* Posts by Steve Davies 3

7136 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009

Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Almost enough to make me want to vote to stay in

Any site that refuses to serve me content because I run an ad blocker gets put on my blacklist and is never visited again.

There is always another place to find the information or buy goods these days that I feel that they are just shooting themselves in the foot.

The more they block, the more they will turn people away.

RIP Prince: You were the soundtrack of my youth

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Happy

Re: Atmospheric Nuclear testing when they were kids?

Hey,

I was alive in the 1950's. Well, born in Coronation year and I'm still alive and kicking (just)

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Worried?

If you want to sell you DG tickets then look no further...

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Pint

The soundtrack of my youth

started disappearing back in 1970 when Hendrix died. Been downhill ever since.

It is Friday so time to raise a glass to those who have made so much enjoyable music (pre (c)Rap etc).

Richard Wright

Syd Barrett

John Lennon

George Harrison

John Bonham

John Entwhistle

To name but a few of those

'Impossible' EmDrive flying saucer thruster may herald new theory of inertia

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Coat

As seen on TV

(in memory of Victoria Wood)

There was a TV prog in this very thing. I caught a repeat of it a few months ago.

The inventor was (IMHO) a very reluctant 'boffin'. Not someone after their 15 nano particles of fame.

There is probably something real in this but bigger boffinbrains than mine will decidely pour scorn on it until it dies a death only to be reborn years later by some Stealth Startup, fleece the investors for bazillions and still get nowhere.

Cynic? Moi? yep.

time to go for a walk.

"I may be sometime."

Larry Ellison's Brit consortium in 'advanced talks' to buy Aston Villa

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Villa Park

to become 'The Oracle Stadium'?

We don't have to 'Page the Oracle'[1] to see that this won't be popular with the fans.

[1] A slogan used for the 1st gen ITV Teletext Service back in the day.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS arrives today complete with forbidden ZFS

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

RedHat seem to think Btrfs is ok to use

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Storage_Administration_Guide/ch-btrfs.html

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Once upon a time...

In a time oh so very long ago, the arrival of a new Ubuntu release was actually big news.

Now?

May I suggest it is now more of a 'Meh' moment.

Sure, the fans will rave on about it but many here we have jumped ship to other distros as they have either outgrown it or got fed up with it.

Mint seems as popular destination for former Ubuntu fans.

I went to the Linux 'dark side' myself and now use CentOS. Still on CentOS 6 so that I can avoid 'systemd' for as long as possible.

As for ZFS, I'm far too old to get excited about a filesystem. I was once very excited about one once upon a time. Well I would be wouldn't I as I wrote my own one as a student back in the 1970's. It was a new Filesystem for RT-11. It worked most of the time still, it was fun for a while. All that bit twiddling deep inside the kernel. Oh, the memories.

Official: EU goes after Google, alleges it uses Android to kill competition

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Surely Apple uses iOS to stifle competition too?

Nah.

Google needs Apple who needs Google. Otherwise the Anti-trust people would be wetting their knickers all hot and bothered about getting one/both in the dock and facing very large fines.

MS is a mere bit part player and that is not the fault of the other two. MS have been shooting themselves in the foot quite regularly over their mobile business for a number of years. Shame really because it (and it pains me to say this) the hardware ain't all that bad.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Ubuntu Phone

Nice argument but...

Can I go into a phone shop on the high st and buy one?

Nope.

That sort of makes it irrelevant does it not?

What market % does it have?

Probably not on the EU's radar.

Hand over our code to China? We're no commie patsies, Apple cries

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Germany is #1?

apparently these numbers a boosted by the fact that if you lose/have stolen an iDevice in Germany the Police request user data from Apple as SOP.

different countries, different procedures.

Four hundred MILLION vulnerable Androids are out there

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Google could fix this but they won't

Google/Alphabet could (IMHO) fix this by insisting that anyone using the Android core and brand issue patches for at least 4 years (like apple????) or they must stop using Android and the branding.

They own the trademark and the likes of HTC, Samsung etc are brining that trademak into disrepute but the lack of support. (IANAL etc)

Microsoft completes its Skype bot invasion with Web, OS X versions

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

MS are brilliant

at messing up something that used to work perfectly well.

Why would I want bots on Skype? I get enough spam connect attempts as it is (even though my skype user name is very obfuscated)

So the next question is...

How to disable/get rid of this?

Censorship FTW! China bans Paris Hilton, minor Kardashians et al

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Joke

no not Paris!

Where would this place be without her?

As for that family (??) of media [redacted].... Nuke the lot of them. The world would be a better place (See Icon)

Brexit would pinch UK tech spend but the EU wouldn't care – survey

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: There is so much bollocks ...

Can we have some evidence that the EU is funding the BBC?

I expect that I am not alone here in thinking that it is the TV License that goes most of the way towards funding the BBC.

in other words,

Citatino please?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: There is so much bollocks ...

Too late, I've been doing that ever since the referendum was announced.

all this hot air is amazing. I do have one question though

Where is the Invisible Man a.k.a. Nigel Farage, then?

If he was so much in favour of us leaving why isn't he on every TV/Radio show, on the front page of the tabloids almost every day then?

Perhaps the 'out' campaign think he is far too much of a liability?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Brexit...

A very good summary but IMHO you missed one vital point.

Vote for out and get Boris as PM. His going into the out camp is widely regards as his move to get chosen as PM when 'dodgy dave' steps down.

Woz says wearables – even Apple Watch – aren't 'compelling'

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Happy

Re: Half-Hunter

A 'half or even full hunter" is far more durable than a smartphone. The metal case protects the delicate insides. The round nature of the device makes it slip in and out of pockets with ease as opposed to most smart phone (even those with rounded corners).

The chain properly attaching it to ones clothing makes for a perfect device. does the job it was intended to do perfectly and no silly wrist band.

As I said, I hate things on my wrists. So the likelyhood of me stumping up for a watch if this type is as likely as Leicester winning the Champions League.

now where the number of my bookie?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Seconds out... Round 2

The Apple Watch is buy most measures a failure yet it sold a good few million.

It has done several things though (IMHO)

1) Shaken up the whole market for totally electronic wearables. No longer are they just restricted to things like the fitbit.

2) Got a whole lot of talking about wearables. Before it was very, very niche. Still a niche in my opinion but far closer to mainstream than before

3) Shaken the traditional watch makers to the core.

By all accounts, the next version will be thinner (it is apple after all...) and more usable.

All I know is that I don't want anything on my wrist including a watch. Not worn one for almost 40 years.

Now if someone repackaged it into something like 'Half-Hunter' format then I might buy one.

One of the people on the office has one. Thinks it is perfect for using Apple Pay on the Tube. That might be a perfect niche for it.

Lets all wait for round 2 and see where this marker is going to go.

What's wrong with the Daily Mail Group buying Yahoo?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: The Daily Mail & Yahoo!

The only saving grace of the Daily Mail is that it isn't owned by Sky/News International.

Not that that is much these days.

UK authorities probe 'drone hitting plane at Heathrow'

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Kudos to the idiot responsible

The idiot or idiots responsible should be lashed to the tailpipe of a Tornado or a Typhoon and re-heat engaged.

If an aircraft (no matter what size) is downed by one of these then all drones will be made illegal the next day. Only professional drone operators will be allowed to use them.

Personally, I can't wait for the day.

Meanwhile over in the US, some states have made shooting down a drone a criminal offense no matter what the drone is doing. This includes snooping on what is going on inside your home.

The NSA/FBI will be applauding this move. Now they can snoop on their suspects as much as they like always hoping that their snoop drone (or drones) get downed by the suspect and that gives them the perfect excuse to cuff the person.

I predict that all the nice juicy stuff will soon go underground (literally) just to avoid drone snooping.

UK web host 123-Reg goes TITSUP, customer servers evaporate

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: The National Enquirer of Technology

quote

Your reading it.

I know it is monday but...

You are reading it

Is a more correct way of saying it. (see ICON)

Mac hinge may change

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Whale oil beef hooked

so you didn't look at the various Mac Blogs that are clearly saying that new Macbooks are on the way probably at the WWDC?

More fool you.

On the otherhand, the MBP you bought will last for years so unless you really need a bit of extra grunt that the new CPU's will give you then you have no need for a new shiny-shiny Apple bit of tat. Unless, you have some bragging amongst your mates (???) you need to do...

:)

Ok, so I bought one last year myself. I've passed its predecessor (2011 15in MBP) onto a family member. They love it. Still got years of life in it yet.

Drive for Lyft or Uber in SF? Your wallet is about to get lighter

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Correct Legal Status

Does this mean the end of 'Car-pooling' and the lanes reserved for them to be eradicated?

During my time living in the USA, I found the local politicicans totally moronic and just small time versions of their Congress critter heroes.

For example,

A Shopping Mall was built (in error) with one 5ft section in another state. This second state wanted to charge their sales tax on everything sold in the Mall. This state had a much higher sales tax then the first state (1% at the time). The Mall operators simply got a backhoe (JCB for us in Blighty) and demolished the bit of the building that dared venture into the other state.

The whole thing about permits for this and permits for that, permits to breathe, permits to live is frankly a blight on the US idea of freedom. We are lucky here in 'the old country'. Some of the people I know in the US would rather like the idea of their state leaving the Union and coming back into the UK fold.

Frying pan into the fire but it does show the how pissed off many citizens are with all levels of Government in the USA.

You Leica? P9 certainly is a Great Leap Forward in imaging... for Huawei

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: retro knobs and dials

Yeah. Try using a touch screen when you are wearing gloves.

Real buttons are the order of the day.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Is there a "best" phone camera out there?

The old saying 'The best camera for the job is the one you have with you' holds true for many sutuations.

But, like you, I carry a small Point and shoot camera (4yr old Nikon) with me apart from the times I need my DSLR with a telephoto or other special lens. According to Lightroom, I took some 8,000+ pictures with the DSLR last year. About 50 with my phone and a little over 200 with the Compact Camera.

IMHO, most of the time the people using the camera on this phone won't have a clue about how to get the best out of it. They'll probably complain that it takes shit photos. But hey, they have bragging rights saying that 'I have a Leica lens on my phone'.

Apple assumes you'll toss the Watch after three years

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: FIRST OWNER

Shhhhhh not totally ignoring it but not emphasising it.

After all, we all hate Crapple here don't we eh?

{2009 13in MacBook just upgraded to El-Capitan. Going great.}

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Four years?!?!

Batteries are readily available on fleabay. Go for it...

Surprise! Tech giants dominate global tax-dodging list of shame

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: How many Oxfam emloyees use iPhones ?

By your measure they should also stop using any Microsoft Product. no windows

No HP Printers or PC's.

etc

etc

etc

time for Oxfam to invest in Abacus makers then?

I know it is nice to pick on Apple because they present a nice fat juicy target. But any legislation will sweep up all the other US companies identified in their report as well. You can't be selective in this and not come in for at least some comment.

Seriously though, the US Law needs reform and then this problem would cease to be one but their insistence that they pay US Tax on every cent no matter where earned (on this planet and beyond) is the root cause of this. But they won't do that now will they? Apple (not the worst) and the other companies spend an awful lot of money lobbying people in DC. Vested interests and all that.

So life goes on and nothing changes especially this year because all those 'cough-cough' elected representatives don't want to rock the boat and not get returned to the Washington Pig feeding trough in November.

You won't believe this, but… nothing useful found on Farook iPhone

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Oblig quote from the Bard.

"Much ado about nothing"

that leads to

"A Comety of Errors."

Then again, Dickens had it right with

"Bleak House".

US anti-encryption law is so 'braindead' it will outlaw file compression

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Just a point of clarification...

Don't you mean the DC Realiry Disfuction Field?

Anything that happens inside the Beltway seems to be so far removed from reality that it might as well be on another planet.

Mind you we have our own Political RDF that covers the Palace of Westminster and every HMG Building withing 3 miles. If we were to nuke every career civil servant, we might get a government that actually worked instead of the ''Yes/No minister' charade.

You can also include all political hacks in that as well. They have been infected with the PRDF Virus as well.

So what if an MP dates a 'professional woman'... Who the hell cares outside the PRDF Infection zone anyway????

Google broke its own cloud AGAIN, with TWO software bugs

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Happy

Re: Like I said in another article

Q: Are my Cloud Services running?

A: Yes sir, your cloud services are running perfectly

Q: Then why can't I get at them?

A: We don't know Sir. Please try your network provider... As the operator looks out the window at a JCB, a big hole and several people all scratching their heads and saying 'That fibre optic cable should not be there'.

Hey, Atlantis Computing. What the heck is this in your EULA?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Cue Striesand Effect in

10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1..0

donning my lawyer tinfoil hat...

Please can someone get sued by a company with these terms in its EULA. Then and only then can we get this sort of crap outlawed. Just like the clauses in the Windows EULA that absolves MS of any responsivility for anything ever.

French thrash Brits, Germans and Portuguese in IT innovation

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

DevOps === The latest Fad

To be replaced by another 'Latest and greatest' just as many companies get it implmemented.

rinse and repeat thus spending lots of mony, delivering very little but boy does it look good on the managers CV's.

Time for another round of Golf then Chaps?

That corner office will soon be in sight.

Samsung's dimmer Galaxies can make calls when locked, cabled

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Samsung's 'apple moment' perhaps?

sorry about the multiple posts. Far too early in the morning and not enough Coffee in my system.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Joke

Samsung's 'apple moment' perhaps?

Now will Apple sue them for copying this sort of bleeding obvious 'Doh!' attack?

See Icon before downvoting (please)

UK cops trial £250k drone squadron

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: 1080p drone for 50,000 pounds each?

The consumer Drone will probably have a very hackable connection between the ground and the UAV. One would hope that the POD version uses something more akin to military spec (frequency hopping maybe?) radio to connect the operater and the UAV.

After all once these things become common I'm pretty sure that the crims will go out on a job equipped with 'drone' scanners and disabling tech.

Bundling ZFS and Linux is impossible says Richard Stallman

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Joke

Re: ReiserFS...

"I hear it murders wives and gets caught"

Just normal exception handling

sorry, couldn't resist.

Windows 10 debuts Blue QR Code of Death – and why malware will love it

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Come on MS. Please tell us who thought that this was a good idea?

QR Codes are so.... well twenty naughties. Not the latter half of this decade.

I have not and will never scan a QR code.

You have absolutley no idea where or what it is referencing.

The same goes for those silly short URL's for that matter.

As has been said, this is just another big fat jucy target for the malware writers.

Won't they ever learn?

IMHO, Nah. Nope, Niet, Nien, Non etc etc

Read America's insane draft crypto-borking law that no one's willing to admit they wrote

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Requirements for US Political Office

The only one seems to be that you are a Lawyer and as such totally divorced from the real world.

How many senators/congress critters are not lawyers or don't have a degree in Law?

1) go to Law School

2) Join top law firm

or

2) Become and ADA

3) Become partner in Law Firm or get elected DA

4) Run for political office (even if you are a complete idiot as most are)

4a) Get lots of $$$$$$ from vested interests to fund your election campaign

5) get elected and start paying back the people who paid for you to get into office.

Rinse and repeat 4) & 5) until they carry you out in a box.

Dear Windows, OS X folks: Update Flash now. Or kill it. Killing it works

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Doesn't work

Just uninstall Windows 10. You now know from first hand experience just one of the reasons why people here don't want anything to do with W10.

There are other options you know.

As has been said, spoofing your browser can get most sites that need it to display the content in HTML5 rater then in Flash. Just watch out if you do do that on W10 as Microsoft seems to have started overwriting your user settings with updates.

{Posted from a Windows 10 and Flash free environment}

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Get the content producers to kill it

Otherwise it will linger on and on and on and on.

Come on people, stop producing content that needs Flash. Then it will go away.

Yes you, BBC and the rest... You know who you are.

It is all well and good saying that you are going to stop using it but when are we going to see some action eh?

My laptop does not and will never have flash installed. I've got rid, now it is your turn!

BOFH: Sure, I could make your cheapo printer perform miracles

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: If anyone knows of any recommended method

Personally speanking Kodak paper for inkjets is pure crap. Never been able to get it calibrated on my Epsom 2100.

Yet, I used Kodak paper in the darkroom for years and was a great fan of Ektachrome film.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

Ah Transparencies

A certain Three letter computer company seems to call them foils. The still use that for powerpoint pages. Doh!

How Remix's Android will eat the world

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

But does it slurp my data?

In these days where every OS seems to want to keep phoning home with all sorts of data about what the user is doing it sems to me only sendible to know what the policy is in this area? Does it still send everything to Google?

What about updated? As Android gets a lot of updates but many company don't pass them onto their users, a clear policy on updates/patches would be useful for many people when looking at this sort of OS.

That naked picture on my PC? Not mine. The IT guy put it there

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Another reason...

I've said to people for years "never piss off your IT people - they WILL make your life hell".

There fixed it for you.

London to Dover 'smart' road could help make driverless cars mainstream – expert

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: 50 years later than German towns

They had it on the A4 between Taplow and Slough back in the 1970's,

Great idea.

Now we get lights with shorter and shorter green times. The ones on the A281 near Dunsfold are stupid. only green long enough for 4 cars to get through. no wonder more and more drivers just ignore them anyway.

Neighbour sick of you parking in his driveway? You'd better hack-proof your car

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

how long before the car makers ...

Start legal action using the DMCA. After all the shit state of the networking/security on the CAN in most cars is far too embarrassing to be ket out into the wild...

nice idea but thes behmoths don't like being told that they have problems. look how long it takes them to issue recalls even after prople have lost their lives.

Sticking with my old Motorbike. No fancy electrics on that. Joe Lucas didn't know what the term fancy was,