* Posts by MikeSM

31 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Dec 2010

Boeing zaps PCs using CHAMP missile microwave attacks

MikeSM

Re: Faraday Cage

"induced spikes in any conductors penetrating your cage (like copper power cables from the mains)"

Wouldn't an isolation transformer protect equipment from this?

Absinthe 2 lifts iOS 5.1.1 gadgets over garden wall

MikeSM
Thumb Up

LockInfo - definitely a must have!

PrivaCy - obvious

TetherMe - forget playing around with all those silly workarounds. This one enables native tethering.

SBSettings - The most useful part of this for me is enabling/disabling bluetooth and wifi from anywhere in the OS instead of having to dig through menus. Saves so much battery and time.

Revealed: Inside super-soaraway Pinterest's virtual data centre

MikeSM
Happy

I too am an introvert fwiw, and yes it seems Pinterest is nothing more than a problem looking for a solution.

Just very recently however I have begun to find Twitter quite useful. I prefer to keep my Facebook very personal/professional and not cluttered with a bunch of Likes and subscriptions. Personal friends and professional contacts only. This allows me to reveal very little to the platform/advertisers about myself. Now with Twitter I can follow feeds I find interesting like the local council, comedians I enjoy, software developers, political figures, etc. Because I've never shared any personally identifiable information with Twitter it limits the ability for third parties to build profiles about me. And I can keep my interests private from my professional contacts on Facebook.

Also I should add that I have never actually tweeted anything myself.

Free apps suck your power: researchers

MikeSM

Re: Free stuff costs more?

As the American saying goes:

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!".

Dammit Ramnit! Worm slurps 45,000 Facebook passwords

MikeSM

They actually have been doing this for a few months..

http://www.julianevansblog.com/2011/10/facebook-launches-anti-malware-url-scanning-service.html

however how many of your users actually read these warnings before obliviously clicking through?

AT&T asks Apple to signal iPhone 4S is a 4G phone

MikeSM
Devil

No worries

The Supreme Court of the US has already protected AT&T from class-action litigation.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2011/04/end-of-class-actions-supreme-court-upholds-at-t-arbitration-clause.html

Angry Birds theme park takes off in China

MikeSM

Maybe even the third..

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

Kick! Bostock! out! too! demands! Yahoo! shareholder!

MikeSM
Thumb Down

I still chuckle each time I see it and even read the headline to myself exclamation points and all.

Facebook music dashboard: Revenue at last?

MikeSM

I'm fairly certain Facebook already has their own funny money. I seem to recall reading a story about Facebook and Zynga squabbling over payment systems about a year back.

US Marines not allowed to fart in Afghanistan

MikeSM
Facepalm

..didn't know that blankets could talk.

"because it offends the Afghans"

You would think a military publication would know to use the proper demonym.

Amazon Free Apps start to rile developers

MikeSM
Facepalm

Re: 1 Sided

>>Also remember Amazon isn't getting money from it either.

Can't tell if trolling or truly that naive..

The free app of the day is a huge win-win for Amazon.

-They get a steady steam of daily visitors to their site

-They get word of mouth from these visitors

-They get click-thrus for all the ads in their app store for other Amazon junk

..etc

RIM launches five BlackBerry smarties

MikeSM
Facepalm

RE: Business phone

They don't need to make a camera-free phone. The camera can be disabled using BES policy.

iCloud.com goes live

MikeSM
FAIL

I'm guessing you came here from the RSS feed?

Remember a few months ago El Reg announced expanded coverage for down under..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/28/reg_aussie_ops/

I believe Richard Chirgwin covers the Ozzie bureau.

Here's the UK version of the story:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/02/icloud_prices/

Most Adobe Reader installs are out of date

MikeSM
Thumb Up

One stop updates for Win

This is pretty much what I came here to say. Imagine how much cleaner Windows would be with a one stop update center for all your installed software (similar to how iOS handles it). The way it works now is every program, even some from the same vendor, runs its own background service to check for updates. What a waste of resources.

Dev's iPhone cable melts after iOS 5 upgrade

MikeSM

Doubtful

From my experience (and I'm an electrician) I'm going to guess the more probable culprit is a faulty charging cable. Even the one Apple supplies with the phone is of incredibly poor quality (I amalready on my third - just picked up a Belkin that is made from thicker gauge wire).

I haven't noticed high temps while charging but definitely have seen them during heavy discharge - if I'm using the GPS in my vehicle with Bluetooth connecting to my stereo and the wifi hotspot enabled, the phone becomes uncomfortably hot - to the point where I won't even put it in my pocket.

Runaway process in beta OS (heavy load on battery) + shitty Apple cable = shorted, melted charging cable.

Would love to know what the other end of this cable was plugged in to, and what happened to it!

Schmidt preaches 'deep integration' desire with Facebook, Twitter

MikeSM
Thumb Down

DO know what you are talking about

I didn't read petur's post as praising anything.

Facebook has finally allowed users to download account data, albeit in a difficult and non-reusable way. Additionally there is a waiting period of at least 24 hours before it can be downloaded.

You data is NOT deleted after you close your facebook account. It is retained indefinitely "should you ever choose to come back".

And despite how strict you set your privacy settings, your data can still be leaked through your friends' ignorance - unless you completely disable the Facebook apps platform. A trusted friend can authorize an app to hoover information about their friends (read: YOU). Disabling the Facebook app platform severely cripples the site's functionality and prevents you from accessing the site from mobile apps, uploading pictures from your mobile's camera app, etc.

Bottom line: Zuck and Schmidt are both hypocritical nutjobs. They can shove their social networks up their respective asses.

IATA: this iPad could BRING DOWN A PLANE

MikeSM
Facepalm

@ArmanX

Ugh.

I too would love to use any and all my electronic devices while in flight. But it is attitudes like yours that make the use of ANY electronic devices banned.

Despite your assertion that your GPS receiver or MP3 player are "listen only devices", they do in fact emit RF energy. Any electronic device with a processor is capable of producing EMI. Your "cheap no-name MP3 player" is actually among those devices most likely to cause issues due to its poor or non-existent shielding. There are plenty of documented incidents of portable electronics causing disturbances in avionics.

Twitter settles with FTC over celeb account hacks

MikeSM
WTF?

eltiT

Since when did Twitter fall under the jurisdiction of the US FTC? The Federal Trade Commission serves two primary purposes: antitrust regulation and consumer protection; specifically:

"The basic consumer protection statute enforced by the Commission is Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, which provides that "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce...are...declared unlawful." (15 U.S.C. Sec. 45(a)(1)). " http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/brfovrvw.shtm

So some script kiddie pranking twat "celebrities" qualifies as affecting commerce in the US? WTF?

To be fair, I absolutely agree Twitter failed in protecting their administrative login facilities. But let's be honest: we're talking about a micro-blogging social networking service. This is not PayPal or Amazon, no money is changing hands here!

It's a sad day when the US government goes after a free* social networking service because a few people's feelings were hurt.

*free as in - no cost. no one sustained any financial loss in this "hack".

'Wrong amount of snow' caused Heathrow chaos

MikeSM
Coat

More importantly

Was it the wrong type of snow?

Adobe releases Wallaby to jump Jobsian Flash ban

MikeSM

Both ways?

One thing I've observed but never see mentioned in the 'Apple vs Adobe' Flash wars:

IT professionals are the first to grumble when they come upon a website that relies heavily on Flash for its functionality. Yet whenever a discussion about iOS comes up, they are also the first to point out the lack of Flash as a weakness in the iOS environment. So which is it? Does Flash suck or not?

In the interest of full disclosure, I do use an iPhone as my everyday mobile device. I have not found the lack of Flash in Mobile Safari to be a major hindrance to the use of my device. It seems most Flash-dependent sites have either developed a native app or an HTML5 equivalent by now.

I do realize this is a reflection of my browsing habits as well and may not represent all users.

That being said, I honestly just don't understand why this is still news.

Hackers find Google's music cloud

MikeSM

Re: Large collections

This is a great point. I don't see why Google couldn't license an acoustic fingerprinting service like Shazam, and develop a client-side app that scans your music collection and then securely transmits a list of all your songs to their server.

Windows 7 service pack 1 set to lift off today

MikeSM

Re: Could be interesting.

As Tom 13 noted, WGA is gone but we now have WAT - Windows Activation Technology. It won't just be freetards in the chorus if MS built this in to SP1. Despite having a legitimate OEM copy of Win7 that came with my laptop, I opted out of the KB971033 update because I don't agree with its functionality (specifically, the phone-home provision).

I'll wait on the sidelines, as always, for the horror stories. And also for word that KB971033 wasn't rolled in.

Chrome 9 debuts with WebGL, app store, instant annoyance

MikeSM
Thumb Up

see above

As noted above, there is a "beta" print preview option available by entering "about:flags" in to your address bar. Also Silverlight is definitely available for Chrome with native support. I use it to stream Netflix every day.

MikeSM
WTF?

Where did you get your information?

Upon automatically upgrading to Chrome v9 all of my extensions continued to operate perfectly:

AdBlock - Version: 2.2.29

FlashBlock - Version: 0.9.31

NotScripts - Version: 0.9.6

Keep My Opt-Outs - Version: 1.0.10

MikeSM

Have you even looked at the extension gallery?

Flashblock: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gofhjkjmkpinhpoiabjplobcaignabnl

Xmarks: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ajpgkpeckebdhofmmjfgcjjiiejpodla

Seagate tells flash bigots to get real

MikeSM

Self-serving denial

Lots of great comments so far so I won't repeat what's already been said.

Here's my unqualified assessment:

People's perception of reliability rather than the factual numbers will be more important. Laptop sales will probably peak in the next few years and the manufacturers are going to need a strategy to move them. It's very easy for a marketing department to make the argument that fewer moving parts = increased reliability. And the public will buy it.

As fas as manufacturing capacity, it's probably a non-issue. If there's a market for it, China will find a way to do it. Cheap.

For actual storage capacity, I concede that the trend has been more. However as others have already pointed out, this is again merely a marketing technique (moar is bettr!1!!). Most of the 'media packrats' I know personally actually prefer using external storage rather than putting everything on their laptop HD. Why? For one, there's the whole 'all your eggs in one basket' thing. Additionally it makes it a lot easier to supplement their bittorrent collection of music, movies and warez by swapping usb hard drives with friends without impacting their precious ratio on a private tracker.

WTF is... wireless HDMI?

MikeSM
Boffin

confused

Isn't it the role of the receiver/amp component to provide the HDMI inputs and switching mechanism?

If you're only using the TV's built in speakers you probably don't need to even bother with HDMI to begin with.

Conficker Group muses on hits and misses

MikeSM
FAIL

Have we learned nothing?

And yet IT departments far and wide, from Fortune 500 companies to defense contractors to governments, still allow all workstations to read/write/execute USB sticks. (stuxnet anyone?)

In this day of ubiquitous broadband internet, smartphones, and "cloud" infrastructure, I'm having a hard time justifying the need for any type of removable media for end users.

Ford cars get draconian parental controls

MikeSM
Pint

yank here

There is definitely no explicit content on terrestrial radio broadcasts in the US(per FCC regs); however satellite broadcasters Sirius and XM have not *yet* completely caved to the morality police and therefore do occasionally play uncensored music and talk shows.

Beer, because I'm currently enjoying one.

Gawker tech boss admits site security was crap

MikeSM
FAIL

show me the money

You (or your company) seem to be just as culpable for failing to walk away from a contract that opens you up to major liability.