* Posts by Terry 6

5589 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2009

Google bans third-party call-recording apps from Play Store

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Interesting

Precisely. As I noted, I don't currently record any calls. And wouldn't grant any software permission to do so on a routine basis. But if one day I really feel the need to do so it's no business of Google's. And it's easy to think of reasons why this might be a legitimate activity. e.g. WFH and are given an instruction that may be in breach of some legal requirement, or unethical or risky in some other way but that the bosses could deny. Or after being contacted by a scammer, or being given a reassurance that some ( perhaps legally binding )agreement or process is being started or terminated, but without any written confirmation. ("Don't worry Mr. Customer, we'll have your electricity bill for £40000 corrected to £400 immediately and you don't need to worry about the bailiffs" - The sort of story, in fact, that pops up on Watchdog from time to time).

Actually I use my landline for those sorts of calls, so I could just use the mobile phone's voice recorder to record that. But there are plenty of people who don't have a landline. And some here on El Reg who actively look down on them.

Terry 6 Silver badge

I don't understand

I don't. Are they saying that they want to stop us recording calls ( I haven't needed to yet, but could conceive of a time when I would*)? Or do they want to keep such an option to themselves for some strange reason?

IOW. What's this all about. Why can't I just record my calls with my choice of software if I so choose.

*Scam callers for example.

British motorists will be allowed to watch TV in self-driving vehicles

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Don't forget truck drivers

Makes sense. Add maintenance costs, capital costs, applicable taxes....

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Too early.

Takes me about 10 minutes to full wake up after a little mid-day snooze. I guess autonomous vehicles won't be for me.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Bah!

..or gun shots.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: It's a paradigm shift

urban ones are easier (IMHO) as better line of sight, decent junctions, road markings, proper lighting, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings etc.

Not in bloody Barnet they aren't. Bendy roads with concealed side turnings, random street furniture obscuring the view of the road, including concrete bollards and iron bell shaped thingies on the corners*. Tight turns into roads that suddenly narrow. Mini roundabouts that barely leave enough space to get round them. Cars parked on both sides of narrow roads.

*Put there to stop drivers going on to the pavement as they turn. Because the turn is so narrow and tight that cars are in danger of a collision with vehicles coming the other way- especially if it's a bus or something.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: It's a paradigm shift

A great chunk of that applies to suburban roads too. Which car reverses to the one place in a narrow road where there aren't cars parked on both sides of the road? How do they negotiate potholes big enough to break a car's suspension. etc.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Bah!

".....is risible. As is the idea I would need to own (and maintain) the thing."

I was with you till that point. A car isn't, though, just a personal taxi. It is also a store for items needed while out and about. Our reusable shopping bags. Work resources.Travel cots (when at the parenting/grandparenting stages of life) And so on.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Or on the demographics. Tesla drivers will, I'd hazard a guess, be a fair bit older than the mean, a hell of a lot wealthier and accordingly, have significantly more money invested in their vehicles. I'd hazard another guess that there won't be many high mileage long distance drivers among them. They'll either be driving a desk when not in their Tesla or being ferried to the airport for international travel.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Tad premature

Whatever the responses about AI, surely the need for this is just far too distant still to actually be rewriting and publishing it in the Highway Code. Of course there should be a draft in some junior minister's files and within the DafT (I think that's Private Eye's name for them).

But actually going public with this now is jumping several guns. Have they nothing better to do with the Highway Code?Is it so perfect that there are no other revisions needed much more pressingly?

IoT biz Insteon goes silent, smart home gear plays dumb

Terry 6 Silver badge

Proprietary software v interoperability

Anything that costs a significant sum of money, or would have a significant impact on people's lives, needs to be on standardised software. So that if things go South for one supplier the public can go to another*. Companies don't like this. The want us in a walled garden, so that we can't dodge between different suppliers with different prices. Beancounters love monopolies- as long as it's their monopoly.

*Even something as simple as encryption software. There are plenty of products out there that sound pretty good. But they all have their own way of handling the encrypted files. i.e. one can't open the files created by another, even if it uses the same sorts of algorithms.. So I stick with the usual ones, because if anything goes wrong I know that there will at least be lots of copies of the software around.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Home Automation is the Future (cont)...

Yep. I have a Hive. It sort of came with the British Gas boiler installation. It's useful to control the heating from my phone. And I only just discovered that it even has other internetty things. Nice to have a record of my fuel use, too, but I won't be too bothered if that part ceases to work. Because the Hive will still control the heating. And to be honest BG Centrica is probably as safe a bet as you'll get. If only because of the regulatory and political searchlights on them.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Open Standards

should never be bought, however cheap it is.

Like any other form of gambling* the boundary is how much you can afford to lose ( emotionally as well as financially). If your IoT kit becomes a fancy door stop in a year or so's time and you can just shrug and get on with life, then go for it ( though the environmental impact is another kettle of ball games).

If you are going to suffer, don't do it.

*I seldom waste money on gambling. And then only tiny sums. because it hurts me to throw money at bookmakers and other such parasites. A quid on the Grand National every couple of years and a tenner at a casino once in a decade. That I can cope with.

Terry 6 Silver badge
FAIL

Spending a lot of money to make your life dependant on proprietry equipment from a single company

No further comment required.

Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: So many things wrong with the TV/Streaming model

Yes, on each of the streaming services there are currently one or two programmes I'd watch. The idea that I'd subscribe a full annual fee to each of 4 or 5 such services to watch four or five series that will end or run out of steam before my subscription expires strikes me as lunacy.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Netflix is over

There's at least one scene where Roger Moore's Bond drags a protesting woman into the sauna. It's definitely a bit rapey.

Twitter faces existential threat from world's richest techbro

Terry 6 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Most of us don't give a toss.

See icon. Nuff said.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Twitter's job is to be Twitter – not to make people rich

The historical difference seems to be the new need for maximisation of profits. A business that makes enough money to pay its expenses and give its owners/shareholders a nice fat income is no longer considered adequate, at least not if institutional buyers take an interest. The institutions will buy any company which has a share value that is potentially underachieving. Then ratchet up that share value by any short term means it can. Long term strength or even the existence of the company has no relevance if its assets can be milked. It is the slash-and-burn approach to business.

Terry 6 Silver badge

It's not so much about "too scared" it's that rational people use rational means and look for rational explanations, which may be nuanced. The flat Earth/conspiracy nut jobs and the like have no need to behave in that way. They are impervious to such trivialities as evidence and logic. And psychologically a strongly held, confident opinion will be more powerful than a rational "on balance" one. We see this with vaccine reluctance. The rational arguments that vaccines are massively much safer than the virus and have been extensively tested and billions of people have used them doesn't convince some people nearly as much as being told confidently that the vaccine is an evil ploy by the politicians and those terrible big pharmers ( why's there no tractor icon?) to put them under mind control.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Twitter's job is to be Twitter – not to make people rich

At least part of which is that to grow, even to the point of survival, the money bags have to be brought in. Beancounters and professional investors. And all they see is money. That's assuming that there was genuine altruism to start with. I'm pretty sure that Amazon always had a game plan beyond flogging cheap books. And Gates' Microsoft was always about commoditising tech. Anyone think Apple was different?

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Same old trick?

Both

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Twitter - the pinnacle of soundbite crap

Twitter allows "threads", a chain of sequential Tweets. So there's no such limit really. Long rants, and even well thought through arguments can and do exist there. Sadly writing isn't the same as reading. When I did twitter it was hard not to notice that as a thread progressed the number of people interacting ("likes" etc) diminished. It would appear that for many people reading a single Tweet represented a major effort. Following a thread to its conclusion was just too far beyond them.

Terry 6 Silver badge

But the bad, crass and inappropriate can be screened. Great for users, terrible for revenue.

Which does rather beg the question as to why those types of ads exist.

An early crack at network management with an unfortunate logfile

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: and you won't even remember which idiot wrote it

Right, this is not just a problem with programme coding. Almost any set of instructions, even human language ones, can suffer from the "obvious to me" problem. It's a skill in itself to be aware of sections of instructions/explanations/code/reporting/etc that are only comprehensible in the context of something you have stored inside your own head.

When the expert speaker at an NFT tech panel goes rogue

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: It's scams all the way down

As to that, a lot of people do use, and more to the point actively choose to retain a landline. They're independent of signal strength and for the time being at least, mains electricity. Usually the sound quality is better and they're easier to hold too.

Apropos of which, this is by and large also a matter of fashion; landlines are so 2017.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: It's scams all the way down

All money is imaginary really. But it's backed by big banks and nations. That banks create money isn't sufficiently well understood by the public. One of the major scams works by telling people that their money is at risk and has to be moved to a new secure account. It works partly because people think their money physically exists as a big pile of cash in a vault.

In fact it only exists as numbers in a ledger. Banks hold cash to meet day to day withdrawals and legal requirements. But they can create money as a multiple of that cash simply by loaning it as a credit- it's just numbers. It's why run on a bank is such a disaster. Suddenly they have to find actual cash to give to desperate customers. But the cash isn't there. It doesn't exist.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: So it's not just me.

In that sense it's like the difference between being a bookmaker and a mug punter. The Turf Accountant is betting on most of the Mug Punters losing. With odds adjusted to make sure they do OK themselves. The odds aren't about the chance of the individual Mug Punter's selection winning. They're a measure of the bookmakers' risk exposure.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Grifters all the way down

Nah. You don't need blockchain for that either. Most scammers seem to get by perfectly well without it.

It just makes the job more efficient. The benefits of modern technology innit.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: It's scams all the way down

I'm sure there is an element of scarcity value in this when its craft or antiques. But also the element of changing fashions. Stuff that will have been fashionable when first sold, or it wouldn't have sold, (avocado bathroom suites?) but returns to fashion or becomes part of a new fashion. Stuff my parents threw out in the mid/late 20th C. became "delightfully retro" in the early 21st. And some of that was horrible. Some was quite decent though. Cue cries of "100 quid for that. My parents threw out six of them!"

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: It's scams all the way down

Some of his (possibly earlier) Banksy stuff was quite funny. A better class of graffiti. I was genuinely amused by one such that I saw before I knew who/what he was and long before I realised that it was by him. Most of it is (IMAO) self-righteous crap. Schoolboy leftism of the Corbynista/SWP sort of political sophistication. But he can draw. And he came to the attention of the fashionable types. Especially the ones who wanted to seem to be be down with da yoof, because he stands out from the other anonymous paint sprayers.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: It's scams all the way down

Thing is, OK art (or Art) will never have much intrinsic value. And much of the value it does have is fashion lead (anyone who's ever watched a few episodes of Bargain Hunt will have seen one of those times when the auctioneer will be saying of some beautiful object "10 years ago that would have fetched £900 at auction, but now it's only worth about £3.50). But a physical object does have some intrinsic value and some possibly subjective but real intangible value (aesthetic value if you like).

This is considerable less so if it's a piece of art designed to shock or incite you. Think Banksy, who's stuff is clever graffiti,stencil sprayed on a wall. Even less intrinsic value if it's a digital design that can be endlessly reproduced. But if it's just an NFT, knocked out because it's, well, saleable the intrinsic value is nil. As to the aesthetic value, hmmm. There seem to be a lot more NFTs than there are talented creators wanting to produce actual Art in the form of NFTs....

You can buy a company. You can buy a product. Common sense? Trickier

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: 'twas ever thus

Yes, in the UK the contract of sale will specify portable/removable appliance to be left, with a price. This can make a difference to the tax paid on sale since some of the sale price can be considered as being for the appliances. The higher the agreed valuation of the dish washer etc the less the the tax ("stamp duty") maybe even bringing the sale below the threshold for payment. just don't try to take the piss.

Fixed items, lighting,switches,shelves etc are meant to be left. As are garden plants that are buried into the ground. Some people are stupid and unscrupulous and will take these items, leaving bare wires sticking out of the walls etc. but it's illegal.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: 'twas ever thus

Not as destructive, but I'd assumed the installers had dome this. Woke up after setting an overnight cycle to find the machine in the centre of the kitchen.

Infosys quits Russia, ending UK political and tax scandal … maybe

Terry 6 Silver badge

And, again I feel I should mention, it's a bit ridiculous for someone to claim they are "non-domiciled" when they clearly are domiciled with a senior member of a nation's government. It may be legal - but not "decent, honest and truthful" as the advertising code used to put it.

Terry 6 Silver badge

What perhaps makes this different are that a) taxes are being raised substantially for the lower paid, by her husband ( in his official role) while their family income is protected and b) There's a bit of a contradiction between saying you are one of the most senior members of a government and are actively ( i.e not separated) married to someone who is not domiciled in that country. If you are living within a marriage to someone who runs a country that's a pretty good example of being "domiciled" in any rational sense.

Don't let ransomware crooks spend months in your network – like this govt agency did

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: You reap what you sow

Well actually....

My dad was a factory manager when I was a kid. The owners begrudged every penny spent on maintenance ( let alone replacement) for ageing machinery. Dad seemed to spend more time looking at the machines from underneath than from above. And I know his experiences were pretty common in British industry at the time - at least in small manufacturing businesses.

These days there is the added complication that the beancounters are paid to achieve short term margins.

I have a sneaky suspicion that many the offspring of those factory owners of 50 years ago went on to become accountants. Especially since most of those factories closed due to competition from much more efficient, modern overseas manufacturing ( long before it was merely a matter of cheap Chinese labour btw). And to also to believe that this is how businesses should be run, because that' how daddy did it. And I know there's a contradiction in there. It's a strange paradox.

(Any yes I've met plenty of people like that)..

What do you do when all your source walks out the door?

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Never get the chance to do it again

And presumably some very specific forecasts for some very specific locations. And maybe weather data shared from some very sensitive- in the intelligence sense- equipment. I know nothing of the Met Office beyond what anyone would. But that seems likely, somehow.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Formatting pc's in the days of DOS and Windows 3.1

That's kind of like when, at around that age, I went to buy a calculator. The one I thought I wanted didn't have a price ticket or any specifications. The sales staff were bunched together in the middle of the display area, as far from the calculator section as they could be and refused to acknowledge my presence. So after a few minuted of vainly trying to get their attention and another few minutes entertaining myself (bear with me) while I waited I went round to as near as I could get to where they were all stood chatting Saying loudly, "You've wasted my time because you didn't want to come and help me buy from you. So I'm going somewhere else and I've wasted some of yours." And put down the stack of price tickets that I'd collected from the display models (those that did have them), while I'd been waiting.

Fish mentality: If The Rock told you to eat flies, would you buy my NFT?

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: The One who Looks like a Greasy Marseilles Pimp of the Olden Time

Especially as soon as the nurses/postmen/[other underpaid and overworked service workers] are noticed.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Happy Anniversary!

How do you tell the difference? Or even is there a difference. The Corbyn/Murray types are definitely left wing and well heeled. Rebellion? None of them seem to have any problem retaining or accumulating the dosh rather than divesting themselves of it. Benn gave up his title to be in the commons, but only the title.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Fish reluctant to go on the scales

And they struggle to follow recipes properly.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Happy Anniversary!

A bit like the Corbynite Labour Left here in the UK, them lot are, then. The born-in-a-mansion sell-an-old-master women and men of the people.

Google focuses Lens on combined image and text searching

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: google search syntax

I guess page 1 is primarily populated by those that pay Gooooooooooooogle for the privilege.

Again, I'd put money on it. And the fact that they focus on getting as many results rather than relevant results as they can.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Is Google ignoring sites that don't produce revenue

I'd bet money on it.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Absolutely. What (Google etc) search needs is a decent category restriction. If I want to find the specifications for [widget] I need search to give me that information. not a billion adverts for items that may or may not be said widget, with maybe a few thousand more for the search terms that I tried to use to limit the search results for the item, but entirely unrelated to my search. Google has, over the years, even made this harder- since it now tends to ignore search terms that seek to restrict results to something useful.

Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'

Terry 6 Silver badge

Windows key followed by program name only works if you remember;

that you already have 1 or more programmes that will do the thing you want,

that you can remember the sodding name and

that when you type it in Search doesn't throw up something vaguely similar in spelling, but not the thing you need.

I also recommend sacrificing a goat to Belial.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Win 3.1 allowed us/me to group programmes according to function. Not to have a trillion icons all over the desktop. Not to have them in an alphabetical ("Start") list according to whatever obscure and unhelpful name the publisher decided to give them (or worse in a folder created by the publisher under their even more obscure company name).

That simple, sensible option survived to Windows 7. Then they started trying to prevent it, making it more and more complicated to do. Just about possible still in 10.

What happened after 7 strikes me as part of a company lunacy that seeks to make Windows as unrelated to what users want to do with their own machines as possible.

And they still haven fixed the bug that means you have to edit the registry and add a ,s to the path if you want to use custom recycle bin icons. What the ,s tells Windows, who knows. Why it needs to be part of the path to the icon that Windows is already able to use, just not change to beggars understanding.

Amazon internal chat app that censored talk of unions and ethics may 'never launch at all'

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: Slack can already do this...

Possibly not so much. Governments in democracies have to publish budget allocations and get votes through. Actual amount of cash isn't the same as the power to use it. Especially when companies can use their cash to buy politicians' votes promote their wishes.

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: It is amazing how much

Or if all the staff hold a tiny share each but the government makes clear what is going to happen anyway.......

Fujitsu to open Arm-based A64X HPC systems to public cloud

Terry 6 Silver badge

Re: I hope they have improved their software since the days of Horizon.

True, but they can always lie about it, can't they.