Posts by M Gale

http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news/virus/2014/Number-of-the-week-list-of-malicious-Android-apps-hits-10-million

So how many of these malicious apps affect people who haven't rooted their handsets?

If the user has checked the little box to allow installation from unknown sources, how many of these apps have broken out of the per-app sandbox?

I'm reckoning that number will be zero, just like I said. Even if you do get something dodgy, you uninstall it. Just like I said.

Head-in-sand? Hardly. Broken handsets more likely to be infected. Well, I think that falls under "no shit, Sherlock".

Now, as I said (again): I've yet to see anything that affects a handset that hasn't had its own security measures broken to "root" it.

When you can find an example of malware that will infect a non-rooted device, and break out of the sandbox, and be unable to be simply uninstalled like any other app, then maybe I'll listen. I just haven't found any.

And Dalvik still isn't Linux.

Re: Race to the bottom...

Of course, this could never happen without doing something to tackle the Android piracy problem...

The only Android piracy problem is the one in your head.

No, really. I've seen some bloody ridiculous reports that claim 90-odd percent of Android and iOS software out there is an unauthorised copy.

And then I actually go out and look at the real world, and come to the inevitable conclusion that these reports are complete and total shit.

Re: Remember SCART?

If legislating connector types in this manner did any good then why did SCART never take off in North America?

I guess an unhealthy dose of "Not Invented Here". That and the EU is not the USA. SCART worked incredibly well for what it was meant for, which was basically connecting your different tellyboxes to/from the telly. A lot better than expecting everyone to plug red/white/yellow leads in the right way, and heaps better than RF modulators into the antenna socket.

It was basically HDMI before HDMI, and without the nasty HDCP crud.

I propose a new word.

Cunnilinguine.

For when you're making a real, erm, meal out of it.

Re: Moderation

Oooh, subtle threats of violence. Classy.

I would say it's more like an assertion that the OP has some restraint. As in "I won't go insulting you regardless of how big and hard I may or may not be."

I certainly don't see where the threat is, subtle or otherwise.

Re: 700 watts

Fortunately it's only there to turn the chocolate tube-steak into charcoal, same way that you can turn wood into charcoal I guess. Heat the stuff up in an environment that's as oxygen-free as you can get it.

700 watts, in an insulated box the size of a bucket, should be enough to thoroughly roast whatever you put in there.

Re: But do all Macs run OSX?

With the menus at the top of the screen you always know where the menu bar is going to be.

With the relevant menu for the application in question being attached to the window of the application in question, you'll never know where the menu for the relevant application will be?

Personally I have more of a problem with crappy "unified menu bar" interfaces like OS X and some Linuxy things. Sometimes the menu you want is not for a window that is in focus. Yay, more alt tabbing, yay more mouse clicking.

Re: Sigh

This bitching is more like that that followed Vista: A lot of people complaining about a new interface that seemed to be change for change's sake, and grumbling that the new version provided little if any benefit over the previous.

There was quite a lot of bitching about WGA and how it would only inconvenience paying customers. Enough that Microsoft didn't distribute WGA with their volume license customers. Oh, and that fucking awful fisher price colour scheme, which was at least trivially changeable back to something.. well.. else.

Win9x was bitched at because it took up 80 to 100MB at a time when a 210MB HDD was not unusual. Oh, that and the horrific compatibility issues with DOS software which was still bloody common at the time.

Re: Ultra?

Oh I know about those, and that's still a pretty big lump to stick in a phone. If you can get three times that, in a paper-thin wrapper around the phone battery?

Joyful times, perhaps.

You wouldn't expect an IT person to work for free if they tools which help automate their job eg building images for multiple use rather than installing everything from scratch...why should a company be any different?

And you think the person who created the "includes Firefox" build was hired specifically to make that particular build? Or is it that they probably perform all kinds of tasks within Dell, and creating the Firefox build was an hour or two of mucking about on top of their normal duties?

This is something that cost Dell close to zero to make, that they probably recouped the costs on with the sale of a single, no-Firefox PC. Dell are also breaking Mozilla's license agreement by charging money for software that Mozilla stipulate should be freely available, which is kind of why Mozilla is a bit miffed at Dell right now.

And no, no I don't expect the company to work for free. If you've not noticed, PCs are quite expensive. Asking for £16 just to select the image with Firefox on it is a piss-take. Usually when people rob old grannies and other weak or disadvantaged people, we slap them in a prison cell for a while. Or perhaps just slap them a few times. Wonder what should happen with Dell, then?

Re: For some reason...

WhatsApp can fuck off. The first time I heard about it was when it ninja-installed itself alongside something else. It has nothing I want, I never use it, it got uninstalled as soon as I found out I'd installed it. It can go die in the same fire as browser toolbars.

Re: I must be getting old...

It was a problem. It got fixed. At least according to a "diodesign" comment I read on an earlier article.

(and who is DioDesign anyway?)

Re: Not sure where you work...

The other issue, is when it's custom made, if the guy that wrote it buggers off, and there is little or know documentation, it leaves a whole load of shit behind....just look at the banks for a classic example of this.

That's why you beat them about the head with the Big Book of SSADM before letting 'em near a compiler.

Okay, so you could probably pronounce it as "sadism", and probably compress the entire methodology down to "anal retentive attention to detail and documentation", but hey, if you want everything documented, you document everything. Before writing a bunch of undocumented code.

Or at least encourage them to use Doxygen and heavy use of remarks. Owt's better than nowt.

Re: Data Format, not Applications

it's like suggesting a professional graphics house replace Photoshop with GIMP.

Honestly while The GIMP has that truly weird multi-window interface, it's quite capable, even if not quite as advanced as Photoshop, which is only one component of the entire Adobe creative suite.

However, given Adobe's recent "cloud"-only subscription bullshit, I could see some companies tempted to make the switch to just about anything else, even if it's only Paint Shop Pro and Corel Draw.

Re: Got what they deserved.

Anyone stupid enough to 'invest' in something like Bitcoin has frankly got what they deserve.

A shitload of profit? Because that's what a lot of people seem to have got out of it.

How many mathematically based applications have stood the test of time? MD5? DES? Even the seemingly best (mathematical) ideas have flaws that come to light and how can you base financial transactions on something that cannot be trusted?

You do know that money is numbers, right?

if someone steals your money then how the hell do you ever prove who did it and get it back?

You have that same problem with cash, gold bars and property in general. I guess we should abandon property?

I believe the phrased "a fool and his money are soon parted" fits well here.

A phrase that a few bankers seem to be intimately familiar with.

Re: Hope the contract includes upgrading the website to mulitingual support

They should show an English flag and if anyone doesn't like that, they are free to go and make up their own language and use that instead and stick their own flag next to it.

<pedant>

I don't think I've ever seen St George's Cross as a language option. Union Flag perhaps, but that's not exactly "English".

</pedant>

Re: @M Gale - Unfair Tax?

You're still talking about road tax, when I'm on about the telly tax. As is, well, everyone else.

You want it, you pay for it.

Re: Take your glasses off if you want to continue this conversation...

Maybe in your head it'll go like that.

Personally I'd rather not start fights. People tend to die in fights. This isn't a ring, there are no Queensberry rules, and nothing's stopping the Glass wearer from responding by using a hard kick, firm squeeze (or perhaps an outright bite) to remove your ability to ever make children.

They'd probably get away with it under a self defense ruling, too. So, perhaps your more polite first idea should be where you draw the line, eh?

Re: Appropriate reaction

You should learn to read.

It wouldn't teach them to. Call it "lead by example."

Re: I have to wonder.

Or rather, compromise a popular website with a hidden canvas element and some websocket funkiness.

WebGL is basically GLSL. It runs on the GPU, be it AMD or NVidia. It may not be specifically suited to GPGPU operations, but then, Javascript isn't particularly suited to Bitcoin mining. It can still be used to (slowly) do such though!

In fact, after a bit of Googling around, getting data out of a WebGL shader program seems to be scarily possible, in much the same way as getting data out of a generic GLSL shader program. Pretend the array of data is a texture, pass the texture in, work on the texture, read the texture out again. Or pretend the data is an array of vertices, depending on which type of shader you're co-opting, I suppose.

Re: Care-o-meter: LOW <-[]----------------> HIGH

Can you imagine launching a UK website and that happening during your first week? Goodbye business.

Honestly, relying on natural search rankings during your first week is not a good strategy. That's what Adwords are there for. They cost less than you think. I remember about £20/week and some intelligently-chosen keywords resulting in hundreds of thousands of ad views across Google affiliates within a few days. Quite a few conversions, too.

Once you're established, people are talking about you in forums and your natural ranking starts getting bumped up, then you can drop the Adwords campaigns.

Now I'm not sure what happened for you to have your Google ranking dropped. You haven't mentioned which domain you're talking about, and I guess that Reg moderators might /dev/null the post if you did. However, I think you have to accept that with any search engine, you are going to go up and down the rankings based on quite a number of criteria. So long as those criteria aren't "we just don't like you" or "we're about to launch a competing service", there really isn't anything that any monopolies commission should be getting involved with.

Also, first post eh? Hi.

Re: Popcorn

I think you're confusing an argument on the Internet with actually getting worked up. Over toys. Of which there are far better available.

Re: How is this even a debate?

No more than a lorry driver gets a say in whether to turn their tacho off?

Depends on what data is being gathered of course. Sticking cameras all over the interior might be met with a barrage of chewing gum.