* Posts by Fred Flintstone

3106 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jun 2009

Swedish linguists nix new word after row with Google

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: what's swedish for bollocks ?

Ironically, according to Google translate you only have to capitalise the word "bollocks".

Maybe bølløcks? :)

Japan's rare earth discovery bad news for China's monopoly plans

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: China only has a monopoly on willingness to pollute

But they tend not to be concentrated in nice, easy to mine seams

They're also chemically bonded to other materials, which is where the pollution originates. After mining, the minerals have to go through a chemical process that is expensive in terms of equipment, energy and pollution to be freed. The titanium vats alone cost millions..

Brussels 'mulling probe' into brutal Apple negotiations with networks

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

The biggest revolution of the iPhone was..

.. getting the carriers to part with a slice of their revenue and hand it to Apple. When I heard that Apple was actually managing that I bowed deeply, because nobody, and I mean NOBODY had ever managed that before in the history of carriers. I used to work in that industry and that was a real, genuinely jaw dropping achievement.

That's changing key business fundamentals ("we pay, you bleed") right there. Heck, I suspect they actually had to keep some consulting in to adjust their systems to pay out as that function cannot have been planned in in their original billing and accounting systems.

Hats off to whoever managed to negotiate that.

Oi, Microsoft, where's my effin' toolbar gone?

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Coat

Re: Stuck back

That's below the belt!

Oh, wait..

:)

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Pint

Re: Oh lighten up a bit

Indeed. It's Friday! Have a beer!

Microsoft, Adobe, wilt during Australian price gouge grilling

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Makes Torrent look good.

You should check out how "personalised" that experience is when you try and read a product license statement:

1 - you first have to select from a massive product list

2- then you have to select the right product version (only recently have the in-product links improved to the point where they at least load the right PDF to bypass those steps)

3 - then you have to locate the right language in the statement. Just to make it easier for you, they sorted all the languages by their English name which has all sorts of weird consequences. For example, German comes AFTER English, not before (if it was called Deutsch).

Under UK law you could probably claim unfair contract terms because it's so hard to get to what you actually agree to...

Swiss boffins unleash power of graphene on flash mem

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Noted..

"Keeping it simple, Kis said:"

I saw what you did there :)

Another iPhone passcode bypass spell revealed

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Unless the phone manufacturers start employing idiot-savants to test their new editions of each OS, it's impossible to guard against

In my experience, 5 year olds will do for hardware, and 12..14 year olds for software. If it survives that, it *deserves* a MIL-SPEC number..

Phone, internet corps SNUB US government's cybersecurity ABCs

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Whatever you do..

.. get me back my cabinet with the Mark IV Chubb dial lock.

I'm going to have to get me one of those for at home - mainly because I don't think anything less will keep the kids off my biscuits :)

Apple fixes iOS passcode-bypass hack with 6.1.3 update

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: iOS security creaking at the seams.

Goggle Maps has a bad tendency to tell me to turn just AFTER intersections

I think TomTom may claim prior art there :). I would love it to moderately sync up with roadsigns announcing an exit so you can match the sign with the specific exit section in places where it gets a bit too complex to read reallylongforeignplacenameswhichyoucannotreadatmotorwayspeeds.

But eventually you get used to it enough not to put too much wear on the flash memory that contains the "please turn around" sound segment :)

Software bug halts Curiosity: Nuke lab bot in safe mode

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: $500/hr

You're right - that's going to the be the main expense post on the call - the mileage claim. I don't have teh time to work it out right now, but I reckon it would be fairly impressive :).

World's largest solar collection plant opened in Abu Dhabi

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: But what happens ...

@Psyx, thanks for the explanation, I was wondering about that. I'm a bit surprised they can't make it 100% solar driven in the one place where there isn't exactly a shortage of sun :).

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: @AC

Damn. There go my plans for world domination.

Oh well, back to Linux then :)

BlackBerry CEO: iPhone past its prime

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Agree. To me, that one qualifies as a comment of the week, mainly for humour value.. :)

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Ummm

"Not sure why you think that is funny."

Simply, because to an iPhone owner, no other phone is better than theirs.

Interesting, there is nothing in that post that indicated iPhone ownership or even preference.

You know you should have posted at 8:20, right?

Weev gets 41 months in prison for exposing iPad strokers' privates

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Thumb Up

Re: He's Right

You really think obese people in front of computers will achieve anything ?

*Love* the sarcasm :)

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Big People

Firstly I feel I need to apologise for the above horror show of a post. Not in terms of spelling mistakes but rather missing entire letters out! Not good.

Hey, happens to me too. Not a problem :)

The only reason the guy was sentenced to a ridiculously long amount of time, and fined to boot, was because he made AT&T look foolish, and had emails of people in positions of influence and power. If all those emails had been ordinary folk I bet you he'd have never been sentenced to such a long time in prison.

I think it probably had more to do with the fact that the judge couldn't really see any remorse for his activity. The idea of a punishment is to prevent a repeat or correct behaviour. If the accused has already spotted where they screwed up (or can act convincingly, let's be realistic), the sentence needs not to be that harsh to ensure lawful behaviour.

If the accused doesn't show remorse, the sentence gets harsher because it still has to be made clear to the defendant that what they did was A Really Bad Idea, and because leniency could otherwise encourage other idiots to act in the same way. IMHO, the situation is aggravated by the fact that US works on precedent - if this guy had been able to walk off with a short holiday it would have set precedent for similar cases.

I'm not entirely clear what the AT&T restitution was for, though.

Caught on camera: Fujitsu touts anti-terrorist pulse-taking tech

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

There's an app for that (really)

The "VitalSigns" app from Philips has been doing heart rate detection on the iPhone 4S for quite some time (the first version was posted late 2011). It also monitors breathing, but it needs you to keep the camera quite steady. The heart rate detection seems less sensitive.

Researchers find cloud storage apps leave files on smartphones

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

That's how most networked things actually work..

From a networking perspective we haven't moved on since the days of 300 baud modems insofar that a network is always slower than local storage and less reliable, so a file is always stored locally before opening.

It's one of my party tricks if I need to show executives why using corporate webmail and reading attachments on hotel computers is not really a good idea: enter "explorer %temp%" on the Windows command line (usually not locked down) and watch data from all that have come before you.. Conferences tend to set up a few machines for guests, and I can usually tell from the reaction of my audience fairly accurately who has used those machines :)

I can't really understand why anyone would think that this would be different for smartphones, especially in the light of customer expectations of responsiveness.

Google Drive goes titsup for MILLIONS of users

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Great services if used properly

5) use more than one cloud provider ?

Flooding market with cheap antivirus kit isn't going to help ANYONE

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: AV product claims @AC

Name me a single distro that automatically sets the user as root account ?

Name me a distro that sets a different password for root than the user account on installation?

End users (especially at home) will just blithely enter their password when an installer asks for it, so they are exposed to trojans, irrespective of platform. At least they have some anti-virus which may pick up on a signature before it gets that far.

Do you actually know what you are talking about ?

See above.

Drunk driving: No more dangerous than talking on handsfree mobe

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Facepalm

Re: "'Should be allowed', advise researchers"

OK, so you actually, seriously believe *anyone* would read that headline and think "Oh, that's OK then, I'll have a few before I go home?".

This is not the Daily Mail, you know :)

Eric Schmidt trousers his monstrous package at Google

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

What I want to know is ..

.. how much they paid Schmid's ego. That is so large it must have its own Social Security number by now.

Fake fingers fool Brazilian biometrics

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: The Chaos Computer Club

I loved that CCC stunt - I remember laughing out loud properly when I laid eyes on the headline. Couldn't have happened to a nicer idiot..

Downed US vuln catalog infected for at least TWO MONTHS

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Facepalm

I suspect ..

.. they were aiming for an irony award.

What's most important? Bandwidth over kilo-miles, or milli-watts?

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

I am massively impressed by fibre

I'm still astonished at how they can create glass that's so transparent, light can actually go that distance..

GoDaddy gone, daddy: Websites go titsup in server assault

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Given the general thrust of their marketing

Yup. Correct statement right there.. :)

Google to pay laughably minuscule fine over Wi-Fi slurp across US

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Consumers have a reasonable expectation of privacy

There needs to be a substantial financial penalty system in place now to prevent tech companies thinking it only makes good business sense to capture this data, whether or not they ever use it now or in the future.

Although I agree with you, the Google affair is effectively a lost opportunity to fine the crap out of an organisation and set an example. It was plain illegal what they did (and AFAIK even criminal in some countries), and anyone with half a braincell knew that their claim that is was an accident was total BS (that means "accidental" extra capture code on the cars and "accidental" availability of a back end to collect all the data) - the very fact that they tried to lie their way out of it was to me the clearest indication that it wasn't an accident at all.

The problem, however, starts with users. Even on this forum here are many people who don't know the law and seem to find it even morally acceptable that an unencrypted WiFi is a license to invade someone's privacy (maybe because they are actively using someone else's link?).

Your rights are being sold, right now. It would be better not to let that happen, because turning the clock back is a lot harder.

Google's Wi-Fi sniffing to result in $7 million fine

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

The real issue is that the only reason that sniffing this traffic might be unlawful is if we are claiming that the users of that Wifi had a reasonable expectation of privacy

Actually, no. It tends to be classified as either unauthorised intercept or gaining unauthorised access to computer resources, or even both. Most governments have created laws against that, if for no other reason than to protect themselves. Using your neighbour's WiFi without their permission falls in many countries actually under criminal law.

Personally I find that in quite a few situations a tad OTT, but I understand and appreciate the reasons for it. And so does Google - there is no conceivable way to make it credible that Google did this by accident. None whatsoever.

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Oh yawn, here we go again. Print this out on a little card and keep it with you.

1 - accessing WiFi without permission is in many countries illegal, IRRESPECTIVE of the WiFi being encrypted or not. It's the equivalent of walking into a house because the door was left unlocked, that is stupid, but it still doesn't legalise you gaining access to the network (even if some products do this now automatically). Here is an example of a conviction in the US.

But let's assume, for a minute, that it was OK to access an open WiFi without permission. There is another problem: data privacy.

2 - Google is a business, and a business has to comply with laws. The moment there is a mere POTENTIAL of acquiring personal information, permission has to be gained from the individual involved. Given that Google could potentially acquire information deemed "sensitive" under EU law, it would have to gain EXPLICIT permission. Even for US companies, "you let me drive past your house" is not considered enough as a permission statement.

In the US they're a bit more relaxed about it (hence the pityful fines), but the EU has actually been too friendly here, and the lobbying proves that Google jolly well knows it got away with breaking the law once, and is worried about not being to pull that off a second time.

France demands Skype register as telco

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: lots of dropped calls these days

Yup, same here. I never actually knew Skype had a "reconnect" feature until it started to randomly drop calls..

Time to set up my own FreePBX, I think. I talked to our telco about SIP/analogue integration (since they offer a service that uses SIP to hit our office), but unsurprisingly they do not allow SIP-to-SIP connections. Which means we simply buy desk phones which are multi-account capable - I have seen there are even ones with a video display but as I haven't looked into this technology I don't know if this is a standard (otherwise it's pointless). Oh well, when I find the time..

It's a bit of a shame, though, I just found this Logitech device that would have worked well on the office TV..

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

@chrisf1: I think you nailed it.

I suspect regulators see a repeat of the PayPal model which established banking services without the need for a banking license, and there is massive pressure on improving intercept capability on VoIP. The problem I see is that governments have burned the trust of their population they would use those powers wisely - you need not look any further than the fact that none of the so-called "short", "emergency" measures for anti-terror have ever been rolled back and re-examined for deficiencies - deficiencies that the average citizen had to allow for as it was all "very urgent".

It'll be interesting to watch..

Curiosity's MYSTERY MARS find: NASA reveals THE TRUTH

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Coat

Given the age of the planet it's more likely going to be Bruce Forsyth or Cliff Richard.

Oh, you meant inappropriately touched, sorry.

Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: multiple cursor feature

One word: BRIEF

Wow, that tales me back.. It had column manipulation, and I had the PARADOX add-on so I could cook up some PAL scripts and kick them off from inside BRIEF. That is, what, 20+ years ago? I think I may even done some Turbo Pascal work in it, but I think at some point I got the lightweight "e.exe" which was a tad more agile on my machine..

Thanks for the memory :)

MakerBot demos 3D object scanner that fits on your desk

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Never Give Up...

I may have to kill you first - that table won't hold you in one piece.

Seriously, though, the next idea will be a way to convert CT scans into a printing map for organs.

Or really fancy horse burgers (sorry, missed lunch).

Amazon accused of knocking off AWS customers' products

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

It's deja vu all over again..

You know, this is all so familiar. Theft and imitation as a business model, where did I hear that before, hmm.

It was some outfit in Redmond, I think. Couple of years back. Mostly survived because it could simply keep complainants in court until they were bled dry..

C'mon on people, "those who do not learn history are bound to repeat it" applies to IT too.

Here's the $4.99 utility that might just have saved Windows 8

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: This continues to amuse

How can that be abuse of a monopoly?

You're right - it's more and more feasible to call it a former monopoly..

Microsoft preps UPDATE EVERYTHING patch batch

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Silverlight

widely

That's actually a novel way to spell "nowhere". Must be a Microsoft spell checker.

BAN SMUT, rage MEPs: Purpose of internet must be EXTERMINATED

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Well, at least some slide..

Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

You need three things to make it happen.

I think you're right in seeking a money model, but it's IMHO only part of the picture.

1 - a relentless customer focus. If you look long term, the idea is VOLUME. Volume means power to make things happen because no manufacturer is going to risk pissing off a large possible client base. This is also why Microsoft is so deadly worried about Linux in general - it has all the tools in place to make a hit go viral in minutes. You do it right, and there simply won't be enough chairs to throw in Redmond :). Caveat: this is not a goal, merely a notable side effect.

2 - money. This is where your financial model comes in. I'm not sure yours is the right one (I'm the wrong guy to ask), but without dosh this isn't going to happen, partly because you need to create solid continuity as well as accountability. Money helps here, also because you cannot do this without intelligent marketing. There are a few things you can do with Linux that no other OS could come close to, but that needs careful planning.

3 - Leadership. This is what originally gave me high hopes for Ubuntu - Mark didn't just come equipped with l33t coding skills, he also had a vision and was driving that through. However, I'm not sure what happened, but somewhere along the line this train came off the rails. This may have been Mark doing other things, or not being the right leader, I don't know. But what could have been hasn't happened, or hasn't happened yet and I'm as disappointed as anyone. Maybe it's exactly because he codes himself, and got sucked in by detail - no idea. I have a great deal of respect for Mark as he's one of the good guys IMHO - so maybe I should give him a call and see if can somehow help. He does occasionally listen :).

I haven't given up on Ubuntu, but they can do better. MUCH better.

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Sound Ballmerish

It is a bit of a hassle to switch distro, so once they've shifted they won't come back.

Well, not unless the alternative recovers and goes one better. I think that's a Very Good Thing - competition works. I just hope Mark Shuttleworth has actually picked up that message.

Ubuntu did a number of very good things (that's why it became a favourite distro) and there are many more good things to be done, provided they learn lessons along the way. It's of course easy to argue with hindsight, but whatever goal Ubuntu is reaching for with Unity must be clearer articulated instead of the current "our way or the highway" impression people get. That doesn't just annoy developers, it also sucks for end users and like it or not, that's really an explicit goal for a Linux desktop: volume. Only then do you have any leverage to convince manufacturers to pay more attention to Linux as a hardware platform, OEMs to forego the Microsoft tax and pre-install Linux and companies to start considering it viable for mass deployment.

In short, I think they need to think a bit more about their perceived audience. I've said this about a gazillion times: unless you consider your end user, you cannot do a good IT job. Ubuntu/Canonical is not excluded from that. IMHO, of course, happy to debate that point :)

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

The dialogue needs to get a tad more constructive..

I see a classic techie vs user gap here, which has led to UI decisions of which I can see the strategic sense, but which lack a tactical path to full implementation that users can actually follow.

First off, Mark has a vision. It may not be so well articulated that mere end users and coders can work with, but it doesn't just exists, I think it's fairly comprehensive as well. I talked to Mark in 2010 or so (could even be 2009), and tablets were just showing up in the market. Even then, Mark saw mobile computing as the future instead of tablets, and as far as I can tell he was right.

The main problem is that people who are strong on tech tend to be less involved with the end user, and if Linux wants to succeed it needs to win that audience. At the moment, the choice that many tech people so cherish is exactly a barrier for end users who lack a basis for making that choice, which is one of the good things that Ubuntu originally did: it created a single brand that end users actually liked (well, at least the colour blind ones :) ).

However, we have a user base that has been brought up on MS marketing, and people dislike change - you need to take that slowly. The picture that needs to be sold to end users sees is composed out of 3 parts:

  • a kernel that must make sure that all the gear works in a PC (an issue Apple has neatly avoided). This is not under Ubuntu control, but device support matters.
  • an OS that provides the mechanism to interface with the end user. Here Linux *really* has a mess as there are too many desktops. In my experience, people trying to switch from Windows tend to feel comfortable with a KDE variant as most of its elements work virtually identical to Windows. This is where Unity was IMHO a bridge too far - too much, too soon.
  • applications that perform the same functions as the Microsoft equivalents. There is a massive omission there which keeps people on Windows: Outlook.

The "Linux" picture for end users is composed out of all three. Leave any part out and you will not have the package to convert people, and you need to do that first before you progress to corporate and volume deployment.

Like it or leave it, but with Mark back in the picture Ubuntu is the only distro that has strong leadership in place. If said leadership could be convinced to widen his viewpoint to enable dialogue with end users it still could return to a prominent position. In my opinion, Mint taking over as "preferred" distro should have been a wake up call, let's hope Mark heard it.

Mmmm, TOE jam: Trev shoves Intel's NICs in his bonkers test lab

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: most of this stuff is old

Mine isn't working properly. No pen up/down and faulty Home position. Can't find the schematic though. Maybe time to dump it and get a laser etching systems.

I expect to be in London in a couple of weeks, I could bring mine along (it's stored somewhere else now). It's a top of the A3 range one (with LED position display) and I think it has done about 100 A3 sheets in its entire life.

(yes - I have decided I may flog it at some point - it's fully boxed so it takes a lot more space than the aforementioned PSION Organiser IIs :)

Bacon sarnies can kill: Official

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: ...and now I must warn about the the Danger or drinking Water

Ah, the old dihydrogen monoxide story.

The old ones are the best.

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Coat

Re: Re:cavemen?

My archaeologist wife is frothing at the mouth

Sorry, you can't blame bacon for that. Rabies, maybe, but not bacon.

Microsoft about-face: Office 2013 license IS transferable now

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

"Customer feedback"? Yeah, right..

"Based on customer feedback we have changed the Office 2013 retail license agreement to allow customers to transfer the software from one computer to another," Microsoft's Jevon Fark said in a blog post on Wednesday.

I'm not buying it (pardon the pun). I suspect this has either come about after strong hints from authorities that those terms won't wash, or because they simply have not managed to shift the product...

Oz Senator says Google Glass could 'end privacy as we know it'

Fred Flintstone Gold badge

Re: Talking Sense

You could walk around with little office stickers. Every time you see one of these people you sticker the camera hole. Might make you unpopular, but it could be killer fun for a flashmob.

The problem is indeed that Google is trying to circumvent with volume what laws would normally prevent - not the first time. Unless it is possible to proxy the data stream through some sort of device that rips out other data, what you basically have is the Homeview version of Streetview, right there (the first to come up with that idea were the Germans, followed by the BBC)

And I, for one, will merrily chuck out anyone who walks into my house or office wearing one.

'Quantum fridge' gets close to absolute zero

Fred Flintstone Gold badge
Go

Beer fridges are boring

And to answer the question in the sub-head, yes, the device probably could cool your beer. It might cheaper and more convenient, however, to buy yourself a beer fridge.

Aww, come on. Where's the fun in that? The very genesis of hacking is to see what you can get away with for no other reason than that you (possibly) can (well, OK, there is actually a very good argument for it).