Posts by Fred Flintstone

Re: I'm pretty sure Apple know where their Genius Bars are already

I do wish they'd pay attention when you tell them about errors on their maps though. Report a problem and they just seem to ignore you.

It does take time because they have to do either an independent check or get a host more reports of the same issue. The same thing happens with TomTom, but I wish there was just a button you could whack that said "bad - check" because I am not going to add this whilst I'm driving, and by the time I am at my destination I will have forgotten it (plus the coordinates will be lost).

I use TomTom because I prefer to be independent of a data connection.

Re: Simple enough

I think someone may have given me a bottle of whiskey as a present. Not sure.

All I can remember is waking up with an empty bottle on the floor and having "armitage shanks" imprinted on my head (with thanks to Al Murray :) ).

The Diana Ross thing..

I can't quite decide if this tells something about the age of you guys for knowing this, or about mine for recognising that.

Probably both :)

Re: Simple solution

Pretty soon your memory is full

Yup. The old Sony, probably patented "security through obesity" method.

It's platform independent - I've also come across it on Sony laptops...

Re: Billy no mates

Sounds to me like that Ecuadorian Consul is starting to succumb from Stockholm Syndrome

That matches with Assange's "I don't want to go to Stockholm" Syndrome...

Re: Trending...

Any signs of blunt force trauma in the shape of a chair leg? I mean, if you're talking about Microsoft...

Mine's the one with the Kathy Reichs novel, thanks

Re: looking spiff

I must admit that the immediate commentards assumption that it must be a photoshop job is amusing by its implied insult :)

Another fine piece - thanks for this, Alistair.

Re: C r A p p l e

Enough with all the polite self restraint, tell us what you really think :)

Re: Bring back the cash economy!

But now you can lose far more by having your card cloned or your account hacked - and you can still get your wallet nicked, except now they have an incentive to pull out your fingernails one by one until you tell them your pin number.

No comment needed - just a copy so it can be upvoted twice. Absolutely spot on.

Re: WTF

Every device should be as hardened and closely monitored as necessary given the data on it, and every device should be configured as if it was directly exposed to the internet. If you then choose not to expose such devices you are doing so as an extra line of defence, not as your only line. And you should not accept devices which are fundamentally broken and unfixable.

Hmm. Be careful not to treat security as an absolute. It's a balance between budget and risk tolerance. Sure, you can nail every single device down - I sometimes have to because of my job, but I also know what that means in terms of maintenance overhead and impact on usability. When I'm onsite, my machines all have a bluetooth lock so the moment I'm away from my desk they lock. They have full disk crypto because that's easier than trying to protect each segment individually, but it means I must fully shut down the box at the end of the day or I'm wasting my time.

Etc etc etc. So, yes, ideally you lock everything down individually so none can become a bridge head, in practice it tends to be easier to manage the residual risk of not being 100% locked down but have easier to use machines.

It strikes me that Windows has turned from Microsoft's major selling point into a potential boat anchor on anything they touch. They have bought in some seriously good products over time (Visio, for example), and instead of enhancing the product and learning lessons from them they butchered looks, functionality and eventually relevance to any business.

For Microsoft's sake I hope they will eventually learn that the best customer is one that WANTS to buy a product, not one that buys the product because they are not left with a choice. I know that is a different mindset, but seeing just how much gets ruined in the pursuit of client lock-in and how much value gets lost in the process I think it's a lesson that MS needs to learn urgently.

That is, if the man at the top lets it happen. As long as Ballmer is afraid of his own shadow instead of knowing that it's pretty much irrelevant what anyone can do in his management team given his boatload of shares I fear the only way is down. That wouldn't make me sorry for the company as such, but there are a lot of people whose livelihood is associated with the company - and that *does* matter.

Building ecommerce is IMHO a classic example of a need to play nice with others - interoperability (remember that magic word from when the Internet started?) is critical if you want others to join..

Re: @Don Jefe

And it was extended twice as well.

Nice one. A good reference when yet another sponsor representative politician is trying to pass a law with the use of either "emergency" or "temporary". It always means that there is something in that law which they fear you may object to if you were thinking rationally.

We have more than enough laws to deal with emergencies that do NOT harm the principle of due process, and I have yet to see temporary powers that are either extended indefinitely or turned into law proper on the next possible occasion. Does anyone actually know of an occasion where temporary power handed to the state was handed back? No? Thought so.

Re: Internet drones?

You need a ground antenna, which the censoring country can prevent.

Hmm, could this not be built on a MANET construct? In that case you only need to provide the Internet feed to the edge of the cloud, which may be conveniently reside on the safe side of the border.

Re: Well that solves a problem!

I was more imagining the initial learning cycle which seems to contain a degree of Darwinism. It was either learning fine motor control quick enough to handle feeding or die due to blunt force trauma of an overreaching robotic arm..

On the flipside, I exported a CSV from a card scanner, and Excel defaulted to make a thorough mess of it whereas both OO and LO opened it up just fine on account of having sensible defaults.

What's worse, with the &%*$ ribbon in the way I can't even find where to correct it in Excel (augmented by that utterly stupid idea of creating online help so a search will give you a million irrelevant hits), so we just used LO and got on with getting some work done..

Re: Oooh, can I play too!

OK, thumbs up for sarcasm here. *Excellent* response, grin.

Re: Hang on here...

Condoms + "Thumbs up"

I saw what you did there...

That terrorists will come after us if they can, and the only thing we have to deter this is good intelligence."

I can't say I've seem much intelligence in what's going on there.

Re: design triumph (of the will)?

Are we sure they didn't big up the Adolf link to shift a ton of stock they'd over-ordered?

Actually, I think you may be spot on (which is in a way agreeing with @jake above)..

Re: Accesssories

Yup - give the app, a miniature fan to stop it from steaming up..

Category

How interesting to know a list of things some anonymous person on the internet doesn't want to buy. Do elaborate - are cucumbers on that list too? What about your favourite brand of crisps?

Solar cells are. With this %ç*& weather I'm seriously considering water mills instead.

Re: Is this not a joke?

Following the law of the duck, it probably is.

In my opinion, it's almost certainly a windup. There's so much wrong with their concept I'm not even going to begin to write it down because I have other things to do today :).