Posts by Mark 65

@Chris Miller

"But it would be simply idiotic for government to chuck £5 billion of our money at a scheme to provide extra bandwidth for which there's no demonstrable need."

Think yourself lucky. In my country (Oz) they're chucking $43bn at it. Bigger country admittedly, but over 70% of the population live in only 10 cities/metropolitan areas. Plus instead of doing FTTC then upgrading to FTTP at a later date they want to do it all upfront and hence get gouged on the prices from contractors. By all accounts from Tasmania (the test case) it doesn't seem to be working that well.

It's about time

That everyone took advantage of their weakened financial state, overstretched military, and the rise of China as a World economic power, and told the US to shove their asymmetric "special relationship" agreements up their arse.

@Reg Blank

I don't think you're too lazy, the problem is the structure of the country and the lack of oversight. Take the QLD plod for example. They act as a law unto themselves. There have been countless recent headlines over beatings in custody, deaths in custody, and criminal corruption. Underbelly certainly wasn't all overstated. What gets done about it? Fuck all. They are left to effectively investigate themselves - that'll end well. They are overseen by the State politicians who are their mates that put them in power and who are also a law unto themselves. I'm not quite sure who oversees the State. Then you have the Federal Government that just seems to want to bring in new taxes.

Until there is proper, unconnected, unbiased oversight of the police and the politicians (don't even mention crime and misconduct commissions) with the power to prosecute nothing will change in this place.

You could complain vociferously but you'd just get arrested, and then what recourse would you have? I'm not sure that the locals are lazy and disinterested but more resigned to the fact that unless they're prepared to go all out to the point of mass civil disorder fuck all will change around here.

@Dave Fox

"having taken James Bond's Blackberry when he left it on the train, surely my first step would be to put it into airplane mode so that it can't receive any remote wipe instruction! ;)

So much for security!"

How exactly do you do that without unlocking it first?

Computer says no

"If the govenment can deliver all it's services via computer, except maybe Health, they don't need to employee people in pretty much every town in the country just to fill in some forms."

I can't see the computer helping you to fill in the form or advise you of other things you're entitled to etc. Not that all staff do this but the ones my olds dealt with did.

@Bear Features

"Example, why do we constantly hear about obesity drugs, when really, it should be about eating properly"

That's because, unfortunately, there are some obese people that are just big fat lazy weak-willed bastards who have no intention of dieting or exercising and would rather pop a pill or get their gut stapled. I can speak from first hand observations of a family of 3 when on holiday who each attended the all-inclusive buffet 3 times for the main meal and 3 times each for the dessert. Every day. That's just plain fucking greedy and, no doubt, the target market.

@enigmatix

"“Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world,” said Ballmer.

_Was_ loved. That's until only the Windows version continued to be developed and yet more shit foisted on the end user. Can't really see them bringing on the OSX or Linux variants.

@Fuzzysteve

But does it mean you have to get rid of NAT regardless of whether it's original purpose is removed?

If mom and pop's router gets an IPv6 address and then holds them on an IPv4 LAN will that work? It would certainly make things easier for the vast majority that don't give a toss. I'm sure NAT has saved quite a few from internet nastiness.

Shitheads

Was the first thing that came to mind upon reading this...

"The Vupen researchers said they plan to share technical details of the exploit only with government customers “for defensive and offensive security.” Neither Google nor the public will be privy to the specifics."

@peredur

Can't quite agree with you there. Whilst his approach may be on the unprofessional side (shouting out in front of everyone) you also cannot go with your offered advice which is akin to the mollycoddling support you'd offer a five year old that is still in very much in the early leaning phase of life. Presumably these people are paid quite high salaries for their perceived competence. That they have shown themselves to not have any by releasing something on a par with an internal beta on behalf of a company that cherishes it's "it just works" mantra (whether true or not) shows foolhardiness in the extreme.

"The people he was addressing are unlikely to have got into this mess on purpose."

Judging by how shit things were I simply cannot agree here unless they are incompetent in the extreme.

Not my experience Hayden

Sounds like you have a shit bank. When I contacted my bank because I'd noticed an erroneous DD payment taken from my account that morning they asked me if I'd like to have the payment recalled and then promptly did it.

I think you'll also find that cancelling a direct debit cancels a direct debit. The paper says I give you the right and the cancellation says now I don't. If your bank simply pays out money whenever presented with a request then it's probably time for a change.

@jonathanb

"The number should be printed on the back of the bill and on the energy co's website."

Which brings you neatly onto the next issue which is that nowadays companies tend to farm out their meter reading to 3rd parties and so wouldn't be able to confirm anything. I doubt they'd even have the competence to be able to give you the number of the 3rd party.

Indeed

Gordon Brown had actually ended boom and bust until Anonymous hacked him.

Storage

I think we can rule out convenient external storage as Apple will simply kill it off as nobody would ever bother buying anything above and beyond the base model.

@AC

"Now, imagine if each county** (county, not country) could set its own personal and corporate tax rates. I guarantee you overall taxation would fall, and goverment efficiency would rise. A lot."

Be wary of the race to the bottom that may also occur - Ireland being a case in point.

@Neoc

Like Telstra give a shit if a big company runs up a huge bill - it's guaranteed payment, not like taking Granny to court for $200k

Maybe Australian?

Over here the arseholes at Telstra require you to pay to not be in the phone book. Yes, you did read that correctly. Lucky country, my arse it is.

StevenN

It is a phone right? It therefore has a connection yes? It has a GPS yes? Send to server a couple of beacon descriptions that it has to obtain anyway to use the database - WI-FI, cell towers etc - and get assistance response in return. Get location quicker. No need to cache a poxy location tracking database. Get it now?

Delusion...

"A lot of people also think the NBN is a very good thing, as it is perceived to be more reliable, as well as a solid long term investment to attract more work (ala working from home for one example).

"

Then I'm afraid a lot of people are seriously deluded. The fact that for the last 10 years at least I could effectively work from home performing my IT development role has had absolutely no influence on it happening. Companies want their little employees lined up in front of them and OHS implying that employers would be responsible for the home work environment seals its fate. The only possibles are then contractors who would be responsible for their own environment when not in the office.

The NBN in its $43bn form is a white elephant, make no mistake about that.

@famousringo

" These devices are being bought by people who don't need hard keyboards, optical drives, beefy CPUs, or tons of ports in their mobile computer — who don't need a laptop"

Really? In the case of the iPad, what are they activating and syncing them with then? The phrase "sucks arse" doesn't even begin to describe a tablet that relies on ownership of another computer in order to function. Sort that out and you may have a point.

License?

"I am afraid your argument about this will fall apart very quickly in a court of law.

Apple does not sell software, it grants you a license to use it, under several conditions."

You failed to read the part about the "several conditions" in the previous post. In UK law if you wish to attach conditions then they have to be clearly stated up front at the time of purchase or they are not enforceable. It's been said before, you cannot have it both ways. You either sold a copy or a license to use, and you put up with whatever disadvantages come with that but you can't flip-flop afterwards to suit yourself.

I think it is quite clear that they are selling you a copy. Go to their own online store and tell me where it says "you can only use this subject to these conditions" before you purchase - I'll save you the time, it doesn't -> ergo not enforceable.

Never upgrade

I know it generally works with Linux but I've always found it much more reliable to reinstall. Now if anyone knows of a program that will take note of all I have installed in terms of non-base apps and either list package and source or allow for simpler reinstallation that'd be great.

I've had at least one Ubuntu upgrade balls-up (I'm thinking it was a 9 to 10) and similarly for OSX my Snow Leopard upgrade died a death after a while.

Although it's better these days it's still far less effort long run to reinstall unless you have some real bespoke installation that you have a cloned backup of so can justify the upgrade attempt.

Taxi fodder

At least they have the sense to be issuing Blackberries. I just hope with all these handsets out there that there is some decent bulk buy bargaining going on.

Re:Holistic security is hard

I'd imagine in this situation it's bloody impossible. Given people have access to the device that contains the signing key it's only a matter of time before they extract it. A bit like blu-ray players needing to be able to decrypt the data on a disk to play it meaning that everyone potentially has access to a key.

Indeed

I can barely wait the remaining 5 months of my contract so that I can ditch these useless shites. Only issue is, which Aussie provider next - there seems to be a good reason they want to lock you into a 24 month deal?

I don't agree

"Is this what we want? Probably not. But it's exactly what we get when we, the tech world, decide to compete with lawyers and lobbyists instead of developers and salespeople."

That's only part of the issue. The main reason why Microsoft and now Google have come under fire from Governments and law-makers is because they have completely abused their position. Microsoft didn't get their arse handed to them by the EU because they use patent lawyers (software patents count for little outside of an East Texas courthouse) it was because they broke the law and utterly abused their position to keep others out of the market. Likewise Google has come in for attention because it deliberately sniffed wireless connections and geotagged them all over the planet.

Patent disputes have very little to do with it, shitting on your "customers" does.

I just wish

That someone would organise a decent single-point-of-sale marketplace like that offered in iTunes so that I can switch to an Android jobby when I come off of contract. At the moment the marketplace is more like a car boot sale.

Pictures or it didn't happen..

What about a copper battering a photographer for indicating when someone's exercising a little control freakery?

Not sure on the details

I'm sure I read somewhere that if you create some patentable invention/creation (genuine are few and far between these days) then, no matter what your employment agreement states, you are entitled to a reasonable return on the licensing. The employer can state that they own the copyright but you are entitled to a cut of patent licensing. I think this may have related to the UK rather than the US but I'd be interested if someone knows more details.

@AC

You've obviously never worked in Australia - the working environment is a little backward compared to Europe and the like.

Indeed

You can't beat reinforcing your argument with observations on the purchasing habits of a nation that couldn't put together an airfix kit - not that we do much better these days.

@bolccg

Err, no. It is the job of the Federal Government to deal with boycotts etc not local councils. Do you really want the town councillor formulating some foreign relations policy? As the State Premier pointed out, it is their job to deal with rates, roads and rubbish and not this.