* Posts by swisstoni

44 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2010

TSB outage, day 5: What do you mean you can't log in? Our systems are up and running. Up and running, we say!

swisstoni

Think I'll be moving accounts

Blimey you've only got to open the console in Chrome to see that these people really shouldn't be trusted with your money.

The Edward Snowden guide to practical privacy

swisstoni

VPN

No mention of using a VPN? I find that interesting. Does he consider them all compromised?

NASA primed for 9-minute live test of mighty rocket motor

swisstoni

Needs more struts.

Windows 10 Edge: Standards kinda suck yet better than Chrome?

swisstoni

Forking ridiculous

Hey I know competition is a good thing, but I do wish they'd just forked web-kit and saved us web devs the inevitable head aches to come.

Robots.txt tells hackers the places you don't want them to look

swisstoni

It has it's uses

I've had pen testers my and fail one of the sites I look after, just because it had a robots.txt. They didn't look at the contents of it, just that it was there. Robots.txt is a useful tool for controlling the behaviour of legitimate crawlers, it also makes it easy to identify those that ignore it and take remedial action.

Needless to say, it added an extra sense of perspective to some of their other suggestions, most of which I considered bullshit too.

Never mind those touch apps, full Office 2016 is coming this year

swisstoni

Re: All I want to know is...

Sounds like you need LibreOffice.

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

swisstoni

For pure after dinner theatre I don't think you can beat a balance brewer. No idea if they make a good cup of coffee though. I'll stick to my nespresso for my daily needs.

http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2014/01/belgian-balance-brewer-coffee-siphon-weird-coffee-equipment-how-coffee-siphon-works.html

CERN outlines plan for new 100km circumference supercollider

swisstoni

Build it somewhere else

Why not build it around London. At least then when they're done with it, it could double up as a couple of extra underground lanes for the M25.

Samsung ready to drop faster SSDs

swisstoni

Cue the inevitable......

But it's a rectangle with rounded corner posts

LOHAN straps on satellite comms capability

swisstoni

How about.....?

Why don't you use it do download a song from some publicity hungry US pop star?

Oh no wait, that would be an absolutely ridiculous thing to do and massive waste of time and resources. Who'd do something as stupid as that???

AMD loses marketing boss

swisstoni
Thumb Up

How long?

Have you been saving that subhead for?

Netflix snubs 'Tech City' for Luxembourg

swisstoni

VATs the way to do it.

This is simply down to the VAT rate. 15% in Luxembourg, 20% here. You can bill VAT at your local rate across the EU. As Netflix will want a harmonised euro price across the EU (eg 19.99). If they came here they would have to pay an extra 5% of their gross margin to the exchequer and also be at risk of currency fluctuations.

eBuyer £1 sale fail: Customers vent fury... on Facebook

swisstoni
FAIL

I bet there are some pretty depressed looking people in the Ebuyer marketing dept. What a great idea to make your website completely inaccessible during the busiest internet shopping day of the year. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

I'm imagining a few techies sat in a corner with an 'I told you so' look on their faces.

Smart TV shootout

swisstoni
Meh

YouView if you want to....

So when YouView comes out in 6 months time. Will any of these TVs get firmware updates, or will I have to drop another grand on a new telly to get it?

Cracked emails again deployed against climate researchers

swisstoni

Acronyms?

Is the confusion between the University of East Anglia (UEA) and a large oil producing nation (UAE) deliberate, or am I missing something?

Google hits the boozer with own brand of beer

swisstoni
Pint

Free Beer!!

Will this lead to free beer, all supported by ads? I think I could go for that.

Ten... Androids to outshine the iPhone 4S

swisstoni

Umm yes, my original T-Mobile G1 and my 16 month old HTC Desire are all running the latest version of Android (tablet version aside).

That's the great thing about android, you can generally hack away to your hearts content.

Premier League loses footie decoder case

swisstoni

Serves Sky right for charging Pub's so much for content in the first place. For smaller pubs it's just not worth the expense, unless they turn their nice venue into a horrible multi-screened venue which shows nothing but sport all the time.

I think TVs in pubs are the devil's work. But I can see the attraction of being able to show a couple of games a week to bring in some punters.

Amazon revamps E Ink Kindle line

swisstoni

Special Offers

I think the difference comes from there not being a 'with special offers' advertising supported option. The $99 Kindle touch is $139 without it, and the one we're being offered here is $109 without.

So $109 in £ is £72.66 + 20% vat = £87.20. So all in all, fair doos really.

swisstoni
Devil

Amazon site has just updated. At the moment it looks like we're only getting the $79 Kindle for..... wait for it......

£89

Rip off Britain strikes again. Now where my Daily Mail..........

Byte-dock MacBook Pro port replicator

swisstoni
Flame

I thought there could be issues running a mac book closed like this? The cooling on these is very well hidden/integrated and pulls air through the keyboard and out of the screen hinge. Which is why there isn't an option to disable sleep on lid close in OSX. Or at least there wasn't in Snow Leopard, I haven't checked Lion. You had to install a tool like InsomniaX to make it available.

Twitter discovers MMS for photo tweeting

swisstoni

And I thought all the teens were using MMS to sext each other. Unless of course that's all in the mind of the Daily Mail.

HTC knocks out the Beats

swisstoni

Sounds great, just get rid of the silly logo and I'll take one.

Oh and maybe throw in some decent headphones from a recognised audio brand like Sure or Sennheiser.

Satellite gives better picture of solar flares' effects on Earth

swisstoni

Maunder Minimum

So the last minimum lasted 70 years?

So that's 70 years of summers like that last one, and loads of snow at winter again?

Sod this, I'm moving.

Samsung plops out waterproof smartphone

swisstoni
Pint

I'd love one but...

I'd love a phone similar to this, but why do they have to give it such rubbish specs. Why not give it some innards that are worth protecting.

I'm looking for a replacement for my HTC desire. All of the top end phone's look like you'll be shoving something akin to a flatscreen tv in your pocket. I think 3.7 inches is plenty big enough. Just give me a decent resolution screen, 5mp+ camera, dual core processor and a decent battery. If it all comes wrapped in a tough waterproof case, even better.

Pint glass as it should be able to survive all manners of random drinking related injury.

Amazon Free Apps start to rile developers

swisstoni
Thumb Up

No such thing as bad publicity

Well i've just bought their app on the back of this story. I've been looking for a decent podcast app to replace the UX minefield that is Google's Listen. Looks like a nice app and has had some decent reviews, including a few from people who found out about it the same way I did. So perhaps they won't do too badly out of this after all.

Canuck ultralight pilot drops in on strip club

swisstoni
Paris Hilton

tit le

Photo or it didn't happen. If you don't have any of the parking lot, the inside will do just fine.

Archos 32 Android media player

swisstoni
Thumb Up

PMP?

What we have here is probably the first sensibly priced dedicated Sonos remote control.

Top-secret US lab infiltrated by spear phishers – again

swisstoni
WTF?

Stable Door - Bolted

'Representatives didn't return emails'

Um well they wouldn't would they, it's been turned off.

Seriously though, IE? What were they thinking? I don't let my 14 year old use IE because of the security holes in it. If I had a nuclear lab, I think i'd be a little stricter than that.

Iran to attend Olympics, despite 'racist' logo

swisstoni
WTF?

Iron, like a lion, in 2012

It's bonkers, you can take the letter's 2012 and rearrange them to sort of look like zion in pretty much any typeface, not just the ugly abomination chosen by the olympic designers. I don't think we can be blamed for the year, that would lie squarley at the feet of Pope Gregory XIII, or perhaps Jesus.

If there really was a consipracy to have the word zion in the logo, then I wish they'd just used Comic Sans and saved us all a few quid.

Samsung UE55D8000 55in net-connected LED TV

swisstoni
Paris Hilton

Unexpected Unveiling?

So did ... "Incidentally, browsing the Smart Hub had unforeseen consequences during my time with the telly. A conflict in IR codes meant that some Smart Hub commands actually caused my IR controllable curtains to randomly open and close."... this happen during your redtube moment? Red faces all round I imagine.

Ten... over-ear headphones

swisstoni

Grado for me to.

I'm right with you Llyander. The Grado SR80's are a great set of phones. They may make you look like a russian tank commander, but they sound superb. I don't think the sound leakage and isolation matter all that much. If you are really thinking about leaving the house with a massive set of phones on your head, then you need to seek professional help. For portable use, a set of high quality in ear monitors makes much more sense, and you don't look like a complete c**k either.

Nokia Digital Radio Headset DAB

swisstoni

Rovi?

The Roberts Rovi has been around for ages and will work on anything with an Apple dock connector.

I've had one for a while, and it's great if you're still. Not so good if you're moving around in an low to middling signal area.

My major criticism, and this applies to all DAB radios. The delay compared to analogue radios is awful. So it makes listening to TMS whilst watching the cricket at Lords a complete non starter.

ICO pays through the nose for 'website development'

swisstoni
Happy

ICO

Well if your abbreviation is ICO, then you have to take icons seriously.

Denon Ceol with Apple AirPlay

swisstoni

uPNP

Does it support uPNP or DLNA for those of us without Jesus Phones or Fondleslabs.

I've been using the 2player app on android for a while to do similar things to AirPlay and it's great.

YouTube honours shuttle dead with 'Workplace Safety' ad

swisstoni

Innapropriate

Well I didn't get any Workplace safety ads. But I did get some for Lingerie and Cheap Flights.

I just don't think there's an appropriate ad for this sort of thing, apart from maybe Life Insurance.

HTC DG H100 Media Link DLNA adapter

swisstoni
Thumb Up

DLNA Renderers

You can use pretty much any internet radio as a standalone audio DLNA renderer. They are normally just listed as uPNP, but DLNA is just a subset of that standard anyway.

I've been using a Roberts Revival iStream and the 2Play application successfully for some time. I can stream all my audio collection from my NAS box, or the phone itself and have it play on the Roberts.

Render farming is hot!

swisstoni
Thumb Up

Would love to hear more......

Any chance of another blog discussing the design, hardware choices, form factors and other assorted technical treats?

Xbox 360 outsells PS3 2:1

swisstoni

GT5?

I think the big seller for PS3 at the moment is the release of Gran Turismo 5, i've not tried it, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to be playing that with a move controller. So I'm not suprised they're not selling that many proportionally. Whereas the kinect add on is the major highlight for xbox at the moment.

GoPro HD Hero camera

swisstoni
Paris Hilton

Looks Great....

..how about you strap one of those to Paris? Plane or socialite, I'm not fussy.

BBC workers lose £240k of tech gear in two years

swisstoni
WTF?

What? How much?

You can be pretty sure that the company conducting this research wouldn't offer their services to an organisation of the complexity of the BBC for much under half a million. So by not using them, they are saving us nearly £250,000 a year.

You can bet most of those £1500 laptops were shiny aluminium, fruit flavoured ones. Those luvvies have to express their individuality you know.

Whatever they were, I do hope they're not including the cost of licences. I would hope they have site wide licences for most of their software, so the net software cost of one machine going out backdoor and another being purchased would be zero.

Dixons aims high, medium and low with own-brand blizzard

swisstoni
Unhappy

Budget range?

Does that budget range include their £20 usb and iec power cables? The sort you get conned into buying because there's nowhere else to go?

Postcard App has stamps licked

swisstoni
Unhappy

Nice try but......

Postcard to UK....99p

Postcard to Europe.... £1.49

The look on your face when you come back from holiday and see your data roaming bill.... priceless!

Amazon.co.uk takes on Tesco

swisstoni
FAIL

What a bargain

£25 for a bottle of Bombay and it's not even a Litre. I don't think so. Surely the idea of this is that it's meant to be cheaper?