Posts by Fred Flintstone

Outlook, yes, Office, no longer

Come to think about it, Outlook is pretty much the only solution out there that integrates calendar, email and task management really well - but even there the never ending "featurism" has pretty much neutered the program as its functionality is now buried under layers and layers of crap "make it look good" UI gloss which do nothing to make it work better.

As for Office, the rot set in when Sun bought released OpenOffice in the wild, but I have also worked with iWorks over the last few days. It's quite an eye opener to find that you can be productive again - especially Powerpoint is worlds most dangerous time waster (not just in creation, but also in how it enables extremely bad presentation habits).

I switched only a week ago, but I have yet to find a reason to use the Windows VM or even MS Office. That is impressive IMHO..

Try Googlesharing

If Google ID is a problem for you, plenty of ways to isolate you from the logfiles at Google..

The fact is that Google has indeed done a killer job on searching, which is what brings them their traffic. Once upon a time it was Altavista (must go and look at it again), now it's Google, and someone gets clever it may change again.

Not quite

Apple has enabled facilities that go beyond what is normally accessible, and the only thing Apple should kick itself for is that they didn't seal those features better behind a user preference.

However, it *is* sometimes useful to give your location or other data as long as it remains your choice, that's the whole idea of privacy. What happened here was that someone did not follow the rules. Bad on Apple for not spotting that earlier, bad on Flurry for ignoring what they were clearly told.

And, legally, bad on Flurry alone. In Europe and the UK this would be a privacy violation.

I agree, but is it gravitas?

I'm not sure it's just gravitas. The missing two ingredients are the ability to shape a vision and to inspire others towards it. Ballmer has always been second class. He can only FOLLOW a script (with some effort), he cannot write it.

Personally, I see Ballmer's performance as the best evidence that Gates is indeed no longer influencing the company (having said that, Gates was seriously flagging too, he's had his day).

As for how much MS means - I realised today that setting up a Windows VM was a complete waste of time. I don't need it at all :-).

You're forgetting something

Asking Google to destroy the data would be destroying evidence.

I'm astonished, nay, disappointed that the Information Commissioner contended himself with a weak slap on the wrist unless the dossier is handed over to the police.

You see, whatever the excuse is really doesn't matter - Google has committed in many countries a criminal offense by recording information that wasn't theirs to access. In the UK this ought to be result in criminal prosecution as well under the Computer Misuse Act.

It cannot be acceptable that some poor schlob gets convicted for using a WiFi network from a pub whereas a mass violation like Google's is left unaddressed.

The gathered information is this evidence - this is also why Google itself had to seek advice. If they had deleted it themselves it could be construed as destroying evidence.

As a slight aside, although the "reason why" doesn't actually matter it ought to be observed that the story keeps changing. In my experience this is symptomatic of executives properly caught with their pants down...

"public nudity clown" tuesday

"I remember significantly less workplaces having "public nudity clown" tuesday as corporate policy."

Ah, so there IS something for Zuckerberg to aspire to..

Monopoly

You don't seem to understand what the word "monopoly" means. It doesn't mean "no way out", it means having more ability to manipulate a market than can be reasonably expected under perfect competition (look it up). The term shows up when a company abuses its weight to sway the market, and that's what Google is doing.

What I find interesting is that Google seems to think it needs to do this. It's ahead with most of what it does, and it could easily go for a slightly more relaxed approach which wouldn't cost it so much in terms of image and lawsuits, but I guess that's not the Google way..

Umm, no. Not true.

"The security risk to ANY OS is directly proportional to market share (ubiquity)"

I think you forgot to add ".. and system design". The reason MS has such a massive problem is that the OS wasn't built from the ground up for process and user separation, they only started working on that since about Win NT 4. The "others" share the Unix heritage of default user and process segregation, so don't have to start from scratch.

Sure, other OS can suffer malware - no OS will ever fix a room temperature user IQ - but it's much harder to hose the box by accident, even if it's fresh out of the box*. I'm writing this from a Windows desktop, left is the new Macbook Pro, on my right is a laptop with OpenSuSE and virtual box to run suspect Windows files, so I'm fairly familiar with most platforms..

(*) Amusing fact: just bought a Macbook, and guess what was the first thing it did? Patching -- and asking for a reboot..

That gold again

"Unless you worked at the Treasury N2, you will not be aware of all the factors that were considered before gold and currency reserves get sold. Presumably those decisions will be the right ones given the information available AT THAT TIME. It's also very likely that the civil servants and master of the universe bankers recommend these sales or approved them"

You are assuming they did that in the interest of the country, but there is only one solution - GET IT PUBLIC. Practically anyone with a functional brain advised against it at the time, so it would be worth knowing WTF drove them to be this stupid. It's not like they left the UK with a pile of money now they have been thrown out.

Until that time I concur with the people who stated at the time that it was a VERY, VERY bad idea. It still is just that, with hindsight.

Bit too early to tell..

1 - Pardon the pun, but this has been a positive fountain of crap, not just of oil. Regulators didn't, questionable quality concrete, shortcuts in safety measures - if you add it all up it would amount to spend the profit of at most 2 days worth of production.

2 - BP paying it all? Sure, it would be folly to state anything else, but I want to see that happen before I believe it. BTW, if you think *BP* will be paying you're actually wrong anyway. You and I will, every time we fuel up. This will make the oil crisis look like a walk on the park.

But I must compliment you for the nice attempt. Did thy get you from downstream PR?

It's not tampering

It is incorrect to call the efforts of the tech "tampering". Tampering is *deliberately* affecting evidence, but the tech didn't start out with teh expectation of finding child porn, and when he found it I think he was legally obliged to stop and report (even as a decent CYA exercise).

It will be interesting to see how this pans out, because I'm not sure the evidence stands up (apologies for the unintentional pun). There is indeed a 3rd party access to the system (bonus question: how do we know the Best Buy environment is virus free?). What could happen is house searches - if this guy has been entertaining himself in this fashion for some time there will be other things around, and at that point I hope they find enough to lock him up.

Keep an eye on this one - it isn't over yet..

welcome to the Real World (tm)

"LOST does NOT mean stolen so whoever the 'tard is that says its handling stolen goods is a tosser."

No, he is correct. It is also a UK crime (AFAIK), but if you don't get caught there's not much that can be done. However, if you go and tell everyone I suggest you start packing pyjama's and toothbrush as you will soon be visited by the nice boys in blue. If you're a Brazilian electrician I suggest you add a bulletproof vest to the assembly and avoid travelling by tube.

The main reason nobody feels sorry for Chen and Hogan is the deplorable way they behaved. Even if they decided to take pictures they could have still tried to get it back to the original engineer, and not mention his name. Disclosing who it was was unnecessary and could have gotten the guy fired (I'm still surprised he wasn't).

In general they could have left a lot of information out about where they got it from, which is what you do if you're serious about protecting your sources, even if they're unwittingly your sources - the phone itself was credible enough.

Instead, they more or less pissed on the poor guy who made the mistake that gave them their precious hits and exposed themselves as the idiots they are. I expect Hogan's charitable expression to feature prominently in court.

If I was Gray Powell I'd send both of them a big tube of lube the moment they're locked up, with a little tag "Because you're worth it.." :-)

Auto door locking

"But what's this about auto-locking doors when the car moves? How insane is that?"

The most benign reason for auto-lock is preventing theft: someone opening the door and taking your jacket or the driver's handbag while you're waiting for the lights to change. I think it's also a mandatory facility if you're rich or famous enough to require Kidnap & Ransom (K&R) insurance.

And it stops the kids from falling out if you forgot to engage the child locks..

Hahahahaaa - and you believe this?

If I recall correctly, FB will hang on to your deleted data in much the same way as Google, but for much longer. Once it's out it's out, you cannot "undo" this.

Your only option is never to provide anything you might want to delete later, and that's where your problem starts: what looks like a good, useful idea now may not work with what you do later.

Ergo a default stance of just being very, very careful.. If your social life depends on FB you may want to find a life first..

Exactly my thoughts

It must have been one of those computer explosions you see in movies with bits flying everywhere. I've only ever seen this happen in real life, and it involved an A/D card which was accidentally wired to a fresh 550V generator output instead of the 30mA measuring loop it was meant to see.

Other than that, life with failing PCs has been pretty boring..

It's the principle

You took a purchase decision based on a feature set. Maybe yours didn't include "other OS", but mine did, and not only that, I put the time in to make that work.

Now I find a classic double glazed selling is going on: I didn't get a system as described, only they delayed that change until after the time I could go after them under the original contract laws. There should be no way ANYONE finds that acceptable, because you're setting a very dangerous precedent. I buy goods because they have a feature set I want - if that set of capabilities can be changed after purchase I consider that deception, vandalism and possibly theft and will act on it as such.

So, no difference there then other than time..

Umm, pot, kettle, I quote Doctorow here:

he USA was a pirate nation for the first 100 years of its existence, ripping off the patents and trademarks of the imperial European powers it had liberated itself from with blood. By keeping their GDP at home, the US revolutionaries were able to bootstrap their nation into an industrial powerhouse. Now, it seems, their descendants are bent on ensuring that no other country can pull the same trick off.

– Cory Doctorow

Damn..

.. so you won't buy the ones with wings? It even has cute ads, honestly..

However..

.. if you ever work on complex documents and Word borks on it to the point of simply crashing, OOo will save the day (and your doc). Open and save in OOo, and the crashing goes.

Don't know how it does it, but I have been using that trick since OOo 1.2 or so, it has saved me + formed colleagues an absolute *ton* of work.