Posts by Jeremy 2 268 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
It's pretty obvious now, isn't it, that Google is trying to get China to kick it's arse out of the country? If China sends Mountain View packing, they'll try and leave with their head high. If they pull out of their own volition, they go with their tale between their legs and the world laughing at them and saying "we told you so."
'Tis all about PR now...
"Only they didn't do it arbitrarily, this is an enforcement of the developer agreement which the developers ought to have been aware of. So not arbitrary. And it's always been there, so no moving goalposts either."
An argument that would stand up if Apple hadn't 'reviewed' and approved the app for sale in the first place.
No company should punt their wares on the App Store. The sheer volume of cases like these where Apple arbitrarily remove businesses' income streams and constantly shift the goalposts in terms of what is and is not allowed should be a clear warning to developers. Who knows what next week's naughty list will contain?
Apple are the new PayPal.
"PayPal’s highest priority is to always ensure we comply with all applicable regulations everywhere we do business around the world so we can screw over a much of the world's population as possible"
There, I fixed that for them.
This is a perfect chance for a financial regulator to grow some testicles, stand up to PayPal and say "No, if you want to act like a bank, be a bank with all the consumer protection requirements that entails. Otherwise, piss off, you're not operating here."
Of course, that will never happen but we can wish...
"It's surprising how many "web designers" still develop sites on the live server."
There's now't technically wrong with doing that, of course, provinding you've got a few braincells to rub together. It's because they used obscurity as security and left the development site unrestricted that they got caught with their knickers down.
There are several different ways you could fairly reliably lock down a site in development that's lurking on a live server. IP restriction and/or user authentication to name but two.
A well protected development site on a live server is no different to an admin control panel or similar - even if 'they' realise *something* is there, they have no way to get into it or see what it is.
Presumably, much like Gmail chat, this annoying pile of privacy destroying crap (sorry, "social networking tool") can be easily and permanently blocked at the firewall. Disallowing all connections to buzz.google.com would be a good start and I'd imagine somebody will pick their service to bits and find any other hosts that should be blocked before too long.
In the context of a study on mobile use, which is probably 95% Facebook, Youtube and p0rno, that's hardly surprising is it? I can't think of many uses for FTP on a mobile device.
I'm sure FTP's usage on the desktop is shrinking too but that's a whole different kettle of fish (i.e. it's use is dropping because it's been superseded, by SFTP for example).
"However, as of half three today, from where we were sitting the site was still showing the "for sale" notice, in both French and English, suggesting Tata's fix had not taken."
Or suggests that you're using a DNS server that has a cached copy of the compromised records which haven't expired yet.
"The issue with the bail condition is that, under Human Rights Law, it could well be argued that this condition is itself a punishment, delivered in advance of court hearing and verdict. As such, it may constitute a breach of the Human Rights Act."
and
"However, if the offences were committed on the dates given, Mr Heard ought to walk free: the extreme porn law did not come into being until 26 January 2009 and is not, as far as we are aware, retrospective in its application."
Don't worry, they'll never let the small matter of that awkward thing we call The Law get in the way of thinking of the children/animals/terrorists/etc.
...but you appear to be correct. PA criminal trespass law says "A person commits an offense if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he: (i) enters, gains entry by subterfuge or surreptitiously remains in any building or occupied structure or separately secured or occupied portion thereof."
However it also says that if there's a 'No Trespassing' sign then entering is 'defiant trespass' and Google is sunk. But then it'll probably only cost them a buck so no biggy.
http://law.onecle.com/pennsylvania/crimes-and-offenses/00.035.003.000.html
The 'code' says:
"Passengers must not be selected on the basis of personal characteristics"
Therefore, they must be selected at random. Which is kind of at odds with the very next sentence:
"detailed protocols which are not published because, we are told, they contain security sensitive information which includes selection criteria on those chosen for scanning."
So which is it?
Did you ever see the site Mr Biffo and friends launched after Digitiser was axed? It didn't last long but it was an outstanding rendition of Teletext mechanics in the browser (and without resorting to Java either)... Sadly it looks like they blocked the Wayback Machine though so it's consigned to memory now :(
It was at digiworld.tv in (late?) 2004 should anybody have the wherewithal to dig it up from somewhere
If I may refer to my previous comment on the iPad name:
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/657478
At 9.7", I can see the appeal a little more than the 7" that was expected... But the lack of open access just puts me right off again. You just know it's going to be locked down tighter than the crown jewels.
So.... Meh.... Again.
My bank, a large southern US institution with a <ahem> sunny, trusting attitude </ahem> have a particularly unpleasant way of trying to force me into VbV.
Every time I try and make a transaction on a VbV enabled site, I remember that VbV is a pile of steaming shit and click the "not now please" button when it tries to convince me to enrol mid-process by entering a few details that literally dozens of companies and agents, etc, know about me. The transaction always appears to complete as normal but within an hour or so, I get a callback from the bank telling me that "suspicious" card activity has been detected and I then have to confirm the transaction with a call centre idiot instead.
So refusing to join a poorly thought out, poorly implemented programme that's nothing more than security theatre is now, apparently, 'suspicious'.
Sure, nobody should be using PayPal for their business needs and if anybody signing up for a business account there actually read the terms and conditions where it basically says they can freeze your funds at any time and for pretty much any reason with very little recourse, then far fewer people would use it.
But...
Punters *love* PayPal. Almost everybody has a buyer's PayPal account, even the people who hate it. Ubiquity plus the fact that customers often expect it from small sellers is a nice little self-reciprocating loop for PayPal. Businesses use it because customers expect it and customers have it because for lots of smaller businesses, it's the only payment option. Add to that the media, which has taught the great unwashed to be afraid of small-time companies asking for CC#'s on the internet and PayPal must be rubbing their hands with glee.
The other problem is lack of cost-effective alternatives for small businesses who may only see a sale or two a week. WorldPay is trusted but is a subscription model (when last I checked, anyway) so your small profit disappears and a lot of the other major payment systems, like Google's have the same 'what's yours is ours' attitude as PayPal as well as being limited to certain currencies. Those that perhaps do act a little more ethically towards their business customers face the problem of being small-time and the customers won't trust them and the sellers end up with an inbox full of "do you take PayPal" emails.
It's no good saying businesses shouldn't use PayPal when the punters expect it and there's no genuine competition that doesn't have exactly the same problems.
Cynic-Mode: On
Surely if the customer is being ass-essed at the check in desk, they already have a pretty good idea whether the flight is full or not and can either waive the fee right there and then or obtain a hold for the fee on the customer's CC and only put it through if the flight does turn out to be full.
I'm sure that won't happen, though, and they'll charge the oversized self-loading freight for a second seat regardless and then take 6-8 weeks to refund the amount (by cheque, no doubt), during which time, it's sat in the bank earning a little bit of interest. Multiply that little bit of interest by all the big butts who fly and you've got a nice little earner.
"According to Moody's order, Ward made multiple online posts in which he shared his name, date of birth, telephone number, street address, and email address."
Not the smartest knife in the drawer, huh?
Seems like a heck of a lot of money, too. I wonder how they intend to extract it from him?
So, fail on both sides, really.
robots.txt is voluntary, not enforced (unless they're also blocking access by IP or user agent) so if they are so sure they have a case for fair use, why don't they keep on going and have it out when/if NI take them to court?
Maybe then we could have a final ruling on whether or not linking without consent is OK and end this stupid squabbling.
At least the idea that it would be called iPad seems to have fallen by the wayside. I always thought that sounded like an incontinence aid.
iStuff is for the people who live in areas governed by Home Owner's Associations - those nightmarish places where the almighty 'rules' govern the colour of your house, the length of your grass, the hours you can cut said grass within, and so on. Some people obviously thrive on living in a controlled environment where somebody else does all the thinking for them. I'm not one of them so I won't be even remotely interested in the iDontCare. I'm sure they'll sell millions though.
Where's the 'meh' icon?
Presumably it will come with a carefully and sternly worded disclaimer written by said lawyers to the effect that the device is merely a guide and that ultimately, if you find yourself becoming a new decoration on a 747's nose, it's entirely your own fault for not knowing where you're going.
Same as an in-car sat nav won't let you use it until you agree that if it tells you to turn down a railway line, you'll remember to ignore it.
The BBC's reporting of this story (here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8413377.stm ) makes for interesting reading. In particular this bit:
"A seven month trial in conjunction with internet service providers found the technology behind the filter to be 100% effective."
Oh really? So it blocks access to the naughty sites consistently and accurately without any failures, false positives or loopholes? Riiiiiiiiiiight....
So glad I'm not an Aussie ISP customer right now... Evil Jobs used in lieu of an Evil Conroy icon.
> Here's a pre-emptive request: If you're not going to *clean* your house
> before attacking others, at least acknowledge that you're not exactly
> the poster children for liberty...
Oh we're not. If this were Britain, we'd have just stuck the Wikileaks URL(s) on the IWF list and the problem would have magically gone away :)
Erm, Google for OTMR. 'Black boxes' are mandatory on all trains on Network Rail lines since Jan '08. They don't record voice (although radio/telephone comms are recorded at the signal box end) but they do record driver actions, several different indicators of speed, engine, braking and safety system states, etc, etc, even down to use of the horn, I believe.
You're right about them being fairly unpopular with drivers though, for fear of witch-hunting.
I see the dodgy emails are written in trademark 'Phishing Message English'.
How is it that in all these years, the muppets who run these scams haven't realised that they'd fool a lot more people if they understood some fundamentals of grammar?
Dear user of the hostgator.com? Yep, that sounds real...
So following the instructions from the Silicon Alley Insider, I was able to find a story that if I attempt to view from within the WSJ website, I see a preview of but that if I attempt to view from a Google search, I see the whole thing (hosted on wsj.com with an identical URL).
So obviously the WSJ are analysing referrers or tracking cookies or something to determine where clicks into story pages originate and serving either the cut down or full version accordingly. If they're too dumb to turn that off and only show full stories to authenticated, paid-up users *and* Google's crawlers (hence still getting the traffic from Google News) then that's their own problem, not Google's.
We need a Stupid Murdoch icon.
"You have to ask just how much DARPA, or anyway the rest of us, are actually going to learn here. What is for certain is that some interesting - probably largely unseen - shenanigans seem likely to take place this weekend."
Then again, it could just be, you know, a bit of fun to celebrate an anniversary?
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