* Posts by John Lilburne

1026 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Dec 2009

Want a new HDMI cable? No? Bad luck. You'll need one for HDMI 2.1

John Lilburne

the convenience of getting quickly where you need it instead of waiting.

Ha. I was in a PC World earlier in the week with about £100+ of stuff. One person on the checkout, couple of people in front of me. Checkout person was trying to find a till/card reader that worked. After 10 minutes I left the stuff on the counter and walked out.

10 years of the Kindle and the curious incident of a dog in the day-time

John Lilburne

Most digitized books, especially those by Google, are atrocious when it comes to illustrations. They are indeed grey/black smudges lacking the detail of the originals. Mind you some of the hardcopy reprints of out-of-copyright books are equally atrocious. I recall a 'complete' Sherlock Holmes book where the illustrations were scanned with an over-the-top contrast. Comparing those illustrations with those in the original Strand Magazine was a revelation as to just how butchered some of these things can be.

That said I dislike e-books intensely they do not give me the same tactile feel. I can't quickly scan back through the pages to relocate something. Having read a book I can recall where in the book some information was, and whether it was on the right or left hand page or not. I cannot do that with an e-book. I mostly read non-fiction and like to jump about within the volume, again that is not convenient with e-readers.

So although we have a kindle it is mostly unused.

'Gimme Gimme Gimme' Easter egg in man breaks automated tests at 00:30

John Lilburne

Unprofessional bollocks

All code has the potential to cause user issues. Adding unnecessary code is highly unprofessional.

As Google clamps down, 'Droid developer warns 'breaking day' is coming

John Lilburne

Re: Congratulations!!!

'Making a crack down on ad fraud sound nefarious must have taken real effort.'

Except that if your device is known to be a prime target for fraud the marks will either avoid placing ads on the device, or demand a lower price per click to compensate for the 90% of fraudulent hits.

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/click-fraud.htm

Google aims disrupto-tronic ray at intercoms. Yes, intercoms

John Lilburne

Re: Congratulations, Google

I'm sure that educating your offspring via loudspeaker is not at all going to make them feel like they're in bootcamp and you're the master sergeant (who likes their master sergeant in bootcamp ?).

But the Kids listen to their device. One could use this as a child minding service. Just have some pre-recorded messages which it barks out from time to time

Stop that.

Play nice.

Don't hit your [brother|sister].

Be quiet.

...

Leave the cat alone.

Uber loses appeal against UK employment rights for workers

John Lilburne

Re: How far

Some 12 years ago my father was running a similar scheme where his workers were 'self -employed' but he directed where they went etc.HMRC were having none of it and declared that they were employees. If Uber get away with this then there are several £100 thousand the taxman owes me.

Take off, ya hosers! Silicon Valley court says Google can safely ignore Canadian search ban

John Lilburne

Re: Simple really

Meanwhile a federal court has enjoined Google to remove search results for copyright infringing site SciHub:

https://torrentfreak.com/us-court-grants-isps-and-search-engine-blockade-of-sci-hub-171106

Simon's Cat app rapped for random 'racy' advert

John Lilburne

Typical ...

... it ain't our fault guv its the algorithm, we just take the money, and BTW don't keep asking for any taxes.

One-third of mobile users receive patchy to no indoor coverage

John Lilburne

Yep mobile reception is pants in the village. I can just about get a signal in one of the bedrooms.

The power company came out about 2 years ago to install a smart meter but abandoned the installation because they couldn't get a mobile signal. Why they need a mobile signal for monitoring energy usage is any one's guess.

USB stick found in West London contained Heathrow security data

John Lilburne

Why would you give your data over to some cloudy thing. Doing so leaves you vulnerable to a having the cloudy thing shuttered at any time. Ask those that used Yahoo Photos, or a whole bunch of Google apps. Yeah use them as another form of backup but keep your data elsewhere and don't be dumb enough to expose yourself to the risks of being suckered into relying on some cloudy API

HMRC boss defends shift to AWS, says they got 50% knocked off

John Lilburne

Re: Of course not

"Uncle (sic) Sam is indeed the top Big Brother these days. Google and Facebork are mere also rans."

Perhaps. But they do have the excuse of stopping bombers, organized crime, and other criminal activities. Whereas Google, facebook et al, slurp up your life firstly the better google up your bandwidth in order to try to sell you shit you don't need, and secondly to manipulate your opinions and dull your senses.

National Audit Office: We'll be in a world of pain with '90s border tech post-Brexit

John Lilburne

Re: Brexit?

Upgrading the system will be the same, Tory EU idiocy or not, but the thing will be greatly worse as pre idiocy one could have relied on the systems within the EU to track thinks like Freight IMPORT/EXPORT.

Of course if one is simply concerned about counting those of a swarthy complexion then it might seem to be the same thing. Though why it would cost a £beeeellllllliiiion is anyones guess:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/tally-counter/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Atally%20counter

Google's pay-to-play 'remedy' is warming Eurocrats' hearts

John Lilburne

What is the point of price comparison sites?

The sellers tend to compete amongst themselves such that the prices coalesce. Can't recall there being much of a price difference between resellers from any thing I've bought recently.

BoJo, don't misuse stats then blurt disclaimers when you get rumbled

John Lilburne

The EU is just a slush fund for farmers.

Not quite true. It is a slush fund to mega agribusiness mainly located in the UK.

For years the EU have wanted to cap the amount paid per farmer rather than having it based on acreage. The UK has always opposed this as the UK farming industry is dominated by just a handful of companies that own most of the industry. IOW the UK government has been supporting a transfer of money to the mega rich.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/01/farm-subsidies-blatant-transfer-of-cash-to-rich

This is why BREXIT will NOT result in a reduction of payout to Tory sponsors.

John Lilburne

Except that if Tories have control over how to spend extra money, it won't be on the NHS, Schools, Pensions, or Welfare. It will be on kickbacks to jails, banks, financiers, and offshore tax funds.

John Lilburne

After you take the net figure having subtracted all the subsidies paid to agriculture and other EU payments to various schemes. There remains the additional costs of managing things that once were managed by the EU and now you have to do yourself. Like for instance ensuring that you have a workable import/export system in place, and that you can administer your trade deals between 190+ countries. They'll also have the additional expense of doing immigration control of EU citizens, etc. They'll need to manage the legal system that they are reclaiming from the EU and they'll need to police those laws too. The extra administrative costs they are taking on are substantial.

Spotify just can't wash those songwriters out of its hair

John Lilburne

No it is mostly the fault of spotify and similar. No one has forced spotify to use works where they don't know who the owner is. That was a decision that they made on their own.

They entered a market failed to adhere to the rules of the market and now complain that adherence is a burden. Its a bit like an online green grocer driving around country lanes harvesting crops from fields they come across, and then complaining that they can't pay the farmer because the fields didn't have signs with the farmers address on it.

John Lilburne

Re: I can't help but wonder if .....

I think you'll find that it is Silicon Valley that has the government in its pocket. Google alone spends 10x more on Washington lobbyist than the whole of the copyright industries combined.

Oracle throws weight behind draft US law to curtail web sexploitation

John Lilburne

Re: further proof

"Some of us can remember back to the days when any article by Mr O didn't have a comment section. Hopefully, that era is long gone."

Indeed but back then most denizens of this site were Google fanbois that hadn't grown up and were likely to bawl and scream in vast numbers. Since then articles by others, including Mr O, have demonstrated that pronouncements of Google, its astroturfers, and shills are no longer taken as benign statements from an godlike overloard, but rather the self serving bullshit that one would expect from crony capitalist corporations intent on maintaining there monopolies.

Seriously, friends. You suck at driving. Get a computer behind the wheel to save your life

John Lilburne

Re: A large chunk of accidents ...

The Sunday drivers aren't nearly as big a problem as the lycra-clad dickheads that use twisty country b roads as a velodrome. Those arseholes can be found every evening.

John Lilburne

A large chunk of accidents ...

... could be avoided by warning system whenever one nears an ASDA/WALMART store. In my experience the standard of driving from those exiting those locations is utterly abysmal.

Something like a "WATCH OUT!!! TWATS IN VICINITY!!!" heads up alert.

Defra recruiting 1,400 policy wonks to pick up the pieces after Brexit

John Lilburne

Re: 1400?

They will need to replicate the software systems that the EU had in place for agriculture delivery, We all know how great the government is on building IT systems

CHAOS IS ASSURED.

ALL HAIL DISCORDIA

Google paying Apple BEEELLIONS to stay search top dog on iDevices, say analysts

John Lilburne

Just goes to show ...

... if their search engine was actually demonstrably better than the opposition they wouldn't need to do this.

Blighty’s beloved Big Ben bell ends, may break Brexit bargain

John Lilburne

Re: Not to worry

Rather Farage is to be tied upside down inside the bell so that his head can be used as the hammer.

London Mayor slams YouTube over failure to remove 'shocking' violent gang vids

John Lilburne

Really! Really! Really?

Google makes most of its money from YT by data mining its users, you get far more information from categorising music, film and TV video users then from cat antic videos.

After all other than marketing pet food there is very little extra value you can derive from cat video. Music, film, and TV OTOH indicate lifestyle choices.

John Lilburne

Re: All they have to do...

The content of the videos contravene YTs own Terms&Conditions. The problem is that YT and many other tech companies like to hide behind web statements and do nothing to enforce them.

over a 60-day period it raised concerns in 526 cases where the site's guidelines were believed to have been violated but only received responses to 15 of the reports.

One volunteer says he has 9,000 complaints still awaiting responses from December.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/05/youtube-systematically-failing-protect-children-watchdog-claims/

According to Google 90% of the Trusted Flaggers reports are correct. Its not censorship so much as the local pub posting notices saying that racism isn't tolerated and every Saturday selling booze to a group of yoiks goosestepping and cry "Sieg Heil" in the car park.

Google drops poker face, allows gambling apps on Play Store

John Lilburne

How will that work?

"App must prevent under-age users from gambling in the app"

The Google refrain for almost 20 years is that adding age-verification breaks the internet.

Google goes home to Cali to overturn Canada's worldwide search result ban

John Lilburne

Re: Extra-territorial control

This has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia or any other state that inhabits your fevered imagination. Trading in counterfeit goods is illegal in almost every country in the world including the US.

Dark web souk AlphaBay shuts for good after police raids

John Lilburne

Silk Road rather than ...

Sometimes it is hard to tell one bunch of spivs from another.

How to avoid getting hoodwinked by a DevOps hustler

John Lilburne

We need a ...

... thetan meter icon for posts like this.

Met Police laggards still have 18,000 Windows XP machines in use

John Lilburne

Re: Why?

Problem will be that changing an OS involves unknown risk. Some key software may no longer work, work differently in some way, or no longer interface with other systems. Fixing these issue can take large globs of cash. Much of the software in use will have been certified and require re-certification which will account for more globs of cash.

It ain't as simply as upgrading your home machine or the machines in some 10 desk office.

Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe

John Lilburne

I don't recall that at all. You still have to click down to page 23 to find what you were looking for (OK maybe if you were on altavista it was page 24). But the search engines were all full of clickbait and spam. Not sure that it is any better today except that we are no longer prepared to look down to page 23 or wherever and just accept whatever dross appears on p1-2.

John Lilburne

Re: How have I been harmed, exactly?

For most sites that you visit ad sponsorship is irrelevant it pays pennies, which is why they are all trying to stop adblockers so that they can at least scrape a few shekels. Do you not see all the whines on the news sites employing you to take out a subscription? Almost every content creator and content creating site has lost out since they were conned into believing that ad sponsorship was a thing.

Men charged with theft of free newspapers

John Lilburne

Surely this could be argued away by a lawyer

The lawyer could argue that by taking the papers they were clearing away a public nuisance.

When can real-world laws invade augmented reality fantasies? A trial in Milwaukee will decide

John Lilburne
Coat

Re: The first pic

Marauding mobs of twitchers in pursuit of a rare bird can and have caused environmental damage, caused an affray, the death of the bird in question, and terrorised old people in their gardens. Those responsible for advertising and directing mobs to environmentally sensitive locations bear a responsibility for any damaged caused.

http://web.onetel.net.uk/~wcswift/

Google plans to scrub 'inflammatory' and terror vids from youTube

John Lilburne

Those dastardly users not using the correct tags, what ever will we do?

Hmmm. In order to get the videos watched don't they have to advertise them in some way, with tags or descriptions?

Even if they are linking to them from elsewhere can't Google etc (who claim to know everything about everything) detect that YT video aaabbbccc is being linked to from sites glorifying in the death of members of group QQQQ.

Software dev bombshell: Programmers who use spaces earn MORE than those who use tabs

John Lilburne

Re: A question

Coding styles mean that anyone looking at code in any editor, or on any machine within the organisation, see the same layout. That the layout doesn't change based on the vagary of which developers machine one is sitting at, or which editor they happen to use. TABs converted to spaces such that they adhere to organisational layout standards are the best way forward. Some sites also dictate a maximum line length, if DevX decides on TAB stops every 6 columns and the organisational standard is every 2 columns then

DevX's code is going to look to look like they've wrapped code at artificial places.

John Lilburne

Re: Hey, did you know the editor could do that automatically?

Better yet the site that you work at ought to have a preferred layout style built into the preferred editor that you use. If someone is wilful enough to change the style or to not use the sites preferred editor, for something that doesn't matter a jot, then they are probably wilful enough to subvert other standards too.

John Lilburne

Re: A question

No its because places that have enforce coding layout styles generally pay more than places where everyone can write their shit any which way they want.

HINT: Your editor should allow you to type TAB and have it replaced by the standard number of space (2,3,4, or 69) as appropriate to the layout style.

Brit hacker admits he siphoned info from US military satellite network

John Lilburne
Pirate

Re: "NCA has people with skills like Caffrey's"

breaking into computer systems and 'stealing' other people's data.

I'm reliably informed that he could not have possibly 'stolen' anything as: Copying isn't theft.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

Europe-wide BitTorrent indexer blockade looms after Pirate Bay blow

John Lilburne

Re: I could be mistaken, but...

Not according to Cary Sherman of the RIAA. There is a video on YT with him saying that they don't give a damn about ripping for personal use. I think its this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhIWvyKd7C0

John Lilburne

Ehm. CDs haven't had DRM since the mid 2000s.

The rise of AI marks an end to CPU dominated computing

John Lilburne

Re: Bloody AI's

Frankly AI is anything that cons a comp-sci geek for longer than their attention span (currently about 10 seconds).

Facebook fake news: Sort it out yourself, readers

John Lilburne

It is the same old wikipedia cop-out:

Don't rely on anything on this site check somewhere else.

which renders the information on the site as useless.

Booze stats confirm boring Britain is drying

John Lilburne

Less Booze More Crack.

What evidence is there that reduction in alcohol consumption hasn't been replaced by a increase in consumption of crack and/or skunk?

Google's 'adblocker' is all about taking back control

John Lilburne

Take whatever whitelist Google provides and add it to the backlist. You won't be disappointed.

An echo chamber full of fake news? Blame Google and Facebook, says Murdoch chief

John Lilburne

Re: News of the World

NOTW BAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!

Is an excuse for not thinking. In the past you published content that you mostly created yourself and drew in ad revenue as a result of having a limited print run. The ad revenue allowed you to create more content. If the content you were pushing was tosh then you ran the risk of getting sued over it or other wise picked up by toothless watchdogs.

Nowadays content that is created by A is scraped by B-Z and its dog. The print run is no longer limited and as a result the ad price per impression has fallen to near zero. The content creators have difficulty financing new content and as a result the quality has dropped. Google & Facebook don't care whether the content they are running ads against is original or 1000th hand, nor whether the ads are actually seen by a real person.

Teenagers think Doritos are cooler than Apple

John Lilburne

Scanning down my RSS feeds ...

... I thought this was a dailymash spoof. Poe's law in action.

Google promises policy review after several big brands pull YouTube ads

John Lilburne

Maybe its not 'the ad industry' but simply Google?

YouTube TV will be huge. Apple must respond

John Lilburne

Since when did Google ...

... have any licenses for this? Currently the FCC has told them to get stuffed that they can't just steal teh content and stick it on their own boxes.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/26/congress_wants_fcc_to_snuff_out_googles_tv_landgrab/

Basically this article seems to be just another instance of Google trying to co-opt tech journalist into its mission to steal the worlds content.

Andrew Orlowski has plenty of articles here on the subject.