* Posts by Martin Summers

1503 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Apr 2011

Cisco snags potential customer-sniffing biz for an undisclosed sum

Martin Summers Silver badge

No-one's bloody sniffing me, I don't care how much they paid!

Google-free Android kit tipped to sell buckets

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Re: That photo of the cloth-covered device

That might be because it's a VR headset.

Which? calls for compensation for users hit by Windows 10 woes

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Re: "some people rely on their computers"

"It's my shrewd suspicion that whatever folks might say, there isn't a single techie working for Microsoft who, if their life really was the stake, would choose Windows over *ix."

What a great question. I had to stop and think about it, but not for long. My answer was Linux. Supporting Microsoft products is my bread and butter and I don't go in for bashing them 'just because, but I feel on this one you're right.

Xiaomi the money? OK, here's a one beeeeellion dollar loss ahead of IPO

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Xiaomi are starting to get a great reputation in the UK. If you frequent such sites as Hot UK deals then you'll have seen the electronics they purvey posted as hot deals with subsequent testimonials of just how good quality their kit is. As it happens I have a pair of Bluetooth scales and a robot vacuum manufacturerd by Xiaomi and I am highly impressed with the high quality of both for the relatively low cost. Even the packaging is premium. They were both made for the Chinese market so the vacuum did shout at me in Chinese to begin with but that was easily resolved in settings. I look forward to their official arrival in the UK as I do think they will shake things up for the better if they keep up their current standard.

Yahoo! Kills! The! Messenger!

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Fond memories of Yahoo Messenger being the first IM client I ever used in the late 90's. Along with Yahoo chat rooms and a Yahoo email address it opened up the world to me when the web was still exciting. Its a shame Yahoo went downhill but they belong to that era now.

Google plays cloud catch-up and moves into a place of its own

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Trends

Presumably the next big thing will be having a single box for every server. Imagine that.

Great time to shift bytes: International bandwidth prices are in free fall

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Re: Meanwhile...

Streaming 8K 3D Virtual Reality porn? I'm sure that could use a bit of bandwidth.

'Autopilot' Tesla crashed into our parked patrol car, say SoCal cops

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Re: Hmm

"I also think that calling something "autopilot" is a bit misleading, since we've all seen aeroplane films where the pop-up autopilot handles everything perfectly and nothing ever goes wrong."

Apart from when it deflates?

Headless man found in lava’s embrace

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Re: Hard hat?

You'd have to be a right blockhead to attempt that.

Beardy Branson: Wacky hyperloop tube maglev cheaper than railways

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"particularly if you are out hunting penguins."

How very savage, back home we can still buy them in the snack aisle at the shops. Canada not looking so great now hey?

You've got pr0n: Yes, smut by email is latest workaround for UK's looming cock block

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Re: Alternatively...

Surely Bushnet?

'Alexa, find me a good patent lawyer' – Amazon sued for allegedly lifting tech of home assistant

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And what, they've only *just* realised that Amazon are supposedly breaking their patent now? Short on money by any chance?

BOFH: But I did log in to the portal, Dave

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Re: GAH!

"I'm sure I got PTSD from dealing with the Oracle support site!"

Oh that I can deal with, it's their support line for the products I deal with that give me sleepless nights!

UK consumer help bloke Martin Lewis is suing Facebook over fake ads

Martin Summers Silver badge

The guy has saved me plenty of money over the years and many many countless others. He's not smug at all and has done more for consumer rights than anyone else I know of in this country. Right now he's doing more than government are sensibly doing to solve the social media issues we are having. As he has said even if he doesn't win he is hoping the prominence of the case will raise enough awareness to put these scam artists out of business.

I wish him every luck in his case. Facebook can't be allowed to hide behind the just a platform crap when it's the money they make from these scams keeping their business in profit.

Kaspersky Lab loses the privilege of giving Twitter ad money

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Re: @Martin

I think the key words in my comment were "fairly or not". I didn't say it was fair or that I agreed with Twitter. Doubt has been introduced and a security vendor surely cannot survive something like that. That's all I was saying.

Martin Summers Silver badge

I hate to say it but this is probably the beginning of the end for Kaspersky. They're not going to shake off the reputation they are gaining (fairly or not) and it doesn't help that whilst powerful their enterprise products are so unforgiving and unpolished. I've uninstalled it only the other day and I get it for free.

Oracle whips out the swatter, squishes 254 security bugs in its gear

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Re: wait wut

Yes it is used for the Micros Simphony till suite and Opera Hotel/Property management software for a start off. Lots of businesses use those. Now they've found another way of screwing you out of licence costs by charging business for the software needed to run it too!

Soyuz later! Russia may exit satellite launch biz

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Re: A SMARTR AIMovement ..... with the Off Loading of Sensitive News Stock Items ...

Aww, leave him alone he obviously just needs some adjustment. It has been a while since he posted anything coherent though. I also take it you're new here.

Facebook scandal: EU politicians should aim for straight answers, not star witnesses

Martin Summers Silver badge

Having the likes of Zuckerberg in front of a committee is vanity and grandstanding to give politicians the feeling of being powerful over a huge company.

Change does come from the top down though and I'm sure Zuckerberg didn't exactly like being sat there being grilled even if he could wing his way through it. It might just have the desired effect simply so that he doesn't find himself in the same position again. I say might optimistically because after a while everyone forgets and people revert to type fairly quickly.

Whois is dead as Europe hands DNS overlord ICANN its arse

Martin Summers Silver badge

The only use I had of WHOIS having my details is getting a random phone call from a chap wanting to buy my domain name off me, which back in 2003 I made about £600 for. Personally I'll be glad to see the back of it as I think it's completely unnecessary to have those details exposed. It's made a mockery of with privacy services anyway and I balk at the cost of those on top of the domain. It's not going to make any difference to anyone having this shut off, only the registrar and the naming authority need my details.

What is going to be affected is verified SSL certificates, although I imagine there's an opportunity for registrars to make some money out of a verification API. I'm sure someone will be right on that.

'Dear Mr F*ckingjoking': UK PM Theresa May's mass marketing missive misses mark

Martin Summers Silver badge

Lee, can I just point out on the flip side of that there's lots of people complain that they *don't* get information from local candidates during the election. Unfortunately people's allegiances do change and they're fairly fickle when it comes to their politics but I agree with your sentiment.

As for getting information despite being on the edited electoral register, councils and political parties have access to the full register. The reason being is that's why it exists in the first place. Its for electoral purposes.

I've never understood why people get so upset about getting leaflets from political parties. If you don't want to vote for them or vote at all even then chuck it in the recycling. As it happens, if you don't want any bother at all then just tell your next local canvasser that you don't want further information, they update their information because believe me they don't want to waste the effort of sending you political literature you don't care about either.

All I would say about that is, like social media or the news sites you choose to visit, you end up living in a bubble where you only hear or see things you agree with and never have your opinion challenged. Which is a scary prospect.

Gmail is secure. Netflix is secure. Together they're a phishing threat

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: This has happened to me for years

I'm in contact with around 3 or so namesakes I get email for including one in my home town. I've had property rental statements, mortgage application details house sale agreements, job contracts. I even got something rather important that I could have digitally signed for and caused all kinds of issues. Quite a lot of the time the companies they are using have assumed my namesakes have made a mistake in the email address they've given and corrected it to mine off their own back. I am however nice and let people know of their mistake. I even forward email on to one guy in the US, trouble is when I used to send myself an email to remind myself of things (stopped doing that a long while ago), he was in my autocomplete and I sent him my private stuff a couple of times!

I've used the dot in my email address for services that point blank refuse to allow me to use my original email address as they have it on file but no password reset mechanism. I find it quite useful so I hope it's not retired.

Any social media accounts to declare? US wants travelers to tell

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Re: legal?

Erm, that's kind of ours and Europe's thing not theirs.

PwC: More redundos at HQ of UK 'leccy stuff shop Maplin

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Re: At least Dick Turpin wore a mask...

"While that is shocking, pubs in Ireland also charging over €5 for a pint of Guinness and they seem to think it's alright."

I think that's quite reasonable for a meal in a glass!

It's March 2018, and your Windows PC can be pwned by a web article (well, none of OURS)

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"The implication was that Microsoft's security is somehow terrible compared to anyone else."

No, I wasn't implying Microsoft were worse than anyone else because everyone has bugs and security flaws. It was a general question.

Martin Summers Silver badge

Genuinely interested in finding out the answer to this. Given there are so many vulnerabilities found and they keep patching the code, are the fixes they make likely to open up more vulnerabilities or break fixes for old ones? It seems never ending and I do realise just how big these code bases are it just amazes me that they can never ever get near fully secure.

Rant launches Eric Raymond's next project: Open-source the UPS

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Re: Lack of clue

"So they've got a clue they don't have all the clues.... yet"

Well maybe Ian Mason might want to contribute there and point them in the right direction. All they're guilty of is saying that UPS's suck in their opinion and they want them to be better. If people contributed to projects like this rather than complain about them doing it wrong or not having a clue then they might get somewhere.

Sneaky satellite launch raises risk of Gravity-style space collision

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Re: Regulatory Oversight

No, they are communication satellites and because no-one really can tell the rest of the world what they can and can't launch into space, this is perhaps the only way this company can be called out on their inconsiderate behaviour and attitude.

With IoT you too can turn your home into a giant flashing 'HORSE BIRTH NOW' klaxon

Martin Summers Silver badge

Really? Noone has said it? OK well then I *have* to.

Aren't people worried that with this being so loud it could wake the NEIGHbours? You could really foal out with people.

I come to the comments on articles like this for the puns people...

4G found on Moon

Martin Summers Silver badge

"Not that they own any real estate on the Moon of course."

No they don't, but you reminded me about something saying that. What about that bloke that claimed all the planets and celestial bodies and started selling bits of them to gullible punters (yeah unfortunately me too in my younger days, chance for a bit of the moon eh, why not?). Surely he should kick up a stink about people going up there and sticking mobile masts on his and his customers land? Or is he busy sitting on his cash pile still laughing.

Samsung's Galaxy 9s debut, with not much other than new cameras

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Re: What?

It's digital publishing. They rush the articles out so as not to miss page views for the initial wave of interest and then they correct it later (mobile seems slow to never to get them?). Sign of the times, thankfully we are intelligent enough as readers of this site to decipher the odd strangulation of a sentence. The sentence you mention looks like some of the things I'd write if I was knackered.

Martin Summers Silver badge

Bored now. I'm not going to bother upgrading from my S8. I think they're only releasing a new phone every year as they've got their upgrade program that they launched which states that you get a new phone every year.

The only benefit to the S9 being pretty much exactly the same as the S8 is that they might be able to easily keep pushing the updates out for the S8 as well. I'm currently running the beta Oreo on my phone patiently waiting for them to release the final version, which I thought they'd do on the announcement of the S9.

Nope, I'm going to hold out with my current phone unless something from another manufacturer catches my eye. Even those who love people to know they have the latest phone will be no better off with the S9 because how would anyone know you had one? Is that one of the reasons the iPhone X has a notch?

Kentucky gov: Violent video games, not guns, to blame for Florida school massacre

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: I know what trump is thinking

Giving/allowing them to carry, I don't know if they had to pay for them or not but unfortunately it's a fact that they have them in a pilot state:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40353408

The most recent mention of the pilot is in this article some way down the page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42804741

We all live in this world and in the UK what happens in the USA good or bad has a habit of spreading. Luckily we don't make it easy for anyone to get a gun so our chances of mass shooting are great reduced. Strange that isn't it.

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: I know what trump is thinking

They're giving the teachers guns now, sending nominated staff on courses on how to use them and deal with the idea of shooting one of their deranged pupils one day. What a world we live in...

Martin Summers Silver badge

He's right, you can't regulate evil but you can sure as hell not make doing evil easier.

Look out, Wiki-geeks. Now Google trains AI to write Wikipedia articles

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I wonder what amanfrommars has to say about it.

It would be nice if El Reg admitted that it is their pet AI they unleashed on us commentards a few years ago...

Magic Leap's staggering VR goggle technology just got even better!

Martin Summers Silver badge

Someone needs to do a spot of investigative journalism on this and end the saga one way or another! If someone who knows what they're talking about breaks their NDA one day, they're in a very tricky position as if they've got nothing they won't be able to afford legal bills as they'll implode. If of course their product is amazing then it will do them the world of good for investment and publicity, not that they seem to be struggling without anything to show!

Who wants dynamic dancing animations and code in their emails? Everyone! says Google

Martin Summers Silver badge

AMP is causing higher user engagement presumably because you can't turn the sodding thing off in search results. I have no choice but to click on an AMP page most of the time these days because the regular page has been hidden somewhere. I always click on the link button at the top to open the page on the publishers site in the vain hope that others are doing it immediately and it shows up in their stats somehow.

Hyperoptic's overkill 10Gbps fibre trial 'more than a clever PR stunt'

Martin Summers Silver badge

Here we are again with someone saying we 'don't need it'. Well how about we just have the ability to do it and see what happens hey? Who are these people who make judgments on what people need? I'm reminded of the phrase 'see things as they are not as you are' and no doubt the people making the 'don't need' comments would be happy themselves with what they have stated and of course that should do for everyone else too.

All this country really wants and desperately needs in this more and more digital economy we have is for some bugger to get on with the job of laying fibre everywhere to every home they can physically get it to. Only then worrying about what technology is put down it because at least it can be bloody changed later!

Government have a lot to answer for with this because only they can force the issue or make it happen nationally where profit isn't the first consideration. No company will ever ever do this kind of thing as an altruistic gesture and that should be face smackingingly obvious to everyone who makes the decisions.

Samsung needs to eat itself, not copy Apple's X-rated margins

Martin Summers Silver badge

I have an S8. Quite simply if the S9 costs more than that did then I won't buy it. It won't be worth it and neither is the iPhone X. I'm not going to be fooled into buying entry to an exclusivity club. Just like HTC have screwed themselves with poor build quality, software bugs and complete lack of customer care. You can see it coming Samsung will screw themselves by following the expensive is good route. That will only ever work for Apple tax payers. People who buy premium Android phones are savvier than that.

Winter Olympics website downed by cyber attack

Martin Summers Silver badge

"At the moment we are making sure our systems are secure, which they are, so discussing details of it is not helpful."

Of course. And is stable door locking now a Winter Olympic sport?

EE unveils shoebox-sized router to boost Brit bumpkin broadband

Martin Summers Silver badge

Had one of these as a 'temporary' fix for a business leased line order that went wrong. It dropped out constantly and got throttled like mad if you actually tried to use it. This was for 45 or so office users in a barn in the middle of the countryside. They tried everything including rebooting the phone mast and it never worked properly even after that. They even sent one of their engineers out, a guy who actually built the mast we were connecting to. He did all kinds of diagnostics and knew his stuff, nice guy. He also told me that Ericsson who actually ran the mast sites wouldn't let them (EE) do anything to their own masts as Ericsson were ultimately responsible for any downtime in the contract. I know this is being touted for home use but if you want to use it for any more than casual browsing good luck as I can't imagine the problems I had would have just gone away.

Hey, you know what the internet needs? Yup, more industrial control systems for kids to hack

Martin Summers Silver badge

I never would for very obvious reasons, but part of me would love to play with this stuff and go see what's out there that you can log in to and control remotely. Of course there are people without such scruples that would be on Shodan all the time doing precisely that.

It shocks me that it's still a thing and more so that you don't hear about companies suffering attacks all the time. Surely some company somewhere in the world is having some scrote log in and turn their heating up full whack or some industrial control system had gone aywire thanks to an external actor. Where are all the stories about this? I would like to hear the real world impact of these net facing systems being compromised.

Oracle point-of-sale system vulnerabilities get Big Red cross

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Re: It might be ok

They bought out Micros some time back and the Oracle branding is only just really starting to appear on the hardware if you have it replaced.

Micros were apparently reasonably good at what they did but Oracle have turned it into crud. Their support has got marginally better but they're still happy to leave you high and dry without a functioning system for weeks if they don't know how to fix issues they've caused by pushing out updates.

Baywatch hero drone saves silly struggling swimmers Down Under from going down under

Martin Summers Silver badge

It's very easy to very quickly get into trouble unexpectedly. It's a natural environment with many variables that even experienced swimmers and surfers can 'come a cropper' in. Not to mention that these are kids and kids make mistakes.

Let's hope you never get in to trouble in the sea and they've decided to wind up the coastguard because they shouldn't be taking the time and trouble to help 'idiots' as how can they tell who they are? That's like A&E closing because they get swamped with drunks. I'm sure most people who end up needing emergency assistance in the sea don't intend to need it whereas idiot drunks who drink to excess could easily prevent that happening. I know what I'd rather fund.

.UK overseer Nominet abandons its own charitable foundation – and why this matters

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Re: What I want to know is

Not paying for a .uk sounds great but if you don't get it someone else will. Plus you've got all those trademark holders who are always held to ransom when it comes to domains. Unfortunately the only people who did obviously object and could feasibly have done something resigned, leaving the current management to do exactly what they want.

Make Apple, er, America Great Again: iGiant to bring home profits, pay $38bn in repatriation tax

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Re: Android

"Apple enforces these upgrades quite fiercely, so iThings tend to become unusably slow after a few years."

Well yes, on purpose as it happens too!

BOFH: Buttock And Departmental Defence ... As A Service

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Re: Ahhh!

What are you implying, that he was off form before? I think you need to apologise!

Sky customer dinged for livestreaming pay-per-view boxing to Facebook

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Re: I'm Guessing Russian Hackers

"Irony. Look it up."

Waaaaay too subtle, lack of a winky face and you went a bit Bombastic Bob on us.