* Posts by John Tserkezis

2242 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2007

Another year, another Telstra privacy slip

John Tserkezis

Nice, it looks like they've given up on even trying to hide their screwups.

Apple’s Siri gets sweary with British child

John Tserkezis

Glad to see it still happens...

Back in the days when DOS was prime, and windows software was in the up-and-coming stage, I was testing some corporate windows (win16) software.

Under normal conditions, windows was run in the autoexec.bat, but I tried running the windows software under a DOS prompt anyway (I was bored and had time on my hands, so sue me).

Where I was expecting the standard "this is a windows program" message (forgive me for paraphrasing, this was a long time ago), instead, it went along the lines of "this is not DOS software you fucking moron".

While this may have been acceptable for shareware of the time, it wouldn't cut it for corporates on the off chance they want to have a "play" with their computer. These guys pay a rediculous amount of money for the software, and bucketloads more for the data feed. No really, the fees are just plain fucking scary. So no, callilng them fucking morons was not on, these guys have heavy duty lawers on the payroll for normal day to day work, so taking us to the cleaners for a "funny" statement would have been a breakfast snack to them.

I did report the "bug" to management. I suppose the programmer responsible who thought it was funny at the time, would still have a sore arse today. Whoever it was, sorry dude, but I can't let something like that slide. No matter how funny *I* found it. :-)

Wi-Fi Protected Setup easily unlocked by security flaw

John Tserkezis

"Yes, it's easy to spoof a MAC but a MAC whitelist means your hacker has deliberately and consciously crossed the line into illegality. No longer can they claim they just switched their laptop on and Windows just connected automatically to your router."

Just because something is illegal, it doesn't stop anyone from doing it.

It only offers you legal recourse, and then only if you catch them.

Once they've sniffed your packets, logged into your network and sucked out your IP, they're gone - no need to hang around after all that.

Good luck with getting that horse back into the stable.

Nissan Leaf battery powered electric car

John Tserkezis
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It gets better.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Nissan Australia is testing customers' suitability before allowing them to purchase one.

<http://smh.drive.com.au/green-motoring/buyers-must-qualify-for-leaf-electric-car-20111221-1p4vp.html?page=-1>

This is great news for Nissan, because it allows them to claim 100% customer satisfaction in their sales lies ^H^H^Hpamphlets, while still selling a piece of crap.

Samsung hauls Apple into court over emoticon patent :-(

John Tserkezis

"If Samsung has hundreds of technical patents why are they scraping the bottom if the barrel with this?"

They're trying to piss Apple off?

Yes, there is significant prior art (if it is was I think it is, there's no patent numbers specified), but the same goes for Apple too.

This isn't about "you're using our technology" anymopre, if one side bends over and takes it, they WILL go down, so you retaliate with the like till the fight goes away, or one end up broke (whichever comes first).

Channel Seven cleared by ACMA for use of RIP Facebook pics

John Tserkezis
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What copyright?

If *anyone* retains copyright, it's Facebook.

Try reading the terms and conditions next time you click on a button.

Or doesn't the facebook generation need to read contracts because they already know everything?

Brits turned off by Smart TVs

John Tserkezis

Can't say I'm suprised.

For those who do know what they're looking at, the features on TV sets are fairly lame at best, even when compared to something like game consoles. When you're looking at media gate boxes, the gap is even further, and for those of us with full blown PCs in there, there is no competition.

Mind you, I'm in Oz, so considering there are a whole heap of older people who don't even have the Internet at their place, certainly aren't going to want it on their bloody TV.

LightSquared screams 'conspiracy' over leaky test results

John Tserkezis

So they're not really complaining that their tests were leaked, but rather, that where everyone had previously *thought* the tests were bogus, now all doubt was removed...

FOI request turns up Carrier IQ surprise

John Tserkezis

You're not paranoid if they really ARE out to get you.

So much for Carrier IQ's innocence, and anyone who uses them.

Yep, I'll take THAT smartphone please, the one that DOESN'T have Carrier IQ pre-loaded.

Certification for Malaysian IT pros?

John Tserkezis

Not suprised really, Malaysia has been pretty hard on IT professionals.

Making them pay for their registration is just another way to kick them in the goulies.

Windows Defender Offline: For PCs too hosed to go online

John Tserkezis

I can't believe they offered this as an "option".

Perhaps it's just me, but if you're going to disinfect a box (or at least try), the *FIRST* thing you do is take it offline.

Bitdefender? Really? Your box is hosed to the point it can't connect and Bitdefender is going to save you? Good luck with that, as the saying goes.

Download.com sorry for bundling Nmap with crapware

John Tserkezis

"Mistake" my arse.

This is no "mistake", it doesn't matter what they're "distributing", they're attaching scumware to make a buck.

iOS finally gets Palm compatibility

John Tserkezis

Yeah, no thanks.

iPhone? No thanks.

In case of world destruction, and I lose both my Palms (primary and spare), and the only phone left on earth is the iPhone, then I'd probably have more important things to worry about.

Sorta knocks my argument around a bit, but then again, I wouldn't have to stoop so low to use an iPhone - so I'm still happy.

El Reg's life of Steve Jobs - now available on Kindle

John Tserkezis

When's the audiobook version being released?

Especially useful for those NOT in the 9-18 year old demographic that are capble of reading and waking, riding or driving at the same time.

Stars behind the clouds: Oz government wants ratings

John Tserkezis
Unhappy

Oh dear.

You know this can only possibly end badly....

‘Blogger not a journalist’ says Oregon court

John Tserkezis

This is why Wikileaks was created. No problems then.

No wait...

Office 15 beta ready for fondling by early 2012

John Tserkezis

"vote with their feet and went from OOo to LibreOffice..."

There is a Bug^H^H^HFeature in LibreOffice Calc that removes gridlines if you change the cell background colour.

The original intention was to mimic Microsoft Excel.

Many people quite rightly argued that if they wanted to use Excel, they WOULD have used Excel.

The powers that be finally admitted the change was short-sighted, and revered changes for the next major release (v3.5)

We're still waiting. This is a year down the track, on a release that split from the Sun OpenOffice because they didn't like how things were going.

Sounds like the blind leading the blind...

John Tserkezis
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"Not only can current versions of Office read files created in pretty much all previous versions, but Microsoft have released a compatibility pack for Office 2003 to allow it to read files created in more recent versions."

Future versions can *read* earlier version documents just fine.

But all bets are off if you expect all of the formatting to LOOK the same though.

Ditto for their official 2010 to 2003 document conversion utility.

Result is very messy, and that's not counting the painfully wrong formatting either.

Flinging Facebook insults at Thai monarchy earns fat jail terms

John Tserkezis

I'm glad I live in Australia.

Where insulting our Majesty the Prime Minister is a national passtime.

Jew or not Jew app withdrawn from iTunes

John Tserkezis
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Does anyone have to be reminded, that, for this app to be banned, it would have had to pass the super-strict apple application vetting process in the first place?

My kindom for an anti-apple logo.

A pear seems to fit the bill.

Oz ISPs propose copyright enforcement trial

John Tserkezis

What happens when everyone votes with their wallets?

And moves to an ISP that doesn't babysit them?

It'll give a whole new definition to "customer churn".

Rumoured iPhone 5 'will have 4in screen' against Jobs' wish

John Tserkezis
Happy

Not only will they make it, the fanbois will suck it up more than any other previous incarnation.

Why? Because they're idiots. They'll buy anything.

Not only talking about Apple fantards here, but all and sundry.

I remember when small phones were all the rage, users would go into shops and be hell-bent on finding something smaller than what they already had - at any cost. "look at my new phone" they would say, I'd ask where (too small), "it's so cool, I have GPS maps on it, I can watch TV on it, I have four spreadsheets open on it" again, I'd have to ask where, because I can't see it anything on that 1" screen.

Some time later, presumably when their fingers are riddled with RSI from trying to press buttons that are way too small, and now wearing thick glasses to compensate from the long periods of staring at that tiny screen, now they want big screens.

The bigger the better. I'm waiting for a tablet that can be used as a phone.

With a stylish case and shoulder strap, it'll be the next big thing in handbag/manbag accessories.

Mark my words.

LinkedIn dumped by biggest sugar daddy

John Tserkezis
Unhappy

Funny that.

I created a LinkedIn account about a month or two back, because I received three requests to do so from known friends in the space of a week. So I did.

Come several weeks later, after a dozens of requests to become their f**ing friends from people I don't know, spam from other members who have nothing else to do than flog off their crap to anyone who'll listen, and constant spam^H^H^H^Hreminders from LinkedIn that I didn't fill in every little pointless field in my profile - I'm out.

I would have liked to say that at least it wasn't Twitter or Facebook. But now I'm not so sure.

I feel so dirty.

Banks bung hard-up Acer £315m loan

John Tserkezis

Taking out a loan to pay off another loan?

Beginning of the end.

And I don't care if it is considered a valid business "procedure".

Valve says credit card data taken

John Tserkezis

"Still haven't seen it clarified yet whether this applies to all Steam accounts, or just those linked to the forums."

Seriously? This is your major worry here?

It's akin to saying, someone broke into my house, but only ransacked the kitchen, so since the kitchen doesn't apply to me, I'm not going to worry about it.

The fact that *anyone* got in *at all* should be a concern to you.

Toyota, Intel connect to connect cars to web

John Tserkezis

Great, just what I need...

...a car that while waiting in traffic says "There are new software updates available! You have selected to automatically download and install these updates. Please wait while I download 63 software patches and reboot 14 times, you may notice the engine stop and restart several times during this process, you will be able to continue your journey in about 45 minutes. Note, it is highly advisable you remain with your vehicle during this process. Toyota wishes you happy motoring!".

Adobe confirms mobile Flash Player's race is run

John Tserkezis

I for one..

...will be happy to not upgrade my flash player AGAIN for the tenth time this bloody month because every web site says "you must have the latest...."

HTML5 will aleviate that to some degree, but, I can't help thinking about the ad factor being shoved down our throats.

It's easy to say the Internet is not a porn delivery system, likewise, Flash is not an advertisment delivery system.

But we know how things turned out *anyway*...

Invasion of the radio snatchers

John Tserkezis

"The entry of Sweden’s Spotify to the Australian market has been one of the worst kept secrets in the music industry"

News to me.

But then again, I don't fancy paying for my music twice. Or three times.

Plus service fees and network data of course.

"it is currently advertising extensively for local staff"

One man's "extensively" is another's "watch how hard I try".

I found one entry for a "Label Relations Manager", and as far as I can see, only on the Spotify website.

I've also looked (admittedly not very hard) on three of our larger employment sites, with no finds on company or job title.

Dunno, this smells very much like a promotional story disguised as a "real" news story.

Airline strikes, unions outraged

John Tserkezis

Joyce is going to need that pay rise...

Number one rule of any business, is don't piss off your customers. They might not come back.

Rule number two, is don't piss of your employees. Not only will they not come back, they'll bite your arse before they jump overboard (or are pushed as the case may be).

Good luck with your pay rise Joyce, after pissing off both your employees AND customers, you're going to need it to cure your arse that should now be the consistency of mince meat.

Boss leaves robot in charge of office

John Tserkezis

Big Bang Theory

Yes, Sheldon created a Remote Presence Device, after he got spooked by Real Life reducing his life expenancy.

All it did was piss everyone off.

One blanket should be enough to disable it though.

Or better yet, encourage it (a little push) to go for a walk down the stairs.

Microsoft trousers yet more royalties from Android gear

John Tserkezis

All the royalties in the world might make you rich, and feel warm and fuzzy inside...

But it wont bring Windows Mobile back from the dead.

Vodafone customers fume over iPhone 4S delays

John Tserkezis

Tell me, what does the 4S have the previous incarnations didn't?

No wait, didn't they fix "that" antenna issue?

Or was that slated to appear on the iPhone 5?

Suckers. Really.

Will litigants chase Oz smut-watchers?

John Tserkezis

Pornmongers chasing prnmongers.

Never would have thought that would happen in a million years...

Mozilla to Firefox users: Ditch crashtastic McAfee plugin

John Tserkezis

Missed that one

"Is there a version 7.0 of Firefox? Must have missed that I'm still on 3.6.23."

Like Flash, I'm rapidly approaching the "never upgrade again" stage. After a smattering of firefox upgrades here, I am on 6.0.1 and got reminders that I'm not on the latest and greatest barely a month after installing it.

Over it thanks.

At one stage they upgraded once every year and entirely ignored issues everyone was whining about.

Now they're upgraded every second day for yet another BS feature we'll never use.

Thanks Mozilla, you'll never get it, will you?

How the Yahoo! homepage predicts your clicks

John Tserkezis

I don't see what the fuss is about.

You select from a pool of stories, and optimise the most likely to be clicked to the top, based on readership.

Anything like "man gets hit in groin by footbal" goes to the top.

And something like "housefire kills family of six" goes to the bottom.

Simple.

TalkTalk still the most whinged about telco

John Tserkezis

there's something inherently slimey about most telcos tbh #

Not wrong. The most complained about sector in Australia is, guess what, Telecommunications.

Kinda like all the telcos are trained at the same spot.

Arduino to add ARM board this year

John Tserkezis

96MHz???

What were you expecting? These are small single chip micros for small applications.

This isn't like upgrading to an i7 so you can reboot faster, the appliations are small, and you don't need a beefy cpu to do the job.

Revolving tweets as Twitter’s chief scientist exits

John Tserkezis

Twitter had a scientist on board?

Shocking, I would never have picked it.

iiNet publishes fibre broadband plans

John Tserkezis

"Nobody ever said the NBN would be “cheaper” than broadband today; the word used in the original press conference was “affordable”."

"less affordable" would be more correct.

But that's alright, the NBN is nice and shiny so that makes up for it.

Yahoo, Microsoft's Bing display toxic ads

John Tserkezis

THIS crap is why I use Linux.

Irrelevant. Using Linux (and Bing) will lead you to the same malicious code.

But that's not was being discussed here: It's that the search engines return known malicious code.

The fact you can't actually execute the stuff on your Lunux box is irrelevant by this stage.

HP sued by investor over PC and TouchPad antics

John Tserkezis

Who's running the company here?

I've seen a few companies that were run by the shareholders alone.

None of them exist anymore.

Companies have the company in their best interest.

If the company is your ONLY interest, you'll end up with a company, and everyone will be poor.

Shareholders have money in their best interest.

If money is your ONLY interest, you'll make a pack of money, then you'll go broke.

There IS a happy medium, and if you expect to get there, the shareholders should NOT make the moves here.

Security firms: Android malware set to skyrocket

John Tserkezis

Why do I get the feeling...

...this sounds very much like there is a rapidly growing market with no "brand xyz virus scanner" penetration, and they're just busting to get into the game?

Australia to issue passports for males, females and... X

John Tserkezis
Happy

Whoo Hoo! My weight is no longer the reason everyone will be looking and pointing (and laughing) at my manboobs.

Now they'll be looking and pointing (and laughing) at the "X" on my passport. And I'm ok with that.

Dole-office civil servants allowed Twitter but no Facebook

John Tserkezis

Instead of asking why was FB blocked, I want to know why Twitter is still OK?

No really, like there's a difference between the two as far as time wasting goes??

TomTom fights falling satnav sales with iPad app

John Tserkezis

TomTom don't give a stuff about their customers #

You think?

When they started, support in Australia consisted of a Dutch-based fax number.

Reportedly, they DID actually answer your queries though, so that makes it all right then.

Then they had a local (Sydney) sales and service outlet.

Then that sales and service outlet became a sales outlet.

Then the friends who had TomToms (after I tried to tell them not to) said it was cheaper to replace the entire unit rather than upgrade the maps.

Today, I tell everyone to buy whatever the hell they like. They don't listen to me anyway.

Probably for the best...

Big pharma discredited by Twitter drug-pushing: Official

John Tserkezis

Who needs Twitter?

"A pharmaceutical company's use of Twitter to promote medicines discredited the industry..."

Er, I don't think they needed twitter, they can themselves, all by themselves...

Apple augments reality, tells you where to go

John Tserkezis

Hasn't this already been done?

Or am I missing something...

I recall a system still under development that used a separate GPS receiver and laptop with built in maps that was built for the purposes of "touristy" information,. and perhaps to automate and streamline the new student orientation at the university.

This was well before hand-helds existed let alone had the power to numbercrunch this.

The prototype was quite large, and was a huge backpack that consisted of a laptop and associated equipment along with the battery packs, and used a virtual-reality headset with built in camera to augment the video.

Mind you, that hasn't stopped apple from patenting as its own, even if they had to steal it.

AFACT vs iiNet round 3

John Tserkezis

And I'll say it YET AGAIN.

You can set up a system, be it DRM, courts, or otherwise to absolutely enforce a zero-pirate environment.

But you had better be happy with your three remaining customers.

LightSquared blasts GPS naysayers in FCC letter

John Tserkezis

People will just have to decide:

Which do they want more?

For their SatNav unit to tell them where they are,

or to have internet connectivity so they can tell their Failbook friends that they're lost. Again.

AT&T: 'Eat too much data and we'll strangle you'

John Tserkezis
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"the few that spoil it for the many"

It's downvoted because by definition, Unlimited means unlimited.

It doesn't mean unlimited, but (said with a mere whisper) limited under certain conditions.

That kind of logic is confined to politicians just before election day.

The customers (well 5% of them anyway) are taking _exactly_ what AT&T were offering.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Just because you chose not to, doesn't put you in any higher moral position.