* Posts by David Nash

1434 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jul 2008

Just a little heads up: Google is still trying to convince everyone that web apps don't suck

David Nash Silver badge

Re: But surely anything better than an "app" for everything ?

I agree -- for things that are web-based services, stop trying to push apps on me all the time. I'm thinking of LinkedIn but many others also apply. Why do they all want me to have their app when they've already done a pretty good job of making the mobile web version very usable?

For apps that work offline (surely that's unthinkable to the likes of Google?) maybe an app is better. I've not used one of these so-called progressive things.

Rocket Labs mean business, Brits stick pin in Mars map, and Japan celebrates HTV-7’s dive into the atmosphere

David Nash Silver badge

120 launches a year?

Seems optimistic?

UK.gov fishes for likes as it prepares to go solo on digital sales tax

David Nash Silver badge

Re: FUD and Ignorance

Seeing as how this whole situation has arisen because these companies use various mechanisms to ensure they make a loss and that is why they don't pay tax, I think it would be extreme incompetence on the part of whoever drafted this proposed legislation, if such a loophole applied.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Hmm

That's just BS. Are you saying that the income tax I pay on my salary is punishment for working?

No, because if I didn't work not only would I not pay the tax but I wouldn't get the salary either.

Tax is not punishing success. It's one of the costs of doing business, of which there are many.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Tax isn't my strong point...

"So how can you tax someone that provides a service for free, just because they then make money of you using their service for free?"

Because, as you said, "they then make money".

You might have noticed that making money is one of the main things that incurs a tax. Doesn't matter how you make it. Unless you're a charity or similar, make money=pay tax. That's the point here.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Too complicated

"So tax advert *display* rather than sales."

That won't help tax companies that do sell stuff, or enable selling of stuff. eg. Amazon, Ebay.

UK rail lines blocked by unexpected Windows dialog box

David Nash Silver badge

headcode

is that the number shown on OpenTrainTimes.com?

Why don't we have proper train identifiers used for the public here, as they do in many other countries?

Here trains always seem to be identified by the station it's leaving and the time (optionally with the destination). That's often ambiguous and inefficient. Much better to say "train 12345"

David Nash Silver badge

Re: raspberry pi

A Raspberry pi is 40 quid once and can display a webpage.

But much harder to find someone you already have, who knows what to do with it.

David Nash Silver badge

OpenTrainTimes.com

+1 for this useful website.

30 spies dead after Iran cracked CIA comms network with, er, Google search – new claim

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Face facts

I read it as ironic and imagined the quotes around "Crooked Hillary".

Stating that the CIA describes it as resisting all attempts.... really?

But the number of downvotes suggest a number of people here read it as straight.

Nikola Tesla's greatest challenge: He could measure electricity but not stupidity

David Nash Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Anti-intellectual?

Dunning-Kruger.

Apple emits its much-anticipated updates to Mac, AppleTV, and iOS

David Nash Silver badge

The headline

Doesn't to "Drop" something normally mean to abandon it?

It's been a week since engineers approved a new DNS encryption standard and everyone is still yelling

David Nash Silver badge

It seems there are two changes and the original article didn't emphasise enough the thing about browsers.

As several comments here pointed out, HTTPS is just another way to get to a DNS server, and as several others have pointed out, this has certain advantages from a user security point of view.

However why would the DNS server choice be part of such a standard? Currently browsers make calls to the OS or standard network libraries to resolve names, which will use configured addresses, whether they were static or obtained via DHCP. The same should apply to DOH, the change should be at the OS level, nothing to do with the browser.

Memo to Mark Sedwill: Here's how to reboot government IT

David Nash Silver badge

Wunderkids?

Was that ad supposed to be reassuring?

Who the hell wants to pay their council tax via a system that's been built by a 19 year-old kid with no experience?

Mac users burned after Nuance drops Dragon speech to text software

David Nash Silver badge

Apple won't allow it's OS to be run similarly on a Windows machine

I'm no Apple fan but I appreciate the fact that they are a hardware company using the OS and other software to sell such HW. Therefore it would be suicide to allow the OS to run on generic hardware.

MS and Google are not hardware companies, and to the extent that they do sell their own hardware the strategy is generally the other way round from Apple, ie. the HW is there to get users onto the software and platforms.

As I said, not an Apple fan but still considering going with Apple for a PC when Win 7 is no longer supported. MS have driven me off. Not an iphone though, there are limits!

Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz

David Nash Silver badge
WTF?

It's all about the buzzwords

That Red Hat page contains the word "cloud" about 45 times.

And "Linux" only 6.

Should a robo-car run over a kid or a grandad? Healthy or ill person? Let's get millions of folks to decide for AI...

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Final solution many years from now

Train drivers don't choose who to swerve at not because trains and pedestrians are segregated but because trains are on rails and the driver can't change direction, only the speed.

David Nash Silver badge
Stop

3. hit something solid over something moving or weak that might give way

Surely not - you want something that will absorb the energy, not something that will push it all back into you.

Apparently the very worst thing (for the driver) to hit is a tree. Unlike a post that has been put there, it usually won't fall or bend over. Unlike another car it won't move along the road or crush a bit. It just sits there and doesn't move and you hit it with all your kinetic energy.

David Nash Silver badge

Can't steal a cat.

Cats belong to no one but themselves.

Chinese biz baron wants to shove his artificial moon where the sun doesn't shine – literally

David Nash Silver badge

Lunar-tic

It's almost as if the writer didn't know the origin of the word he was implying.

David Nash Silver badge

t-shirt weather

When is it not t-shirt weather in a Northern town?

David Nash Silver badge

How can you live without the sun?

My wife, being Spanish, thinks much the same, and we are many hundreds of miles further south than Scotland.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Eight times brighter than the Moon?

Here's a picture of the Earth and Moon taken together

Is that actually taken together? Who or what took the picture?

Remember when Apple's FaceTime stopped working years ago? Yeah, that was deliberate

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Youtube App, @ David Nash

Maybe my phone is a couple of years older or maybe it depends on your phone brand. Mine has an "uninstall" option.

David Nash Silver badge

Youtube App

That's a third-party App so I wouldn't count that as the "features you got when you bought the phone".

Tech hub blames tech: San Francisco fingers Uber, Lyft rides for its growing traffic headache

David Nash Silver badge

Re: 30 years SF driver here..

You might have one or two valid points (not sure actually) but you ruin it with they way you put it.

* Civil rights? Get real. All tax-collecting authorities spend money in ways that many of their constituents disagree with. You're trivialising the real civil rights struggles of the past and not-so-past.

* "Critical Mass assholes" Oh you're so eloquent.

* Blaming cyclists for the traffic around them

* it's an unattractive city to cycle in so your suggestion is to make it less attractive to cycle in.

* Bit of an unjustifiable anti-white rant too

Sure, Europe. Here's our Android suite without Search, Chrome apps. Now pay the Google tax

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Sailfish ahoy

Your argument doesn't quite hold water - you are running perfectly fine with hardly any Android apps and no Google, except for the apps you do want, which you run on another phone.

David Nash Silver badge

non web-based email

Just get a domain and a simple mail service from one of many providers (I use 1&1), you will be given IMAP, POP3, SMTP access. Plus webmail should you need it.

Not free. But cheap enough that I don't care.

David Nash Silver badge

Apple do not have Significant Market Power on mobile phones

They do not have the majority of the market, so why is it that every podcast I listen to says "give us a review on iTunes"?

Take my advice: The only safe ID is a fake ID

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Mickey The Cat

Why would the name have been questioned, if she had the card?

It's not like it was in the name of Mickey the mouse.

David Nash Silver badge

DOB of 1st January 1970

Do the millennials who coded it not think there is anyone that old? What do people older than that do?

Or are they just stored with a negative date?

UK space comes to an 'understanding' with Australia as Brexit looms

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Still irrelevant

"the likes of ships and aircraft can carry alternatives"

Galileo is the alternative. That's the point.

New Zealand border cops warn travelers that without handing over electronic passwords 'You shall not pass!'

David Nash Silver badge

If your phone is blank of all apps and data...

that would be reasonably suspicious in and of itself, no?

Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless?

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Hahaha...

So the reason nobody walks is because nobody walks.

That syncing feeling when you realise you may be telling Google more than you thought

David Nash Silver badge

Re: Don't blame Google.

You're probably right but, and this is part of the problem with Google and the rest, TL;DR.

Cookie clutter: Chrome saves Google cookies from cookie jar purges

David Nash Silver badge

Not defending them but wondering, this happens so often that I wonder if they are evil or just blind to what users really want.

Do they think, "heh heh, we will keep them logged in so we continue to track the unsuspecting users" or do they think, "poor users would be logged out of Google, nobody wants that, we had better keep those cookies"?

Could it be that they think they are being helpful rather than creepy?

How an over-zealous yank took down the trading floor of a US bank

David Nash Silver badge

Re: yank?

@jmch

Yes that's obviously what @OssianScotland was referring to. No need to spell it out.

Still using Skype? Good news! After HOURS of meetings, Microsoft reckons it knows when you're Not Active

David Nash Silver badge

Do not disturb

What's so rude about that.

Maybe it should say "Please do not disturb".

Microsoft pulls plug on IPv6-only Wi-Fi network over borked VPN fears

David Nash Silver badge

Say goodbye to online gaming and VOIP if your connection uses CG-NAT

You've said it three times now, so I guess it must be true.

I have not heard of CG-NAT before but I suppose if people will be prevented from using those types of online services they will have to be told in advance or there will be chaos, especially if they phone the helpline and the helpdesk people don't know the difference and just tell them to turn it off and on again!

UK networks have 'no plans' to bring roaming fees back after Brexit

David Nash Silver badge

Re: 3 did it in desperation

except the "big guys" didn't follow except when the EU made them.

Have they followed Three's feel at home in all the other non-EU countries? In the USA for example, which I imagine would be an extremely popular move.

David Nash Silver badge
Pint

the Car Club story

Brilliant!

David Nash Silver badge
WTF?

voting leave will be worth any economic cost.

Any?

Any?

Think about what you are saying. Are you really that stupid?

UK.gov finally adds Galileo and Copernicus to the Brexit divorce bill

David Nash Silver badge
Facepalm

The ISS is a cooperative workplace, not whole countries running a political and economic system in which every decision affects the lives and economy of their people.

Of course the EU countries are going to try to get whatever they can out of the negotiations, in the same way that the British should be (but failing). That's not unreasonable, it's entirely reasonable and natural and their duty anyway. They are not a "help the Brits" charity.

David Nash Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Remind me...

I was going to point out "fewer" rather than "less" but realised that most of the Brexit crowd don't understand the difference (JRM and BoJo probably excepted).

David Nash Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Remind me...

"very specific things that will definitely be worse, or no longer available"

And yet those who mention such things are accused of "project fear".

As if ignoring a problem makes it go away.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: £350 million a week

The NHS never were going to see any of that. It was wilfully miscalculated and a con from the start.

David Nash Silver badge
FAIL

Re: The punishment beating will continue

"no detailed idea what that involved at all:"

And that's still the case for some - last night's BBC Question time had the now-traditional long debate about Brexit and one idiot in the audience still commented "why can't we just leave now?"

These types give it no thought at all. None.

David Nash Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: TL;DR

Ugh you made click a Facebook link! My own fault for not checking first.

David Nash Silver badge

Re: TL;DR

"The other people..."

...not to mention the military who want their high-resolution GPS, and the rest of us whose taxes will pay for implementing our own solution.

Kernel sanders: Webroot vuln creates route to root Macs

David Nash Silver badge

Asking for trouble

Who thought calling it "SecureAnywhere" was a good idea?