Posts by P. Lee

> I'm not sure how that works out for HP.

Does it compare with their 1040-G2?

I'd like to see some top-end laptops with external PCIEx16 connectors (via a dock?) for gaming graphics and alternative NGFF boot drives. Then you can use your work laptop for personal use and play some decent games without sacrificing portability (due to a large battery) for work.

Unlike an MBA, the 1040 has replaceable RAM and disks.

Re: sending emails abroad

Technically the sender should be responsible, because the MX lookup is done before sending the data. However, geolocation is tricky and non-trivial for the casual user.

Perhaps we need dns-based jurisdiction records attached to every ip address (like ptr). Then you can build your apps with compliance requirements to check destination jurisdictions. Maybe we could add jurisdiction qualifiers to dns queries.

Re: Employement status is more complex than that

IR35 is about tax law, not employment law. It explicitly states that the two are not related or dependent on each other. So you can be taxed as an employee without having employee status.

Its also evil and designed as a backdoor way to impose employee status problems on those with the temerity to run a small business which successfully wins big clients.

Re: Stones and Glass Houses

>>do they have more Landcruisers than Humvees?

>IS captured something around 2,300 Humvees when the Iraqi army ran away, so I'm guessing that the answer to your question is no.

But that was years ago.

TopGear didn't take humvees to the North Pole and there's a good reason for them noting that the landcruiser is the backbone of every warlord's transport policy. Yeah, that's right, the taliban don't have much of a domestic car industry to protect...

Re: While we're beating up GUI designers..

I run hot corners... but not all of them. Actually, just the top left - it zooms out to show all windows. I usually run bottom-right too as a lock-screen function.

Re: allowing .everything is .ridiculous

It really doesn't make sense to expand the TLD's if in reality it doesn't expand the name space.

If all the .news site owners are going to be trumped by .com (Reg TM) owners, what's the point in having it? Get rid of it and let them use .com/news

It's going to get worse if you have different .com and .co.uk owners and they both want .news

What happens then?

Re: Are Win7 users not upgrading because of Win8/10's tiles?

It's the ghost of a dead mobile strategy. If you don't use tifkam, devs won't develop for it, which means no apps, which mean no mobile device purchasers.

Oddly ms seem to have mostly given up on phones and tablets, so I don't know why they are still trying.

Is it just the upgrade cycle? I don't see particularly good times ahead for W10 - "Not quite as bad a GUI as W8, but lots more snooping than W7" will not win W7 users.

Re: Oh Wonderful

>But with Microsoft in control of the engine neither will anyone else be able to play.

But we are talking about a cloud for xbox - MS are already in control. This is probably more about MS acting as gatekeeper towards other games publishers - If you want your games to run well on xbox, you need to pay MS for access to their physics hardware, because the xbox itself is a bit weedy.

> I specifically disabled this Motion Lighting bullshit when I first plugged in the TV and set it up.

And herein lies the problem. After all, when you plug in a TV its normally "off" be default. That's quite energy efficient. Just because nearly everyone changes the setting to "on" is surely is no reason to have to measure that particular option...

Maybe just the worst-case should be tested, rather than defaults?

> more sexual partners often (usually?) = poor success at sexual relationships.

Now you're just undermining the music industry.

The current crop seems particularly odd with TayTay's self esteem so low she's quite happy to sleep with someone she knows is going to dump her; someone else asking his girlfriend if she'll stick by him if he goes to jail or whether she's willing to die for him (presumably he wants her to take the rap for murder he committed) and yes, you may be young and you are stupid for not getting more than a private verbal commitment - of course he was going to lie in that context.

Re: And this trend will only continue

> as MS loses market share

That may not be the case. It could just be that there aren't enough new customers to create the ever growing revenue which the stock market seems to think is possible. When everyone already has a license, it's a bit hard to sell more units.

Hence the rental model, which is software upgrade purchasing which works even when you don't have something new. Why go to the bother of selling new stuff, when you can just take back the old and sell it again? It's good for customers too - now you can buy upgrades without the hassle of actually having to do upgrades.

Ah, the joys of monopoly.

Re: Oh no, let me shed a little tear...

I'm crying with you.

Remind me again, what is the downside for europe if the agreement is shredded?

Re: Well that settles it

I use different email addresses for each org I talk to, and dedicated applications for email etc, rather than a browser interface. FF + noscript, ghostery etc for general browsing which stays logged out of google and chromium only for talking to google services. They can track me on their own site if they really want, but normally its running in privacy mode anyway so that I don't have problems with multiple google logins from different family members.

Re: Ha!

Give W10 users pause for thought perhaps. They can't pause the updates and the spying.

Classic shell may address some ui issues, but what about the rest of it? The problem with "windows as a service" is that it's missing the other business elements in that scenario: dev, test, staging, prod. You don't just update production without seeing if an update works in your environment first.

Oh yeah, and don't connect dev/test to prod. Firewalls, jumphosts... We've heard of them.

Does Office need the R&D cost of Windows weighing it down ?

It's all about the upgrade cycle and differentiation. I don't think r&d costs for windows weighs much unless you think marketing is r&d.

If office and visio and project were available on Linux / osx you'd probably see a drop off in windows revenue for no office revenue gain. If you need those apps, you pay the "line rental" cost of windows. That cost is there to make sure you don't also commit to another platform.

Re: The boy with his finger in the dyke succeeded.

>Similarly the story of King Cnut (Canute). He was deliberately teaching his sycophantic court that his powers did not extend to breaking the Laws of Physics.

A pertinent cautionary tale to those attempting an excessive embiggening of flash. As is The Emperor's New Clothes.

It's a great product, but sometimes we are quite happy trading lower speeds for higher capacities - it will depend on your application. You are spec'ing for the application, not just following a fad right? If the app doesn't demand it, why would you do it? Is AWS' Glacier ok in the cloud but not in the DC?

Re: Not available

>Open/Libre will not cut it, by a very long way. So I use O365. Horses for courses.

But the choice appears to be between a nice little pony you can own and a shire horse which isn't for sale but you can rent.

I'd like to buy the shire horse and I'd like it not to drop dead after three-to-five years.

Yes, MSOffice has more features but for me, a tax deduction this year does not outweigh additional costs every year.

What happens when I retire or become unemployed or injured and no longer run a business and get tax deductions. Poof! All documents are inaccessible. Office rentals this year... Windows rentals next year? With the slowing pace of innovation, access longevity actually becomes a more significant issue than it was when it was worthwhile upgrading hardware and software every couple of years.

Re: M$

>After you remove all the tiles you can simply drag in from the right to remove the extra space

I think the issue is a little different. Like many things in Windows, it isn't that it can't be done, it's just harder than it should be, especially for an OS that costs money. Why doesn't it auto-collapse when the last part of the entry is removed? Why delete something and then have to delete the space it leaves? That isn't great, especially when so many users don't want tiles in the menu to start with.

It's the ghost of a mobile strategy that is still wailing on the desktop. If MS can't get an adaptive desktop/mobile interface right for their OS, what chance is there for applications?

Re: BillG

XYZZY

Bloat

Probably not as much you think. Addressbook IM and video are already part of most os' environments, so it's just a question of calling the right libraries. The added bit is the presence publishing and a stub to make sure the firewall ports are open. MS is going to put Skype in your windows whether you like it or not.

I'm slightly disappointed that isp's / ietf haven't picked up the ball to engineer some presence publishing mechanism so they can pick up inbound / outbound sip call fees. Some sort of threeway email handshake or DANE thing.

Linux provides several very pleasant desktop options. If you want ms apps however you nay prefer an ms desktop.

That's by the by, however. I suspect this will be a hotmail type job. Bring the function in-house as *nix to get into the market and then port to windows.

It would certainly be helpful if switches authenticated users against AD without all this x509 malarky, hmm?

The Linux component either will not remain or it will remain because ms wants to ship windows-specific extensions to Linux sw switch vendors. FLOSS is there because people cooperate to solve a problem and share the costs and benefits. MS has no ifinancial nterest in sharing benefits with others, which is why I'm wary of even stuff they might provide under the gpl. It's fine to use, but don't expect it to continue without you paying in some way or other.

Re: Low-res

Headline says 7k lines of pixels... already corrected?

Lesson to be learnt

Buy a iwatch or go to jail. It's just un-American not to consume.

I can't wait for the first bomb to be found which is made from an iPhone jammed directly into a lump of c4. Bonus points for a big red button of obviousness.

Re: So, Ad Age thinks I'm a "thief" who's "interfering with business"?

You are not Ken's customer. You are also not Ken's audience.

Re: To NAT or not to NAT

>There are lots of things which will work better by not having to fight with NAT, but security has been a very big unintended benefit to the world using NAT.

Right up until UPnP arrived :)

With any firewall, unidirectional access is pretty much a basic function which you should be able to do with or without sNAT.

Re: Teacher Vs Equipment

and take away distractions.

Like, er, computer games, instagram, facebook, instant messaging, video messaging.

Sorry, what was it you wanted to buy again?

Re: This bill includes extortion?

>Does Australia not already have extortion laws on the books?

There may be no attempt at extortion, it may just be spiteful.

That said, it's a pretty dumb idea. Stop trying to insulate people from the consequences of dumb behaviour. Why am I feeling so callous? Because it's security theatre. If you are worried or embarrassed by the release of such material, don't make it to start with. The law is not going to be able to save your reputation.

If the person you're with has not stood up in public to state that they will love, cherish and adore you for as long as you both shall live and signed a legal contract confirming it, what makes you think they'll do that? What's the likelihood home-made pron is made with a phone? What is security like on a phone or a phone with attached cloud?

It's a pointless law for which evidence will be very thin regarding an action where the rightness or wrongness is not intrinsic to the action, but based on events, context and private discussions which may or may not have happened. Legislatives need to stop trying to interfere in the domain of morality, where the legal system cannot see or where remedy cannot be applied.

Re: Unsurpringly...

Not sure about Lewis but I did a double take when I read this (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34184564) "over the last two decades the glaciers have retreated more rapidly, says Martin Grosjean, a glacier specialist at the University of Berne's Oeschger Institute."

So far, so predictable, but later on we read how "Hundreds of Roman shoe nails have emerged from the ice too." As someone said, "I wasn't expecting that." Was there a Roman shoe nail wholesaler who undertook an ill-judged attempt to cross the glacier, or were they left there when the glacier wasn't there? The Romans were quite industrious but neither they nor their Greek predecessors where known for their climate changing CO2 emissions.

Sadly the article fails to elaborate and I'm left with unsatisfactory speculation.

Re: Do you think that if I asked them nicely

> I heard that it will retail above 30k.

But worth it for paparazzi?

>You're overlooking Occam's Razor: the simplest explanation is the most probable.

"No security breach" -> "no breach of national security"?

Perhaps, a government's minister's email account did have its password guessed, but it wasn't one being used for ministerial things?

Re: Computer hardware makers need to stop making silly excuses for their failures.

It isn't all their fault, though they do have to take some blame. Stop trying to segment the market so much by restricting features on models.

Give us a decent thin, light (<1.5kg) system with a good 1920x1080+ 13"-15" matte screen, replaceable batteries, at least one memory slot and a standard format (PCIe or SATA3) SSD, a large trackpad with some sort of 3-button functionality, proper-sized arrow keys, some USB ports and AC wireless.

If you want to get fancy, do some CTI with my mobile so I have the option of using it with my PC to make/receive calls and the other way around - using my phone's contacts book to dial on a softphone, kick off email etc. Document hand-off between phone and PC can be done over local wifi/hotspot with SSHFS - I don't want or need no steekin' cloud. If I'm doing hand-off, I'm holding both devices.

W10 wasn't going to drive the hardware market because the OS shouldn't be doing that and people (rightly) wouldn't stand for it. Companies are pulling data back into the DC from PC's so there's little driver to actually process data on PCs any more - we're heading back to almost dumb terminals. A more sophisticated Word processor, with spreadsheets bolted on not to analyse data, but because Word's list indentation system feels a bit shaky and A4 ain't large enough. Spreadsheets mostly act as an information pin-board. When data is all locked away in the DC and no-one can do much with it, perhaps we'll see a swing back the other way, as we did when the PC was born. For now, the PC server farm is taking the place of the mainframe's role of yesteryear.

This is before we get into conspiracy theories regarding whether really powerful desktop CPUs might poach Xeon sales and the fact that AMD is really not giving Intel enough of a poke in the eye. Perhaps we'll have to wait a couple of years for the Chinese to catch up in CPU tech before things get moving again. For my part, I'd like to see Linux-proper gain mobile power-saving feature options. Maybe standard Gnome 3 (or whatever QT is doing) would be suitable for a phone or tablet. I'd like a proper Linux desktop, rather than one of the "optimised" abominations currently seen in the mobile space. Perhaps on ARM. Different cores with process migration? Yes please!

>I wonder how the Russian government feels about the end-2-end encryption?

It doesn't matter that much. Once the data is kept within the country it can start demanding keys and all sorts of things. I presume this is all assuming users tick the "I'm a Russian" box.

While I dislike Putin's actions and rather doubt his pure motives, this is actually the correct way to do it. Legislate for your own country, not the American way of deciding you rule the earth.

Re: Trusted computing

The idea of a lawyer in command seems absurd... however its difficult to know if it a weasel move or a recognition by the BoD that the Windows 10 snooping thing is way out of control and while they can probably cope with consumer irritation and rebellion, dealing with corporate customers is a whole different ball of wax.

MS isn't a dying company. I'm just amazed that it constantly manages to make itself look like one.

+1 for the "why the creepy W10 ads?" Buy Windows 10 (don't think about it, just look at the cute baby! Awwww!)

Pssst! MS! I have this plan I got from Coke for managing a transition to a new product. Oh... you've already got it? Now I understand.

Re: The Law of Unintended Consequences

>But MyKi was a speculative investment in the idea that the state government could get out a pay-wave debit card before the credit card companies did, and we've been paying for their hubris ever since.

Except that isn't really it. With a debit card, the money stays in my account, paying off my mortgage interest. With Myki, it sits in someone-else's account. I have no problem with the Myki Pass - buy a week's travel in advance, it's the Myki Money I have a problem with. Take my money knowing its just too inconvenient to go through the process of getting it back. There was nothing wrong with the original ticketing system.

Then they go one creepy step further and track my movements. I get that they may need to track passenger patterns to understand usage... so put a unique key on each disposable paper/magnetic ticket and see where it goes that day. It doesn't have to be hard and it doesn't have to be creepy.