Re: Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is $929
My cheaper option is currently to keep using the phone I bought three years ago. It does what I want, and while the battery holds out I don't see the need to upgrade to something that expensive.
2293 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
I'd like something with the feature set of a Galaxy 4 only with a modern CPU and memory capacity. A lot of the newer ones are too big - the 4 fits in my pocket nicely and the screen is a reasonable compromise between portability and readability. None of this face or fingerprint crap for unlocking either. Dual-SIM would be nice, unless one of the carriers is prepared to offer me two numbers on a single SIM.
The only way updates should be applied to this sort of stuff is by user intervention. Someone needs to have physical access to the aircraft and flip a switch, insert a key or other positive action that allows the upgrade to occur, in conjunction with detecting that the aircraft is on the ground and otherwise powered down. IT should only accept a signed image, and also inhibit all functions related to movement until the upgrade interlock is removed.
The same is true for cars, too (especially the 'on the ground' bit).
The US credit scoring system is not fit for purpose anyway. What you get is a snapshot, so the day before I pay off a credit card bill my score can be noticeably lower than the day after. It fails to note that this is a repeating pattern and actually represents a sensible and responsible use of credit.
As for paying interest, if you're doing that on a credit card then you're using it wrong.
As the credit card is linked directly to the bank account and automatically debits 100% of the balance at the end of the month, credit cards have little value over debit cards, currently.
To me, the big difference between a credit and debit card is who is liable in the event of fraud or failure to perform. There are more consumer protections when using a credit card than a debit card, and I suspect that both have way more in the way of legal protection than using your phone. I don't have any mobile banking apps on my phone and prefer to keep it that way. But then, like may Reg Commentards, I like to think I'm a bit more aware of the security risks involved and have a lack of faith in bank and phone security.
There is no excuse for leaving an unsecured device connected to the net these days. I wonder how many bot-nets it participates in already.
If that was aimed at me, it's secure in that it only talks to their server. Internal to my network it's on a VLAN of its own and I've sat there and watched what it does using tcpdump on the router so I don't think it's participating in anything. That's how I know it uses http clear text to communicate.
I normally put my phone into flight mode overnight, I guess that's a usage pattern they can spot. In theory it stops it transmitting, but given that it's a software switch, no doubt someone can override that. Sometimes I forget to restore it to normal and about noon the following day I decide that things have been a bit quiet and realise why.
I'm glad my home is dumb. Apart from smartphones, I have one IoT device on the system and that mostly operates on a fixed timetable, I only talk to it to change the schedule. It's also hideously insecure, using http with no encryption in sight, and the server out in the cloud is slower than a snail on valium. A real POS of design. One day I'll hack the protocol and set up my own equivalent so it need not talk outside the firewall.
My router runs OpenWRT, so hopefully less likely to have dodgy firmware.
Isn't it cheaper to do the last mile wireless...
Yes, if you're the only one using it. Otherwise it's shared bandwidth with everyone else, whereas wired bandwidth is, to a first approximation, all yours (assuming your ISP has properly sized the pipes).
If you've got 100Mbit/s then you lose some of that because radio is half-duplex compared to the full-duplex of a wired system that can (in theory) stream 100MBit to you while taking the return traffic. Radio has to stop sending so you can send the acknowledgements. Then there's the overhead needed for each radio burst so the RX is in sync with the TX before the real data starts. Then there's all the neighbours also wanting some of that airtime.
Point to point wireless is possible, but costs a lot more and may exceed the cost of installing a wired channel.
They should have it on the same basis that BT provides services to smaller ISPs, where there's a wholesale arm that maintains the equipment and allows BT Retail and other ISPs access on comparable terms. Most cable companies are a de facto monopoly, or a duopoly with the local telco so competition is somewhat limited unless steps are taken to encourage that.
So a deal to allow Comcast to put in and run the cabling is fine, but other ISPs should be allowed to tout for the endpoint business without having to pay punitive access charges.
Cost of wasted space is less than the cost of dealing with it.
I always used to swear mightily at the dodgy attachments when it was still dial-up, noticeable pause as the crap was squeezed down the phone line only to be deleted. It's interesting how things have scaled, back then when it was still small hard disks, an offensively large attachment might have been 100k in size and hold up a V.34 modem link for some time. Now it's all scaled a few orders of magnitude bigger.
Then what happens when you're told you just lost a big deal because of your paranoia AND that your job is now at risk AND you risk getting blacklisted meaning you may not find a replacement job, either?
If you read my original comment I noted it was personal email, so the only person who could fire me from that is me. At work I use whatever system they have set up, although if I have enough configuration control on the email client I'll set it to favour plain text both ways. It's someone else's job to keep the system secure, my only obligation is to not do something stupid like click on the dodgy link or attachment should it make it as far as my inbox.
I still view email as plain text by default and I still sent plain text by default. I've noticed that some HTML clients handle plain text really badly, often losing the line breaks and bunching it all up though, but that's not my problem.
As for the occasional one that turns up and all I see is a line telling me I don't support HTML so should upgrade my email client, they're straight in the bin.
I'm of the school that considers HTML email to be a security hazard, to the point that if you send me email with an HTML section and you aren't on my approved list, it will bounce (the joys of personal email rather than business). If you can't present your information clearly as plain text then too bad. Just that simple filter takes out an awful lot of spam without having to try too hard.
I am currently debating whether to click on that link or not. On the one hand it might make their sifting job a bit harder if suddenly there were tens of millions of IP addresses in the log, On the other hand I wouldn't put it beyond them to take the trouble to ID everyone and put them on a travel watch list.
Several factors at play here. If the site is still at the same IP address then it will take a while for removal of DNS records to filter down, especially if the default TTL was set high, and it'll still appear to be there. If the hosting provider (as opposed to the domain registrar) pulls the plug then it doesn't matter who's providing the top-level DNS pointer, it's not going to find anything. At that point a long DNS TTL works against them because the system will keep giving the old, and now invalid, answer until it times out so their new site, wherever it is, won't get much traffic until it does.
That's actually bad business for the advertisers. If they're getting charged per page impression, the last thing they want is their ad being fetched and displayed on a tab that isn't currently being displayed. The javascript really ought to determine that the tab is not the top one and do nothing until it gets an event, not keep pulling in images that will never be seen. Of course, the ad-server benefits from the current model because they're getting paid for delivering the images regardless of whether they're being seen.
It's almost a step in the right direction. If you want to serve me ads then I expect them to arrive from the server hosting the main page being viewed as a static image. Nothing animated, no pop-ups, no dodgy javascript, just a good old img src tag. Do all the fancy stuff to select which image at the server end because I don't trust your third-party ad code. If you manage that then you'll probably defeat the ad blockers. Or provide me with a legally watertight agreement to clean up any malware mess at your expense, backed with a large sum of money in escrow to guarantee against unexpected bankruptcy as a means to get out of paying up.
OK, mine's the one with the toothbrush in the pocket.
Then again, their position isn't as strong as it once was. Linux completely owns the OS market. The year of the Linux desktop is probably never coming, true, but the year of the Linux everything else just keeps repeating itself and getting bigger every time. Everything else is a MUCH bigger market.
What keeps MS in position is all the established software vendors who only produce Windows versions of their products. If they produced Linux versions too then a lot of people would shift. Not all, if you've got a thousand PCs to manage, MS have put a lot of effort into making central administration easy to do, and Linux would have to make significant advances in that direction. It probably has most of the hooks required but I'm not aware of anything that ties it all together.
Apparently VR is a thing that some people do. I don't understand. Why do you need VR to play Scorched Earth?
This is probably one of those questions that you're best not trying to answer unless you've got plenty of money. If you try it and realise why you need it, you'll resent the expense if it's out of your reach.
He said he was told he'd be hit with contempt of court allegations if he refused to answer questions, and he wasn't allowed to consult with his lawyer for much of the time.
I appreciate it's much more difficult at the sharp end but the response to remember here is "if the court will not permit me to consult with my lawyer before answering questions then I have nothing but contempt for the court".
Why would you but a microsoft branded laptop to run linux?
To be fair to MS, I've never had an issue with the hardware. While I can't claim to have bought a lot, the mice have been durable and the stuff I've seen in shops looks good. It's just that I don't like their software that much. If they hadn't made such an effort to lock down the BIOS to prevent people installing Linux then I might even have considered buying a Surface at one point. Even now, I'm using a Linux VM on a Windows 10 machine, a set-up which reduces the contributions to the swear box to an acceptable level. Still waiting for some software vendors to produce Linux versions of their products...
Also, from an ergonomic point of view putting the separator on a shifted key is irritating in an otherwise case-agnostic filesystem. I believe in some keyboards it actually is on an AltGr key, which is even worse.
On a proper PC keyboard, the backslash is on an unshifted key.
If they're off grid then taking over the domain names is one option. Someone must have those registered so there's a possible point of contact. If Datalink are still selling then there's a money trail that could be pursued and redirected. One could probably pursue back through the shipping channel with a court order too, to require the carrier to disclose where they collected a package. All possible, provided you've got a legal system that will help you and not obstruct things, which could be problematic depending on the actual location involved.
Perhaps they should argue that Equustek should simply sue Datalink for the amount of profit they would have made for each unit sold. That's another way of approaching it, let people rip off your ideas and then extract profits from them. Of course, this assumes that there's money around for this to happen. They could also request a transfer of ownership of all the domains to their control too.
All sorts of options available for when Google tramples the judgement into the dust.
systemd
'oh! DNS lib underscore bug bites everyone's favorite init tool, blanks Netflix
Fail - had it been Windows then there would have been an unexplained issue/bug until MS had gotten around to issuing a fix, no easy way to make it work until that time. The workaround to rebuild without libidn2 is a temporary fix for those who know how to do it, everyone else can wait for it to be patched next time they apply updates, exactly the same as with the other desktop OS.
For a limited value thing it's probably safe, but what about when it's worth the thieves mugging a person and chopping off the RFID-equipped hand to go get something worth a lot more? I remember El Reg doing an article on a Mercedes owner who lost a finger so the thieves could activate the scanner on his expensive Merc.
I think there's precedent for such things being allowed. It's clearly not attempting to masquerade as the trademark owner and I think courts have taken the view that it's a useful outlet for complaints. Some [...]sucks domains have been bought for lots of money by the trademark owners before now as the only way they could take them down.
However, it can be superior to other methods because it limits electronic emissions and can be used in an emergency systems crash or after an electromagnetic pulse event.
So what happens when the EMP takes out the fondleslab? A working hand/arm combination and Mk 1 eyeball coordinated with a human brain can still get something to work even after that.
"Aaah, MENSA"
That fraction of the population who are too stupid to understand what's wrong with the notion of an IQ.
No, it's that fraction that's daft enough to pay the membership fee. It's perfectly possible to have a 150+ IQ and not waste your money.
I do still remember Noel Edmonds taking the piss, starting a competing organisation he called DENSA for those who weren't smart enough, and then trying to persuade MENSA to offer a joint membership to him and his mate because the sum of their IQs was above the qualifying threshold.
I can't blame Google, the EU specifically structured its corporation tax laws to encourage tax competition between member states by allowing companies to funnel revenues in this way. The only way to solve it is for the politicians to stop generating hot air and get on with actually doing something about it.