Oops!
... or even customers'
I am my own grammar nazi!
Posts by GettinSadda
615 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2007
BMW says 'i' aye to EV and hybrid car
FOSS maven says $29 'Freedom Box' will kill Facebook
Thursday 17th February 2011 16:28 GMT
@copsewood 3
I admire your spirit (and the obligatory geek-fu) but I think that you are mistaken about what most people want.
Facebook is successful because the vast majority of the general public actually like what it does and even how it looks. They like all that stuff that turns you off. That's why Zuckerberg is ridiculously rich.
To the average Facebook user, your suggestion of setting up and running a nice little 'family and friends mail-do-hicky' is about as attractive as the idea of growing your own organic cotton and hand weaving it into your own clothing. They would rather just pop down to Tesco or Asda and buy Jeans for £3 and a T-shirt for £1.50 in an 'attractive' range of designs.
I host a number of websites, some are exclusively for family content. However, these days when I do post something on these sites most members of my family just say "why don't you put it on Facebook, then I'll see it along with all my other stuff".
Thursday 17th February 2011 13:51 GMT
@copsewood again!
I think if this had happened ten or fifteen years ago then it might have worked, but are people that currently have Facebook really going to want to buy a mini server, then buy an external drive, then buy a deep-geek book on how to set it up, then give up doing it themselves and pay some sort of consultant to finish the job for them?
Why spend loads of time and probably a good three figure sum getting this new device to work? What is in it for them? They have Facebook, and so do their friends and family. They swap photos and videos (maybe uploaded from their phone via an existing app) play FarmVille or Mafia Wars, IM each other through the day, track their favourite bands' fan pages, search for old school friends and even buy Facebook gifts. And what does all this cost? Nothing (except the gifts and any in-game charges). How long did it take for them to set up? Five minutes if they type slowly! Oh, and they give away their privacy - but then to be honest very few Facebook users actually care much about that!
I would be amazed if 0.5% of the developed world wanted one of these things, so there is no real prospect of it ever reaching 50%
I also think you may be underestimating how big a job getting a global system like this working reliably would be. Sure, you could set up Drupal and Wordpress on your personal box, even set up photo and video serving, but this is not a Facebook replacement, it is just your own personal site, like most of elReg readers probably have already.
Thursday 17th February 2011 12:05 GMT
@copsewood
"Take a look at the list of Debian packages sometime. Then go figure that and why most of this code has been developed by people paid to do this (reason: doing this helps sell loads of services and hardware)."
I'm not quite sure what you are saying here - is it that there are already Debian packages that will run a high-quality social networking site (good enough to tempt away current Facebook users) and to run it on a set of massively distributed servers where each and any server may be connected or not at any time or may be powered off or on without warning and where latency and bandwidth to any server may vary wildly? Or are you suggesting that there is enough profit at $29 per server to fund the development and maintenance of such software?
"These £29 devices and the USB attached disk drives will become a large enough market to support the open source software in their own right."
So, a) you have increased the price from $29 to £29, b) it is now £29 plus a USB drive (which is likely to be >£29 itself) and c) You seem to be suggesting that the profit from selling the external storage will go to supporting the code (this can only really work if there is some sort of vendor lock-in... nice!)
Thursday 17th February 2011 10:52 GMT 
Two questions
OK, two questions:
1) How much storage is this $29 box going to hold? Baring in mind that it will be used for online backups as well as all the other stuff (and so realistically would need to be in the hundreds of GB range for current backup habits)
2) Sure, Facebook and all the others have quite a lot of servers that could be replaced by a large number of small devices distributed around the world, but there is also lots of IP including a shed-load of code and the developers to maintain it. How do you replace all of that?
Storm brews over Chinese synchronised goldfish
Google open video codec faces second challenger
MozyHome stiffs unlimited users
Wednesday 2nd February 2011 13:10 GMT
Seems clear enough
It seemed clear enough when I looked at their website before ordering:
<quote>
The current maximum upload speeds are as follows:
* The first 35GB of data can achieve upload speeds of up to 2 mbps (megabits per second).
* Between 35GB - 200GB of data can have the upload speeds reach up to 512 kbps (kilobits per second).
* 200GB or more of data can be uploaded at up to 100 kbps (kilobits per second).
</quote>
Wednesday 2nd February 2011 12:17 GMT
Welcome to the 21st century
<quote>
It's a *backup* service, meant for important stuff like documents, photos, home vids, etc, not a general dumping ground for your program files, Windows files, and any other files you feel like.
</quote>
I have a digital camera. My wife has a digital camera. Both take video as well as photos.
This means I have over 40GB of photos and home videos (not counting anything still stored on DV tapes)
Wednesday 2nd February 2011 11:48 GMT 
I got the e-mail yesterday - and acted
I got the e-mail yesterday and immediately re-read the recent article on online-backup:
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/01/17/gt_online_storage
So I then selected Carbonite as my new backup service (3.9GB backed up so far...)
I haven't bothered to try and argue with Mozy - the first they will find out is when they suddenly stop getting my money.
Femtocell experts create even tinier porta-base station
Wednesday 26th January 2011 17:07 GMT 
What is the point?
Can someone please enlighten me to what the point is?
This device turns a broadband internet connection into a 3G connection so that you can use your mobile without paying roaming fees. However, if you have an internet connection, why not just use VOIP for calls and WiFi for data?
If having the same dial-in number is important to you, can't you set your phone to re-direct incoming calls to your VOIP number?
Man killed by own cock
Lame Stuxnet worm 'full of errors', says security consultant
Wednesday 19th January 2011 16:18 GMT
Nope
I have to say - I read the article, and the guy's white paper on the subject, and I have to say that I just don't get it. His arguments seem to be more full of holes that he claims the US/Israeli story is.
For example, he states: "...in March 2010, China’s Customs ministry started an audit at Vacon’s Suzhou facility and took two employees into custody thereby providing further access to Vacon’s manufacturing specifications under cover of an active investigation."
Yet according to his own articles, the main damage caused by Stuxnet was "In late 2009 or early 2010"
And one of his biggest arguments against the NYT article was that the timeline was inaccurate!
Who are the biggest electric car liars - the BBC, or Tesla Motors?
Facebook suspends personal data-sharing feature
Tuesday 18th January 2011 12:38 GMT
Re: If they actually cared about privacy
I had this same thought - should be quite easy really.
Also, they should add a feature where the number of people that do share and that don't are recorded on a per-app basis. Then some drone at FB-HQ would get a list each day of the apps with the highest back-out ratio and have a quick look. Then a good proportion of suspect apps could be shut down. There should also be an easy way to "report" any app you have recently installed/used
Flashy fists fly as OCZ and DDRdrive row over SSD performance
No need for speed, says Oz communications shadow
Fit your old MacBook Air with turbo flash, bitchslap the new ones
Friday 7th January 2011 14:10 GMT
Re: Check
The new Air is not available with a hard drive - only SSD.
So, this is a comparison of two similar computers, with different brands of SSD inside. For all but the most I/O intensive activities I cannot see how applications can be expected to run "more than three times faster than with Apple's own SSD inside" unless Apple's own SSD is a real dog.
I would love to see some real figures to back up the claims.
Thursday 6th January 2011 16:50 GMT
Maths check please!
"The SSD supplier claims that 2008-2009 MacBook Airs fitted with these flash superchargers run applications more than three times faster than with Apple's own SSD inside"
If, as claimed later, these SSDs are 20% faster than Apple's current SSDs, how do we end up with a 200%+ speed-up? Are the Apple SSDs in the old Air that much worse than the new Air?
"With a data rate (sequential read bandwidth) of up to 275MB/sec, this is also 20 per cent faster than the latest MacBook Air and 41 times faster than an Air with a hard disk drive inside – the poor lumbering freak of a thing."
So the original Air had a hard drive that could not beat 6.7MB/sec? I am very surprised!
Motorola uncloaks 10.1-inch Xoom fondleslab
Friday 7th January 2011 09:30 GMT
Re: Re: John Smith 19
"They say about 6.5hrs to 7hrs ish when playing back a HD movie through the HDMI port...so probably a bit longer on normal tasks."
Ah - one of the biggest power drains on this sort of device is the display, so I bet this example is with the display off! I wonder how long it runs with the display on?
'London black cabs to go electric in 2 weeks' – Boris Guardian
Wednesday 15th December 2010 10:17 GMT
Re: Swappable battery packs?
Black cabs are one of the few areas where I can see swappable battery packs being a sensible solution.
For this tech to work you would need a reasonable number of vehicles that regularly need a full recharge, fast, (rather than being OK with a top-up overnight) and where speed is worth paying for. You would also need a massive infrastructure (ideally within a limited area) with staff testing battery packs and even the ability to drive a new pack out to a stranded vehicle if a pack fails for some reason. It would also help considerably if every vehicle in the scheme was of the same design. There would also need to be financial and regulatory reasons to switch to this tech. And finally you really want all involved to be members of some sort of organization that can arbitrate disputes and educate users (maybe even manage financing).
All in all, I think battery-swap cabs would be a great idea. Especially if charging stations charge off-peak and can give back some power when there are sudden demand peaks.
Missing piece completes Stuxnet jigsaw
Monday 15th November 2010 15:45 GMT
Looks clear to me
So this code targets a specific type of motor controller that is known to be used in uranium enrichment, and specifically two particular makes (one from Iran). It then makes changes that will affect the controlled process over the course of several months.
I wonder what could be the target of such an attack?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran#Second_enrichment_plant
Linux life savers for paranoid penguins
Monday 8th November 2010 16:59 GMT
@AC at 12:14
Then you misunderstood my post. What I was objecting to was the arrogant and offhand way that the applications, which are the very purpose of the systems that the quoted poster claims to administer, were dismissed as "useless toys". Contrary to the impression that many sysadmins seem to have (so wonderfully lampooned by the BOFH) very few business computers are actually bought simply for the pleasure of their sysadmins. They are bought to do income generating jobs (such as processing music, still imagery or video data).
What confuses me is why the poster saw fit to lay into the applications when they were only used to provide context in the very first paragraph of the article:
"So far, in my look at Linux compared to Mac and Windows, I've covered music players, photo organizers, and video editors. But all those apps – and all the documents they create – are lost if your hard drive crashes, your laptop takes a spill, or some other catastrophe strikes."
Monday 8th November 2010 11:04 GMT
Seriously?
>> "music players, photo organizers, and video editors" aren't part of the system ... they are toys for consumers that sit on top of the system ... and in the great scheme of things, are clearly useless when it comes to longevity of data.
Wow! I guess that you must not realise that here in the real world there are people that:
a) Have all of their music held digitally and for most of that the digital copy is the only version they have;
b) Use digital cameras and have thousands of pictures that have great value, either personal value (because your kid only ever had one 1st birthday) or commercially (because they are a professional photographer);
c) Make films and television programmes using computers - and losing one of those during production is more than a minor oops!
'Hippy' energy kingpin's electric Noddy-car in epic FAIL
Samsung: we'll sell a million-plus Android tablets this year
Seagate squirts out rectal cleaning spray
Tuesday 2nd November 2010 13:04 GMT
Correction
"The product contains borax, helonius, kreosotum and platina..."
If this is "Homoeopathic" then it does not contain any of the above - just water. The listed items will have been involved in the early stages of production, but by the time you get to the finished product, none of them will remain.
EU to lift flight ban on carry-on liquids
Tuesday 26th October 2010 10:48 GMT
Not new
"The European Union has certified a liquid-detection security scanner that will allow that £20 1.75 liter bottle of Bombay Sapphire you bought at the Duty Free shop to come aboard your flight in your carry-on bag."
You can already carry on anything bought in the Duty Free shops as they are placed AFTER security. You can even buy duty free liquids on-board. Strangely the air-side shops at Geneva Airport also sell penknives!
Vatican confirms Simpsons as Catholics
Keep your PC clean - or we'll shut you down
Police issue lettuce e-fit
Check Point defends ZoneAlarm scareware-style warning
Tuesday 21st September 2010 12:54 GMT
No longer
"For a legitimate security firm like Check Point to adopt similar tactics is a great shame because it can only increase user confusion"
As far as I am concerned - this is not true as the company can no longer be regarded as "a legitimate security firm". The moment they started using underhand dirty tricks they lost the right to be called legitimate.
Firefox 4 beta gets hard on Windows
Wednesday 8th September 2010 09:45 GMT
Security
> "Firefox 4 Beta now remembers what sites use the HSTS protocol and will only connect to those sites using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) in the future, helping to prevent 'man in the middle' attacks," Beltzner says.
So in other words, the browser stores a list of the most security-conscious sites that you visit in an easy-to-retrieve way. Want to know if a user ever visited "dissidents.org"? Try and visit "http://dissidents.org" while sniffing the net connection - if it goes straight to "https://dissidents.org" then the user has been there before. Nothing the browser tries to do to encrypt or password protect the list is of any great use
Hands on with Motorola's Milestone 2 and Defy
Diesels greener than electric cars, says Swiss gov report
Tuesday 31st August 2010 15:56 GMT
Whole story?
So, they researchers looked at the following:
For the electric car:
* The environmental impact of the fuel usage at the vehicle (nil)
* The environmental impact of the production of the EV fuel at source (power station)
For the diesel car:
* The environmental impact of the fuel usage at the vehicle (exhaust)
Anything missing?
Oh yes...
* The environmental impact of the production of the diesel fuel at source (refinery)
Any guesses about that last item? And how about all the other factors such as exploration, extraction, shipping etc. There have been studies done on this, and from memory petrol and diesel end up looking pretty poor, but I'm sure there will be plenty of biased links supplied below:
Lexmark files patent gripe against 24 cartridge makers
Tuesday 24th August 2010 15:12 GMT 
Which companies?
Oh, please tell us which companies sell these cheaper inks/toners for Lexmark printers - then we can choose them rather than the total rip-off of the "original" ink.
The black ink for my printer works out at £1 per ml - that's over £500 per pint. Unless this is made from unicorn blood, there is no way in the world that there can be any justification for this price. It is simply a 100% rip-off.
Inmate-frying microwave pain blaster turret installed in US jail
More choosing maths A-Level
Short passwords 'hopelessly inadequate', say boffins
Monday 16th August 2010 15:19 GMT
We need a solution
We need a solution to passwords - I have about 500 passwords in use across many systems and perhaps 50 of these get used regularly. About 10 passwords are "vital" ones such as banking or router passwords.
There are a number of so-so solutions that will collect and protect passwords, but I have yet to find one that is painless to use (yes, please take this as in invitation to suggest products!) so I end up with my browser holding most of them (synced across different computers) and my poor brain holding all the ones that security really matters for. Most of the low security ones to end up sharing the same password, but not the vital ones.
Before long we may need to find a better solution than passwords that we can remember - but are strong enough to resist brute-force because there will be an ever decreasing number of people that can remember the ever increasingly complex passwords!
Ten unlikely iPhone insurance claims
Toshiba shows off self-deleting, self-encrypting drive
Tuesday 10th August 2010 09:34 GMT
Volatile?
"Tosh has added a facility to have the on-disk security key be automatically deleted when the drive's power supply is turned off."
So this turns non-volatile storage into volatile storage - interesting, but I am not sure how many applications there are for 640GB of volatile storage. Or is the key supposed to be reloaded from somewhere else at power-on (in which case, the security is lost if that non-volatile key is stored elsewhere in the same machine)
BBC workers lose £240k of tech gear in two years
Monday 9th August 2010 12:34 GMT
Security
"BBC has security you Plum. Like I could just rock up unannounced to the weather set and steal an on-air kiss from one of those weather-girls and pinch an unattended black-berry and laptop for my trouble on the way out."
They do have security in TV Centre, and they still let hundreds of members of the public in on a regular basis to be audience members, interviewees or even just to service the coffee machine. They have separate security at the entrance to the weather centre too, but that is not where all the "weather-girls" are, you will often find some of the highly qualified weather forecasters stood on a beach or in the middle of some National Trust property doing a forecast (and no, I don't understand why either). At these times, guess where the presenter's laptop and phone are.
Monday 9th August 2010 12:32 GMT
High losses?
You may think that losing 150 laptops in 2 years would be a lot for your company, but I expect that every one of your laptops spends most of its time either in a building with security guards on the door, or in a private home.
How many normal companies expect their laptop owners to grab them and rush off to some unexpected crime hot-spot in the middle of the night and then do a 10 minute talk to camera while the laptop is sat in the car the other side of the police cordon where you will return in a few minutes to write a quick update for the news website? How many of your laptops are currently being used by people in war zones? How often do your laptop or phone users spend an 18 hour day filming in a disused warehouse while the equipment remains in the car or a caravan the other side of the site surrounded by 120 extras with nothing to do until they are needed to film the riot scene?
The BBC is not a normal IT company and I am not hugely surprised by the number of items lost or stolen - I would actually have guessed that it would be higher.
Vodafone upsets customers with upgrade downgrade
UK population to be guaranteed mobile 768Kb/sec service
Smart meters pose hacker kill-switch risk, warn boffins
Thursday 29th July 2010 06:59 GMT
It seems quite possible!
These devices seem to be less secure than the average PC - so things need to be sorted!
http://www.smartmeters.com/the-news/893-security-firm-reveals-smart-meters-vulnerability.html
What would happen if someone gained access to the system via some sort of hack, and instead of making a nuisance of themselves and drawing attention, they simply set off a script to turn off every meter, one-by-one as fast as they can. How long do you think it would take before enough load had been removed that the oversupply would cause serious long-term damage to the network? I would guess between 5 and 15 minutes.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
