Posts by Novex

Streaming (or caching via streaming) - pah. Do I really want yet another cloud service which gathers data on everything I do and everywhere I go? Add to that that I have no control over the quality of the digital music stream.

Give me a CD of the music that I want to listen to (that may not be available on a streaming service, or even for download) and I can choose to rip it to a file format of my choice (MP3 at highest quality with a decent VBR), put the resulting files on my microSD card and pop that in my phone and listen without breaks, adverts, or any other annoying shit. I retain control of what I want to listen to, not some spotty herbert who thinks they have the right to tell me what I should and should not like.

Oh, and if for some reason I want to, I can listen to the uncompressed* CD directly in better quality on my home system, and I have a decent source should I ever need to re-rip for any reason to a different file format.

Me? Grumpy? Never! ;-)

*uncompressed in the sense that it's probably the best quality most people can get. 44.1/16 is (most times) by definition a form of compression compared to an original recording, which, if I get really technical, is a compression of an actual real analogue sound itself.

To add to the government getting us deeper into the shit, they are also subsidizing low pay and self-employment through in-work benefits, which causes an increase in government expenditure while reducing the tax income*. This seems to have also had the 'unintended' consequence of making at least some employers think that they don't have to pay a living wage out of their profits and can just pay minimum and the government will always make up the difference.

As an aside, has anyone actually stopped to think why suddenly so many people decided to become self-employed? I have an idea, maybe it's because the private Work Programme providers (and by extension the public Job Centres) kept banging on at the unemployed to become self-employed as a way to trick the figures so they could get their WP pay-off from the government, because they sure weren't getting it from getting anyone into actual jobs (and unfortunately for me, I know this from being on the receiving end of such advice). So that increases the debt even more.

*technically, if all those people who are in low pay were on full unemployment benefits, then the government expenditure would be higher, true. But the effect in the long term is that low pay carries on for far longer and therefore over time the benefit expenditure is higher and the tax income lower.

Mozilla Firefox Updates Getting Too Frequent

I don't find Oracle's decision surprising. I'm considering sticking with the ESR releases in future as well. Too often Mozilla have introduced changes that have borked 'my' add-ons every time and it's getting very frustrating. I suppose it just goes to show that relying on another product as a framework for third party functionality is risky (relatively speaking). This issue affects a lot of other software as well, like WordPress; anything written for Java or .Net; in fact, even stuff written for Microsoft Office programs.

3D printing definitely has more development to undergo before it's particularly useful to the masses. But even then it will never replace mass production outright as the economies of scale just can't be matched.

So it will pretty much always be used for niche items such as: replacement parts for things now out of mass production (like car engine parts); small runs of bits for satellites (I believe NASA already do this); one-off body parts like prosthetics and other medical uses (bio printing of organs for replacement is already being done); hobbies (like the food printing mentioned, or any other art or craft); or prototyping, as already mentioned.

The biggest thing yet to be sorted out is the 'finishing' of parts. There needs to be some kind of addition to the process that cleans up the final printed part so that it feels like it's been mass-produced. Currently that finishing still has to be done by hand.

I did a quick scan of the pdf file and found no mention of Microsoft Security Essentials. Bearing in mind that it's likely to be used by quite a few Windows users, and I didn't get the feeling the article was aimed at only non-Windows AV, that seems to be a serious omission. Coupled with the pdf not having a decent structure, not listing all AV software tested, and not giving a properly laid out set of results for each AV product, and I'm afraid this whole examination starts to look woefully inadequate. Which is a shame, as it appears to be attempting to highlight valid shortcomings in AV products.

Apparently Synology units are compatible with WD60EFRX (at least, the DS412+ is) according to their compatibility checker.

https://www.synology.com/en-uk/support/hd/model/DS412+

Rooting

I didn't buy an Android phone until I felt sure I could root it and install a 'firewall' around the core (in my case I use xprivacy). Despite having to do that, and keep an eye on xprivacy settings too, I'm very glad I did as some of the app permission requests beggar belief.

However, I agree with comments above that such pullovering ;-) about shouldn't be necessary. There really should be a proper permissions capability built into Android right 'at the core' giving a user total control over what data and facilities can be seen/used by any application, without having to do such things as 'booting and rooting'.

Is it just me...

...or is this whole Google Glass thing starting to get about as close as we can to what William Gibson wrote about in 'Neuromancer'?

Shouldn't that last line read 'The irresponsible operators have been notified, the researchers say.'?

So is this yet another case of nobody wanting to bother with checking out the security of their systems, and just throwing something into existence because they can? I wonder just how many more of these really piss poor implementations (of either hardware or software) we're going to read about in the next few years...

Welcome to the 'there's-no-such-thing-as-a-perfect-world' life despite what the cloud purveyors would have us believe. I am of the opinion that no critical system/software should be trusted to an 'all-eggs-in-one-basket' solution, but that's the way the 'clunts' would have us 'users' work. So I'm with Mr. Barnes and his reply above.

The problem I have with the paper (which I haven't read by the way, so I accept liability if what I'm about to say is wrong) is that the article and their comment suggests that they haven't come up with any ideas for mitigation of the 'improvements' for spamming they have proposed, which if they were decent folk, they would have at least tried to do.

Ah, but...

...are techies really the best people at doing the very people-centric job of networking and communication with lots of other people? IMHO, I think not.

What this article makes me think is that we don't have enough technical jobs in this country any more due to all the outsourcing, so now we've got to find something for the technically-oriented to do which isn't actually technical...

Take aim...

I'm going to put my head above the parapet for a shooting, and argue that this is not a good thing to happen. While iOS and Android are arguably good systems, it helps to have a third player in the tablet and lightweight device space. If MS is to stand a chance of making much headway then they need organisations like Mozilla to be there with their apps. While Metro for the regular desktop and laptop PCs is pointless, it's a good system for touch-screen and gesture devices and it would be a shame to see it fail because of restrictive capabilites put in by MS. Any well-known apps for it could only help its chances. Mozilla pulling out doesn't help it at all.

(need an icon for 'taking a bullet for my country', or being a devil's advocate)

PCs are now workstations?

The days of the PC as a consumer device are gone. It will live on as a workstation though, both in business and in the home, especially if we count serious PC gaming as a form of work-level usage, rather than just something purely casual. For all the casual stuff, the phones, tablets and consoles can do and are happily doing the job.

Other than a single drop out I've had no issues. Restarted modem and router and all has been fine since.

I don't think Plusnet are any better or worse than any other provider - most times their customers have no problems, occasionally they're struggling. How is that different to BT, TalkTalk, Virgin, etc.?

Admittedly the router I had supplied to me is pretty basic and probably not up to making many connections (i.e., more than a couple or three wireless connections at once), but it works for most usage scenarios. In the case of needing lots of wireless connections, it's up to the user to look into their usage patterns and find something after-market that works for them. How is that different than any other provider?

Only way to be sure...

...of security/privacy is not to let your data out of your own hands. Even encryption isn't necessarily a guarantee that your data won't be visible to someone, somewhere as a result of spying and malicious back doors. I can't even be sure that a personal cloud server on my own internet connection isn't susceptible to hacking.

Of course, it's all a matter of degrees. There will be some data that isn't sensitive and it doesn't really matter who sees it, but there will be other times when the data is in need of care about where it goes. I might be willing to put a music file or two on a cloud share, but not a CV (too much risk of identity theft). I might be willing to put game saves in the cloud, but not my medical records.

A Truly Secure System?

The only way I can think I'd be happy with my medical information being in an online DB would be for it to be in its own 'black box' - effectively its own little database program that only I and my doctor can have direct access to. Anyone else can only ask a simple question that can only have one of three answers: true; false; and null (or in more common parlance: yes; no; unknown).

In that way, if any medical search for a particular condition is needed, then all the 'black boxes' can be asked a question. For example: does the patient smoke? They get answers from the boxes of either yes, no, or unknown. Those that answer yes can be told to alert 'their' doctor accordingly and the matter can be followed up face-to-face with the actual patient. I suppose this in essence is like the black box being a medical avatar for the patient.

Of course, I don't expect any company or government department would even have a clue what I'm talking about (least of all the NHS in the UK :( ).

Dual Boot

Personally I think that to get Windows to have the level of hardware control desired would require Windows to have direct access to that hardware. So my answer would be for either a dual boot arrangement, or to have two separate machines. If finances allow for that much memory and Xeon processors, then money for more than one machine can't be out of the question.

Site Selective Image (and Video) Blocking

Especially for mobile devices but useful for desktop too, I'd like to see site selective image loading. That way I can block all sites from downloading images (and video) by default, then enable such on a site-by-site basis (a bit like NoScript's way of working with JavaScript).

Peasantdale

The Pleasantdale drive sounds from the specs like it's suitable for (and maybe even designed for) being a repository of information to be read, but not written back to very often, if at all. A website storage drive maybe? Perhaps a place to put non-writable VMs?

A bit of a shame..

I switched to Winamp from WMP quite a few years ago now (pre Vista's release I think) due to changes in WMP that I didn't like. Winamp came up trumps as an alternative enough that I bought the Pro version and I've been happy with it most of the time ever since, with just the minor niggle or two.

I've downloaded the latest release, and will keep on using it as long as I can. I even have older computers I can keep running (or get a VM going with Win 7 or XP) which will allow me to carry on as long as those computers keep working.

I will probably eventually have to change to something else, just like I have to change mobile phones eventually (for ones with no removable battery or storage :( ). Life does move on, even when sometimes we don't want it to.

Keep It Going

Personally I'd like to see BB survive, but with a focus back on business-like mobile devices and services for all sizes of enterprise. The biggest problem with Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's WinPho devices is they are far too consumer- and cloud-centric and in being so, they're moving too far away from what a business phone needs to be - independent and secure (IMO).

Not Quite Cloud...

I recently set up my own ClearOS server for email, with SOGo for groupware. It all works, kind of, but of course it's not a proper cloud service in that it doesn't have apps that can be downloaded to phones, etc. But it did finally get me away from Microsoft's Outlook (I now use eM Client instead as it can handle the CalDAV and CardDAV that SOGo uses) and having my email hosted. But running my own server does need a decent internet connection (which I have) and the cost of the electricity to keep running the server 24/7 needs to be included, though it isn't much.

I'm sure there are easier and probably better home cloud solutions out there, like the NASs mentioned already, but what I would say is that I am much happier now that I'm not locked in to any cloud service provider's offerings.

Hmm. Personally I'd be thinking along the lines of:

HTML5 for the front end interface with Apache & PHP on a web server;

C++ for a core and permissions logic tier on a back end server, keeping the code for data handling as far from JavaScript as possible (never trust a web client with checking of data or permissions);

Postgres or MariaDB for a back end database storage. RDBMS for most uses is fine, though a JSON implementation might make life easier depending on what kind of data is being stored.

By going HTML5 based, you won't have so much to worry about with different clients being used to access the system, and also if you change your client computers at a later date, the core logic is not platform specific to the client, being kept away on a server that would probably be running Linux or Unix.

I once had a contract where my immediate boss (a woman, I might add, and a very nice one too on all accounts) realised that the best way to get the best out of me was to work with me and support me, not pressure and stress me. That was one of the better contracts I did, simply because I wanted to go in and do the job, rather than feeling that I had no choice but to go in.

So, for employers, hear this: it pays to be positive and supportive to your staff, particularly your Aspies, because we'll put in the extra mile to get the job done!

"ICANN has previously said it wants to "unleash the global human imagination" by extending the number of top level domains in operation."

More like unleash a way to make money...

I am of the belief that, as mentioned in a previous post, it's better to let a message be available to world+dog and encrypt it, than try to hide the whole line of communication.

My rule is: always encrypt at the client using a public key published by and for your recipient, then send to recipient.

All that's needed to enable this to work more transparently on the existing email system is for there to be a replicated worldwide set of servers that hold public keys for given email addresses, and an email client 'add-on' that can look up the key and encrypt an email using it before sending the email.

The user of any given public key can update to the public key servers for the email-key pair as and when they need to.

Please somebody tell me this somewhat simple system already exists?