* Posts by John Tserkezis

2242 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2007

Samsung files patent for ear-mounted Google Glass competitor

John Tserkezis

Re: They're coming but they're not selling

"For whom is that a sufficiently compelling proposition?"

They could be, as they do more than that. If you use audiobooks or podcasts a lot, being able to fastforward/rewind with fewer button presses is certainly easier. That and, being able to tell who's calling you just by looking at your watch helps, considering your phone may be tangled within a holster or a bag or pocket or wherever. Especially so if you're using a headset, wired, bluetooth or otherwise.

Any watch face is too small for maps and web, so there's no point in enteraining that idea, but email and SMS are readable enough. Some claim ability to respond too, but I think button presses would be too small.

So they do have SOME merit, it's just the price that may offend.

To the author: As far as the article states "anyone - well, anyone in the US" "Anyone in the US" doesn't count. the world does not drop off the end of the earth at the US borders. So stop claiming "anyone". Especially when wearable tech is available now for a LOT less than fucking $1500 - that's just not on.

Turnbull gave NBN Co NO RULES to plan blackspot upgrades

John Tserkezis

I'm not convinced they're even looking at the bottlenecked backbone, which at this point is probably of higher importance then theoretical speeds one might get to their home.

Commonwealth Bank in comedy Heartbleed blog FAIL

John Tserkezis

I don't know if I had received a slightly reworded version of the email, or during english classes at school, I was actually paying attention.

The message *I* read was clear in that the regular CommBank informational website *was* susceptible, but since patched, but the NetBank backend was NOT susceptible, so not applicable for fixes, thus passwords did not have to be changed.

Windows 8.1, which you probably haven't upgraded to yet, Already obsolete

John Tserkezis

Re: Does ANYBODY still believe this tripe?

"Install and reboot,

Windows is updating, please do not turn off your computer..."

I know you say that in jest, but it's really like that. I have a work-supplied RT tablet, but never use it, as I can do more with my own laptop, and there is only a moderate tradeoff in weight. So, the win8 tablet never gets used aside from bringing it out every so often to do updates.

I haven't actually used it for anything productive, it's just been updates, not only that, they're BIG updates every bloody time.

This is what I'm eating my monthly internet bandwidth for?

Bored with trading oil and gold? Why not flog some CLOUD servers?

John Tserkezis

Didn't Enron try something like this?

Worked out great for them! Cough, cough.

Over half of software developers think they'll be millionaires – study

John Tserkezis

I've had my fair share of delusions, but this was not one of them.

I want to stress that most of the developers I know are not like this, but some of them have their minds in such a twist, it would be sacrilege to mention they won't be the next Gates, or McAffee. Worse still, some of those live their lives up (well, make it LOOK like that) but don't tell you they're living on bulk rice every day to make up the cash shortfall.

Dropbox defends fantastically badly timed Condoleezza Rice appointment

John Tserkezis

To all my friends who ask why I don't use DropBox.

NOW you know why. So stop pestering me, especially when I offer a number of different workable options.

FTC gets judicial thumbs-up to sue firms over data breaches

John Tserkezis

Sadly, I don't think it's going to make any difference.

If past behaivour is anything to go by, by the time anyone finds out the company was led by corrupt management, the monies have been distributed and everything else gutted. When administration moves in, there probably isn't enough money left over to pay for their lunches.

What's the difference when it comes to compaies that are lazy with our data? They're most likely structured to look like they're not making any profit at all, apart from a modest office, there's not much hardware since they've outsourced all that to cloud providers, and it's not the cloud provider's fault, because they only supply the computing power and storage.

Net result: everyone gets screwed except the ones running the joint, because they've conveniently moved the profits they didn't make, into assets that technically don't belong to them, or into accounts no-one knows about.

Sony battery recall as VAIO goes out with a bang, not a whimper

John Tserkezis

"internal, non-removable"

(forehead slap) When will people learn!?

NSA denies it knew about and USED Heartbleed encryption flaw for TWO YEARS

John Tserkezis

"One of the NSA's specific roles is to safeguard national communications and online security infrastructure"

Yeah, and the other is to monitor the national communications and online security infrastructure.

Russian deputy PM: 'We are coming to the Moon FOREVER'

John Tserkezis
Joke

Bad idea.

First, colonisation of the moon. Then it'll seem like a good idea to dump radioactive waste there. Then there will be a "magnetic disturbance", then it'll blow up.

No wait, hasn't that already happened, or are they just a bit behind schedule?

Windows 8.1 Update: Throws desktop drones a bone but still as TOUCHY as ever

John Tserkezis

Re: 'and if you need sideloading keys, you can purchase an unlimited number for around $100.'

"The only way you'll get them to stop is by voting with your wallet."

Or by rooting your OS.

You think it's just a freak accident that so many are rooting their phones for this reason? Once the desktop has reached the same level of "closedness" it's only a matter of time.

John Tserkezis

Re: Windows 8 was built for one reason only

"The 30% margin on everything sold through the store."

Not to mention the fee for allowing sideloading... If you don't want to play in their store, you still have to pay.

Just another nail in the win8 coffin.

Microsoft crows about 149k-seat Office 365 deal that costs it MILLIONS

John Tserkezis

"If they went with the $20 version, that is $240 a year or $720 over three years. Care to guess what a perpetual copy of office would run them?"

It doesn't matter any more. Allow me to explain: A one-off charge of that magnitude means a capex. You have to explain to higher management why you're doing it, and then, why you're doing it every several years again and again.

A subscription maintenance update cost is much less, perhaps below their capex cutoff, so they don't have to explain that or have it signed off. It's stupid because it does indeed cost more, but in large corporate circles, if you can get away with your manager screaming at you less (even if it costs more) that's a "good" thing. Meanwhile, since everyone is doing it, they slowly but surely run the company into the ground.

As they close the doors, the CEO stands up and blames the "economy". There, problem solved.

Indonesia considers smartphone tax to spur local mobe-makers

John Tserkezis

Won't work.

They tried it in Australia by taxing imported cars to put locally produced cars in a better light, well, a better price anyway.

Result: Allowing for the general downturn in the auto industry, local factories are closing down and imports are going up to compensate.

YYYep, that worked out real well.

Why won't you DIE? IBM's S/360 and its legacy at 50

John Tserkezis

I'm a spring chicken.

Only experience here is a regular x86 rack mount server that emulates the old OS and software, along with a copy protection USB dongle. The original terminal lines were translated to something that could be transported over ethernet, and each client had an ethernet emulation terminal client that mimiced the old green screen terminals. Except in this case, the colour was customisable. I would hope so!

I had to continually set the buggers up because the users were cutting and pasting data between the terminal window and Excel.

The whole time I'm thinking "there MUST be better modern software that isn't such a pain in the arse".

Technology is murdering customer service - legally

John Tserkezis

I called microsoft support recently.

Yes, shocking, but I did. My last experiece was a long time ago, they were easy to get hold of, but I just gave up because they didn't seem to know anything.

More recently, they did know what they were talking about, and did fix the issues. However, true to the article, their phone number was near-impossible to find, the phone maze was worse (I had to hang up and start again several times when I realised they got me to follow a wild goose), but I eventually got onto a human - and that's where I was stumped.

The waiting time was holy crap short, and although they seemed to have a meld of indian/america accent, shockingly, they could actually answer my questions. Believe it or not.

If only I kept the phone number and the phone maze sequence... In my defence, there were a couple of numbers and multitudes of phone menu combinations, bit too hard to write all of the attemps, and too long to remember the last combination - especially when I was surprised to hear a real human at the other end...

One Win 8 to rule them all: Microsoft talks up 'universal apps' for PCs, slabs and mobes

John Tserkezis

Re: One friggin small universe I'm sure.

"Web apps are 'the universe' but they will stuff up the web like others do."

I'm not sure it's that bad, but it's not that good either. I'm working on a fairly substatial application now that will be mostly internal. If it were web based, it would solve a few of my problems, but it would create more. There are inherent limitations that alone are dealbreakers, but worst still, it can't be made portable. I'm not talking cellphone portable, I mean copy it on a USB flash drive and run "anywhere", including non-Internet accessable locations.

Worst of all, (and I've said this before) Joe Bloggs can't develop free applications using free compliers for a free market and not get away with paying Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) fees for the "priveledge" of doing so.

Five-year-old discovers Xbox password bug, hacks dad's Live account

John Tserkezis

My take on this.

It might be surprising, but not entirely without precedent.

Remember everyone used to make jokes about programming VCRs? "Just get a 5 year old to do it".

Children are persistant, and try things that may not be intuitive to adults - especially the adults who wrote the firmware/software.

Remember the guy who single-handedly crashed an airline entertainment system by fiddling? He did so by trying things that would not make sense in that context. OK, that was an adult, but children are especially good at trying things that would never occur to adults - again, particularly some adults that write security context code.

Lego is the TOOL OF SATAN, thunders Polish priest

John Tserkezis

Not a problem for me.

"...are actually tools of Satan that can destroy children's souls."

No problem here, I sold my soul to some guy called Milhouse for five bucks. Sucker.

Hackers force innocent mobes to join crypto mining gangs

John Tserkezis

But it **IS** worthwhile.

When SOMEONE ELSE is paying for power, maintaintaining the hardware, wears the cost of running and replacement, then it IS worthwhile.

No, Minister. You CAN'T de-Kindle your eBooks!

John Tserkezis

Re: Unacceptable

"You seem to have misunderstood. You have not "bought" a book. You have licensed a copy."

Perhaps you have misunderstood. You can "buy" a book and have heavily limited rights, or you can "steal" a book and have all the rights in the world.

Hmm, tough choice. While they're arguing over semantics, everyone else is just doing it anyway.

Brit game devs WILL get tax relief for, er, EastEnders Game and Legend of Slough

John Tserkezis

What's the bet some bastardised version of Candy Crush is going to submitted for approval - and pass?

Remember, Mcdonalds (the "food" place) passed Australia's Heart Foundation tick of approval a couple of years ago. No, their "food" hasn't magically gotten better, just everyone else's standards have gotten worse.

Homeopathic remedies contaminated with REAL medicine get recalled

John Tserkezis

That's why it's been working...

Kinda like an audiophile using regular copper, or religous outfits realising there was no god some time back, but the tax benefits were too good to let go.

Hot, young under-25s: Lonely slab strokers who shun TV

John Tserkezis

Hollywood crapola vs the entire fucking web.

Pretty obvious choice here.

I'm way past being a Gen Y'er, and that has nothing to do with it. Look at the available content.

Returning a laptop to PC World ruined this bloke's credit score. Today the Supreme Court ended his 15-year nightmare

John Tserkezis

Re: A bit missing from this article that sheds a different light..

"Unfortunately, instead of immediately unpacking it in the store..."

If you've ever tried this in Real Life, you'll find the most common response is "get nicked".

If you've ever tried to buy an open box, you'll need to demand a discount, because open boxes always, always, always have something missing.

John Tserkezis

Re: A bit missing from this article that sheds a different light..

"So basically he was awarded £166,000, but wanted more and it back fired. So the long battle could of ended 6 years ago."

The worst of malware can be measured in dollars, or pounds or whatever your currency of choice. Destruction of credit cannot be directly converted to an equivalent compensation in currency. Over 15 years, he's been repeatedly screwed a number of ways over a purchase he didn't want or ask for in the first place.

Candy Crush King sees IPO go sour as stock price heads south

John Tserkezis

Boo fucking hoo.

That is all.

IBM PCjr STRIPPED BARE: We tear down the machine Big Blue would rather you forgot

John Tserkezis

"The Model M keyboard is wonderful, but also INCREDIBLY LOUD. The other people of your household, office, and possibly surrounding countryside, will not thank you for getting a Model M."

The other people in the houshold and countryside can get stuffed. I have two Model M's, and one new Unicomp.

TV sales PLUMMET. But no one's prepared to say what we all know

John Tserkezis

"Do you not understand that the old stuff was designed to wear out?"

Not really, it's a case of market economics not suited to products that last forever, because no-on is willing to pay that much for it.

"There is a lightbulb in america that's been burning for over 100 years."

What they don't tell you, is it's entirely useless and of ornamental value only. It burns orange. To hell with colour temperature, this bulb is just plain orange. And it's dim. It's great by oil or gas lantern standards of 100 fucking years ago, but hey, since then, we've moved on.

"Then the Phoebus cartel was set up to limit bulb life to 1000 hours"

Not quite. When it comes to standard incandescent bulb technology, that life span was determined as a compromise between brightness, colour temperature and lifespan. If you bring the energy down, you can make modern incandescents last 100 years too. But no-one would buy them because they would be dim and orange and fucking useless by 2014 standards. If you don't like that, try induction lighting, with claims of 100,000 hours lifespan, and lighting similar to fluorescent lamps. Not so crappy now?

"fail from poor quality capacitors in the power supply"

I once replaced all the caps in a new derated PC power supply with high quality high temperature caps that would normally never get used in that position - to the tune of at least a couple of hundred dollars. It was hammered solidly for 10 years before I threw it out. The box that replaced it had the power supply replaced once in 10 years - for $30 bucks. Now you know how the market economy works.

"Manufacturers know this and their contribution is to make the cases hard to open"

No, you're thinking of Apple. Although, somewhat to their defence, it does make it cheaper and easier to manufacture - always a plus in that game, even if it does piss the costomer off.

TEN THINGS Google believes you believe about Glassholes and wishes you didn't

John Tserkezis

Bah, privacy isn't going to be a problem. Not for the Glass anyway.

If you're going to use privacy to purve, you need to do *everything* as you would normally do under that context.

A member of our photograpy club was field-testing his black portable camera inside a grocery store. I asked what they said about it - it's normally a no-no. He said they didn't ask. Upon further questioning, no-one even noticed - he had the camera at his waist. Had he held the camera at eye level, he would have no doubt unceremoniously thrown out on his arse.

Ditto with the Samsung gear, you can fiddle with your watch - and no-one cares at all. As long as you're willing to mute the beeps and camera noises in hardware, it's the near perfect covert camera.

Which brings me to the Google Glass. It doesn't look anything like normal, not even close. There are many, many cheap and not-so-cheap covert eyeglass camera systems out there, the Glass isn't even a close contender - it's way too recognisable - and not only by us geeks.

How to Poo on a Date wins odd book title of the year

John Tserkezis

How to poo on a date.

Why do I get the feeling that the answer is quite short, but like some of my classmates used to do in high school - take a really short answer and turn it into a 25 page essay, making it look like you know what you're talking about.

Clearly I'm not the "read the book to find out" type.

QUIDOCALYPSE: Blighty braces for £100 MILLION cost of new £1 coin

John Tserkezis

Cynical Brits might suspect that "lowest possible cost to industry" is a euphemism for "at consumers' expense".

Nothing cynical about it. Here in Australia, they've converted everything up to $2 into coins, and there was some (perhaps not yet serious) talk of a $5 coin.

To pay for it, the councils stopped injecting their parking inspectors with the now obsolete Wanker Serum (TM), and started with injections of Cunt Serum (TM)(1). Many councils have also issued new uniforms that if you didn't quite look twice, could be mistaken for standard issue Police uniforms. The parking inspectors for some time are demanding more rights to be protected against locals who are now abusing them, and not just verbally.

As far as vending machines go, all coin firmware has been upgraded with "Coin Eating Technology" (patent pending), which randomly eats coins and refuses to admit it injested anything. At the same time, huge signs were installed alerting the now hungry or thirsty users to a phone number they can call (without actually promising anything). Then IF you get a successful connection, it'll be a press "1 for this" menuing system that is so convoluted that you'll give up before getting anywhere. Which leads me to the next cost-saving venture - by far fewer phone boxes:

Public phones are a non-issue. They have all been progressively rolled back (even if you could find one that actually worked). Now that the 60+ population (the last of the die-hards who still used phone boxes), now have their own cell phones - there's no need anymore. Privately-owned-publically-used blue and gold phones have entirely vanished altogether, again for the same reason, and it doesn't help they were always placed outside shops that also sold cheap prepaid cellphone cards and recharge slips.

So there you go, these are several suggestions on how the recoining costs could be absorbed by the industry(2).

(1) Term is used entirely in the derogatory sense, and has no bearing of the same word used to describe a particular body part, or any other part of its owner, especially not the owner's mother. Also, the serum is actually fictional, the councils actually use behaviour modification to achieve desired results (sign more fines or you lose your job).

(2) Rort the customer.

Scam emails tell people they have cancer to trick them into installing a money-stealing Trojan

John Tserkezis

Re: Inquiring minds want to know

"Typical users will believe what they are told the file is, and wouldn't have a clue what the extension means."

When it comes to "typical" it appears your milage may vary.

Of the 300+ employeebase at my last company, I don't ever recall that particular rename trick ever being fallen for. We did have filters in place for known corrupt sources, but they did occasionally get through. Depending on the department, some would get zip attachments all the time - as a matter of their daily work.

So, either you were dealing with a collection of complete idiots, or more likely, you were too lazy to train them.

John Tserkezis

"Emailed zip files no longer serve a business purpose IMHO."

Bzzt. Wrong answer.

Had a client who couldn't download the latest iteration of our software that fixed a crititcal bug from our website. Claimed it "wouldn't download properly".

So I emailed to him. Nope, it gets everything except setup.exe.

So I renamed it. Nope, it interrogates the file and still blocks it.

So I zipped it, and renamed it. Nope, it inspected the zip opened it, inspects files and blocks them anyway.

I could have gone further, but it REALLY was beyond what I should be doing to work around something that's entirely outside my control. So I asked if he could get his IT people to open an exception, or offer another way. His response was diplomatic in the least, but that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

So I snail mailed it. Yep, with a fucking postage stamp and everything.

If it were a substancial volume of data, I would have snailmailed a thumb drive (non-secure critical data here boys and girls!). Are you going to block external drives next? CD/DVD drives? There is only so far you can go before you prevent your people from doing their job.

Remember how long the Soup Nazi lasted on Seinfeld?

Like I've said before, never piss off your customers, they might not come back. Second to that, never piss off your employees, not only will they not come back, they'll leave a trail of desctruction on their way out.

All because you took the easy way out. I'd downvote again if I could.

That NSA denial in full: As of right now, we're not pretending to be Facebook or Twitter

John Tserkezis

Deny, deny, deny.

Till you get found out, then, deny some more.

Is no browser safe? Security bods poke holes in Chrome, Safari, IE, Firefox and earn $1m

John Tserkezis

"Only Java held up to the time-limited attacks"

Say what you want, but kudos to Oracle who actually fix bugs rather than just pretend to, not mentioning any names Adobe.

FANBOIS' EYES ONLY: United Airlines offers FREE MOVIES on iOS kit

John Tserkezis

From the little research I've done on this, it appears it initially is available for Laptops, and iOS devices, with and excuse that they're having a "bit" of trouble with Android for some stupid reason.

The deciding factor here, is the application they MAKE you install onto your device first, which in turn gets the media stream via WiFi, which merely behaves as the transport medium. WiFi != Free for all content.

This is not a technical issue regarding the target device - there is plenty of competing technology that will allow "any" media stream onto "any" device with whatever software it comes with. My guess is they want to entirely control what you see, how you see it, and most importantly, bow before their sponsors who want to peddle their hire cars, accommodation, fast food, or whatever crapola that is by FAR more important than the feeble offering of 50 movies and 200 shows. (my dvd collection is many times larger than that, so they're not trying hard enough).

Too late for Untied though, anyone who knows anything has already prepared and done better - and likely flying another airline anyway.

Apple pedometer patent filing cranks up the iWatch rumor mill

John Tserkezis

Two points here:

"Let's just say that the USPTO has its work cut out for it"

I'm not buying it. But the PO will - as long as you pays your bucks, they'll process it.

"noting that a small percentage of its users had reported skin irritation when wearing it,"

So what? I experience irritation when I read about it.

YOINK! Toyota reveals – then DENIES – Apple CarPlay by 2015

John Tserkezis

"Oh right, Apple is involved. Limiting freedom of choice keeps their share price artificially inflated."

I was going to ask about those other Those-That-Must-Not-Be-Named phones that are currently outstripping iPhones in sales?

Odd they should do this really, the current (ish) crop of Toyotas have a reasonably good bluetooth connectivity with not only your (must-not-be-named) phone, but your phone's music collection - at least from what my brother in law says, he's quite happy with it.

Wireless charging standards war could be over 'as soon as 2015'

John Tserkezis

With some commercial chargers reaching AU$150.00, the "war" is far from over.

Even some Qi standard chargers are pulling $50, but sellers on eBay are flogging them for $10 or so. This is stupid - it appears no-one, no-one is interested in how effective a charger is, rather than how much money they can scam them for.

I call bullshit on 2015, this is going to get dragged out for a long, long time.

Plusnet shunts blame for dodgy DNS traffic onto customers' routers

John Tserkezis

Re: I know it's contentious in a free internet

"There should be no management interface of your router on your WAN iface. Ever."

Careful, "Ever" is a big word.

Sometimes WAN ports are not actually connected to the outside world.

In fact I use simple routers to control traffic in a certain way on WiFi Access points, because it's cheaper than a vlan capable access point and radius server to do the same job. Dollar for dollar, it's cheaper for "price-sensitive" applications. Ironically, the fastest growing IT sector in the work I'm doing now.

Any routers I have that are connected to the outside world have their management interface disabled as one would expect. Your statement would certainly hold true if you said "outside world", but "WAN interface" is a port that may be connected within an intranet which still needs to be managable. In any case, passwords are never factory defaults, and secure passwords are generated with something like PWGen in all cases.

Indonesia plans 10 Gbps FTTP as part of 20-million-premises broadband project

John Tserkezis

What's the bet it'll be faster and cheaper than Australia's famed NBN?

Google's tech training for Australian teachers revealed

John Tserkezis

"Even if you've registered already, the School asks you do so again thanks to a “a small problem with our enrolment database in our preparation period”."

Maybe they should have taken their own recommendations and tried to do the basics before embarking on a project like, a website.

Sysadmins and devs: Do these job descriptions make any sense?

John Tserkezis

I had real trouble working out why they would bother, till I read "can be understood by technical managers and HR managers."

Start with a well thought out plan, simplify it, dumb it down, dumb it down some more, then when you're done, compress that, and put it in a vice and squish it down so far it doesn't even resemble the bits it was made of.

Then embark on a wide-scale extensive, concentrated training course, and then, maybe, the brightest of the management and (irk) HR might understand it.

Now THAT boys and girls is what pissing money against the wall is all about.

Microsoft to push out penultimate XP patch on March Patch Tuesday

John Tserkezis

Re: Dearly departed.

"Shortly after performing maintenance on his Honda Civic his car was seen speeding out of control"

It would have been much more believable if you said it were a 2009-2011 Prius.

Dell thuds down low-cost lap workstation for cheap frugal creatives or engineers

John Tserkezis
Coat

Re: "you can spend around half"

"You'll spend the other half in a year when bits start falling off it."

Now, now, it's not that bad. Most of the bits will fail within the extended waranty, and most of those bits may be covered by that waranty.

Kinda like HP, but with less frequent failures.

China bans TXTing and Tweeting in Parliament

John Tserkezis

"In 2012, three ministers in Indian state of Karnataka were forced to resign after apparently watching porn on a mobile phone during a debate in the House."

If that's the worst they do, they have nothing to worry about.

I remember reading about a couple of guys in a Calcutta railway station who were watching a porn video on their work machines. And it would have been a non-event right there - if it weren't for the fact the monitors they were using at the time were routed to the timetable displays out on the platforms.

I tried to google for a URL of the news event, and found it had happened a number of times already. Some people never learn...

FCA drafts new rules to protect crowdfunders' lenders

John Tserkezis

Huh, who would have though? Crowdfunding is more stable, reliable, insured better, regulated better and just plain more trustworthy than bitcoin banks.

Windows 8.1 Update 1 spewed online a MONTH early – by Microsoft

John Tserkezis

I don't have 8.1 desktop around here...

...So I'm going to wait for the official April release before not caring about it.