* Posts by Pirate Peter

73 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2010

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Windows 10 users report app gremlins after Microsoft update

Pirate Peter
Thumb Down

time to start investigating linux installs :)

i will not touch win 11 with anyone else's 10 foot barge pole

when my surfacebook 2 failed i looked at win 11, and said NAH and replaced it with a mac book

same will happen with my couple of old machines running win 10, once i can no longer use them they will get wiped and Linux installed, had enough of M$ forcing changes on me

Raspberry Pi on IPO plans: 'We want to be ready when the markets are ready'

Pirate Peter
Thumb Down

And what could possibly go wrong

what could possibly go wrong once you have to keep share holders on side :(

surely the dividends the shareholders get paid would be better used for R&D, educational support etc

Keep the Pi as not for profit as it currently is

Ford seeks patent for cars that ditch you if payments missed

Pirate Peter

Re: Shrieked

how long before there is a mass market in wheels clamps owners can fit to block their cars driving off for repossession etc?

so easily foiled

a plan as well thought out as Wile E Coyote's plans to catch the road runner :) :)

Pirate Peter

What could possibly go wrong???

a computer and remote control are involved what could possibly go wrong

human error of entering wrong reg?

automated systems we all love them and the way they never get it wrong (how many times have we had incorrect automated decisions?)

or the car being sold on and the system not updated

then if cameras are remotely activated in the car where does that leave privacy laws? as you can't tell which way a vehicle is pointing and what may be visible outside the vehicle

the list of potential issues is endless

Elon Musk issues ultimatum to Twitter staff: Go hardcore or go home

Pirate Peter

Re: Elon never wanted to buy Twitter in the first place

I think the most appropriate icon is a foot with a shotgun pointing at it

because musk has unloaded both barrels several times into his feet :)

Pirate Peter
Coat

most seem to have taken 3months pay and headed for the exit

looking at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63672307 it seems less than a 1/3 of staff left and many critical areas have none at all

the article suggests twitter has a short time before a critical system outage takes the platform offline with none one in the company to fix it

need a "foot shooting" icon, or a "foot in mouth" icon :) both would appear to be highly appropriate for anything musk does

Stop calling, stop calling... ICO goes gaga after home improvement biz ignores warnings

Pirate Peter

only way to do this is make the directors liable for the whole fines and banned from being a director, and each time they commit the same offence (regardless of company name) the previous fine is doubled and length of the ban doubled

while they can hide behind a company and walk away and start up again the same day under a different name they will not stop

too much lip service is paid to data protection with just the odd "look what we did" big fine published to justify the ICO and make it look like they are working for the people (B******ks)

It's [insert month] of 2016, and your Windows PC can still be owned by [insert document type]

Pirate Peter

kb3519398 / MS16-072 breaks group policy on a domain

Just found this one while onsite today

http://windowsitpro.com/patch-tuesday/patch-tuesday-security-update-group-policy-breaks-group-policy

group policies fail to apply with “unknown reason” if you do a gpresult /v

peter

Windows 10 won't come to old WinPhones until some time in early 2016

Pirate Peter

Re: Just got a 950XL

@shaun2

you will love it, the email client and calendar on wp10 is far better than 8.1, I have an old Lumia 520 run winphone 10 on the insider fast track it is a big improvement over 8.1

Pirate Peter

Re: Almost as good

"Just kidding. iCertainly don't have a windoze phone!"

I do, and like it, for me the lesser of 3 evils

all major phone OS's are trying to grab you data and monetise you and encourage you to buy apps etc

winphone may have the smallest app store but it is not full of the rubbish of the other two, the phone does what I want , make calls and does texts and the few apps I needs (trains and weather) are there

the interface is easier to use than android, and I don't have to suffer apples tax because you can only use their brand of things like the apple watch will only charge from an apple branded wireless charger etc

Win10 PCs still stuck on slow boat from China, warehouses empty

Pirate Peter

windows 10 is an improvement on 8.1

I actually quite like 10, BUT you have to turn off so many settings to stop M$ from snooping more than the NSA it takes a while to set it up

Even runs nicely in my 7" tablet,

But all the cool features like Cortana are not available unless you sign in with a Microsoft account and gift them all your web history, location and soul

Still a lot of niggles in it

Also all you seem to get in windows update are a single rollup package, so if that is the way they are going to play it with the business version I can't see many adopting it and 7 will become the new XP

EE turns up speed knob EVEN FASTER on 4G spectrum

Pirate Peter

but no nokia 925??

so, 3 and vodafone have had the nokia 925 for several weeks, the EE store in lakeside claimed not even to know of the 925 despite posters outside their shop for the 925 on vodafone

and they wondered why i walked?? if they are not aware of the latest phones how can i be sure they know their latest tarrifs??

i am disappointed at EE and T-Mobiles offerings so will probably not upgrade early, but wait til i can jump to 3, cheaper tarrif, no download limits £31/month and 925 is free, t-mobile judging by 920 tarrifs £31/month gets me less than GB data and around £149 cost for phone on top

speed means nothing, if the basic amount of data is so small and then punative excess usage charges apply

Motorola minimum-wage sheriffs ride in to SAVE the HIGH STREET

Pirate Peter

assuming anyone uses instore wifi

the price comparisom scenario depends on customers accepting instore wifi,

i know i never will due to the snooping etc that can and does go on, but surely as is already known burying a clause about " you agree to be monitored" in the small print of T's and C's does not constitute "informed consent" and the EU already made that clear regard BT's contract changes to try and make phorm legal

also you have the issue "same as phorm" about website content being used for commercial gain as the website such as amazon has not given permission for their data to be intercepted and used against them in a competitive market

and yes i agree with the poster above, the badges are more likely to be used as a stick to beat the employee with rather than drive up customer service as they are design to do

all the time you go in pc world with there carefully layed out mechandise with cheapest on the left and more expensive on the right and the sales person is paid commision you will not get good advise for the customer, only good advise for the sales person commission and rarely are the two the same

problem is more and more people are becoming tech savy, or take someone tech savvy with them and the BS spouted by the sales team leads to a loss of confidence of the customer and a lost sale

i have corrected sales people in various stores and even been asked to leave after one lost a sale of several thousand because i exposed the lies he was telling the customer, good fun though

Want your social media to swing? First, get the staff onboard

Pirate Peter

and how do you stop your competitors using the information against you

the more information you put on social media, the more leaks out for your competitors to use against you

unless you have closed groups with everything locked down you provide head hunters, competitors and every man and his dog access to your skill base and internal information

putting anything other than marketing information of social media is commercial suicide

imagine if you had uploaded a number of PR photos onto something like instagram, you then find out they have sold your images to a competitor because they changed the T'c and C's

the company i work for tried something similar with a closed system which was outsourced so the management could trawl it for skills etc, when asked if we had to put all details in we were told it was not compulsory so 90+% put just the minimum name and address in

the data was offshore with no safeharbour agreement and outside EU DPA area, sorry not going there and HR could not answer questions on data security, at which point BIG fail

the only people interested in these sort of things are those with a vested interest in getting their hands on your personal data

Amazon: Pay more for Kindle Fire, smoke ads from slabs

Pirate Peter

£15 for no ads hmmm!!

and how many ads would they have to serve to make £15 from a single users??

lots and lots, and if users are happy to stump up £15 up front how is that going to affect their bottom line ?

quite nicely up me thinks

so users get no adds for what they think is a small price and amazon get a nice chunk of wedge for basically doing nothing,

question is are they still gathering data, just not serving the ads? if they are they are still winning even more

time to check small print me thinks

Windows 8 to grab iPad market share wrested back from Android

Pirate Peter

Windows 8 to grab iPad market share wrested back from Android

Windows 8 to grab iPad market share wrested back from Android

goes along with other classic one liners

the world is flat,

moon is made of cheese

if you sail over the horizon you fall off the edge of the world

just about sums up what i think of M$'s chances

'Google's crap for business' - CIOs give ad giant dose of reality

Pirate Peter
Devil

Google needs to change its cost, licensing and privacy fineprint to bag more enterprise clients

so "According to the Forum, Google needs to change its cost, licensing and privacy fineprint to bag more enterprise clients "

shock horror, problems with a big global outsourcer privacy detail, costs and licensing

thats the problem when your data is held by an overseas company with data centres all round the world (not just having a go at oogle here, many others as well),

in the EU we have DPA, if the data is in the US it can be held under "safe harbour" agreement ( but that is a voluntary agreement), many other countries you have to just your chances. for instance look at the instances of off shored call centre data breaches when they were the big thing until consumers voted with their feet / money

problem is when your data is held in the cloud, who owns the data, who can access the data, and who controls how long the data is retained for on backup after you leave the cloud?

also how can a company audit access controls to their data when they don't control the infrastructure it runs on?

to many questions for me with cloud based apps,

Volkswagen Up!

Pirate Peter
FAIL

what about the skoda citigo - same platform and better if you are not a badge snob

no mention of the other VAG cars based on the same platform, that are cheaper if you are not a badge snob

look at the Seat Mii, or the Skoda Citigo

the skoda is better equiped, cheaper and has been available in 5 door format since launch unlike the VW up which will not have a 5 door variant until q4 2012 or even q1 2013

in the auto express group test the skoda was more economical than the other 2, better equiped and cheaper like for like factory fit options

Microsoft hands out tools to sneak Skype onto new PCs

Pirate Peter

install skype and surrender your bandwidth

i do not allow skype on any pc in my house as i do not wish skype to use my bandwidth or computing power for their profit

if you have skype installed, sufficient bandwidth and a average or better pc it will use you as a super node to route other people calls so they do not need to invest so much in their own infrastructure

and it has complex code to avoid blocking by firewalls, will use high ports, then port 80 (http) then port 443 (https) to establish connections and bypass firewall filtering / blocking

you have been warned, remember their is no such thing as a free lunch

BT, TalkTalk lose final appeal against Digital Economy Act

Pirate Peter

lets put this through the bullshit detector !!!

<b>Though we have lost this appeal we will continue fighting to defend our customers’ rights against this ill-judged legislation," the telco added.</b>

good god the detector overloaded and exploded

lets put it through the isp speak translator now

result:-

"we can't make any money out of enforcing this and it will cost us a fortune in time to respond to request, not to mention the cost of sending out all those letters

and if we are forced to disconnect any customers we have lost all that revenue that we have fought so had to lock in with unfair long term rolling contracts with no easy get-out options.

we also reserve our right to be the only company to exploit our customers"

i think that says it all

Would you go to Facebook for mobile tech support?

Pirate Peter

faceache or offshored call centre???

dont have a faceache account so the leaves only offshored call centre

but i would rather give my credit card number to an offshored call centre than give any information to faceache

basically you would be screwed by both but at least the offshored call centre you might be able to order a good takeaway or have a laugh at them trying to see how far you can get them off their script

Spotify tethers future to Facebook

Pirate Peter

how will facebook use the data collected??

wil they use it to remove fake accounts where the spotify information does not match the faceache information??

you can just see them rubbing their grubby hands and wonder what new fields to put in their database to accomodate this new treasure trove of information, and once they have all of it they will ditch spotify and find another mug company to data rape of their customer information

never trusted FB, never had an account, never will

RIM share price nosedives following stinky numbers

Pirate Peter

playbook failed for same reason as hp fondle slab

poor spec and over priced

i looked at both and decided i could buy a decent laptop for what they wanted me to pay for a oversized media player / web browser with little capability for expansion or connecting to anything useful

HP's UK PC boss: We're going nowhere

Pirate Peter

could this indicate people thought it was over priced??

at more than the price of a reasonable laptop wit little if any more functionaility than a smart phone what do they expect?

it is basically a wifi enabled browser that doubles as a media player and photo frame, you can download a few "apps" which are gimicky and you will easilly get bored with

no expansion with SD cards etc, no 3g, tied to HP branded docks and keyboards and WEBOS which is proprietory to HP until andriod is ported over shortly TOTAL FAIL

poor product which was over priced in the current climate, HP do not have the appeal of apple where people buy it because it has the apple logo on, HP and other manufacturers have to build worthwhile product at a reasonable price

HP failed until the price fell to a level people though was reasonable for the product

Rescue privacy before it vanishes forever

Pirate Peter

when will people learn

when will people learn that with these "free" services like google+, twitter, facebook etc, THEY ARE THE PRODUCT FOR SALE

simples,

the idea you give as much information as possible to the system, and ideally share it with the world and his dog, the the system (G+, faceache etc) then uses it for income from adverstising (in effect sells it to the highest bidder)

they even go out of their way to create API's for pay customers (eg advertisers) to be able to data mine YOUR information, so this is the reason they want you to share stuff publically, as if you say it is private thay are not able to make it public to their customers the paying advertisiers

that said unless they had paying customers (the advertisiers etc) the service would not be free

you can't have it both ways

but you do have a choice of using it or not putting information on it you do not want made public

Facebook growth slows in stalkerbase heartlands

Pirate Peter

invasion of privacy and viruses

invasion of privacy and viruses is how i sum up facebook to people who ask me about it

when you look at all the recent news about FB it has all been about how new settings/ feature have been quietly turned on to enable more data to be grabbed and shared before you realise

and most of the viruses i have had to clean up off friends pc's i am told by them came from FB (mainly games most seem to think)

never seen the need to share my life with the FB , the world and his dog so never had an account, nor do i plan to

i do have a twitter account but it is locked down and i refuse all followers, just use it to look at a few people

what we are seeing i think is people getting bored with the toy of FB, relialising there is no such thing as a free lunch and working that FB is selling their data to the highest bidder

i noticed the other day the HM GOV plans to allow you to log into government websites with your FB account,

thats great, gift all your personal / medical details to a US company that can be compelled by the FBI to release any data it has on you

it just gets worse

Best Buy slams brakes on UK stores amid spending freeze

Pirate Peter
Thumb Up

seen better kit and deals at a computer fair

i visited the essex store a month or so ago,

it was poor;y lit, i was looking for laptops and what i saw was very limited and little current models instock, most seemed to be end of lines and i thought prices were high even compared to pcworld (now that is bad)

e.g. only had iPad 1, no iPad 2's in sight

not inpressed i have seen better gear and prices in a dodgy east end computer fair

needless to say walked in, looked for less than 5 minutes and walked out without buying a thing

if that is their business model, can't see them being around to long

ISPs and Vaizey set to bump heads over default porn filter

Pirate Peter

and how long??

"This approach is rejected by Safermedia, which takes the line that an opt-in system, verifying that a user is over 18, is a simple common sense protection for children."

and how long before a teenager gets a freing to set up a profile so they can access adult content?

the same friend who goes into the local off licence and buys the drinks using the money provided to them by the under age drinker so long as they get a free bottle or two

its another case of low hanging easy fruit that makes big headlines but actually achieves bugger all of the objectives

just puts yet more holes in the rights of UK citizens and then the list of filtered topics / material will increase until we can only see tesco and asda's websites

Oh noes – they've stolen the internet!

Pirate Peter
Happy

let me guess

let me guess, the tea leafs were after copper cabling due to the scrap value being high at the moment

ho hum, now have to wait for the signal cabling to be nicked on my local branch line as it was twice last time copper prices were high

Creepy as hell: Facebook developers get to know you better

Pirate Peter
Coat

and why do advertisers or developers need an adress or mobile no?

why do advertisers or developers need your home address or mobile number?

not to provide any legit service on faceache,

the only thing i can see is to sell it on for profit to other ad agencies or address lists, but hold on if you believe all the carp about faceach, then every man and his dog is listed (bar me and a few other sane people and non sheep)

or to link online and offline data to create a mega profile for people

seems like yet another reason (to add to the already massive pile) to not having a faceache account

mines the one without faceache watching me

ICO makes mincemeat of nativity data protection piffle

Pirate Peter

dpa excuse is old had

more often "child protection rules" are now used not DPA as the excuse to be kill joys at the school play or any other events where parents like to take photos,

the photos to be used to embarass said child when they get old enough to have a serious boyfriend or girlfriend

i have had this where a child is from a single parent environment and that parent does not want photos taken as the other parent may find them during an ongoing court case or for other legal reason

but that is a rare case

Chinese telecoms giant furiously scrubs links to Phorm

Pirate Peter
FAIL

NO BUT !!!

@will

it only makes lots of money for the ISP (although peanuts as far as their total income) at the expense of the privacy and data interception of the ISP customer

there is absolutely no benefit to the ISP customer, it is all one sided in the direction of the ISP

NASA's new 'Bullet' airship to fly from Moffett Field

Pirate Peter

a new el reg unit of measurement

so instead of horse power are airships rated in cattle?

whatever next, plastic bags rated in goldfish (like when you win at the fair)

iAds to flood UK iPhones, iPads

Pirate Peter
Coat

as if i did not need yet more reasons to avoid apples products

so now they have their captive adience locked in, they will be spamming them with adverts they don't want

just in time for xmas

one more reason not to let an apple product through my front door

mines the coat without anything apple in it

UK.gov ignores 'net neutrality' campaigners

Pirate Peter
Coat

and down the slippery slope we begin

so how long before the current service level people have is classed as the premium level service costing £10/month extra? and the current contract get demoted due to a piece of small print in the contract to the same speed and service level of dial up?

as to being able to move, since the phorm fiasco most ISP's now try and lock customers into 18 and 24 month contracts with big early release payments so they can't afford to change provider.

so the clue to this will be all the big ISP's mounting a campaign for new customers or cold calling existing out of contract customers to get as many locked into long contracts as possible so they can't leave just before they bring this in

what we need are these changes to be classed as "a material change" to contracts to allow customers the right to move regardless of contract, then what BT, VM, TT and sky squirm when customers vote with their feet

mines the coat with the short term contract in it from zen or Be*

Nominet forgets what the first .uk domain name was

Pirate Peter
FAIL

possible irony

would it not be ironic if they where the first name register, nominet.co.uk and could not remember

it would seem logical that they would be one of the first, if not the first??

so like all other businesses like this, accurate record keeping is not their thing

Phone 7: Another Vista or another XP?

Pirate Peter

battery life?

no mention of battery life? is it that bad like all previous versions of win mobile they avoid telling people

at work we are ditching win mobiles and going blackberry, (at last)

Pirate Peter
Paris Hilton

nice review what about phone 7's advert serving functions?

i notice nothing was said about phone 7's multiple ways to serve adverts to you, you know those little things that annoy people and invade privacy?? like the capablity for in-application adverts?

are there any easy to use privacy functions? to limit data being shared without permission to advertisers?

i assume due to the numerous restrictions on what software can do there will no option for programs like no script, flash block etc to protect owners from unscrupulous websites trying to gather personal information??

is there any way like the iphone advertisers can read any unique id on the phone to help identify the owner

these are questions that need answering before people part with hard cash for one of these little trinkets

i also notice "with applications heavily integrated and tied (or locked) to cloud services from Microsoft and its partners" which translated means they want your data where they can see it

anything interesting in the privacy section of the EULA regarding cloud services and how the data could be used?

sorry for being synical, just how i have become after years of being abused by the likes of apple, google and microsoft when it comes to my data and privacy

paris , because she knows when she is being shafted by the big boys

Street View spies a €2.4m fine

Pirate Peter
FAIL

and our toothless ICO does what??

yet another example of other EU states with decent data protection departments are showing the UK how to do things, while our ICO believes all the BS he is given by big corporates and totally fails in his role to protect UK citizens privacy and data

ICO wants clearer definition of 'personal' data

Pirate Peter
FAIL

mixing online and offline data

there are issues where certain companies are now mixing online data with offline to generate a very detailed profile for people

the other issue is where people replace a name with a unique ID (UID) this is no better than an alias and it still identifies the data subject, and in effect more uniquely than their name

how many fred blogs, tom jones are there ?, but how many with UID 123456789 ? but as the law stands at the moment the because these UID's do not have an actual name in them they are not classed as personally identifiable information (PII)

these are the sort of loop holes undesirable data highjacking ad networks are using to sidestep our ineffective regulators

EU sues UK.gov over Phorm trials

Pirate Peter

AT LAST

"European law says consent for interception must be "freely given, specific and informed indication of a person's wishes". BT did not obtain such consent to include customers' internet traffic in its testing."

so where does this leave TT with it's stalk stalk service which they trialed without permission and intercepted customers browsing to strip the FULL URL to give to a third party so they could look at the page?

seems the EU need to look at both at the same time to save us tax payers some cash and knock these spy systems on the head once and for all

RIM unveils The BlackPad BlackBerry PlayBook

Pirate Peter
FAIL

another one off my list

"Before revealing the PlayBook, Lazaridis unveiled a web-based development platform for the BlackBerry and the BlackBerry PlayBook known as WebWorks, a means of building apps in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. It allows for in-app payments, and it provides in-app advertising via RIM's new BlackBerry Advertising Services"

why does everything have to have embeded advert capabilities,

i am fed up with being tracked by super cookies, flash LSO's and all the rest of the junk advertisers are using , it has been shown people are creating code in html5 that enables virtually indestructable super cookie capability

i am fed up with having to take the time to secure my devices so that every man and his dog does not know what web pages i have looked at as soon as i click a button

what we need is a blank tablet you can put an OS of your choice on, like a pc / laptop. i don't think it will be that long coming either

Most smartphoners don't give a flip about apps

Pirate Peter
Coat

no sh!t sherlock

"In other words, a majority of users purchase mobile phones primarily because — mirabile dictu — they want to make phone calls."

you mean people buy mobile phones to make and recieve phone calls

you will have all the the people at google and apple running round screaming that we don't want to be monetorised, tracked and have our location sold to all and sundry

reson why i will never by anything apple or andriod

mines the one with the old nokis brick in the pocket

Orange customers squeezed out of Facebook

Pirate Peter

not able to access faceache

so whats the problem,

i see no problem at all, as i do not wish to share all my personal information with the world and his dog

face ache has never worked on my orange phone, could be it is an old 6310i

does all i want, makes and recieves calls and the odd text

ICO chides TalkTalk over sneaky StalkStalk trials

Pirate Peter
Unhappy

look at the huawei system

if you read up on the system supplied by huawie to talk talk it has the capability to "CATEGORISE" the pages it visits

as this will be a free service to STALK STALK (sorry talk talk) customers i will leave it to those on here to work out where talk talk is going to recoup the costs from, as they will not put a system like this in at a loss just to provide a nice service to their customers ??

TalkTalk turns StalkStalk to build malware blocker

Pirate Peter
FAIL

free malware prevention

all current browser have malware solutions built in so like phorms attempt to use this as a "value add service" to get around PECR, TT will fail if they then try to launch another service based on the data provided

as how can a service be "value add" when the same service is available free in all current browsers?

there has to be money behind anything like this and it is normally advertising

any TT users able to see if cookies are being set for each site you visit?

peter

Pirate Peter

someone fighting back

http://www.the-phoenix-broadband-advice-community.co.uk/index.php/topic,1828.120.html

op is having fun with TT over the scraping of hhis board

peter

Pirate Peter
Grenade

this looks a crude attempt to get round some of the phorm issues

they claim they only pass the URL to the new system so fully anonymous, no ip, PII passed

only problem is how much data is encoded in a URL?

logon to hotmail and many other websites and a lot of other information is passed as variables after the ? in the URL's

this is every bit as bad as phorm, and they are not being clear as to the exact reason, but providing a obscure reference to anti-malware / parental controls

antivirus / malware embedded in the ISP network? wait for the phrase "VALUE ADD SERVICE" to be thrown into things to try and get around PECR etc (phorm tried it)

the anti malware is not required as all current browser have the funtionality built in. and there are numerous databases which are maintained

there will be some other service round the corner, no doubt to "MONETORISE" their customer base at the expense of the customers privacy

what other information is being gathered whilst they are "checking the page for malware" profiling the page for advertising?

do not trust this system, it looks like a crude attempt to get around some of the problems of the phorm system by making a direct request for pages

peter

Secret sub tech hints at spooks' TEMPEST-busting bugs

Pirate Peter

the obvious question

having developed the technology, one would hope they have suitable detection in place and methods to defeat the technology if used against us as well

looks like "tempest "specs will need upgrading :)

peter

BT hikes call charges

Pirate Peter
Coat

time to move line to LLU

i have been looking at the post office for some time,

they can support my unbundled ADSL line but now BT look like trying to shaft me yet again i think it is the nudge i need

peter

mines the coat with a contract in for anyone other than BT

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