Posts by VinceH 3483 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Nov 2009
"So iPhones look 'special' and Android phones don't? Are you essentially saying that iPhones look nice and Android phones generally don't? Can I quote you on that?"
He doesn't mean their appearance, he's talking about the way they show up in the records of contactless payment systems.
But in terms of appearance, in the eyes of chavs and those who think such things matter, it's the branding, if anything, that is perceived as somehow magically 'special'.
"Up until now, Facebook has been largely shunned by the corporate world, given its propensity for time-wasting during office hours. The site is banned on many company networks."
...which means that during those hours, Facebook isn't seeing enough eyeballs on its customers' adverts, so decided it was now time to address this.
He said that when he used his wife's Microsoft ID with the last preview (installed on a spare hard drive) her copy of Windows threw a wobbler: When she next booted her normal machine, it thought she was breaching her licence by using two copies of Windows under a single licence (same product key, two different devices). It refused to let her do anything until he fixed things and validated her copy by phone.
"Stick a bit of blue tack on the top of the needle?"
For those records that needed it, my approach was to use a tiny amount of that to stick a penny on top.
Although I have no way to play them, I do still have all my LPs and 12" singles - and I have bought more vinyl as recently as last year.
"Every time, we mock these robots."
And every time, we forget that once what we say on the internet is out there, it's out there for good. We can mock these robots today, but what we say might one day be found by the robots of the future - and those words will haunt us as the robots hunt us.
"As I understand it they don't throttle certain types of traffic, they just throttle *everything* if you go over the fair use limit"
They most certainly do throttle certain types of traffic:
my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-30Mb-or-higher.html
> In addition to this, we also apply a temporary speed limit to all peer-to-peer and Newsgroup traffic during peak times to ensure that they do not slow the network down for everyone.
I don't use P2P, but for NNTP it was quite bad at one point. I still read a number of (text only) usenet newsgroups and, when they started throttling P2P and NNTP, I was struggling to manage even very small NNTP fetches. Complaints to VirginMedia were either falling on deaf ears or were being responded with assertions that there is nothing at all wrong with their traffic management and the problem must be with something my end.
Fast forward a while, and the problem seemed to disappear - and looking at their forums (I'd actually been banned from posting while this was going on, a few times) there was an announcement from one of their muppets to say they'd found a fault in their traffic management and they'd now rectified it. (I'm still waiting on an email from them to say "We apologise, you were right all along...")
To be fair, users of phones other than Apple's iShiny can only know how it works by reading reports on the subject - and El Reg's doesn't really make it clear, with the only attempt at an explanation of how it works in this article being:
"Texts sent between iOS devices are routed over Apple's iMessage service across the internet; if someone stops using an iPhone and starts using, say, a Samsung Galaxy handset but keeps the same cell number, messages sent to that person via iMessage will never be delivered to the Android phone – until the ex-iPhone user de-registers from the service."
That makes it sound like iPhone users are automagically opted in to the service, but need to manually opt out (with an inference being that it wasn't easy or obvious, before - further down in the article, it says - Apple put up a web page to do so).
Although, given what AC immediately above says - that when the recipient isn't in a 3G area, it automatically sends via SMS, from which we can infer that the system is aware when messages can't be delivered via the iMessage service - there is still something amiss. (Which may or may not be something else that just hasn't been explained - or, equally, may or may not be Apple being rotten.)
"It reminds me of this guy with his email address dotat.at/email.html"
Neat. I've sometimes pondered sillies like that, but never actually looked to see if the domains were available - partly because I tend to only think of these things while driving, and forget by the time I'm back at a desk - but this guy's obviously beaten my ponderings by a long way (probably at least 10 years if he registered the domain in '97).
(And since I'm thinking about it now that I'm sitting at the computer, I do now have a silly tautological domain name.)
"...is what at least one subscriber probably said."
And the answer would have been "They're all still working for us here at Virgin Media."
What I found most annoying about their smut filter was that every damned time I logged in to see my bill I was prompted to check my settings for it - given that only a few select cookies are allowed to remain on my computer from one session to the next, I assume that was how they were (very stupidly) determining whether or not the customer had decided whether or not to use the filter. However, I noticed that I wasn't prompted last week - so they've finally seen the error of their ways on that one, and stored that in the account (or just stopped prompting people).
As a matter of interest, though, if all innocent traffic was being blocked by the filter - was 'guilty' traffic being let through?
"This is how we humans eventually regain control of our world. Get Alexa, Siri, and Cortana talking to each other. Boom."
Well, a fight is already brewing between Siri and Cortana.
But if you want something a little less spoofed, try this.
Funnily enough, I was thinking that - potential for abuse/creepiness aside* - it would be the ideal Christmas present for my parents. Mainly because I'd like to see my step dad's face when he argues blind that he's right about some nonsense, and someone then says "Computer, what is..." and he is instantly shown to be wrong.
* TBH, I suspect it'll only make a connection when it hears its given name - but even if that's the case now, it could always change in future. I definitely wouldn't have one myself.
"I imagine it would have some value if the author was troubled to paint each autograph uniquely prior to upload. That could certainly be a technical possibility that could be enforced."
And there already exists suitable technology1 to get a 'proper' autograph in electronic form: Touch screen devices - preferably with a stylus, but I suppose with a little practice authors could develop a finger-written autograph.
So perhaps a better solution would be to develop e-readers so that they could go into 'signature' mode, whereby the device can be signed on screen and that signature (image produced by the author signing the device) added to the file so that it's always displayed at the start of the book.
As I said, the technology for accepting signatures this way already exists in software - and the hardware clearly already exists. My idea is purely to implement this in e-reader software - so, come on Amazon, Google, Nook et al, piss on Apple's fire by doing a better job with this idea.
Just don't patent my idea and claim you invented it, you greedy, thieving bastards!
1. The most commonly recognised implementation, I'd guess, is the PDA and stylus combo carried around by some delivery drivers - instead of signing a piece of paper, the person accepting the delivery signs on the stylus2.
2. Based on my own efforts, though, the big flaw seems to be producing a signature on those things that is anything like the real thing. :)
"Banks and payment processors are once again in denial - they said the same about Chip & Pin even though the flaws are being actively exploited by criminals."
Yeah - but there is a benefit with fraud committed with contactless payments: With Chip & PIN, the card issuers could try to argue that the punter was the weak link, and somehow allowed his or her PIN to be known to others - but with contactless payments, they don't have anything to try to hide behind.
"And if you're hanging off the side of a cliff, I recon they'll be a right bitch to retrieve."
Quite. Apparently you should be able to catch it and place it back on your wrist - so when you're hanging off a cliff face, that's something which is going to stop you having three points of contact while you do it. Piss poor example.
"While card companies do have moderately responsive systems, even they are not perfect and do sometimes require that you detect the irregular actions. The banks will often turn down the genuine while letting others, shall we say less genuine through."
Indeed - and there's a good example of that here. The point of the post is more about Barclaycard themselves being the weak link - but note the two fraudulent transactions mentioned: They'd picked up on the £3 transaction, but thought the £2,000+ transaction was genuine.
'He opined that Google and Apple were "in denial" if they thought the decision to turn on full-device encryption by default wouldn't help terrorists plan future attacks."'
He, on the other hand, is in denial if he thinks serious terrorists didn't already turn on encryption in their devices, since the option to do so is already there. This just means you can't easily snoop on Innocent Joe's data.
The new approach isn't so much "on by default" as "on by spooks'-fault."
"If I knew your gmail address, could I send you an e-mail saying that your flight has been cancelled thus resulting in you missing an important meeting etc.?"
I imagine you'd also need to know the exact details of the booking/flight for that to work.
However...
"(Think of comparable scenarios for your own amusement.)"
You could create a fictional flight to begin with that would end up in his calendar - or, obviously, absolutely anything that is likely to be picked up by this system. Which could not only be fun and entertaining in some cases, but downright dangerous or detrimental in others (police officers and other officials being reminded of appointments with bad guys to collect bribes for example - which if inadvertently seen by others could result in trouble for them, suspension, etc., even though the spoof nature of the appointment would - hopefully - come out in the investigation.)
"If the CurrentC app shows a QR code image that is effectively your payment details,"
I thought the idea was that the app scans QR codes on products, popping up information on screen (price, etc) and giving the user the option to make a payment. As such, it sounds (er... sounded?) marginally better for anyone worried about NFC-based systems leading to accidental payments - only marginally, though, because there would still be a risk through phone theft etc, so is still naff overall.
If, however, it holds the user's payment details in a QR code that is presented to the retailer, then what you've described is a big security fail.
But also, if that's how it works, I fail to see the need for a special app - and therefore why Windows Phone and Blackberry can't be supported: they're perfectly capable of displaying images!)
Afterthought: Is it a one time QR code generated at the time the purchase is being made?
"Hell the volcano is probably going to need some up sizing."
Just drain off the molten core and use the hole that leaves.
(And killing two birds with one stone, the molten core you drain off will handily serve as your doomsday weapon, because you'll be draining it to somewhere!)
>> "go to the US for a few weeks and you just select an AT&T..."
> "Did you actually read the article?"
And did you read the rest of his post beyond that point? He went on to say:
>> "just a shame AT&T seem to have sabotaged it."
There was an implicit 'in theory' in the bit you quoted.
"Here comes the advantages,"
So I'd have to make my date wear it while looking at me?
A more likely scenario:
Some twats will develop an app that allows the date to be streamed, allowing other people to make comments, which the wearer will see. They'll claim it'll be to help those who are less confident on dates, and who struggle to think of things to say - the people watching, they'll claim, will be able to offer advice. ("Tell her how lovely she looks in that dress..." etc).
It'll then be abused by scumbags who stream the date to other scumbags, who will do things like rate the date, and make lewd comments about her, and so on.
(This scenario could also play out in other gender combinations.)
"As for the eventual value of .whatever, I guess we'll see if anyone really uses them, or if they're just vanity domains"
Not to mention protection racket domains - whereby well known brands (and even smaller companies) are compelled buy theirname/trademark.newTLD to protect them from misuse.
"(I have my suspicions already)"
Ditto.
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