Posts by h4rm0ny

Re: Sounds like Chrome needlessly hijacked the 'tel:' URL protocol

No, I think most people have largely woken up to the fact that Google are now a "Bad Guy". The key task that still needs to be accomplished is to get people to realize that this doesn't make anyone else a "Good Guy". People love their vendor vs. vendor arguments... They need to realise - it can be neither.

Re: re: Where's the innovation in promising to provide useful updates.....

The chief difference between offering new versions of the OS and just having continuous evolution in Windows 10, is that in the former case the customer can refuse to update. In the latter, it just happens whether they wish it or not. In a technical sense, there's not much difference between how updates are done.

Re: Web much?

>>"Used to get very long delays with this sort of functionality when Ubuntu Unity had it's web search activated (at least you could always turn this off on Ubuntu)."

You can turn it off in Windows 10 as well. The things you can't turn off are things like sending of telemetry data back to Microsoft (which by default includes things like when you're using the system, what programs you're running and for how long).

Re: Web much?

>>"Thing is: I've read too much "success" stories already about Office 365 users being completely unable to work (at one point this even lasted a whole day) while my old-fashioned-but-still-working Office 2010 just started without any hassle (and without any Internet)."

That doesn't ring true to me. Office 365 is the subscription model. You can still have downloadable versions of the software included in that (and I do). They work fine without an Internet connection just as with Office 2010. You might be confusing Office 365 with the online web-based Office software in which case, yes, they obviously don't work when you're not online.

Re: Well done for trying to find the good points of Win10.

I think there are plenty of good points in Windows 10. It's just that the flaws are critical ones. I.e. the Edge browser you cannot separate from your Windows log in if you're using an MS account. The closest you can get is to enter private mode every time you start it and then it can't remember anything between sessions. Basically MS saying: if you want normal browsing experience with this, you WILL tell us who you are so we can track which websites you visit. Other things are reversible but only against MS's wishes - e.g. the lowest you can switch the "diagnostic" feedback to is "Basic", but you can actually turn it off by hacking around with the registry and disabling standard services. But that's neither reliable nor suitable for most users, so I class it as a critical flaw. I have gone back to GNU/Linux after years of using Windows (switched to it part way through 7 when I found it had actually become a decent OS).

I think Windows 10 is good if you don't care about controlling your own computer or your privacy. But for many of us, those are non-negotiable.

Re: I'm mortally offended!

Are you sure? The third back looks definitely Chinese to me and others are not exactly clear-cut.

Re: Small end of the wedge

Seriously, you think a humorous ad suggesting people take a date to the cybersecurity conference has "destroyed their credibility"? This is a company that has consistently scored almost higher than any other anti-malware vendor for percentage of issues caught (Trend Micro matches them) and which exposed the Equation Group's work (NSA) - some of, if not the most, sophisticated malware we've ever seen? You think this ad "destroys their credibility"? I don't know what you're assessing Kapersky on that you think this, but it's certainly not the quality of their researchers or their product.

Re: The Puritans called

I find the Lynx commercials far worse than what Kapersky has done here. Honestly, I didn't have any negative reaction to the picture at all. Yes, it happens to be a guy surrounded by women who want to meet him but I didn't get any impression at all that the message was "women can't fix a computer" and more "women will be impressed if you're smart and go to Cybersecurity conferences". Which honestly, I found amusing. None of the women depicted are swooning damsels spilling their tits everywhere whilst an heroic male swoops in and undeletes their selfies for them. They look pretty smart, various and, well, depicted as people. Not as desperate sex-objects like in a Lynx (Axe to Americans) advert.

Seriously, I'm usually pretty sensitive to how women are depicted and viewed in the IT world, and all this ad says to me is "take a date to the cybersecurity conference - you'll attract smart, capable women". The ad is fine.

Re: The whole thing

>>"Because you don't understand how people can spend money on a hobby that boggles anyone who doesn't engage in that hobby?"

That's not what the OP said nor what they were getting at. Playing a game - understandable for a variety of reasons, surprise, challenge, humour, story, whatever. Paying money to do so, therefore likewise understandable. What was questioned was where someone pays real money for achievements. You can earn coins or equipment etc. in game but many games will also let you buy those things with real world currencies. That short-circuits the entire process and is basically just a way to fire the synapse in your brain that says "achievement".

Such a game model (often the game itself is free) is basically providing the minimum necessary to define success for the player (I've got X weapon, I own 20 pigs, etc.) and then getting people to pay money to get that success without doing the necessary playing / developing the relevant skill level.

And THAT is what is wrong with it. If the achievement is detached from any entertainment the game itself delivers in getting it, then it is utterly arbitrary. You're paying someone real money to have a message on screen saying "you have 20 pigs". Or again, whatever you collect in that game.

If a purchasable extra to a game delivers additional "game", like a DLC expansion pack for a role-playing game, then that makes sense - it's essentially gradiating the price of the game according to how much you play. But paying to avoid having to play - that's deeply flawed and basically just manipulation of the brain's reward modelling.

Re: Sell your soul and then complain about how it is used?

What we need then, is an Open Source equivalent to Facebook.

Porn is a very subjective thing. A picture of a naked person might not be porn, but another person might view it and think it is. A baby breast-feeding shouldn't be porn, but some people freak out if they see it as some offensive thing. I wouldn't be the slightest surprised if some people viewed food in a sexual manner and created a "porn" website dedicated to sushi or somesuch.

So what determines whether or not something is "pornographic" or "offensive". The person doing it / sharing it, or the person viewing it? Or a third party (Theresa May) deciding that both parties should think it is even if they haven't seen it themself?

Re: I dumped Facebook

>>"Personally I'm waiting for the announcement of the formation of GooFaceMicroTwApple which will then be followed immediately by "The Singularity"."

I think in that eventuality, we might as well just use the more traditional "Black Hole".

Re: Interesting

>>"You do the math, and please don't attempt to excuse black-on-white violence as somehow "justified," because it isn't. Besides nearly all black shooting victims are shot by other blacks, and that rate is far higher than for any other race."

Have you correlated for poverty and education? Because those two (linked) factors seem to be far more significant than race, to me.

Re: "lazy economics ... allow migration to give us economic growth"

"Democracy is a process of trial and error."

Don't worry. With Theresa May as PM, we'll soon be putting a stop to trials in the UK. They wont be needed anymore.

Re: Left-wing ideologues.

>>"I'm not sure that our Commentards personal experiences of debating points amongst both Left and the Right-leaning people is borne out by the UK's more reliable yardsticks of political thought along this single axis: the daily rags."

Well the subject is about methods of debate between people, not newspapers, so you're off-topic. Plus newspapers are primarily read by older people so not the best "yardstick" for active discussion between people today (old people are generally more insular than young people). However, I'll take up your comment and dispute it. The majority of papers sold (The Sun, the Daily Heil) don't construct arguments in the first place - they tell the reader what they should think with the occasional editorial throwing in some soundbite reasons. The standard is extremely low. Of the papers that do attempt to actually argue their points as if to an unconvinced reader, I would pit any of The Times (right-wing), the Telegraph (it's nickname is the Torygraph so...) or the Financial Times (de facto Right-Wing just through correlation of interests) against The Guardian - the pages of which have contained such delightful arguments as how a US judge shouldn't make their decisions based on evidence but on what feels right.

Honestly, I think only the Guardian can pretend to be an intellectual paper on the Left and my impression would be that it is noticeably more likely to descend to label-arguments than The Times or the FT.

Re: Really?

>>"You may be familiar with a phrase from the past... "no taxation without representation"... the very essence of why the EU is a failure; un-elected bureaucrats dictating to people what they can and cannot do."

The rallying cry of the Brexiteer: "Unelected bureaucrats!"

We have those in the UK. Tonnes of them. Did you vote for the director of the NHS? No? How about the chairman of the Bank of England? Or the person who monitors fishing quotas? None of these? It's the same process in the EU. You vote for representatives who appoint these people because direct voting for every "bureaucrat" is neither desirable nor feasible. Of course there is one notable difference with the EU - you have in addition to the elected house, a non-elected house (a bit like the Lords). And they are there because individual nations didn't want to yield total sovereignty and wished to appoint their own national representatives. Which we do.

I'm tired of reading "unelected bureaucrats" from people who think that's some odd, tyrannical system.

Re: Interesting downplaying there

Should not the FBI be obliged to prosecute criminal activity in the case of government? Allowing them to just drop charges when it is politically inconvenient (i.e. it's your likely future boss) is just an open invitation to excuse corruption.

Who are the Internal Affairs of government?

Re: <3

Derivative of "baby" and usually used by male Internet users to refer to women they'd want to date. See also "waifu".

Yeah, having a recruiter call me "their bae" would creep me the Hell out and not end well for said recruiter.

I may just be square and unhip, but the last thing I want with my work environment is to go to an after-party and play beer pong with any of them I have my own circle of friends and I keep my work life professional.

It's my experience of work parties / social that they want you to pretend to be all relaxed and "yourself", but they don't actually want that - the politics carries on. And if you do let yourself be yourself that tends to be remembered in the morning (especially if you're a woman where social and work standards tend to differ even more).

The Internet-phrasing is just silly to be. But the idea that I should be professionally introducing myself to a company I want to work for by playing "beer-pong" is just down-right off-putting.

Re: Are you 18?

>>"Do you PROMISE on Cameron's grave that you're 18, cross your heart, hope to die."

Maaaaybe.

But show me Blair's grave and I'll promise pretty much anything you want!

Well maybe if this law passes you'll have the "right" to 10Mbps in your village but there's nothing about cost still. So what does that mean? They're forced to offer it but can charge you thousands for a dedicated line? They're not allowed to offer packages less than 10Mbps? Those seem to be the only viable interpretations of this law and neither really makes much sense. Maybe if you're an ISP you're required to offer 10Mbps to anyone who wants it. Which is a great way to keep out new competition as only BT, TalkTalk, et al. could absorb such costs. Again, as a law this makes no sense?

And what the Hell does this have to do with mandatory age checks, too? Another way of putting that is anyone visiting such sites legally must supply personally identifying information. Yes, that's exactly what you should not be putting into a porn site. Nor should the government be snooping on it.

>>"The sole reason why we are in a position where a service with end-to-end encryption has been provided worldwide is the artificial separation of telecoms and information service providers by the FCC in the USA. USA has allowed the latter to skip a lot of requirements including legal intercept"

There's a difference between how the two are handled, yes. But I don't think it should be resolved in the direction you seem (possibly) to think. With old phone systems, people needed the phone companies to handle the implementation of communication for them. Nobody could whip up a quick communications protocol and implement it independently over the wires. But today data and bandwidth are commoditized. Not only do we not need BT or AT&T controlling how we send messages to each other, they cannot control how we send messages to each other.

Unless Authority declares there shall be no unapproved types of data transfer - that everything must be in pre-approved formats that they can read, then any of us can whip up a communication system in a week which they cannot scan.

So what's the proposal here - companies are to be fined for doing things that members of the public can do for free? Commercial entities are put at a technical disadvantage over free alternatives? Neither seems fair to me.

Along with the other article on El Reg about Facebook being blamed for deaths in Israel because they didn't pro-actively spy on their users enough to satisfy the Israeli authorities, I'm actually, -gasp- finding myself defending Facebook this week! (A bit ;) )

Re: Author is Dead Wrong

>>>>We can't go after people for copyright infringement for using "Itanic" or "cloudobile". You can't defend a word.

>>You can if you trademark them or argue that they're slander, libel, or similar

I've bolded the relevant words in the comment you were responding to for edification.

There're only two requirements. Firstly, Bond has to be English and posh. (S)he can be gritty and rough as they like but they have to know their way a bottle of wine and be able to pick out the Saville Row suit from the others.

Secondly, they need to be something of a brute. I see this as where the danger with a female bond. I think they will be tempted to make Bond a slinky femme fatale a lá Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels or Scarlett Johansen in those Avengers films. They'll want Bond to suddenly be this ninja cat type spy just because he's now female. I would prefer a male bond (I'm female, I like to look Danial Craig - that's half the appeal), but I could stand to see a take on it with a female Bond. But if she doesn't beat someone half to death in a nasty manner and a dollop of sneering contempt for the victim's horribly violent death, it's not Bond.

If they keep the character the same, I might be okay with it. But I suspect they'll want to change it. Bond is a psychopath. That will stand out a lot more to people if he becomes a she and I think most male directors would shy away from that and soften Bond.

Re: " will have to to beat off stiff competition"

Well it's still better than Pierce Brosnan's "I thought Christmas only came once per year". I mean if there's any article where you're going to insert an extra entendre, it's going to be one on Bond.