Posts by stratofish

Re: "integrating internal and external search"

I'm surprised nobody else seems to have mentioned this as it is the most obvious thing I got from the article.

If I search a word/phrase on any web search engine I would expect to get public-facing results. Not my personal or business files. Nor would I ever want it too

Re: Well that ruling has a timespan of about 30 days in the UK

"The Benn act says otherwise."

It really doesn't, it just says we have to ask for an extension if no deal can be decided. If the EU offer an extension, the government still have to then change the law regarding leaving on Oct 31st, which can be stalled and we leave with no deal anyway.

Re: Who are you?

I haven't had one of those machine work yet at Gatwick or Heathrow. I travel a bit less than you but still 2-3 trips a year.

One of the immigration guys once told me it might be the combination of common first and last names I have and I know someone with the same name has been deported from the US as when I got pulled into a back room there once they actually gave me the courtesy of saying why after it was all cleared up that it wasn't me.

I had been thinking of trying a freedom of information request to see if I could find out more or possibly get it changed if it is unfairly profiling by name. It is still faster to go through it and use the failed attempt desks than the full non-EU passport control but it is a pain to have to do it every single time and especially as my travelling companions go through without issue and have to wait around for me.

Re: Threat model

A bomb is obvious and signals that there is a bomber.

Strange readings and the system going haywire ends up like the 737-Max where software can be blamed and the culprit can get away without being suspected. (note. I'm not suggesting that the 737-max is in any way deliberate)

Re: Why the need for complex installers in the first place.

> 2 words: STATIC LINK

Unless you are using (L)GPL libraries in which case static linking is a terrible idea (unless you are in a position to distribute your code such as another open source project.)

Re: Feature trickle down

The upcoming LG G7 is looking to have one so sadly no joke icon required.

I've just downgraded my mobile contract from phone+SIM to SIM-only. There is nothing in the current generation to justify the huge bump in monthly fee that the provider wants.

Re: Unisys screwed up

If the files are not protected by that access control facility then he didn't bypass or avoid anything other than an index page which is fine. Unknown links are not a defence, see the definition of "security through obscurity" for details of why that is a terrible way to protect things.

As a web developer you protect every route to a resource not just the one that most people see. If the files were accessible by direct URL without access checks when there should have been some then the webite operator is 100% liable for those files being publicly available. If the index page links directly to that PDF URL then it is even worse because the URL is also the canonical location of that file. If the URL obviously matches a pattern then it should be expected to be enumerated at some point and protection added if that is not desirable.

I think it means that the current encryption only protects it during transit to/from the server. anybody gaining access can just copy your git repository and use/alter it. By encrypting every file they protect from that happening as well.

Re: After wildly popular 3D TV, here comes VR!

Make sure you clear a space in the loft next to the Kinect so you have somewhere to keep it when you realise it gets annoying after a few uses and is just another gimmick.

Re: Why the fuck would he bother?

> the standing orders on journalistic policy at the Beeb are explicitly NOT to report items that cast doubt on climate change

I guess they screwed up yesterday then when they posted the same thing -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26340038

I hope this is true and it has a major limiting effect.

Even if it does it still won't make the deniers correct, just lucky. Opinion and guesswork can align with facts but that doesn't validate that they were right all along any more than correctly 'predicting' a coin toss does.

Re: OTT?

"OVER THE TOP adverb [1935] colloquial (chiefly British). Usually with hyphens: To an excessive or exaggerated degree; beyond reasonable or acceptable limits; too far." Source - http://www.wordwizard.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22352

It's commenting on the fact that some simple chat apps also do voice and video, far beyond what they actually need, or were designed, to do.

Re: Can anyone get this ......

> And the card details have been breached, a person who is not supposed to be able to see them did.

"Cheetham alleged this allowed him to see other users' credit card details".

Note use of the word 'alleged'. Until proven otherwise the statement by the company has to be taken at face value as they are presumably the ones who would know what was exposed or not.

The fact that he says these were in logs of URLS (i.e. passed in plaintext) is far more significant than the app itself being leaky if true.

I would hope that if I ever got that successful that I would stick to my principles too.

Not everybody is out to just make cash as fast as possible or bow down to some random butthurt guy on the Internet. And they certainly don't deserve being called a cock if that is what they want to do.

Re: Permissions creep

The blanket access to phone call details is especially common for games because when an app suddenly loses focus it needs to know how to handle it. If you receive a call midway through a game for example the apps sounds needs muting, the processing paused, etc. You need to be able to read the phones call state to do that and it is all bundled into one permission.

Re: o'Rlly?

Few models, not fewer PCs.

If you reduce a range to move onto the next big thing but people don't want to buy the new ones, guess what? You can increase the older range again and 'bring it back' from the brink of planned end-of-life, by popular demand no less!

Re: A choice of words

You might want to brush up on a dictionary before you start bashing people about choice of words.

'Rate' is the speed of change, not the change itself. If you plot ice thickness over time, the rate is the slope or trend of the line, not any absolute measure on it, which of course change all the time. For the rate itself to be changing indicates a significant occurance.

In this case it means that not only is the ice thinning as was known but crucially the speed of thinning is getting faster. This IS reportworthy and of scientific interest no matter what you believe about the cause.

Re: 4K is possible.

> Crossbar claims to have tech that can put 1-2TB on 200x200mm piece of silicon.

>If so, you could build out a ROM cartridge (remember those old video games?)

>Imagine one of those, but much smaller.

200x200mm is the size of a dinner plate, not smaller than a ROM cartridge.

Re: Skype for linux?

The only issues I ever have is with PulseAudio config, not Skypes fault at all. Been running it for a couple of years now on OpenSuse for voice and text on pretty much a daily basis. It's almost surprising how stable it is (IMO) given that it was pretty ropey before that. The only issue I can think of is that when someone on Windows calls me sometimes it disconnects after 10 seconds and mine automatically redials them back. That was introduced with an update with the Windows version though I seem to recall. I'm not sure if I've ever seen it crash?

But... It doesn't let me know about new versions and I don't check very often, so if a new one has come out in the last 6 months or so that shows the behaviour you mention then maybe I should carry on with my version. And if that is the case, I recommend downgrading.

Re: Here's a suggestion...

>> ...solve today's problems today.

I like this line of thinking and think it can be expanded to a more general use.

I'll skip paying my heating and credit card bills from before today (where 'today' is always the present day) so that I can solve my current need for a PS4 and a holiday. My descendants being warm and unburdened by material goods will be in a much better position to pay off my debts! Or they will just carry on kicking the can down the road and not bother doing anything about it either...

Re: Sourceforge

> Why would you not use ad blocking software in your browser? Genuine question.

Why would I? Ads pay for the sites to run and for contributors to keep contributing. No ads, no free sites (talking content-driven sites here, like The Register, YouTube, etc, not Aunt Flo's blog). I find them an acceptable but occasionally annoying way for me to get things done. If I used an adblocker it wouldn't be from some delusional angle that I'm helping to stamp out advertising. It would be because I would be selfish enough to expect somebody else to pay for my entertainment/information.

The vast majority of ads are of no interest to me and I have no trouble tuning them out. The few that I might be interested in serve to inform me but I wouldn't click them. Sometimes knowing that high street shop X has offer Y on is good to know or if some new product is out. If I buy something, guess what? The advertising worked and worked well for both sides!

Also, the more people that use adblockers the more money gets poured into techniques to circumvent adblockers. This has a very negative outcome for everybody.

Re: Makes you think....

@Lee D - I don't think you understand the point of music charts. They are not to list the most popular songs ever, or which songs people are actually listening to. The latter being impossible to measure across the industry, only for individual, online services. The only thing that can reasonably be measured across the entire industry is what is being bought. Old songs/albums that get re-released can and do get charted.

Of course it is used for marketing. People are notorious for staying safe and doing things that are popular rather than taking a risk and forming their own opinion and it feeds directly into that.

But it has benefits for the consumer as well. People who are into keeping up with modern music, and why else would you listen to radio/streams that play chart music, get a continually updated list of what is popular currently. Going by sales is arguably better than any generic algorithm for measuring what is popular. When my mother tells me she wants to new CD by artist X for xmas I don't go and look them up alphabetically and try to guess which of 10 albums might be the newest one. I go to the chart corner and get the one I find there by that artist and know there is a huge probability that I have the right one.

The same goes for any chart of any genre and/or commodity. It is a tool to show similar, recent things in a given category, not a recommendation.

Re: NO NO NO!

"8GB of STORAGE! Memory = RAM, RAM is not storage,"

While it is correct that they should have said 8GB of storage, RAM is still storage. It is just faster, more expensive and volatile.

Re: They should focus on two things ...

"When you're programming, dividing by zero yields a crash. Or an exception. If you don't know what's going on in the hardware, you probably don't even know what an exception is."

An exception is a high level construct not hardware. Divide by zero still yields an interrupt 0 on x86 architectures, even 64-bit ones, nothing more. The language runtime may catch it and generate an exception, or the software itself may hook into it to handle it directly if it has permission. If neither do, the OS watchdog timers will probably flag it as crashed eventually and terminate the process, hopefully telling you at the same time.

Re: Look at NSA-approved crypto

"1) they list it as "approved" because they are ok with its use by their own agencies to feed disinformation to other governments who they think might be able to break it?

2) they list it as approved because they know (from breaking the communications of their competitors) that only they can break it?

Take your pick."

3) Not all NSA decryption staff are cleared to read confidential documents, therefore clearing it for use for their own intelligence data proves in itself that it has not been cracked or thought to be uncrackable in the near future.

Re: HAL...

"The first in the Rama series was good. The rest were, unfortunately, dire."

I enjoyed them a lot. The series as a whole is one of my favorites. The first is by far the best but I like the plot and scope of the others too.

Re: No

"targeted advertising never seems to address what I'm interested in"

Around xmas of 2011 my kitchen sink/tap broke. While I was waiting for the landlord to get someone in to fix I idly looked up what was involved to fix it, taking around 25 minutes over a couple of sites. As far as I can remember I have never looked up similar things before or since.

I still get tons of ads for kitchen hardware and spares 18 months later.

Re: I'm Alright Jack

My phone line died almost 6 weeks ago and therefore my ADSL broadband with it.

Due to starting a new job I haven't wanted to take time off unpaid and I wasn't ready to be working from home until recently so I've just had to live with it. I finally managed to work from home last week and the engineer decided not to bother turning up. I'm trying again tomorrow and will hopefully get it all back at last.

There is not a chance in hell that I would buy a console that absolutely required a network connection to play a single-player game, permanently, frequent or otherwise.

The tld is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

along with twitter, oracle, sprite, etc.

I see this being more useful for mid-level registrars to step in and buy generic TLDs such as .market, .medical, .health, and so on for reselling subdomains.

errrr

How is that a variation in the Sun? It doesn't change just because you can't see it.