* Posts by Steve Davies 3

7136 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009

Bill Gates denies iPhone crack demand would set precedent

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Are you a constitutional lawyer then Bill?

If no, STFU {please}

Wi-Fi operators must notify device users of potential data processing

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Been happening for a long time

I used a free 'WiFi' network at a Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico a couple of years ago now. My 'throw away' email is still getting offers from the place. This is despite me not ticking the box about letting them send marketing emails etc. I did check, it wasn't a double negative question either.

Software, not wetware, now the cause of lousy Volvo drivers

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: What about battery life

Some of us bikers fit devices to our machines that allow us to keep the battery charged over the winter.

Perhaps one of these might do for your soft top beemer?

Bit don't tell the insurance company. They'll add £100 to your policy for making a performance enhancement/modification to the vehicle.

WTF such a device has to do with increasing performance is beyond me. Unless it is to make it more usable as a vehicle? (less towing to the dealer to get it rebooted)

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
FAIL

Re: While they are at it . . .

VAG (Volkswagon Audi Group) seem to be going all out to make rear indicators obsolete.

After all they can't get much smaller can they?

I saw an A4 the other day and the indicators were about 10% (if that) of the rear light cluster.

Easy to say 'Sorry Gu, didn't see your tiny indicators'

Is there a minimum size for these things?

Where are the safety people?

Pah, total and abject failure

Ukraine has a Eurovision pop at Russia

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: As Clausewitz didn't say

Which is why

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Goes some way towards explaining a lot of the voting patterns.

If we leave the EU do we have to continue to fund the trash that is Eurovision?

If not it might be enough to make me vote for out.

Or could the BBC put it on BBC-3? That way no one but the addicts will watch it.

Imagination unfurls blueprints to 2017's TV, car dashboard chips: the PowerVR Series 8XE

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

But...

you gotta look cool at every opportunity... Oh wait...

given the Samsung S7 Launch yesterday was all about VR I have to wonder how long it will be before some Rapper/R&B performer wearing a VR headset totals his Lambo/Ferrari/Mclaren while driving with the VR enabled. Gotta look cool at all times...

FBI says it helped mess up that iPhone – the one it wants Apple to crack

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Cook is just grandstanding

Quote

Apple has been running ALL OSX and IOS traffic (including Phone backups and email traffic) through their services for ages, scouring every bit of their users information to see what they can monetize. This is well documented, even in their own EULA's.

citation please.

Are you saying that if I go visit a web site (say www.theregister.co.uk) all the interation I have with that site gote through an apple server? [1]

Are you saying that if I use my own email server in the mail app ALL the traffic to that server goes through an Apple Server? [1]

given that apple don't sell any of your details to Ad agencies and that are basically shutting down iAd I find your statement rather confusing.

[1]I don't own a smartphone but have a company iPhone and use it for email access. I think an awful lot of businesses would like to know if all the emails that their employees read/write using an iDevice is also reaad by Apple. I would imagine that an awful lot of lawsuits would be flying in Apple's directino if it were true.

Please tell us why you believe that everying done on an iPhone goes through apple Servers.

It would make a fantastic Article here.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Speculation?

Have an upvote for adding something new to the debate. Sorry for you to have to live in that county but as you say, there are some nice geographic features between you and them.

Top new IoT foundation (yeah, another one) to develop open standards

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: IoT - Has it's time passed?

Care to explain why it is so vitally important that you know what your devices are doing every second of the day?

We managed for years without this and ... well we aren't dead yet.

Will you start getting the DT's if you happen to go into a 'not-spot' and you can't see this data for... perhaps an hour or two?

So again, why is it so important to your life, your univers and your everything that you know this stuff 24/7/52? If you don't know it, who will care (apart from you)?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

IoT - Has it's time passed?

Is it a solution waiting for a question?

At the moment, any IoT device won't get past my front door. They realy have to get their act sorted out with respect for Security and Snooping.

The more devices that you have connectect to a network the more endpoints you have that can get hacked and turned into snooping devices.

Apart from 'we did it because we could' most of the things that have Internet connections have functioned perfectly well for years without needing to be 'connected'. So effing what if I can switch on a light at my home from the other side of the world. Big Deal. For 99.9999% of us, once the novelty has worn off, we couldn't give a toss about it.

So why do people think we need this crap everywhere?

Ok, so I'm not a salesman and never will be but for many of us, we just can't see the point of it. That means that selling IoT enabled crap will be an uphill task especially for Luddites like me.

Can DevOps be applied to the whole company?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

DevOps...

Hows about El-Reg puts £1 in the swear box everytime an El-Reg hack mentions it?

The DevOps tidal wave is a mere ripple (if that) in most companies.

All this plugging (or flogging of a truly dead horse) ain't going to make it the hottest thing since... the last hottest thing.

As far as many of us here are concerned it is akin to a certain Norwegian Blue.

US DoJ files motion to compel Apple to obey FBI iPhone crack order

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: I am surprised ..

What makes you think that have not already 'cracked it'?

Any evidence might be ruled as an illegal siezure so they may have to go through this charade to get it all done legally. Then they can use the evidence in open court.

Personally, I hope Apple prevail here. There was a revolution in the 18th Century in the USA. Perhaps the people inside the 'Beltway' should learn the lessons of the past lest they get repeated again. Communism fell in 1989. No need to say any more.

Hey British coders: DevOps – you're doing it wrong

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

never mind the quality, feel the width

As true today as it ever was.

Eurovision Song Contest uncorks 1975 vote shocker: No 'Nul point'!

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Somehow

Still a waste of Money for a complete farce. Even worse since Terry W stopped taking the piss out of it.

No matter how much 'fiddling while it burns' we'll never win the damm thing again.

time to pension it off any used the money for something else.

FBI iPhone brouhaha sparks Apple Store protest in San Francisco

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: don't these people

you must be new here...

Didn't you know that Apple iDevice owners live in their own Universe where time started in 1970?

Time runs a a different rate to use mere mortals.

Sheesh...]

US Dept of Defense to shift 4 million devices onto Windows 10

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Obviously....

They'll have a 'non slurp' version of the OS.

If they don't then they obviously don't have any secrets left to steal.

All-American Apple challenges US gov call for iOS 'backdoor'

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Innocent until proven guilty and all that

Until you are found guilty you are 'alledged' to have comitted a crime.

The couple can't be found guilty as they are dead so they will be alledged for a long time yet.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Charge Cook?

If they charge Tim Cook then they need to also charge the bosses of Smith & Wesson and every other gun maker in the USA. After all, terrorists don't only use AK-47's do they?

Then there is the company that sold every gun used to commit a crime in the USA. They should be bang up along with him. After all, they sold weapons that killed people didn't they?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: The precedent is the thing

Quote

Aside from that, their customers will lose faith in Apple's promises of encryption which WILL affect sales.

But where will they go for a secure device?

Android? If Apple caves in then it won't be long before Google will be in the same boat..

Microsoft? ???

Blackberry?

A.N. Other?

Back to Semaphore then...

Cybersecurity is slowing down my business, say majority of chief execs

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

The Sell, sell, sell mentality

selling improves the bottom line.

delivering what was sold hits the bottom line

delivering what was sold to the correct customer hits it even further.

delivering what was sold to the correct customer and not spaffing all their details onto the internet for all to see hits it even further.

etc

etc

So you (as CEO/Chairman/BOD etc) decide how far down the ladder you want to go. That may or may not be adequate for the regaulatory requirements of your industry.

If it isn't then we are into the 'what they don't know about is goodness for our profits' territory.

This management malarkey is pretty simple eh? There must be a reason why I'm a techie and not a boss.(Don't answer that...)

Apple must help Feds unlock San Bernardino killer's iPhone – judge

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Apple are in a no win situation.

I hope that Google (sorry Alphabet) will support them here because if Apple are forced to allow the FBI in then it won't be long before Google will have to do the same for Android.

Perhaps we will see two iPhone models? One for use in the USA (with a backdoor) and one 'Not for sale or use in the USA'.

This will run and run methinks.

Facebook tells Viz to f**k right off

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

1984? Not quite

But to make 'purer than though' people each and every copy of every edition of Viz should be given the Farenheit 451 treatment.

Sad but the Puritans rule the roost in the Politically Correct USofA.

Big, fat fail? Here's how to avoid that: Microservices and you

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: There is no silver bullet

Said Journo's might learn something from going over back issues of Computing and Computer Weekly for the artivles on another bit of snake oil from the 1970's called

'the Last One'.

Where is that today eh?

The hype over it was huge (in journo land that is).

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Every component of the application (should) be retested

And how does it run compared to the Subroutine Call?

with Vendors like Oracle etc charging arms, legs amd everything else on a Per CPU license all this SOA/Restful/Crapware modularisation costs CPU Cycles and may need the organisation to spend lots more $$$$/£££££/Magic money on more CPU licenses just to get the same performance (if you are lucky) than before.

Sure you might possibley/probably/are you joking (delete as appropriate) some money in support but that could easily be outweighed by a new Oracle/SQLServer/Database of your choice license.

And you still may never get the performance back to what it was before the 'DevOps' magic sauce was taken.

Are you a Salesforce or an Uber? Choose wisely, devs

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

The Water on a Chip Pan effect

Which is why in a couple of jobs I've had in the past we all had mandatory fire safety training including how to tackle small fires. Jet-A can get a tad nasty at times.

To be honest, if the instructions are to 'Get the hell out' why do we have to have effing fire extinguishers all over the place? The Fire Brigade will bring their own.

Back on topic.

Salesforce or Uber?

How about neither and no I won't be drinking the DevOps koolaid.

time to stop flogging a dead horse perhaps?

UK to stop children looking at online porn. How?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

Naff all use

Kids today know all about VPN's in order to get around the non availability of TV shows in the UK (or to get them for free). This knowledge is out there. The horse has bolted.

Any kid who wants to get access to Pron will know how to do it and no UK Politician (of any colour politically) can do a thing about it.

Streetmap's lawyer: Google High Court win will have 'chilling effect’ on UK digital biz

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

The google Effect

Use Google for anything and your data (Oh look he/she wants to go to Alton Towers. Lets give that information to 1,000,000 advertisers...) get slurped.

So you went to Alton Towers? How about DisneyLand Japan for your next vacation?

Your choice.

I know what mine is and it is NOT google.

YMMV (And probably will).

Debian 6.0 about to take flying leap off long term support cliff

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

If 5 years isn't enough

Then over on the RedHat [1] side of Linux, you get 10 years out of RHEL (paid) or CentOS (free).

If you really have to avoid SystemD then CentOS 6 still has a few more years of updates. (2020 or thereabouts)

[1] Yes I know that to some Debian diehards, R-H is the spawn of Satan especially for working with Microsoft on making their OS's work better in VM's and that SystemD is the R-H grand plan to get everyone locked into their tech. Personally, I don't have that opinion but everyone is entitled to their own.

Adobe issues patch to nix its Mac-killing Creative Cloud update

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Deletions were triggered... by signing into the cloud service with the build

The Adobe Updater service is a PITA. Die Adobe, die

Shopping for PCs? This is what you'll be offered in 2016

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Any news on laptop resolutions?

Available for more than a year? That means that they are obsolete. Probably going to end up at Morgan Computers any day now.

Is this the last ever Lumia?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: They should stick with Lumia for phones and Surface for tablets.

Heresy.

According to MS all you ever need to do is use Office everywhere all the time. You have to run Office on every device.

All those devices must run Windows 10 (or a variant thereof).

You have got to get on message.

Haptic developer fires patent suits at Apple

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Why are they suing AT&T?

The US Legal System allows anyone to sue anyone else often without reason.

So you (for example) have a car accident. Your lawyer is free (your deep pockets allowing) to sue each and everyong involved with building the car, all the components right down to the smallest nut and bolt use in a machine that was used to make the car and even the man/woman who cleans the toilets at the car factory. One big reason NEVER, EVER to sell anything to the USA even if you have product liability insurance.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: "Over 42 billion sued!"

For a change, this suit wasn't filed in East Texas but in Delaware. Another good place for [redacted] companies to do business. SCO (remember them?) was a Delaware registered company.

It will take some time for the courts to decide if these patents are:-

1) Overly broad and thus can be invaidated

OR

2) that crapple and AT&T did not violate them

OR

3) Guilty - Hang the lot of them. Now!

Higher US Fed interest rates will hit startups over the head

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
FAIL

The FED my be reversing that 0.25% rise

If the crisis in Asia deepens then the rise may well be reversed pretty soon.

If you raise/borrow money and assume that rates will stay this low forever then you need your head examined. If you do your business plan and cater for them to be say 3% then anything less is a bonus and 'embiggens' the bottom line.

anyone investing in a company that has not done a business plan with this sort of scenario also need their head examining.

Pah. Fail.

Louisville says yes to Google Fiber. Funny story: AT&T, TWC didn't want that to happen

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: But...

How long does it take to get a Trailer Home trucked in on a low-loader? A few days.

How long to restore the services that were delivered overhead? Weeks.

There is a reason that people in that area carry around portable generators in the back of their F-150 Pickups.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

But...

They are still going to string this up on Poles.

Saw a new housing development is Kansas last year. All the Phone/cable/internet was being installed via overhead line. Loked Fugly as well.

Bearing in mind that this place is in 'tornado alley' I thought that this was madness.

Earthquake-sensing smartphone app fires off early alerts of disaster

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: I know what he meant, but

sigh

I forsee that this will be used this to measure how much they were 'rocked' by the sex they are not having.

The won't will they?

Brings a new meaning to 'rock my boat'.

Coding is more important than Shakespeare, says VC living in self-contained universe

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

coding vs old shaky

As I have been coding for almost 44 years, I feel that it is time to learn a bit of Shakespear.

A time and a place etc.

If you are only a coder (imagine the geek in their Mom's Basement) then you are hardly prepared to face the world at large. I think the term is socially inept.

Do we really want a world full of people like that?

or do we want people with a rounded background?

I know what I want and it is not the former.

'Adobe Creative Cloud update ate my backup!'

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: FFS

Exactly. If this was Apple making this mistake at least 20 Class Actions would have been filed already. Each one claiming $5M in damages. Naturally $4.999M would go to the lawyers in the event of it being successful.

IT's Holy Grail, but is DevOps a Poisoned Chalice for sysadmins?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Bring on the Future

You are forgetting the PHB's with their shiny new MBA's and Management Speak consisting almost entirely of TLA's, FLA's and adjectives worthy of the man who used to compere 'The Good Old Days' on TV.

Send tortuous stand-up ‘nine-thirty’ meetings back to the dark ages

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Professional managers

Aren't these identifiable because they all have MBA's?

More Bloody Arseholes more like.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Friday afternoon

2:30 on a Friday afternoon? my, that is early.

How's about 4:30pm? A PHB wanted to make sure that we were all at our desks until 5:00 and the traffic jam outside meant that we couldn't get out of the car park until 6:30.

We moved the meeting to a Pub outside the area affected by the traffic jam. Everyone went apart from the PHB who was folornly waiting for us until one of us sent him a text asking where he was....

We had told him about the change of venue but he was so engrossed with his management reports he never read it.

Said PHB moved on very shortly afterwards. Heard later that he'd tried the same at the new company.

Sigh...

Zero. Zilch. Nada. That's how much Netflix uses its own data centres now

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Netfix is at the mercy of Amazon

how long before AWS prices rise?

as has been said, it is a single point of failure

Miss paying your bill by 1 second? Bye-bye Netflix.

Whoever made the decision to put the whole lot into AWS should be sacked

Unless..........

Netflix wants to be bought by Amazon.

As for Apple wanting out of AWS. Well, they are building large bit barns of their own all over the world (Planning permision in Galway permitting) so it sort of makes sense for Apple to at least reduce their dependency on AWS. I'd still use AWS where there isn't a local Data Centre but for the rest of the world? As is usual for the fruity company, they like to do things their own way.

If they do get out of AWS totally perhaps this rush for 'everything must be in the cloud' might slow down a tad. Probably wishful thinking though...

Boffins show Ed Vaizey what superfast means: 50,000x faster than UK broadband

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: "...the average speed of a UK broadband connection of 24 megabits per second (Mb/s)"

Well, if you believe the Virgin Media junk mail then 24Mbits is akin to a snail crawling up a pane of glass?

OTOH, the BT Backhaul can't take even 10% of this so why are we even bothering to discuss speeds that will probably never be reached until 2116. Even then the last mile will still be over single strand twisted pair copper PSTN quality wire so anything over 80Mbits is more than could be expected even with a following wind and les than 50ft to the Fibre Box.

From Tony Stark to Iron Man: Building tomorrow's IT chief

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Eh?

Quote Contemporary IT staff, in short, must more time talking and technology professionals who climb the all-important career ladder will be expected to “engage” with end users, customers and external providers.

So you really mean...

Contemporary IT staff, in short, must spend more time talking and technology professionals who climb the all-important career ladder will be expected to “engage” with end users, customers and external providers.

Isn't the trend that the farther up the PHB ladder/greasy pole you get the more divorced you are from:-

1) Customers

2) End Users

and

3) Reality in general.

All you really care about is the bottom line of your team and how it look wrt others so that you get another three months of job continuation.... Until the next company re-org that is and if you have played your cards rights (viz lick the right boots) you can be moved up and get the key to the executive washroom.

Putin's internet guru says 'nyet' to Windows, 'da' to desktop Linux

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Reasons are probably many

Sanctions never stopped the Russians in the days of Communism. The number of VAX'en and PDP's that popped out of the woodwork post 1989 was huge.

Now? How difficult is it to move a .ISO over the interwebs eh?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Anymore proof needed that

Not counting the recent telemetry updates which can be blocked for the time being

There fixed it for you.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Anymore proof needed that

Windows 7 and above is considered 'spyware'?

Boycott Windows 10. you know it makes sense. Just Say No!

How one of the poorest districts in the US pipes Wi-Fi to families – using school buses

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Rural America is like stepping back in time

For Politicians even at state level, is does not really exist.

There are some really remote parts of the country.

There is a road going from Nevada into Oregon that has a sign saying

Lakeview 179 miles

200yds down the road there is another one

Next Gas 179.

Turn around and it is 82miles to 'Gas'. Wonderful and beautiful country but a long way from nowhere.

So being serious for a moment, what company would invest in anything but wet string to provide internet out there?

This area of California is pretty remote and the small population widely scattered. Income? Mostly Benefits. There was work once but the mines closed a long time ago. Not a lot left out there. So unless you are going to make the citizens move... you are stuck. The 19th Centurty ideal of having their own claim/homestead and living on it remains true today.

this solution deserves a lot of kudos. Well done.

Bank fail: Ready or not, here's our new software

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Nobody wants...

All those bloody automated test cases are all well and good but they don't and can't replicate the quirks of the average user who will try every know keypress in 5seconds in order to speed up the system.

I'm just spent two days getting to the bottom of a nasty UI interaction problem. Do this, this, this, then that and opps!

All has to be done within a minute or things going on in the background make it all work. Timing Sucks.

Can anyone write an automated test for this? Somehow I doubt it.

Systems are getting more and more complicated. Proper (not the automated type) Testing takes lots of time and even more money.

We used to put people in front of a system and tell them 'Go Break it'.

Lots of very obsure bugs were discovered that way. Why don't we do it now?

Answers on a pinhead please?