* Posts by Gordon 10

3872 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

IT'S ALIVE! China's Jade Rabbit rover RETURNS from the DEAD

Gordon 10

Re: An OZ blogger...

Naaa - subcontract it to a clanger.

Apple pushes back release date for 'dustbin chic' Mac Pro

Gordon 10

Then Hackintosh. There are some bonkers crazy Hackintoshs running well over Pro spec's for well under Pro money. All you sacrifice is the nice looking case and if you choose a non-intel board dubious thunderport.

Vodafone, Moneygram hook up to create mobe money MONSTER

Gordon 10

Re: Will be a long time coming to UK...

Yea - I have it on good authority thats why no mobe operator with the possible exception of o2 has done it in the UK. I think but am not sure that O2 piggyback on Barclays license somehow.

Bank license means holding extra capital reserves and lots of onerous financial reporting.

So cool it 2.4 gigahertz: BATTERY-FREE comms for international band

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: I'm struggling to see where

The clue is in the name - embedded. Why embed something with a battery that will eventually die from leakage or need replacing.

If we take slightly naff example of light switches that another commentard mentioned - its bad enough having to change bulb's let alone batteries in the light switch.

Gordon 10

Re: Bazza

Moron. How exactly is this tech any better than an RFID token or something else totally passive for that purpose?

Rotten to the core: Apple’s 10 greatest FAILS

Gordon 10

Re: Lots of Apple kit looks nice

I like it - in a looks like a cash machine kinda way.

Gordon 10

Re: Concentrating on things

1. Upper-Right

A mistake really??? Apple concentrating on short term profit (ie the high end) has made them almost immune from the general slump in PC and Laptop sales. Most people would call that genius. Arguably they learnt from trying to compete with the mass market severval times and decided never to do it again - which at the moment is paying them dividends - lunatic analysts who want ever increasing expansion excepted.

Depending on whose figures you believe Mac PC's current have ~11% of the US market. Not bad considering that is nearly all laptops in a category containing desktops as well.

Boffin talks WATER on MARS: Granted, no 'smoking gun', but all clues flow there...

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Boffins @AC

Sir - your post smacks of the cursory attention and inanities associated with Trick Cyclery. Desist forthwith!

UK claims 'significant lead' in drones after Taranis test flight

Gordon 10
Terminator

Am I the only one

Who thinks that Taranis is a bit of a scary name with connontations of some scary AI overlord?

ROTM

Woz he talking about? Apple co-founder wants iPhones to run Android

Gordon 10

Re: Excellent Idea!

My Mate cant get his M3 off his drive in the snow :)

BOFH: Attractive person is attractive. Um, why are your eyes bulging?

Gordon 10
Pint

Yay

First BOFH of the year and it was almost worth the wait. Slightly too subtle ending imo

Apple cash stash dash results in Icahn v CalPERS bitchfight

Gordon 10

Re: Are these numbers correct?

Its not Icahn's money any more than its CalPERS. One is a reputable pension fund fronting for thousands of pensioners, the second is a Carpet Bagging front man for a lot of shallow and short term 'investors'.

FWIW I suspect she meant Icahn is small potatoes compared to the combined might of institutional investors such as CalPERS.

UK spooks STILL won't release Bletchley Park secrets 70 years on

Gordon 10

Muppet

So assuming any aliens who can build a flying saucer capable of extra-solar travel must be at least 100 years more advanced than us today, and in the last 60 years "transistors" and their ilk operating in computer chips today are almost unrecognisable compared to those used in Baby what makes you think we could even get close to cracking 160 years more advanced tech in a mere year from1948?

Vodafone's Euro revenues slump by nearly TEN PER CENT

Gordon 10

Haha - chickens coming home to roost.

Cant speak for anyone else but Project spring wouldnt have been necessary if they had continued the level of investment they had in their network 3-4 years ago.

They lost me as a customer the second 3's network coverage bettered theirs for my particular part of the world. Particularly as they somehow actively managed to reduce the coverage I enjoyed.

Apple RESURRECTS the iPhone 4: report

Gordon 10
Thumb Down

Re: seems an odd thing to do

IOS 7 on my Iphone continues to run like a dog regardless of updates. Just ordered a Nexus 5 as a result. Seriously considering reloading v6 before I Ebay it. Ironically any App including the Ebay one - that lets say is less than effecient on how it uses data - starts like an arthritic snail. Evem day to day apps like contacts and calendar are appreciably more laggy than on IOS 6.

Gordon 10

Re: New refurbished?

Correction dear commentard.

47% of their highest end Ipad is not bill of materials related. Unless you have Apple internal docs you want to share with us?

Nudge Unit flies into Nesta's arms: Is the hype justified?

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Shaun Ryder - took me a minute

Or Richard Hammond presumably. Or Clint Boon might have been a bit more obvious.

HP execs Bradley and Donatelli ready to walk: reports

Gordon 10

Re: except for the money it's

I imagine they will cope pretty well given the obscene salaries and payoff they are hoovering down.

If I was an HP shareholder (thank god Im not) I'd be asking why their executive comp is so out of whack compared to their performance.

EVE Online erects mashed-up memorial to biggest space fight in history

Gordon 10

Re: Can be the most intense game ever.

Can I have a translation please?

Yahoo! Mail! users! change! your! passwords! NOW!

Gordon 10

Re: users should never use the same password on multiple sites or services," said Yahoo!

Try telling that to anyone who has 40-50 passwords to manage.

Tell us we're all doomed, MPs beg climate scientists

Gordon 10
FAIL

I call bullshit mr AC

It was the wettest January <in some parts of the country> for 100 years. Thats rather different since records began, and again even records began is hardly a great guide for things that have cycles that are multi-decadel.

MAC TO THE FUTURE: 30 years of hindsight and smart-arsery

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Nobody remembers Bill Gates saved Apple @knarf

By nobody you all include the Reg articles that explicitly mentioned this point?

Language-mangling Germans fling open Handygate to selfie-snapping whistleblowers

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Such a refreshing language

Unlike the french who either dont try hard enough when adopting a new word le computer or try too hard that nobody cares - l'ordinateur, you've got to hand(y) it to the Germans.

Handy has always raised a snigger from my inner Finbar Saunders. Handy-gate conjours full scale Fnnarrr Fnarrss from me.

I suspect they know it too. Its all linked to the same gene that makes them love Benny Hill.

And when they are stuck for a word - simply contatenate 10 descriptive words together - splendid!

Blocking BitTorrent search sites 'ineffective': Pirate Bay ban lifted for Dutch ISPs

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Its worse than that - he's dead Jim

Slightly tangential - Im looking forward to seeing the giant Facepalm our glorious leaders perform when they realise blocking something as fundamentally trivial as TPB actually educates the unwashed masses in avoiding blocks of all kinds, and the benefits of encrypted connections etc etc.

Hopefully before they realise it they'll have educated an entire generation in how to avoid the tools of state control of the internet. (Fingers crossed anyways)

Apple blows past (most) Wall Street moneymen's expectations

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Peak apple?

Tedious commentard. You'd have been much better stopping after the first sentence. The second was just trolling.

Apple now spends more on chips than top three PC makers combined

Gordon 10

It's not really a surprise.

Only Apple and Samsung have huge thriving smartphone, tablet and laptop businesses. The others are all more specialised.

Gordon 10

Re: Self supply

Anon commentard who thinks they know better than Samsungs top brass. I'm shocked - shocked I tells you - that they are not listening to your wisdom.

A BBC-by-subscription 'would be richer', MPs told

Gordon 10

Re: Adverts @john 156

Really o wise one care to give us an example of that? Or just trolling? Having Kids of 4 & 3 I can assure you that the BBC's output is by far the most harmless and educational of any other broadcaster.

Icahn slurps another $500m in Apple shares, demands buyback AGAIN

Gordon 10

Re: Activist investor?

Agreed. Why doesn't Icahn just sod off and shut his piehole? He reminds me of those Carpet Bagging investors who went after all the Building Societies in the 90's and 00's. Remind me how well that worked out for the companies and their customers in the long term?

HP Chromebook 11 quietly slips back on Google Play shelves... but where's the FIRE?

Gordon 10

And a helpful suggestion warranted a down vote?

Gordon 10

Might be worth a look at the Acer 270. Not sure how upgradable it is but it has a proper haswell processor instead of the Arm jobbie in the HP.

Touchscreen I suspect you wont be seeing any time soon at these prices.

Gordon 10

Interestingly

The play store lists neither the screen res or the cpu speed.

UK.gov to Google: Kill impostor taxmen ADs hogging top spot in YOUR search results

Gordon 10

Re: Sorry, but tough

I always find it amusing when our MP's critique something on moral grounds - when most of them must have demonstrated the morals of an alley cat on heat to get to parliament in the first place.

I do have a grudging respect for David Davis though who is the only MP who has ever demonstrated some awareness of the need for privacy against the surveillance state. Looks like he should stick to what he knows best.....

Gordon 10

Re: Accountants

In fairness the average Joe probably doesnt entirely realise that.

Ex-NSA guru builds $4m encrypted email biz - but its nemesis right now is control-C, control-V

Gordon 10
Meh

Re: Let me point the obvious:

Or to put it another way. If you dont 100% trust the recipient of a message or are not 100% confident that the contents cant bite you on the ass dont send it.

To be fair that kinda missed the point. The point is not to have a 100% secure solution, its to raise the barrier of entry against passive attacks, an active attack against email whether by a single person (the recipient) or a state actor is always going to succeed.

Gordon 10

Re: I'm all for bringing encryption to the masses, but...

Nice sentiment but you are somewhat missing the point. Name one purely FOSS product that actually user friendly enough for public consumption by the average joe. Im desperately trying to think of one but cant.

Fact is in lots of cases Corporates exist and make money by taking something fundamentally complex and implementing it in a way the average pleb can use.

Amazon's notorious 1-click button for instance - how many other websites have you wished for that on and not had it or an equivalent.

Gordon 10
Black Helicopters

@dropbear

So you're saying a reasonable level of secured comms should only be available to the techo-elite who have the time, background and understanding to manage it all themselves?

Bravo Sir /slowhandclap.

The only valid point you have - and its somewhat oblique to your post - is that the accessability for ordinary users to the current state of encryption controls is piss-poor. If Virtru are taking steps to make it better - even if there are gotcha's that make it unsuitable for the truly paranoid - they deserve all the encouragement they can get.

Having said that it looks a little like a "me to" product thats only getting funded due to the current Snowdon debate to me. The fact that its US based also counts against it.

But if they can "do an apple" and make encryption easily accessable to the masses I would probably overlook some of their downsides.

It seems there are 2 areas of debate we should be having and only 1 is being pursued so far.

1. Robust End to End encryption including masking of metadata, origination and destination.

2. An encryption product that "just works" like an Apple product. Preferably without even mentioning the word "key" to the average joe user.

Infact if I runningin Blackberry, Apple or Google right now I would be beavering away on as many simplified encryption functions as I could get away with.

Especially BB as they have previous forn in this area and are completely failing to take advantage of it - think a global network of BES nodes all chosen at random at send time, and a peer to peer comms systems that means the decrypt key moves between nodes on a random basis or upon decryption request.

'I don't understand why they feel like they own the word CANDY'

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: the app name was what now?

That was my thought too. Regardless of the asshattedness of King trademarking CANDY, hsu is obviously a complete chancer looking to cash in on searches for any similar game rather than coming up with a good name himself - even King managed to avoid using the word Jewel when they ripped off bejeweled.

In short both entities involved are tossers. King merely got there first and took it to a higher level of tossery-ness. Hsu is merely penny-ante third rate copy artist - King have the saving vice of being complete megalomaniacs and first rate copy artists.

It was inevitable: Lenovo stumps up $2.3bn for IBM System x server biz

Gordon 10

Re: IBM have bet a lot on Cognetive Computing and Cloud

I was thinking similar thoughts. One CEO's non-core business could easily turn into anothers core business. **cough**Intel**Xscale**cough**

Gordon 10
Meh

Re: Privacy concerns

Im sure these rumours can be put to bed fairly easily. It wouldnt be hard to put some traffic analysis on mid-senior level mgt's laptops and wait to see what happens.

Im pretty sure that the scale of it makes it difficult - why nobble a laptop when you can nobble a server, router or switch? Why nobble a router when you can nobble a firewall appliance. Why nobble a firewall when you are tapping the cables and network end points anyway.

Given that it would have to be at bios/component level on a laptop anyway - Im fairly confident that when state actors need to target a laptop they do it by actively attacking it instead of relying on some passive measure pre-installed.

After all if even 1 rootkit, backdoor is found soley in 1 manufacturers kit on an industrial scale - that manufacturers business instantly goes down the pan.

HP EliteBook 840G1: Sometimes it's an Ultrabook, sometimes it's not

Gordon 10

Re: Crumulent battery life

Actually I was comparing it to my Vaio TT which cost me around £1100 in 2009 and has a battery life of ~7-8 hrs of normal use.

Gordon 10

Crumulent battery life

4-5hrs? really? WTF?

In a land of tablets and other ~£1000 laptops with 8hr-12hr run times how the hell do they think this is good enough?

No wonder Ultrabooks have flopped - too much cruddy fluff obscuring the few gems.

Gordon 10
WTF?

Re: HDD in an Ultrabook?

Im having a tramatic flashback to HP printer drivers. They used to install lots of un-needed crud too.

Candy Crush dev stuffs EU 'candy' trademark down gob

Gordon 10

Prior art

The coffin dodgers holiday company that also bizzarely owns the AA may have the trademark equivalent of prior art on the work Saga.

Although Im currently imagining a crash between a sweet lorry and a tourist bus reported with the headline Candy Crushes Saga.

LogMeIn: We're stopping our free offering from now

Gordon 10

Read the comments. Users of LogMeIn Ignition (a paid app) have also been shafted. I liked LMI so much I bought Ignition to support them when it was launched. I wouldnt have even been bothered if I had been asked to pay the same amount every year- but £29 - EffOff.

Lenovo haggling with IBM over price of System X... AGAIN

Gordon 10
FAIL

Sales declined

Sales may have declined recently due to the general slump in PC demand but I hardly think the US Govts buying decisions hurt Lenovo much as their PC sales have been on a general upward trajectory since the Thinkpad buy.

But never let the facts get in the way of a good Leftpondian view of the world.

Microsoft buries Sinofsky Era... then jumps on the coffin lid

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Back in the real world

Really - how many PC's in your office have been replaced by Chromebooks, Ipads or mobiles?

None? thought so. With the exception of the chromebook which is essentially a discounted Netbook/Ultrabook with an ad supported OS all of them are complementary devices to the PC rather than replacements.

In the consumer world they are Replacements - not in the enterprise.

Ironically MS have probably exacerbated a temporary slump in PC demand by producing such an abortion of a product.

PGP wiz Phil Zimmermann and pals tout anti-snoop mobe – the Blackphone

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Trust? LoL

You moron. If anyone has reason to distrust the American government its Phil Zimmerman. He was persecuted for years over the export of PGP remember?

That would also be the reason why all their corporate affairs are done in a Swiss company.

Hyper-fast Wi-Fi chip guru Wilocity: Cisco dalliance is our ticket to enterprise

Gordon 10

Why Cisco for device mgt

How does control of switches and network gear line up against control of what for all intents and purposes a PC?

Disclaimer I know nothing about Prime.

Plastic iPhone 5Cs? Nah, we'll flog India our OLD iPhone 4 models - report

Gordon 10

Resale

Apple dont really care about resale values. They care about creating a caché and user loyalty to their brand. Resale value tends to be a result of that.