Posts by JaitcH

China does things it's way for political and intelligence reasons

The Chinese government loves 'backdoors' and whilst it has the InterNet pretty well under control, in their thinking, smartphones represent the next challenge to their hierarchy. There being no physical wires to tie down a user, or to positively identify them, they need to reassert their control.

Look at the kerfuffle over imported WiFi units a short while back - China wanted the 'universal' keys to the encryption.

Anything involving an antenna requires permission (permit) from the Interior Ministry be they two-way radio, satellite dishes, etc. Satellite phones are essentially banned, unless you have a model with an unobtrusive antenna you can sneak through customs.

If you compare the skyline of any Chinese city with Western cities of like size and you will notice the almost total absence of antennae. WiFi is almost non-existent in many cities.

Compare China to HongKong or Cambodia or VietNam, Laos is too poor for high technology, where WiFi is free and open and satellite dishes are as common as front doors. SMS/text is instantaneous whereas in China there can be lengthy delays.

Why should personal use equipment be optimised for Plod?

Plod can take the lumps and go figure out their own solutions for technical challenges. there is no need to add complexity to already complex storage technologies just because MI whatever or others want to read your private files.

It is high time people stood up and said : 'Enough!'. Be it eve's dropping on conversations, geo-location on smartphones or checking electricity consumption for potential pot growers the Plod is everywhere. They don't make people remove insulation from homes so they can use their thermal imaging systems more easily, so why do we have to?

A pox on the lot.

How could the Queen knight someone who thinks he is superior to all beings?

Seriously, what has Jobs done for anyone other than himself? Little.

True, he has spoken in support of spare parts from road kills, etc. but this was only after he had boosted his position on a waiting list outside California.

Gates has put a lot of his cash where his mouth is; he lectures and travels constantly and he is fluent with the work he sponsors.

Personally I think knighthoods should be for those that have allegiance to the Queen which is down to a very few countries and certainly doesn't include the U.S.A.

"Baidu ... a "deep linking" hub spewing out location details about where pirated content is stored "

Just like Google and Bing.

Bloody hypocritical government.

HBgary rep is likely unrecoverable

The HBgary caper has thrown far too much of a spotlight not only on it's activities but als that of U.S. government agencies.

Since they can't even keep their servers safe, nor those of BankAmerica and that they are involved in 'dirty tricks' certainly won't enhance their image.

They have been exposed as an organised scam designed to extract money from government projects that are particularly high profile at this time.

Good riddance to them.

They knew this 68 years ago in the desert

Way back when Montgomery was chasing Rommel around the deserts of North Africa, the tanks had No. 19 sets which had an HF (High Frequency) main transmitter/receiver and a UHF transmitter/receiver compromising, I think, only one or two valves (tubes in North America) - the oscillator was also the 'power' amplifier, the other tube being the FM modulator. (See: < https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wireless_Set_No._19 >. The UHF unit is next to the power supply connector).

Apart from the tanks in the desert disrupting UHF transmissions in the UK (really), these UHF units could also be detuned off the operating frequency by grabbing the short antenna.

But I guess the Apple antenna specialists are more interested in re-inventing the wheel. Even square ones.

Plod is for more than bashing students, like solving crime

Why wouldn't Plod investigate credit card crime. After all, a small fraud might be a test run for a big one and. as they say, a stitch in time saves nine.

And these guys wanted increased budgets?

"he held secret meetings with fellow Islamic extremists at Heathrow Airport"

Not the best place to hold 'secret meetings' given the high Plod count as well as the security types dressed in blazers plus or all the nondescript security types. Undoubtedly the video tapes provided a trove of information, too.

I see British prosecutors have vivid imaginations, too: "He also tried to enroll as a member of the cabin crew and may have been planning to crash BA's computer systems in an attempt to wreak havoc".

How do they connect cabin crew status with that of crashing BA computer systems?

HBgary fails again? Their rep is way down the drain

This is just another hit on the reputation of HBgary and the gullibility of IT managers of HBgary's reputed infallibility. Sounds like that technique that many of us experience - run this free anti-viru test then they try to sell you a program.

Perhaps the SEC should check up on trading emanating from China and HongKong to see if there were unusual trades following these intrusions.

Must be a first: Underpants fitted with hard drive!

If she was technical enough to have pulled a hard drive she should have used a USB memory loaded with Portable Firefox and then there wouldn't be much to look at on the rest of the computer.

Better still, just keep the OS on the hard drive and use USB hard drives for everything else.

The sad thing is, it's likely true. No more fags after sex - where's the iThingy?

The sad, but likely realistic, thing is that many iPhans do rate their Jobs touchy feeling things more highly than their wives/better halves.

Along with a psychological profile on the buying habits of iPhans, it might be interesting to do a behavioural survey of iPhan spouses to learn more about other aspects of the iPhan personality.

iPhans shouldn't feel bad about mixing up priorities, others do it albeit for other reasons.

Forget Flashing Amber lights, make them Flashing Red

Too many motorists, of which I am one, think that flashing amber lights allow you to go careening through an intersection.

Flashing red lights, on the other hand, require motorists to briefly stop - still much quicker than a traffic light sequence.

A wasted food resource

It is very simple to gather sharks fins.

(1) Catch shark;

(2) Slash all fins off body and store;

(3) Toss finless but living shark in to water to die;

(4) Take boat back to harbour and sell to Chinese food markets.

This slaughter is such a waste - the whole body is discarded just to secure the fins. This happens tens of millions of times each year.

Very short-sighted. I bet most non-connoisseur Westerners couldn't tell the difference between 'cellophane' (clear noodles) and real shark fin soup. They now also sell gelatin as imitation sharks fin soup.

Have a look at: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWPoSr76ub4 >.

Next application area must come from the military!

DARPA must be salivating over the uses they can apply Kinect technology to.

For building and structure internal surveys they use a monstrous backpack like device, that employs lasers, which undoubtedly cost a fortune. Now they potentially can apply Kinect technology and save time and money.

The potential is practically unlimited.

Oz Customs are a regular pain in the you-know-where

Oz Customs together with their immigration counterparts are a pain. They examine baggage with great zest, poking and peeping in every crevice that could be used to hide something.

They also use a strange set of criteria as to what can be allowed in, and this is apart from the flora and fauna regulations, which are understandable given that it is an island, albeit a bloody big island.

They expect biz types to carry plenty of cash so they can live in the style the customs guys expect you to live in, too.

In fact, in some ways, they are more aggressive than those TSA guys who harass you when you enter the States.

You can imagine what antics these guys could get up to armed with rectal scanners - how will they interpret the difference between airline food and other foreign objects. Presumably they will have waiting rooms surrounded by toilets for dubious passengers to await the call of Nature.

What if Nature doesn't come calling? Are they going to keep you seated or throw you in jail?

Not even the obnoxious TSA has gone that far, yet.

As Australian Tourism says: "There’s nothing like Australia." Thank goodness.

If plastic works so quickly ...

why is it I am always waiting for the damn transaction to be completed at supermarkets, by the person I am waiting behind?

More hot air than functionality, me thinks.

China is not only a plagiariser but also an innovator

Many people have mistaken beliefs about China.

Western industry has provided a good deal/too much IP to Chinese industry in order that widgets can be bashed out more cheaply and render greater profits to the Western company. So don't go blaming all the evils on China.

One thing I discovered was a Do-It-Yourself IC kit. Definitely not a knock-off.

To use it you run up some free software, start checking boxes and linking others together, much as free Printed Circuit software works, and after saving it you then test the functionality with an associated, free, emulator.

Once you have settled on the design you e-mail the file to the factory and it makes 100-1000 pieces for your test purposes. We are not talking big bucks here - 100 pieces of one design cost me $40 + shipping.

My designs were for simple but much in demand items: a headlight modulator/flasher unit for motorcycles and the other was for a horn-button repeater (one-two-three beeps).

For an extremely small additional cost they mounted the IC dies, under black blobs of 'gue', on small PC boards on which the driver transistors, in one case, and the relay in the other, could be mounted.

The horn beeper was ordered in 500 lots whilst the headlamp modulator was only ordered in 200 lots because we had some heat/cooling challenges. Both sell well through accessory shops and keep two women and two men employed constructing and distributing them respectively.

More complex designs can be achieved by daisy-chaining two modules on a PCB.

Another design I saw was traffic light 'sets' interconnected by BlueTooth. Again, using a small software program, the traffic engineer inserts an intersection diagram of roads, marks off the traffic light positions which are automatically numbered. Insert desired timer delays, etc.

A matrix or table appears on the screen in which the light sequences are programmed through checking boxes. An emulator is activated and the lights illuminated to the selected sequence and it is capable of flagging conflicts, etc. Happy with design - shoot the file off to the distributor and a kit of parts, fully identified and programmed, is assembled and shipped.

A four road intersection, with pedestrian walking man signage, typically prices out around $100 - which compares to Western systems priced in the thousands of dollars and using old interconnecting cabling techniques.

This explains how many Chinese products realise economies when compared to the West, so whilst they might copy some designs there is definitely home grown ingenuity at work, too.

Everything for convenience of government; not governance

The government should be adhering to a higher standard as they control most of the levers of power but instead, led by the declining U.S.A., they choose to circumvent existing laws rather than use them. In reality it's a sign of weakness.

The InterNet was designed to be flexible and resistive to attack which is why they find it difficult to control.

How would they propose to control a numbered domain that could use servers based in a less rigid country?

And what would happen if 'criminal' activities, a definition that is currently very broad, uses a numbered domain through which access is gained by named domains not breaking any laws?

Think BUDGETS: if numbers weren't rising nor would ...

the money.

Plod is the biggest exploiter of statistics to justify budget increases. Economy in trouble? No sweat, we have a number that will continue to garner larger sums of money.

But it might just be coming to an end in Britain with Cameron's Cuts threatening police budgets. Can anyone explain why the Met, of telephone tap fame, need SEVEN helicopters polluting the skies of London? Most likely used to make sure Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson makes it home in time for dinner.

Perhaps the US finds Huawei equipment too sophisticated to tap ,,,

or compromise they decide to scare potential users to avoid it.

Chinese equipment imported into the USA still has to comply with CALEA which enables the US government to plug straight in to monitor traffic.

The US always plays dirty when it comes to competition. And complains when it is bettered by others.

I see nothing wrong with UK underground services using Huawei equipment, the chances are that there similar systems already in use in China so no funding will be required for design and the British will gain from China's experience. Not all good ideas come from the brains of Westerners.

So easily defeated ...

by using a dumb phone without all the bells & whistles.

Next there will be an App to detect this software.

So next time waiter spits in someone's food ...

as they reportedly do with nasty customers, they can get time, in California?

And this is the state with no money, no jail space and their prison system is operating under a court order for breaching guests rights?

At least Jerry Brown is back as governor - he's the guy who let Timothy Leary out.

Could be used in churches, cathedrals, too.

If there was an option whereby a listener could select an approximate distance in metres, by checking a box, this could be used for interior venues such as churches, theatres, etc.

How about eliminating Google link pages"

Really bugs me when I click on a helpful looking link and it takes you to a page of Google links, many of which are unrelated to the search term.

Make mobile browsers and cell handsets eligible, too

With people asserting that smartphones will take over from PCs more attention should be paid to the involuntary tracking users are subjected to without their consent or knowledge.

Knowing someone's physical location is FAR more intrusive than what they do on a computer.

Even more importantly yu never know who Jobs or Google are selling it to.

"limb dismemberment, decapitation and disembowelment among the reasons ..."

Sounds like the reality of the American War in VietNam, Iraq Invasion 1 & 2 and Afghanistan - all of which Australian soldiers participated in. I remember watching the horrors of VietNam served up nightly with dinner (in North America) and seeing a lot of what caused concern in this ruling displayed in living colour.

I would have thought reminding younger adults of the horrors of war might prevent yet more.

"Alan Turing was a true war hero ..." is what he should be celebrated for

The retro view of lifestyles, viewed from present times, would be laughable except the damage and hurt it did to so many but Turing was in famed company including Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, Federico Garcia Lorca, Edward Albee, W.H. Auden, Aristotle, John Maynard Keynes, Christopher Marlowe, Somerset Maugham, Michelangelo, Noel Coward and many other notables.

Better to remember later than not at all. He saved many lives in decoding the Enigma transmissions and undoubtdly shortened the war.

It's not a morals thing, it's the fact the government doesn't get the money

At least they are not trying to pretend it's a question of morals - they simply want they couple of kilo's of flesh from the deal.

Like governments all over.

Plod and CPS deciding what is acceptable, again

Once again England's standards are being set, at least they are attempting to, by the least qualified people able to do so.

Plod is supposed to be impartial but in fact they use words to twist the reality of what they found. No doubt they still think Lady Chatterly's Lover is too extreme.

With Facebook it doesn't matter; it's so leaky now one more hole won't make a difference

Facebook continues to spout more leaks than the dikes in Holland so one more won't make that much difference.

Still it's surprising that Google let this one slip by.

After all these years and billions and billions of dollars NASA still isn't watertiight?

The Texan shouldn't be charged with the NASA offence; THEY should be charged with failing to secure their servers.

This is plain neglect.

"proven, enterprise-level quality, stability, security, & is easier for students and teachers"

Words straight from MS PR hacks. Must have been offered deep discounts to award this one.

Variety would be nice.

Just an Apple pre-emptive PR strike to persuade people to wait for the next conn

With Apple facing an extended delay whilst it figures out what's wrong with it's latest tablet, it has to do something to all the competitors that are busy readying shipments of their pads, many of which have additional features not found on the Walled Garden version 2 tablet.

Jobs, or whomever, needn't worry, there's plenty of business for everyone and the iPhans will wait as long as he commands them to do so.

So what? Just means Apples pays more in kind or money than others.

I like the way the actors type away and from observation it is quite meaningless gibberish. Also check out the keyboards, I've seen non-Apple keyboards with fruity screens.

I know one production that used a telephone from a certain company but in actuality the thing was empty with a few pictures illuminated by LEDS and power by wire from the actors sleeve.

I wonder is Jobs demands script supervision rights too?

Ahem, Thunderbolt is already used by ...

HTC with their Thunderbolt handset; by Thunderbolt Computing, Inc. of Redmond, WA; by Squakenet of games fame and Thunderbolt Computer & Software Service of Georgia.

Seems all these have prior claim to this name, not that it's ever stopped Apple stealing others names before ... including the word apple!

Jobs losing his grip: named successor will acquire power

Cook has been alongside Jobs since for ever so he is a natural to take over.

The board will find it tougher this time around since some the larger shareholders are also demanding he details apart from the union shareholder that first raised the matter.

Once Cook is named permanent CEO we will then find out whether he supports the 30% skim enforced since last week.

They could follow the North Korean practice and name Jobs 'Eternal President', as they did with Kim Il-sung who moved on in 1994. To preserve the body, placing the corpse in a glass bath with potassium acetate, alcohol, glycerol, distilled water, and as a disinfectant, quinine does the job and will require an 18 month repeat cycle. Then they could keep it in a glass box to wheel out on appropriate occasions. Russians are the experts in this.

Cornish Pasties: Cooked anywhere but only made in Cornwall

As long as the Cornish Pasty is assembled within Cornwall, it can be called genuine even if it is cooked elsewhere.

Makes my mouth water for a Ploughman's lunch washed down with genuine Somerset cider!

Remember when the French tried to knock Greek feta cheese, now that's protected (for the Greeks), too?

Apple PR at work again; more vapourware. Will Jobs be around for intro?

Apples PR is still working spreading unsubstantiated rumours that take on a life of their own so people put off buying the competition whilst Apple fixes the bugs - assuming they now have an in-house testing regime.

If you wait for the latest and greatest in technology you will end up never buying.

Of course, an alternative would be t buy a previously owned iThingy as hordes of the faithful will discard their early model products and the patient can reap savings.

Until the Version 2 appears it is just vapourware.

The other thing involved with the delay is the potential for Jobs not to be able to repeat the words of the Insane Clown Posse - magical, miracle, etc.

Why not use electronic fig-leaves?

On occasion the puritans come out and affix ribbons on sculptures of naked figures so the youth can not derive unintended/uncontrolled sexual jollification from the art.

FB could do the same. They could easily place electronic 'splodges' over the parts they decree to offend and permit viewers to be able to click on the 'splodges' so all is revealed to those who appreciate art?

One problem comes when addressing certain animals as the electronic splodge would have to be really large to cover an stimulated horse or bull.

Diesel or Gas/Petrol: Do Consumers really know the difference between OS?

Many consumers don't actually know what goes on 'under the hood' - they simply buy the name on the box which is, essentially, what iPhans do. If you produced an Android handset with a fruit logo most could tell the difference, at first glance.

The most the average consumer knows is the equivalent of whether a car runs on gas/petrol or diesel.

Later they would discover the freedom to use it for practically anything.

Only techies rant and rave about OS and what percentile of the market do they represent?

Wait whilst Cell Phone manufacturers hire their tame scientists for a response

Seems like this is the same old - same old argument returning for recycling.

The GSM/CDMA guys will simply go back and hire their old friendly scientists and 'fund' them for the sole purpose refuting anything that might affect the bottom line.

Richard Branson has thoughts on this - ''A friend of mine got a brain tumor, and before he died we had dinner and he said his surgeon was convinced that using a mobile phone may have been a factor.''. See: <http://sandanyi.com/how-to-protect-yourself-from-cell-phone-radiation >

Given that cell frequencies are approaching those of microwaves, think cooking, maybe the time has come to revisit this question. Even Plod radar speed trap operators have allegedly suffered health damage.

Old Army radio operators who used C52 HF transmitters knew all about the effects of RF - most operators had burned fingers occasioned whilst they tuned the set to the antenna. The first people knew of the 'burning' was the smell of burned tissue rather than pain. Could it be the same all over again?

So a failing Frog search engine and another German proxy for Microsoft are complaining?

Sort of obvious why.

Microsoft hasn't had a success with Bling, or whatever, the Frogs never really got it right so they all turn around and blame Google.

What a pile of horse droppings; and a waste of taxpayers money!

So is Hampshire going to share the loot it collects for ...

preparing criminal records transcripts for people needing to prove they have no criminal record?

For some opaque reason Hampshire Plod send out records for that commercial organisation known as ACPO - why they are in the loop who knows why.

There are two types of records which records criminal offences until they are 'retired' after 35,40 or so years unless you have a SEX record when they live forever. Type 1 is for proving a clear criminal record for Canada, Australia, the U.S.A., etc and Type 2 is what you get if you ask - with everything in black and white.

Perhaps someone can explain if a criminal record is supposed to expire after 35-45 years why do both these record transcripts show the presence of a criminal record.

Very strange, but at least ACPO is raking in the money so they can hire their 'bent' expert witnesses.

The pope doesn't have to communicate with God - he thinks he IS god.

Always grabs me when the church mentions 'talking with God' as if you needed a microphone. I thought He could read minds.

Having grown up on a Sunday diet of American bible thumpers, I only for laughter at the patter they come out with. Some communication.

A bunch of thumpers have some 500,000 watt medium & short-wave transmitters beaming their 'message' across the water to the heathen in China and VietNam. The only problem is that most listeners use FM so all that energy is wasted! I have never ever seen an AM radio for sale in VietNam, come to think of it.

Won't work in North Korea either as they use wire-line rediffusion to keep re-tunable receivers out of the hands of the population.

Some communicators the churches aren't.

Markets are different and difficult to compare

The North American market is split in two and defined by the 49th parallel; Europe is defined by not only the carriers but by EU policies. Into this already eclectic mix add cultural and economic differences.

Out in the Far East market conditions are again different with some governments really flattening the market so handsets can be bought through carriers or retailers with cut-throat pricing regimes.

India is a developing market with infrastructure problems, as is the case with Africa.

As SIMPFELD so rightly pointed out OS don't mean too much to the average user. You buy a Nokia or a Lemon 4 or a Motorola - you buy whatever provides the best answer to your daily challenges - a lot buy because they are happy buying by name alone trusting the manufacturer hasn't screwed up too much.

Alibaba is good for sourcing - not purchasing

When I am searching for a product I often use Alibaba but after that I investigate the sources and buy direct.

A while ago I built a mini-hotel and wanted to source a particular colour shade of marble. Alibaba allowed me to determine what area I could buy it from and afterwards I made a trip, selected the marble and 3 weeks later crates of the stuff were delivered.

I feel Alibaba has grown beyond it's original mandate, China, and now provides weaker coverage for more countries.