Posts by P. Lee

Re: Normality

Banning abortion? What? People think killing babies is wrong? How backward is that! The ancient Greeks and Romans thought that was ok, and that was way before the 17th century.

Teaching an alternative theory of the origins of life on earth? Ah yes, that's just like beheading people who oppose your rule and hiding half the population under tent-clothes while the other half can do as they wish. In the name of freedom, we must smash (or censor) those who don't agree with us.

How much more civilised we are, sending our armies off to foreign lands where they can wreak havoc on them undeserving heathens, killing them, so that they don't have to endure the dreadful atrocities their leaders inflict on them.

Re: I have the solution ...

I think I'll just pop the kettle on for myself and spend the five minutes chopping the veggies for supper. Perhaps I could ask the kids to help so that I can chat to them while we do stuff together.

Its why the IoT will fail. It solves no problem. The metro system can't cope with my bank card being next to my rail card. What's the likelihood the fridge can sort out the jumble of food that's stuffed in it? Food in paper bags and food in plastic bags which have been re-used. Unlike Android, setting up stuff to snoop on my home is likely to be way more expensive than simple mechanical devices and far more trouble for me. I may be willing to pay for "cool tech" but I'm not going to pay for tech which makes things harder for me.

There's also a lack of benefit from the cloud for this. I may allow google to rifle through my mail because they are good at storing email and making it available to me. They also take the security headache away. IoT not so much. I already have music on my phone - I don't need locational awareness to follow me around the house playing music, I'll wear headphones. It may be a marketer's dream and Cisco's dream but I've never had a hankering for it. I may have all my music in Amarok, but I like pulling a CD out and putting it into the CD player. I don't want Christmas to mean scrolling down to the "seasonal" genre in the playlists. I want to buy Christmas tree, bring it home and set it up, not have it stored in a built-in cupboard and pop out fully decorated with this years holographic baubles when a cronjob kicks off on 1st December.

There are a few things which make sense, but I think having the airconditioning run on a timer is just fine, I don't need it internet connected. Apart from anything else, in hot weather my router tends to lock up. I can turn the light switch on by myself - programming it to match what mood I'm in is more trouble than its worth. Plus, what dreadful things might happen if I'm almost home... and then decide to go out for pizza?

Re: Too late to save Windows 8

W8 is now a marketing liability for MS regardless of how technically good it is. W10 will be brought in asap. More W7'ish in interface, more cloudy underneath. Pick your poison.

Personally I find both systems obscure and hide too much. W7 has a usable menu, but I find it easier to pin browser, control panel, file explorer and major apps to the taskbar in order to avoid the start menu.

I just find admin things too hard in Windows. I have a dhcp/tftp/http server combination on which I can dump linux ISOs. Yes, I can dump an ISO on a web server and install an OS from it. Bingo, instant network installation/upgrade mechanism with standard protocols. Now, network install with Windows? There's probably an app for that - some custom thing that will change from version to version. Might have to pay for it. It looks really complicated. Network boot? Now you're having a laugh! You want to boot off an ISO on web server and run the OS from it?

MS just seem to make easy things hard so they you become reliant on their software to do it for you. Obviously you need a The Microsoft Windows 3000 network installation and patching server! Er, no thanks. But we have Special Technology to slowly transfer patches across your WAN links for distribution! You mean like a private torrent with a bandwidth cap?

Don't get me wrong, the Windows desktop is very robust - perhaps more so than Linux's, but they don't seem to have moved much beyond making a really good version of W3.11 It is still very much a client with the server side costing big(ger) bucks. At least with 3.11 you felt MS were doing they best they could, now they hold things back because licensing differences can make it more profitable. Apple are doing the same with hardware - removing features not because its expensive to leave them in, but to protect the higher-end products.

Re: Good, good

How do we know the photo subject wasn't the one getting revenge by privately agreeing to the photo upload and then denying it afterwards?

Do not take pictures of yourself naked. Don't allow other people to do that. If they do it without your knowledge, I'm sure there are laws covering that already. Actually, don't get naked for someone who will leave you. Crazy I know, but sex outside marriage is a very high-risk activity which leaves you open to abuse. Entering into a legally-binding agreement to "forsake all others until death us do part"- provides an indication of how highly your partner esteems you and dramatically reduces the risk of you being abused.

>Uphill struggle to move into high margin devices I expect while more and more people are finding medium or low end phones quite sufficient.

Or even that their current phone is quite sufficient.

> Now we know what the frickin' laser beams are for.

Yep. Sharks at each end for the optical and dolphins working as acoustic couplers. I understand there's a whale running as a signal booster in the middle.

Re: DG834G

I have one of these. (v2) Not so impressed.

It tends to randomly reboot. Line drops are relatively frequent (not sure which end is at fault). I've heard rumours of VPNs but mine doesn't seem to serve them or run any of the third-party router OSes.

I'll try a second-hand Cisco 800 I picked up for five quid.

Re: Only 26 passwords?

a

b

c

...

Re: Raspberry Pi

> But you forgot to factor in the cost of...

Still a lot cheaper than a tablet.

But not as cheap as textbooks, which could be re-used year after year and kept in a library. Not only that, but you can open them and see two sides of A4 at one time and the DPI is great.

Maybe you could approach a teacher or university lecturer and offer them 400k to write a book for you which you then own. Put it into epub and kindle formats as well as printing them, and maybe put them on a wiki open to academics and viewable by all.

Stop forcing up the cost of education with unnecessary, expensive and fragile gadgets.

I don't know if kerbal would allow that sort of inaccuracy, but it wouldn't cut it here: http://my.ign.com/atari/lunar-lander

Re: Why aren't light sabers longer?

See here: http://xkcd.com/1433/

Re: @Trevor

> it's already the de facto standard, and it ain't going anywhere.

I agree with that, I suspect the question behind the doubters is, "is Azure going anywhere or will this just be used to authenticate Exchange clients?" I suspect they are confusing "AD for Azure replaces AD for corporate use" with "Azure wins teh internet and cloud."

Re: So this a week after the Yahoo email failure

But its the infallible Cloud, the way of the future!

Who would download email on their local computer with IMAP, so it stays on the server but you also have it locally?

Re: Tools to do a job

Alas for having only one upvote to give.

The fact that there are so many old systems out there is testament to the fact that upgrades are not required for many people.

After W8, perhaps MS need to reconsider the "sell a new version" strategy and sell fixes and maintenance instead. The OS upgrade cycle seems to be specifically designed to introduce incompatibilities and force the wholesale upgrade of applications. It brings a whole new meaning to the term "monolithic OS."

Actually, with all the virtualisation tech in place, now is an excellent time for BSD/Linux devs to write enterprise software and ship it as a soft appliance. If I were writing a new "Exchange", that's what I'd be doing.

Re: Misleading

>For example, there's a report on a prominent mafia trial where a contemporary news report wrongly associates an innocent person to the crimes.

But I don't think this is the common usage, is it?

My concern would be that I would rather have wrong information returned by my search engine, than one that has been massaged by money or politics. How long until we get a request that Google removes all links which "brings the government/company into disrepute"?

It is tragic for those maligned, but I think there is a better way. Rather than removing the links, how about flagging links which have successfully gone through an arbitration process with an "inaccurate" flag. That puts greater pressure on the originating website to remove the data if they don't stand by it, rather than have their name associated with being wrong. Plus it provides some correction to previous inaccurate reporting.

It also removes the "censorship" criticism and the ability for people to get information removed because they are embarrassed about their previous conduct.

Re: This is good.

It is video *and* its online.

Therefore it is not real. QED.

/cynic

Re: He's missing the obvious then.

>But no, there is little chance of Malcolm hurting regardless of what happens.

Unless those cloud providers promised to fund his political life in return for government going with them rather than keeping things in-house.

Re: Cue panic

>Do you really think 98% of people will notice or care about the change?

Most people who goes to the bother of installing FF is going to flip the search to Google anyway.

>The big question is why the mainstream media are afraid to admit the obvious?

Perhaps because they don't want to be cut out of government briefings to the press in the future, or make an enemy of GCHQ/NSA in general?

Re: Assuming nothing more material was said on Facebook etc.

Crime - its the price we pay for not all being in jail already.

Also, its unlikely being in jail stops all crime anyway.

Re: Good hardware... but

>why exactly would anyone pay 2.5x the price for the latest Galaxy S when it is running identical software?

That is why its tanking. We don't mind paying more if the thing is better but the software differentiation is not enough to make it worth that much more. They need to stop matching Apple and make the best phone hardware they can.

That means - put an SD card slot in it, look at making an aluminium casing, invest in the Kies stuff to make it usable - maybe PoE/mini-DVI for thin-client work. Get some sync going for people with itunes libraries to ease that transition. If they are not good at the UI (which Kies suggests) put some effort into Android itself. Pump some money into Android security projects, make it (or Tizen) properly multiuser based on thumbprint.

It often strikes me that manufacturers do a bit of work and then stop making an effort, especially with sync software.

Re: Upgrades

>Have you ever bothered to keep your /home directory on a separate partition?

I generally keep a couple of OS partitions as well so I can do a clean install without scratching the previous system.

Re: I've been sayin' it!

>Their desperate attempt to kill off the "third pillar" of that marketing malarkey - the third party service provider - will result in more companies getting bitten by this single-source cloud failure garbage.

It isn't even that sophisticated. The whole idea of the cloud is that you don't need to know about the underlying IT, which is simply untrue as DiData are pointing out. You have to know your applications and your infrastructure if you want it to function in a particular way.

That leaves the cloud useful for non-critical things but not the basis for your business. The bottom has fallen out of the IT industry because we've completed the computerisation/networking of business. There's little raw kit/software left to sell. Cloud is basically outsourcing and cloud companies are desperate for recurring revenue now no-one is placing big orders for new kit. Surprisingly for some, you can't do outsourcing without knowing what's going on with the infrastructure. There is no "inevitability" about outsourcing, despite what Turnbull says. Cloud is not "magic." The engineering is hard, which is why a simpler in-house solution may actually be more robust.

Personally I'm surprised that ISP's haven't stepped in to offer an in between solution. Put in a couple of good load-balancers and share them between customers. That would seem like a good idea to me - share the expensive bits but keep the server-side engineering simple.

Re: Hmm.

Any time you want to host a service, you'll run in security problems, especially if running cheap kit.

However, IPv6 does allow at least the possibility that you can set up a sensible firewall ruleset, partition your network for DMZs etc., on a residential system.

It doesn't solve the problem of poor security on a the end device of course. That's why we use VPNs.

I've noticed at least some progress already with wireless segregation being offered on lower-end devices.

Re: Gut ... er journalism?

It starts earlier than mothers chewing food for the babies - at birth IIRC.

Re: Good stuff.

Actually sugar is bad for you too. Apparently it messes with your body's ability to determine that you've eaten enough.

Those hip replacements talked about in the article - weakened bones break more easily to the point where the bone breaks causing the fall, not the fall breaking the bones. Bones of course are hard because of their calcium which can be leached by the body to counteract excessive acid in the digestive system caused (usually) by rich/acidic food, coffee, cream, cheese etc.

Health is a package, a lifestyle. Its best to not eat processed/concentrated food. The first things added in excess to packaged food tend to be salt, fat and sugar, all of which tend to be present in rather high quantities. If one is low, the others tend to go higher to compensate. The problem is the palette - we don't like eating simple but healthy food. Reduce the processing, reduce the human interference between pasture and plate, eat mostly plants, do some exercise and as a generalisation, you'll be much healthier. You'll still die of course, but you'll tend to be less sick along the way.

I think its a fairly sick mentality that suggests that getting people to die young before they become a financial burden on society is a good thing. We should be working for the good of the individual, not leaving them to die quickly by malnutrition, regardless of their income level.

Perhaps obesity on its own is too narrow a definition of what incurs health-costs, would it better please the ranters to widen it to "malnutrition"? It's still mostly the same thing but it might let the air out of their concern regarding sound-bite reports and politics.

Re: slow news day...

> Why The Register has to publish this stuff is beyond me.

Because comment pages have adverts too.