* Posts by Restricted Access

33 publicly visible posts • joined 27 May 2010

CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers

Restricted Access

Life continues to imitate art

The IRL Youtube streamer Ice Poseidon recently got a lot of flak from his viewers when a developer for one of Ice's apps/projects did a similar thing. Ice claims it was the dev going rogue but some still believe Ice wanted it to squeeze out a few extra dimes from the viewers, others think it was done for the "content" i.e. a bit of drama to spice up the stream.

Every SECOND there are EIGHT more Seagate drives in the world

Restricted Access
Stop

Re: This is a joke right?

Correlation does not imply causation. They may in fact have a lower failure rate than alternatives however their greater market penetration due to being in cheap machines could be what causes that perception. Alternatively it could be a fault induced by sub-par ventilation and components in the low end machines that overstress the drives.

TSA to revise nudie scanner software

Restricted Access

RE: I don't travel to the states any more

Be a man, stand up for what you believe in and tell your workplace you refuse to visit the states.

Airport face-scanning robots switched off

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: You what?

> The chip doesn't contain the photo

Yes it does.

Mumsnet backtracks support for net filter

Restricted Access

RE: Meanwhile, back in the 21st century...

> Virtually all phones - including bog standard ones - now have internet connections

So install a parental control and net nanny app on the phone. Although I believe telcos already default to filtering content to be teen-safe (i.e. you can't visit gambling sites on your phone) unless you explicitly request for it to be turned off and verify your age by providing credit card details... at least, that was the case when I joined T-Mobile.

> I was under the impression that one of the ideas was to ask providers to tag their content to a standard, so that browsers could filter based on that standard unless told not to.

Why does this need to be government mandated when there are plenty of products out there in the world that already do just that?

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: @ Restricted Access

Not quite. I saw "net filter" and assumed filter.

Restricted Access
FAIL

Filter != Monitor

> they're actually asking the Government to force their ISP to monitor all of their web activity and see that it fits the govt's list of what is acceptable.

If you want to only view government approved websites then install software (or even hardware) that will "monitor" your activity for you. That way, those of us who do not wish to be censored, or have content censored from us, can live our lives in a free society.

Restricted Access
Thumb Up

In the words of Gavin Newsom

"It's not the role for government to decide what's in the best interest of kids; it's the role of parents to decide."

Labour forum leaks email addresses

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: even simpler

To follow what I just posted, here is a website that does just that...

http://www.nationalpetregister.org

A website that uses confirmation links of the form:

http://www.nationalpetregister.org/activate.php?e=example@example.com

The website also has a registration form where the password input has a type set to 'text' instead of 'password'...

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: even simpler

The whole point of a confirmation email is to prove you have control or access to the registered email address. If the identifier was just the email, someone could register other people's email addresses by faking the confirmation since they would be able to construct the confirmation url from known information.

Flickr thinks again about 4,000 pix loss

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: Cockups happen

"the new management will forget all about previous agreements such as this..."

What is there to forget? It's not like there will be a Post-it on someone's desk reminding them to extend this guy's subscription each year. All they would have done is fired off a one-off database query that basically looked like this:

UPDATE users SET membership_expiry_date = (current_timestamp + interval '25 years') WHERE username = "bindermichi";

Nothing more needs to be done.

If Flickr did become part of something else it would just merge the membership expiry dates of existing customers into the new system.

Restricted Access

RE: Hmmm

"So how long until the privacy police are moaning about Flickr keeping people's photos AFTER they have deleted their accounts?"

The privacy police would have less to complain about if someone designed a decent deletion process and explicitly informed users of their data retention policy. But is it really too much to ask that someone creates a system that allows you to delete an account whereby the account gets deactivated for 30 days, logging into the account during this period reactivates the account (thereby cancelling the deletion process), after 30 days of being deactivated all account information is deleted from the active system, after 90 days (or whatever the tape cycle of backups is) the information will no longer be held on the backups, and, most importantly of all, the user is actually informed of all of this during the deletion process.

Photo loss blogger to Flickr: You're f*cking kidding

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: riiiight

The guy didn't throw a fit because they 'lost' his stuff. He was dissatisfied with their account removal procedure and subsequent compensation. As a paying customer he was given simply given an apology and extended subscription when they deleted his content without a review or a deactivation period. He has the original files but until this was picked up by the media he was expected to upload, tag, name, link, and group over 4000 images all over again, which would have taken months of work. Even then that wouldn't fix any issues related to external sites that had linked to the old pictures.

So, before jumping to rash conclusions perhaps you should RTFA along with the source. That way you'll find that you're far less likely to end up with egg on your face.

Lock and load: Birmingham launches gunfire location IT

Restricted Access
Big Brother

RE: According to Beeb news..

According to the Beeb news website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-11950517), before the 12.07 update and after I enquired about it, the police were apparently quoted to saying that surveillance was not an issue as the sensors recorded decibels and not voices. Needlessly to say I was rather confused and worried by this claim. To add to this rather odd claim, the BBC news website included a clip which clearly showed that the sounds are recorded in full glory, can displayed as waveforms, analysed, and played back.

Councils 'spend shedloads on CCTV'

Restricted Access

Who watches the watchers?

http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/

As seen on the 4 part video 'The Shy Machine' by cveitch (http://www.cveitch.org/):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eym5MgaGpxc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zh8oLE2gbo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vxaGDTtpEg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46B78J2YwMM

Not surprising that Birmingham is top of the list considering it's massive CCTV operation that it put in place to monitor the Muslim population (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jun/17/birmingham-stops-muslim-surveillance-scheme)

Blu-ray barely better than DVD

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: It's not just about quality though

"BluRay discs can run at slower speed and transfer a large amount of data over a longer time. That allows them to hold more 'stuff'."

Oh, so BluRay discs (BD) just spin slower and have more transfer endurance than DVDs? I was under the misconception BDs had a higher storage density due to using smaller, more compact 'pits' on the disc which required the use a laser with a shorter (and ultimately 'blue') wavelength in order to be read.

Do you work in an electronics retail store by any chance?

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: Toy Story 3

"Also, the pop-up menus and the ability to bookmark scenes, very useful when I want to resume a movie from where it started. It isn't just the picture quality, it's all the extra perks included with BDs."

I think you're confusing BD features with media player features. It's the device you're using to play your BDs that allows you to resume where you finished and is something that also exists on some DVD players too.

Restricted Access
FAIL

RTFA

Which? wrote:

"Our expert viewing panel watched a selection of 17 films from a variety of studios, both made before and after the advent of the Blu-ray format. Each title was viewed simultaneously on DVD and Blu-ray disc on two identical Full-HD Sony TVs (Bravia KDL-40W4500) and played back on two identical Sony Blu-ray players (BDP-S550). Blu-ray players can play both high-definition and regular DVD discs.

When watching a DVD movie on a player connected to an HDTV via HDMI you have the option to adjust the settings and ‘up-scale’ the picture. For comparisons sake we left the 'up-scaling' option off, so the DVD was watched in its regular 576p resolution setting."

Google 'sacked Apple pioneer over leaked Schmidt memo'

Restricted Access
Headmaster

Monkeys and typewriters

Almost lads. Keep up the good work.

Cyber cops crush plod-snapper site following Millbank riot

Restricted Access
Big Brother

RE: @Jim Booth, 16th November 2010 10:35 GM

"As far as I am concerned I'd rather suffer from a false positive instead of allowing an illegal site to remain online while the paperwork is finished."

Guilty until proven innocent. I like the way you think.

LimeWire (finally) dies under judge's gavel

Restricted Access
Thumb Down

Re: Great!

>So 'cos the song in question takes a while to get going, that gives you right to download it without permission and without paying for it?

Woah, laddie. That's a mighty big straw man you're building there. I know 5th November is around the corner but you're getting rather carried away here. I only said 30 second previews didn't allow for decent representations of songs. At no point did I advocate copyright infringements as an alternative.

> Notice you picked on prog bands, who are notorious for making 25 min epics, to make a convenient argument there!

Firstly, prog bands? _bands_? fun. aren't progressive rock. More like power pop.

Secondly, you say convenient argument, I say picking the most obvious examples to make a point without wanting to spend all day thinking of examples. My point remains valid nonetheless but to assure you that 30 seconds isn't enough to make a good judgment of a song here are further examples, this time covering the genres R&B, Dance, Drum and Bass, and Classical:

"Graduation Day" - Kayne West

"Right here, Right now" - Fat Boy Slim

"Slam" - Pendulum

"The Planets Op.32 Mars, the Bringer of War" - Gustav Holst

The Kayne West track is an example of a song that starts with a monologue and breaks out into a song. Fat Boy Slim and Holst are examples of songs that build to a climax. While the Pendulum song is an example of a song with monologue and change of style from rap backing track to trance.

Restricted Access
FAIL

Re: Re: Tigra 07 - what are my options?

> How about the preview button on most Music stores for the first 30 seconds of a song?

30 second previews are only good for determining if you've found the right song. It's not a very good representation of an entire song. Case and point:

"Be Calm" - fun.

"Echoes" - Pink Floyd

"Time" - Pink Floyd

Zuckerberg leapfrogs Jobs on Americans' rich list

Restricted Access
Boffin

Animals have money too...

The World's Ten Richest Pets are as follows:

10. Brownie, cat, $4.1 million

9. Hellcat, cat, $4.1 million

8. Pepe Le Pew, cat, $6.2 million

7. Ani, cat, $6.2 million

6. Frankie, dog, $6.2 million

5. Gigoo, chicken, $10 million

4. Trouble, dog $12 million

3. Tobey Rimes, dog, $92 million

2. Kalu the chimp, $109 million

1. Gunther IV, dog, $372 million

Famous 'Invisible Gorilla' trick vid gets sequel

Restricted Access
FAIL

Meh

I missed the monkey in the original video but this one was just too easy. Spotted the gorilla, the player leaving, the colour change and still was able to count the passes.

UK.gov scraps stop'n'search terror power

Restricted Access

RE: Load of old codswallop

'The police already have to have reasonable suspicion that the person they're stopping and searching is a terrorist or involved in terrorist activity. They've never been allowed to just stop and search people for no good reason or hassle photographers taking photos of Trafalgar Square.'

That's Section 43 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000011_en_5#pt5-pb1-l1g43)

Section 44 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000011_en_5#pt5-pb2-l1g44) outlines that an area may be authorized for stop and search which Section 45 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000011_en_5#pt5-pb2-l1g45) goes on to clarify that their power "may be exercised whether or not the constable has grounds for suspecting the presence of articles of that kind".

iPhone 4G blingmobe: Yours for £13k

Restricted Access

RE: Ostrich

"the bloody things could be endangered."

Nah, the feet are most likely sourced from ostrich farms found in the UK.

New 3D displays use falling water drops as 'voxels'

Restricted Access
Thumb Up

RE: Interactive

Something that makes you feel dirty and clean at the same time? Sounds like a winner to me!

Computer grads can't even get jobs offering personal services

Restricted Access
Flame

RE: not good?

So you redesigned their infrastructure to the point that you near enough made your role redundant yet feel justified in whining that they aren't paying enough? Perhaps the reason you haven't demanded the pay rise you feel you deserve is because your employers realize that you've done all the work and don't really need you all that much.

Restricted Access
FAIL

RE: Don't call me Shirley

If you need a specialist, you hire a specialist, simple. What you don't do is advertise for a CS graduate, where graduate in this sense clearly implies recently graduated rather than someone who simply has a CS degree, and then complain no one is up to scratch these days.

Colombian cops seize cocaine World Cup

Restricted Access
Coat

Well...

blow me away...

Robotic cargo spacecraft misses rendezvous with ISS

Restricted Access
Pirate

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

Nice one, Chunk

FTC slaps down commercial keylogger firm

Restricted Access
WTF?

RE

What you talking 'bout Willis?

Facebook unveils simpler privacy controls to spur sharing

Restricted Access
Badgers

RE

It's possible to set your account so that it doesn't appear in searches, although you'll still be findable via someone searching through a friend's friend list.