don't, because this has fuck all to do with them.
Posts by The Other Steve
1184 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2007
TV numbers sink as iOS usage rises
Tuesday 12th October 2010 13:37 GMT
Meh, you got there first
Apples to oranges indeed.
Well, precisely. Blokey says that iOS junkies : "Treated as a consumer audience ..."
But you can't treat them as a single consumer audience in the same way that you can a broadcast audience, because they simply aren't all doing the same things at the same time. They're fragmented across a number of media, they aren't one single set of eyeballs that you can chuck stuff at.
Plus of course he's excluded every single other entertainment platform on the planet, from shagging, through badger baiting to reading a book.
OTOH his "OMG! Apple IS KILLING OUR TV!" is clearly garnering attention, since we're here reading about it.
Guardian super-blogger flames Reg boffinry desk
Gov rolls out 'dedicated area of the internet' for digi-ware tests
CEOP chief accuses UK.gov of putting kids at risk
Tuesday 12th October 2010 14:11 GMT 
Microsoft to love kiddy fiddlers ? I hardly think so.
Erm, I hardly think that MS is going to turn around and say "Actually, you know, we won't support your efforts to catch kiddy fiddlers and stem kiddy pr0n"
Because that would go down like a cup of cold sick. Imagine the acres of bile that would spew forth from all and sundry in the press.
And also, how is bagging offenders _not_ protecting the cheeldren ?
If the guy is stupid enough to believe this guff then good riddance to him.
Stuxnet 'a game changer for malware defence'
Monday 11th October 2010 12:53 GMT
Last self reptition, honest. Please RTF Analysis
"he was totally staggered that anyone would attach their SCADA to any network which could be connected to the outside world in any way"
The (allegedly) effected SCADA systems were not connected to the outside world in any way.
"or allow anyone to attach external media to the systems."
No one attached external media to the SCADA systems.
"He also said that this is SCADA lesson one.""
Indeed it is. Which is why stuxnet was coded in order to jump over these limitations.
Clearly none of the commentards can be arsed to RTFM, so in summary :
Stuxnet arrives at your plant on a USB drive (say). It then compromises machines and spreads through your internal net via a combination of tricky exploits. It also continues to infect USB (or other removable media).
At some point, someone takes a USB drive accross the air gap that separates the internal net from the PLKC development boxes and plugs it into the machine used for PLC software development, it spots the WinCC PLC development environment and trojans the fuck out of it, enabling it drop it's payload of malicious PLC code into any PLC projects that come along.
At some point further along, someone tales this developed PLC code on (say) a USB stick, and crosses another air gap to the machine that is used to program the code onto the PLC. At which point, stuxnet trojans the fuck out of the PLC programming software as well.
Now, at this point, when you take your PLC out of your SCADA gubbins to modify the process code on it, another air gap because no one attaches SCADA to anything, it rewrites the code on the PLC, only you can't see it, because stuxnet has trojaned the fuck out of the programming software, and it is now lying to you.
Then you put the PLC back across the air gap and start up your plant. Then your plant go boom.
Stuxnet was specifically designed to work around the fact that no one is dumb enough to connect SCADA kit to external networks, and to exploit the - now thoroughly debunked - belief that this is sufficient to protect them from remote malfeasance.
Now can we all please stop with the "shouldn't connect SCADA to teh internets" cockwaffle ?
Monday 11th October 2010 10:21 GMT
RE: Why indeed
"But why are people plugging USB sticks into SCADA systems?"
They aren't. They are/were plugging them into the windows host used to program PLCs, at which point stuxnet trojans your PLC programming software (WinCC in this case), and then next time you program a PLC, it actually writes custom code to the PLC. Code which is masked from the programming host.*
Then you drop your PLC back in, and your plant go boom, or at least crunch, if it happens to match a certain configuration.
That's why everyone's knickers are in a twist.
*this is a gross simplification, if you work with SCADA, reading the actual analysis is an absolute must.
Monday 11th October 2010 10:20 GMT
Slight problem
"Paying to harden the operating system is one thing, but on a factory floor environment your solutions don't have to be pretty - fill the USB ports with a hot glue gun, and remove the CD and floppy disk drives. Sorted...."
Cool. Now how do I get my updated PLC code onto the machine ?
Sunday 10th October 2010 22:37 GMT
Quite so
"I have yet to see any evidence that the "critical" machines in question were managed any differently than a standard desktop."
And in many cases, possibly even managed less/worse, as the presumption is that the air gap will save them. Whoops!
"If "critical protection methodologies" of the type that I've heard of before, which include stateless operating systems and disabling of USB among a number of other best practices"
High assurance measures, I think you mean. Often they end up at the bottom of the RA matrix because of the cost. The figure in the 'cost of failure to mitigate' column just had a rather hefty number of zeros postfixed, though, so this may change.
Men suffer most in recession
Tuesday 12th October 2010 09:24 GMT 
I didn't like the article because it failed to reinforce my personal prejudices
I mean, bloody hell, all you've done there is just report some facts, really you should have put something snarky in about birds getting preggers, or just not being as good as us blokes at techy stuff and having to all work as cleaners, because that's my opinion, and I if I don't have it reflected back at me every five minutes I feel all lost and vulnerable and my geekWang begins to shrivel.
I'm off to the bog to read "Nuts" for a bit, then put that new Shakira wallpaper on my dekstop, and then I'm going to go have a leer at those fit birds in accounts.*
Never seem to get any decent fanny in IT, for some completely unfathomable reason.
*As the saying goes, there's always one, and if you can't think who it is, it's you.
<--JA, because I know I've had at least one sense of humour failure today.
Monday 11th October 2010 10:20 GMT
Yeah but ...
I know the ONS numbers, but I haven't read the EHRC's report, so I don't know if they made the error of just comparing averages - which doesn't take into account a lot of factors that make the apparent gap smaller, smaller mind you, not non existent - or not.
But I suspect that the above commentards haven't either. Maybe before shouting about "harmanisation" and "women are just less skillful", it would be a good idea ?
Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed
Monday 11th October 2010 09:52 GMT
What he said, only more so
"The problem with separate partitions from a user perspective is not knowing how your data will be distributed and ending up with some partitions being too small."
And the aim is for it not to stop during install and ask the user questions they can't answer, or which frighten them off. Remember kiddies, this is not a geek distro, this is trying to be Linux for human beings.
Ease of use trumps all. This is how it has to be if you want Linux to do anything on the desktop other than annoy the shit out of people.
Monday 11th October 2010 09:51 GMT
A smorgasboard of ignorant hate, but sadly also true
"The Windows people hate Linux per-se, 'cos they think it's cheap and tacky! The Mac people think their precious interface designs are being ripped off! Finally the Linux hardcore people think it should be given away with the book Linux for Dummies!"
And those of us who use all these technologies, appreciating each and every one for it's particular benefits or drawbacks, using each as appropriate to the task in hand, think all of you are dicks.
Google TV transplants Android on Intel
Monday 11th October 2010 09:51 GMT
iSuppli with my little ass
iSuppli are (as usual) full of shit because :
a.) No one except Foxconn knows how much they are paying to suppliers for bulk of those items, nor even how many they are buying on which to base a guess. Foxconn make an awful lot of tech shit, their potential volume leverage is huge.
and b.) because even if anyone did know that, the parts that go into a product are not the only component of it's price.
Quoting the iSuppli number as anything other than the fantasy it is rather suggests that, as you say, "You have no idea what you're talking about."
Android rebellion: How to tame your stupid smartphone
Monday 11th October 2010 09:02 GMT
FWIW
"I don't see that ever happing. For a start, Google would have to open source the extensions to Android they have made, and if you asked the manufacturers to do that, they may well abandon the platform rather than reveal their secrets."
I don't think it's so much about the secret sauce (although that may be an aspect) it's more likely just that the handset mfrs and the carriers can't be arsed (and in any case aren't competent) to manage a FOSS project. They can't manage to do QA on their in house stuff, after all, so I'd hate to see them try and wrangle a couple of hundred hairy prima donnas all committing code at once.
Friday 8th October 2010 18:15 GMT
Which translated in to non dickhead means ...
"Yeah sure, Android setup takes a little bit of forethought, but that's to be expected because Google services are not for dummies (who need the simplicity of iTunes)."
... Apple's UI is easier to use.
Seriously, that is a really, really poor argument. Android is harder to use so it's better ? Really ?
Friday 8th October 2010 16:15 GMT
Bum gravy
"A lot of problems will be solved if handset vendors had to share their code. The problem with the Apache license is that vendors can add proprietary extensions without submitting those back to the open source community. "
No, the problem is a lack of QA. That is all. Allowing a few hundred bored linux coders to fuck with your stuff may or may not match your definition of QA, but either way, the problem is the lack of QA, not the lack of beards.
Friday 8th October 2010 16:11 GMT
That's numberwang!
"Sorry but I think the mass of techies vs the article votes against the article"
Yeah, I really like the way the "techies" have totally showed how wrong the article is to, allegedly, rely on anecdotal data by regaling us with anecdotes.
Only their anecdotes are better, and opener.
Friday 8th October 2010 16:11 GMT
While we're all throwing anecdotal at each other
"While you might say the apple system of checking everything is a good thing, developers have had a right nightmare with it all and it has caused so many problems"
Some developers have had very public hissy fits, true. Most developers not so much.
And how many is "so many" ? I reckon I could probably count them all without taking my shoes off. A vanishingly small percentage of the developer base, I would imagine.
Friday 8th October 2010 16:10 GMT
Carrier bag
This is what happens when you let the carriers mess with stuff, as ably demonstrated by the epic love poem to fail that was Windows Mobile as a phone OS.
The carriers aren't coding shops, and they don't know how to to do software QA properly. When there are problems, nobody blames the carriers or the developers of whatever third party crap or custom ROMs they've shoehorned into their device. They blame the OS vendor.
But this is the heady world of tech, so of course a subset of Android users are frothing at the mouth zero sum fixated zealots for the particular bit of tech they have chosen, and death to the unbelievers. To them, there simply aren't problems at all. It amazes me that Google of all people have managed to tap into this rich vein of idiocy. GNU/Linux I can understand, especially once you add the GNU part back on (for illustration purposes only, hows HURD going ?).
But Google ? How the blue fuck did that happen ?
Google TV makes some media hookups
Much of recent global warming actually caused by Sun
Friday 8th October 2010 21:07 GMT
Examination of motives needed
"I suggest that anyone of a contrarian bent steps back for just a few seconds and thinks long and hard about their underlying motives for their view. Are you honestly trying to approach the issue from a purely objective perspective"
One might equally ask the question of - oh FFS I can't be having with this factional bullshit - anyone who is not a 'contrarian*' the exact same question. And in a large majority of cases, the answer, if given honestly, will be _exactly_ the same.
And this : "Have you read the IPC reports rather than just swallowed what the Telegraph says about them? "
Could just as easily say : "Have you read the IPC reports rather than just swallowed what the Guardian says about them? "
And what you've managed to do there, Nick, you utter prat, is to categorise anyone who doesn't share exactly your view is an ignorant tory, thereby allowing you to completely disregard their opinion. You fucktard.
Thursday 7th October 2010 16:05 GMT
Oh honestly, extinction would be a blessing
The climate changes, it is not and never has been stable. It's entirely likely that human activity has some impact on the climate, if only because we're so fond of burning shit. But we don't know exactly how much, because planetary ecosystems are bloody complicated and we don't really understand them yet. But we're working on it.
We think CO2 might be a problem so we'd like to reduce it. Most likely we can't because the developing world would quite like to live inside, have nice hygienic hospitals, and drive cars. Just like us. And who's going to stop them ?
Long term we can probably do something about our emissions - if we still think that's a problem when we understand better - because efficiency generally equals a reduction in cost, and we're smart. We'll also eventually run out of shit to burn, so this is desirable in any case.
Short term we probably have to display some adaptability, the trait for which us bald apes are most renowned.
That's fucking it, that's all of it, and yet somehow we have managed to fracture off into warring factions 'warmists', 'denialists', 'alarmists' and what the hell ever else, and are currently engaged in such a bitter internecine quarrel that the actual facts and the actual science have disappeared under a humongous pile of ill informed bullshit.
And the really sad thing is a good proportion of the people involved in this monumental and pointless bitch fight are the fucking climate scientists themselves.
No wonder the other thing apes are well known for is flinging poop at each other.
Bring on the extinction level event, this shit is getting old.
ICO issues draft data-sharing code
Friday 8th October 2010 18:16 GMT
Sound and fury, signifying bugger all of any import, as per.
"But compliance with the code will not be mandatory, where it goes beyond the requirement of the Data Protection Act."
You'd have a hard job convincing some companies I can think of that that compliance with the DPA is mandatory where it goes beyond what they can be arsed with.
Android is turning a profit for Google
Provincial outrage over BT's broadband upgrade race
Friday 8th October 2010 14:04 GMT
Ah but then
"Due respect in zone 2 just round the corner from harbour exchange, sovh et al (no word of a lie they're like 60 meters up the road) we can't even get > 105KB/sec afternoon to 2am."
Are you sure that you are connected to that exchange ? I get >=7Mbps for much of the time, and had assumed it was because I was very close to the city's main exchange. But I had the Openreach chaps out the other day to replace an overhead cable that had been mauled by a rogue tree, and it turns out that I am in fact connected to one much further away, as is everything south of the CBD.
Thursday 7th October 2010 14:26 GMT
London calling/Grim oop North
Bollocks to that, I'm nowhere near that London and BT are fibre-ing us up just about as fast they can get the cabinets open. 115,500 premises covered by this time next year. I'm expecting FT my personal C by about January.
At which point I will probably not bother, because lets face it, what the fuck am I going to do with 40Mbps other than pirate shit all day long, which will be speed humped to buggery anyway ?
I'm not sure there are many compelling services that require this much bandwidth, but then again, lets wait and see what the file size is like on MS Office 2012.
Microsoft lovingly open sources .NET package manager
Thursday 7th October 2010 14:52 GMT
Nomenclatural ribabldry really is rife
I know there are some reasons for it - thinking up good names is hard, that's why marketroids get paid, the open development process pretty much lumbers you with whatever you thought of first, etc - but it really does seem that every open source project just has to have a wacky name.
It's kind of sweet, actually.
It's nice to see MS embracing and extending, lets hope they can stem the evil urge to add the third 'E' to their usual deadly triumvirate.
Opensourcer targets Windows Phone 7 hopefuls
Thursday 7th October 2010 21:15 GMT 
Bad code monkey, bad! No SQL for you!
Like iOS, WP7 only allows a single _third party_ task to run at a time. Behind the scenes, the MS processes that run the phone, SMS, email and other backgroudy stuff will be using that SQLCE instance for data storage and retrieval.
Thus the performance and integrity of that database are likely to be crucial to the proper functioning of the device. Hence MS don't want third party apps getting their grubby fingers all over it and doing potentially hazardous things to it.
Previous incarnations of WinMo suffered badly from developers doing stupid things that were allowed to FUBAR the entire system, something that MS are clearly keen to avoid in this new version.
Bear in mind that since the carriers and handset manufacturers aren't allowed to mess with the OS in the way they have in the past, any crashiness - albeit the fault of third party app developer - is going to be blamed squarely on them.
So while I initially shared GrantB's WTF moment, after I thunk it through for a bit, I reckon this is reasonably sensible, and especially in a 1.0 version. I don't know enough about SQLCE's (or WP7's) internals to know if there's a good reason why they couldn't just stick a second instance onboard for userland apps (maybe they worry about enforcing app boundaries?), but I do recall that the last version of SQLCE I coded against was fucking hateful, so maybe it's good that there's an alternative.
Just a thought.
Mozilla upsets net world order with Bing on Firefox
Thursday 7th October 2010 15:42 GMT
Relevancy metric ?
I hate to prick your bubble there, but MS still has 91% * of the desktop OS market. I'm not sure what your particular metric for relevancy is, but since some one in Redmond can push a button and the results will show up on 91% of end users desks within minutes, might I suggest that it's somewhat wonky ?
* http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8
(Bonus flamebait, these numbers also show iOS has more users than Linux)
Thursday 7th October 2010 15:42 GMT
OH MY GOD! THE OPEN HAS COME OUT! THE OPEN!
"Though this is not addressed in the blog post, Mozilla has signed a financial agreement with Microsoft. "The arrangement includes revenue-sharing based on traffic sent from Firefox to Bing's search service,""
What ? You mean the Mozilla foundation takes MONEY??? It doesn't run on unicorn tears ? Well fuck me sideways, who knew ? And I mean it's one thing to take money from the worlds largest meat targeting company, but Microsoft ? THAT'S JUST SICK !!!!!!!!
Many Microsoft workers big on company not Ballmer
Bitstream BOLTs multimedia onto feature phones
Google spits back at Oracle's Android suit
Wednesday 6th October 2010 15:52 GMT
Oh sweet Jesus No!
Have you seen the state of the talent in the developer 'community' these days ? Don't get me wrong, there are some excellent ones, but the majority in the mobile arena are poorly trained hacks. No thanks, keep these code monkeys away from anything even resembling a pointer, let alone multiple inheritance.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
