Posts by P. Lee

Re: Back in the real world

QA on software for a mobile device? You're 'avin' a giraffe.

FIFY

S-J, S-J, how many patches have ya' sent today?

... on a mobile device.

(I know, but there's a historic reference in there too)

Re: I'd rather have the Chinese check my ...

> Since you seem to hate the West so much

Disagreeing with your government is pretty much a requirement for democracy to function in the interests of the people and disagreeing with existing commercial interests the basis of market competition and innovation.

If someone is reading my email, I'd rather the Chinese read it because they don't rule me and they are less likely to share my data with my government as a matter of course. That makes my government's surveillance plans less effective and if everyone did that, it might discourage them from spending money on those plans, which I dislike philosophically because I see impending financial collapse and the Germans can tell you what that does to people and governments.

Don't give the government the tools or the incentive to build mass surveillance systems. I know - its too late, but we can still fight the machine.

Re: This internet of things

> You'll need a net connection to Get Genuine within 30 days.

I'm sorry, your fridge is counterfeit.

Re: GCHQ isn't the problem

>It matters only that the person charged has refused to disclose the password.

>That is how the law is framed.

Indeed. Though the absurdity shows when you claim that someone is impeding an investigation by not helping you decrypt stuff, when you don't know what the stuff is. In this case, it had nothing to do with terrorism.

No doubt it will still be chalked up under, "terrorist convictions" though.

It would be interesting to know if the "I can't remember" defense would stand up if you had 50-odd usb keys.

I'm pretty sure I have a few USB keys lying around with encrypted contents. I was playing with them for a while and don't remember what the passphrases might be. I wonder if I deleted encrypted files on a FAT drive, if I would still be liable to provide passwords.

Its a bad law. Sometimes you have to accept that people will get away with crime. It's the price of a free society.

>But those were using SAS

and what will be sitting on the end of your TB cable?

Re: 8 too many

I don't know about the reality of it, but when I found out it had an 8bit bus, it rather negated all the nice "32bit" promotion that was going on at the time.

Almost bought one... went with an second hand Apple ][+ instead.

Re: Silly money

Or indeed an old core2.

What's the obsession with "new"?

Re: graphics capabilities needed to customize dashboard displays

The humble Rover Metro would also like to dispute some things.

Re: Proof by assertion

>he cruicial keystone of the patent system is that you are *disclosing* the innovation in return for term-limited rights to monopolise it.

The point with tech patents being that they are so strong/long/protected by threat of suit, that they may as well be secret - there's no benefit to the public so why bother granting the property right? Throw them in a PD bucket and let manufacturing finesse sort them out.

Worse, many of the inventions by legitimate companies are legal fictions designed purely to enable the use of legal costs to discourage competition.

That's before you even get to the trolls.

Re: Sex education

Mostly because we don't want 9 year old's finding an academic paper on sociopaths (big word, skip it) enjoying the control they exercise over their rape victims, and trying it out on their class-mates. Children have poor judgement. They think staying up late is grown-up. Tell them about the fun things grown-ups do and they will want to do it too.

I don't think the filter's default "on" is appropriate, but it is reasonable to have an option which allows little Johnny to do his research on Queensland without being surprised. Ideally he'd use an encyclopedia, but apparently reading books isn't the thing anymore.

Essentially, what it really comes down to is the relationship between the State and the Governed. Do all children belong to the State and parents are only allowed to keep them if they follow the Curriculum?

I ask, because that appears to be what most many posters here actually want - the State to enforce my worldview. Personally, I place little faith in the State and view "liberal" not as "enforced permissiveness" but as "tolerant of other (adults) who don't believe what I believe in." Toleration is not "agreement" but "agreeing to disagree." I really don't want the state to enforce my worldview because I'm pretty sure they wouldn't get it right and the result would be an abomination. Actually, even if they got it right it would be an abomination, because my beliefs require people to see my principles as attractive because they are better. It doesn't work when its enforced. Mostly, I want the State to get out of my business. Attempting to change people's attitudes is not the State's role, I don't care whether its Catholic or Gay lobbies pushing for it.

Re: the end of common sense....

Not so much a surprise, but it was the end of the time when we could convince ourselves it wasn't happening.

There was a time when you installed software on your computing device and it just did what it said on the tin. That just isn't true when it comes to phones. Ironically, for some reason I trust W8 less than W7 just because it has a phone-like interface. I find I have an irrational philosophical dislike for the latest windows and OSX versions because of what I've seen on mobile devices. I wonder if anyone else feels the same. I now consistently lie when registering for things and use my own domain with multiple email addresses to prevent consolidators tying things together behind the scenes. I don't trust google either.

There was a time when we thought, "I'm too insignificant to spy on." It turns out, it isn't true. Perhaps the NSA/GCHQ isn't after me, but the fact that they are building infrastructure so that no-one can escape is downright creepy. In the old days, if you disagreed with the government you could move, go somewhere where no-one knows you. Now, everywhere is homogenising and its beginning to feel claustrophobic.

The next time the economy collapses and a group becomes a scapegoat for things that have gone wrong. It is going to be very ugly indeed.

"Needs access to your contact book"

Ah, but is that to allow you to send an SMS to a contact or is it to slurp and send back to the mothership?

You can't know.

Which is why we need a proper FOSS phone. It reduces risk.

Re: Speechless

>If the children are so young that the parents do not want them to have access to sex-education sites, then why are they being allowed onto the internet unsupervised?

It depends what you call unsupervised. Parents have blocked access, much like putting up a stair-gate and then not bothering to keep an eye on the child all the time. Now you can let them playing that game on the ipad without worrying too much about accidental internet access. Of course it isn't perfect, it's about risk not perfection. The kids are in the garden, they might eat dirt and get sick, but I still put limits up to prevent them from wondering down to the park whenever they feel like it.

As far as the LGBT lifestyle thing goes, BT says they don't discriminate between that and hetro. If you define your lifestyle in terms of sex, you have to expect to fall foul of those who don't want to know about your sex life. If I put up a blog about "hetrosexual lifestyle" I'd expect to be filtered too.

There also appears to be a lot of hormone-driven adolescents out in the forums today. Here's a hint: it isn't always about you. When my kids are 6 years old, they don't need to know about STI's and how to use a condom. Yes, I could use squid to block redtube and they probably wouldn't stumble onto it anyway, but if I'm happy to live with the restrictions or don't fancy running a server 24x7, why are *you* expressing so much righteous indignation?

I am going to teach them how to deal with such things, but not yet. They aren't hormone driven and children learn a lot through imitation. I see plenty of children imitating adult sexual behaviour (inappropriate dress, inappropriate dancing) and its disturbing to see sexual behaviour in a child. Obviously it isn't hormone-driven, its pure learnt behaviour through observation probably from the media. I wish the schools had libraries instead of pushing kids onto the internet but I can't control that either. So maybe a filter is one useful tool.

Some parents limit the time on the internet to what is reasonable for homework and rely on a filter during that time. Others have the time to watch everything. People are different.

Lots of people here appear to be concerned about the content of the filters. I don't understand that. It comes across as ethical imperialism - you will listen to and watch and believe what we want you to. Maybe I don't want to see girls shaking their breasts at me while I look for a torrent on TPB. That isn't your call. Maybe my kids are wondering around and may ask in public why daddy had pictures of "mummy" without her top on, on the computer. Not even an up to date episode of Grey's Anatomy is worth that.

Get off your high-horses. This isn't an ethical move by anyone (as if a BT or the government has ethics!), its the government trialling control of the internet at a national level. Its a way of them showing that they are "doing something" while they achieve nothing of importance.

It's creepy, invasive, but that's the whole "internet filter" thing. The content of the filters is irrelevant.

Oi BT! I don't mind you offering filtering to those who want it, but *OFF* by default please. On by default makes you look even more like a corrupt government pawn.

For those of you who are adults and pay for your own internet connection and don't want the filter. Turn it off, complain to your MP and move ISP. If you aren't all those things, sorry, it isn't your choice to make.

Re: It;'s all a trick

Porn reduces sex to a commercial transaction and people to a commodity. It is also psychologically addictive. Consumption usually starts at an age when proper sex isn't available/appropriate, creating a hazardous mental habit for later in those who by definition we don't believe are capable of making good decisions.

It is not fine. However, it should also not be banned since we definitely shouldn't be handing such technical capabilities to any commercial or governmental organisation.

Re: Wow.

Based on the latest Office... so is usability testing.

No, I don't need my excel cursor slowed to treacle, thanks.

Re: Tulips ! @ YAAC

> If the government is broke or unable to honour all these notes then the value falls or at worst it becomes worthless

In ye olden times perhaps. Currency used to be backed by gold, then (Sterling) silver, now there's nothing. The government doesn't promise anything. Not only that, national debts are multiple times the value of the economy, so the currency is worthless anyway.

We just pretend everything is ok to put off the awful day when we can't avoid the fact that it isn't.

Then you can say, "Hello Weimar" and probably everything that came after it too.

Re: 2015 Year of the Linux Desktop

The issue isn't desktop maturity, its app availability and migration cost that is the problem.

I thought the Scottish parliament had it's powers delegated to it by Westminster.

Likewise, Westminster is a delegation of authority from the queen.

I can see why she may want to disassociate herself from that though.

Re: Pat Gelsinger

Isn't one of the points about going to ARM is that its cheap to make lots of lower-power CPUs. Hypervisors are not required because the "waste" from a less then flat-out CPU is minimal.

Of course, the OS should be doing what the hypervisor does, but that's another story...

Re: Sadly Trevor

You want a budget of *how much* to track 60 people?

+1. I fell foul of the same trick. Apple upgraded me to the point where their device is more or less unusable.

It did work ok, now it doesn't and I can't roll back. Roll-back capability might have won me back. Now I lump them in with facebook in the "has some cool tech but is an abomination" bucket.

I might have had warm fuzzy feelings for them, but using updates to make older hardware unusable so you'll buy a newer phone isn't ethical in my book. That isn't a company I want to deal with. Lack of version control in the stores is also a problem. Apps used to work with my OS version, now they don't and there's no way to get a new copy of the older software.

Ah for the old days... a basic bootstrap rom with a tftp client, all in a few kb. So simple, so effective, so sadly missed.

Perhaps that's why I'm so fond of FLOSS - the upgrades are free, the old versions continue to work - there is never a feeling that someone is trying to leverage things you've bought to get more money out of you.

Re: Title is too long.

> But the attitude is IT is a cost centre, not a profit centre.

It is a cost, not a revenue centre, but there are so many over-cost projects which don't deliver savings and/or are not at all robust.

The general trend in s/w development appears to be "larger, more bloated and buggy" so rewriting is an unattractive option.

Re: Message to mobile operators

> Let's be clear about this: there was no margin on iPhones for the networks. None. It's a subsidised sale.

That's true, but I think its probably true for most of the phones being sold, isn't it?

The question is how accurately the networks pick the sales targets for themselves.

The anti-competitive bit is really only when the network over-estimates sales - then the other handsets get squeezed and Apple continues to make margin. That over-estimation may be an genuine error by the networks or it may be a less desirable product failing or it may be an economic downturn.

The issue becomes that Apple maintains it's margins in a downturn and is forcing the smaller companies out. The sales structure is anti-competitive, as all vendors would like. It's time to lump subsidies (Apple and Android) into the predatory-pricing category and ban them.

Re: "coast" for a decade, growing profits year over year by 15%

I'm curious to know if people/business feel if every price rise corresponds to a rise in benefit from using MS products.

Slap on a new GUI and make you buy it again in order to keep using exchange, isn't a feature I'm interested in. The question is not 'are there wizzbang new features' but 'do I want/need the new features?'

I suspect the answer for most people (for pc's and increasingly for phones) is 'not enough to pay for it.'

With the office365 stuff I get the impression that the profit increases are short-term. People are unprepared to switch, but when they do it will hurt MS. When they can no longer sweat the assets because the don't own them, the global economic crunch will come home to MS and those who who sell enabling tech - you can't keep increasing prices when your customers aren't.

Re: So many Anonymous Cowards

S4. Aud$ 539-569 from kogan.

Re: Ahh, companies that build equipment to break the Internet...

More like, companies which do censoring have *their* products broken because *their* products don't scale.

A top of the line Bluecoat does less than 700Mb/s, is ludicrously expensive and appears to be deliberately hobbled. With 24-core servers and blade systems from all major T1 providers, why are we looking at miserly appliances with some of the worst, unintuitive admin gui's which haven't changed much since the 90's?

No sympathy for Bluecoat and their really flexible, but horrible, internet-breaking kit.