Posts by Number6

Where to Go

"On the surface, this looks very much as though the government wishes to start pushing some responsibilities back toward parents and families."

I've already taken responsibility. If I get asked for information by a government official then they'd better have a damn good reason for needing it or they'll be told where to go. Note that their threshold for 'damn good' is likely to be a lot lower than mine.

Ugh

Sometimes I'm glad I'm not on Vodafone. I've become a fan of "bring your own phone" contracts where I don't have to agree to anything from the operator apart from charges for calls and texts, and unfiltered use of a data pipe. It's my phone, I decide what gets installed on it.

Proper Netbooks

The Eee PC and the Aspire One had it pitched about right as a useful compromise between size, performance and (just about) battery life. I have to admit to getting one of those humungous batteries for my AA1, but otherwise it's really useful on the move. The fact that it folds up to protect the display is an advantage over a tablet.

Well, that's the EU for you...

Added bureaucracy and cost. Once it was possible to spend a penny, now you have to euronate.

Caller ID

Does it include a requirement for companies to present a correct UK caller ID on calls? If not, why not?

Incomplete!

There's nothing in there about how to build a working raygun or levitation device for getting up and down the stairs.

Excessive

I did notice rather a lot of LinkedIn email in my spam folder. It's a bit of a giveaway when there are a load of identical-looking messages to various email address I use, but none to the one I've actually got registered with LinkedIn.

Wrong Place?

"The American town of Hampshire, Long Island, has decreed that phone masts can't be placed within 1500 feet of children, making coverage nearly impossible."

Are you getting your Hampshires confused with your Hempsteads?

Data User

I don't make many phone calls, but I do use my phone for email and occasional on-the-road web browsing. However, the only apps I've added were Google Maps, Profimail (better than the phone's incumbent app) and an ssh client. I don't need anything else.

Disguised?

He was mugged by a gang of slugs and no longer looks like that.

Had it not been windy...

Had it not been windy, they'd have been stuck, caught between the water and the Pharaoh's forces. That could have have meant no Jews, no Christians and no Muslims.

As for attempting to cross a mudflat in high wind, if it was a choice between that or being chopped to bits by a bunch of angry Egyptians, I know which I'd choose.

@jai - perhaps breaking wind to save the Israelites was God's answer to the Big Bang.

On a Jolly

One wonders what the EU Patent people are doing over there anyway, it's not their patch and they're wasting our money.

Zap-proof?

I wonder if it's conductive enough to short out a taser? Any volunteers to try it?

Not Over Here

Surely what it needs is for all these targeted businesses to move out of the US, to stop making or selling their products in the US and make it clear that it's the broken US patent system that is causing it to happen that way. Then the US public (the ones who deliver votes rather than campaign dollars) might start asking hard questions of their elected representatives.

Transport and warranty?

Two other obvious variables - a typical warranty in the US is a lot less than here, although on the back of that, they shouldn't be building stuff unreliable enough for a significant proportion of it to fail within warranty.

The other is transport - shipping a container across the Pacific from China probably costs less than shipping that same container from China to Europe.

Hi Monty!

"This is your captain speaking. There is no cause for alarm". Perhaps someone told them that John Cleese was on board.

If it's not against the law...

Ultimately, what someone does in private with consenting adults is entirely their own business provided it's within the law (although the last government were trying to make most of it illegal to overcome that problem). As such, the media should keep their noses out. I'd make an exception for an MP attempting to push legislation while engaging in exactly the practice he was trying to stop, but for anything done in private that doesn't affect public performance, there should be an expectation of privacy.

Photos taken in public places are still fair game, so the Daily Fail can still publish its embarrassing celeb-in-Tesco pictures, but on private land behind fences/screens it's less clear.

Detectable

I'd hate to be responsible for getting an electromagnetic catapult through the EMC testing. I wonder how far away a launch could be detected/pinpointed. You'd probably find that any hostile submarine in the area (and subs can be pretty hard to find if they're trying to hide) would be able to use it as a homing beacon unless it's well-shielded.

A bit harsh...

One would expect God to be taking advantage of modern technology and so have installed spam filter technology on His PrayerNet to weed out most of the trivial stuff so He's probably not being bothered at all.

Mind you, with all the coverage of this one, it'll probably come up on a GODGLEWatch alert.

Troll-zapping

I wonder who owns VirnetX? I wonder what the shares are worth and whether the defendants might find it cheaper to just buy the company between them, declare the patents to be in the public domain and close the company down.

False Alarms?

How many are real concerns and how many were malicious or accidental?

What email address?

I use a unique-to-Facebook email address so I don't think anyone would manage to guess it. Even if they do, the picture isn't of me.

Seeing what goes on

If nothing else, NoScript is good at showing what a page would like to do. The one on which I'm typing now would like to run scripts from quantserv, google-analytics and googleadservices, for example.

It highlights some good security holes - if you run it with Verified by Visa, it jumps up and down and gets all excited, and I bumped into my first (fairly harmless but annoying) clickjacking attempt earlier this week. I tend to use Google to look up domain names, and most of the ones I don't know are related to tracking services so they hit the block list fairly quickly. It is a pain to set up, but as the list of permanent inclusions and exclusions builds up, it's less of an issue. However, Joe Public would most likely allow everything through because he doesn't know how to tell what's good or bad, which defeats the purpose.

This is a title

Smudges are the reason I dislike touch screens. The old resistive one with a stylus (a la P800) was OK, but had the inconvenience of a stylus (although I never actually lost one), but had the advantage of reading handwriting. I remember an early touch-screen HP oscilloscope where any time someone attempted to point to some feature of the trace, a menu would pop up to obscure it.

I have an E71 phone, keyboard safely separate from the screen, although wear and tear on the keys would probably give away passwords on that.

Who needs sound?

You don't need sound to monitor a dot matrix printer remotely - plenty of electromagnetic radiation from the print head drivers and it probably goes through windows and walls better as well. Even inkjet and laser printers, especially those in plastic cases, will probably radiate well enough to reveal their output to a suitably-equipped remote listener.

The End

Goodbye, ContactPoint, you will not be missed.

Another one down

I guess I've bought my last WD drive then if they can't provide support if you're not running Windows. They can join Fujitsu on my list of hard disk suppliers to avoid.

Understanding

It doesn't matter too much if most people don't understand the data, there will be enough people around who are prepared to interpret it who are not seen as government lackeys. The important thing is that it is freely available.

In Case of Emergency...

A pair of very insulated and thick jump leads to bypass the hacked component. If the Safety Elf turns up, hand him one end of each lead while you go to remove the other ends...

DORIS

Do we get to nominate the donkey? Does it have to have four legs?