* Posts by jb99

233 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Aug 2012

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Apple, Google: WE SURRENDER ... to each other in patent war truce

jb99

About time

The whole thing is mad, if they agreed to share this stuff not only would they save huge legal bills but could *all* made better phones increasing the size of the market. Everyone wins.

It seems that in the USA particularly it's not enough to win, you have to crush everyone else too

Get cracking on STARTTLS says Facebook

jb99

Hmm

I always thingkthat this is solving the wrong problem.

Emails need to be encrypted end to end, encrypt them in the users client and decrypt them in the recipients client. Encrypting the links isn't a good solution.

The theat of someone grabbing my emails off the wire is less than that of someone reading them at facebook or google or (random email provider).

They should be encrypted until they are in my email agent.

So there is little point in this.

Activist investors try forcing Google to pay more taxes

jb99

No

I'm a google shareholder. How do I vote against this? I'd rather keep as much of my money as I can thanks.

Dogevault praying backups work after confirming attack

jb99

Re: Bravo chaps

Yeah its kind of a spoof/joke currency. Except that somehow it seemed to gain some traction and actually be marginally useful for tips and small micropayments so is probably a little more of a real loss than it might appear.

jb99

Why

Surely they have learned by now that storing the bulk of the wallets on computers that have a direct connection to the internet is a very very very bad idea. I find it beyond belief that any virtual currency operation does so any more.

it's as if a real bank put their entire cash reserve in the desk of an assistant in a bank branch, and then were surprised when it all got stolen. No, they put 99% of it in a safe that isn't accessible at all in any way to the general public and only transfer the small amount of working capital to the public areas.

Why don't these organizations learn that if they are dealing with cash, even virtual cash, they need to operate in the same way that banks do.

Apple, Beats and fools with money who trust celeb endorsements

jb99

Hard to know what to buy

I'm looking for a good pair of headphones to mostly listen to music.

But it's SO hard to know what to get. Price doesn't seem entirely reliable as a guide, and I basically don't know which reviewers to trust because many of them seem to believe the same stupid things that this article is about.

How can I tell what to buy?

Hey, Samsung: Why so shy about your 960GB flash drive's endurance?

jb99

Any auto backup solutions?

I'm thinking for home use I want the speed of a SSD but don't want to lose my data. Are there any solutions which use the SSD but have a hard disk too and automatically back up everything to the hard disk so that if the SSD fails you can restore from it and continue as if nothing had happened?

Microsoft puffs up OneDrive, now with 1TB per head for biz users

jb99

Re: pointless until they sort their bandwidth

It's strange, previous had this problem with speed. But recently it's been very fast for me.

Something changes? I don;t know..

US biz spaffed more dosh on internet ads than TV spots in 2013

jb99

"Spaffed more dosh"

Seriously?

I'll come back to reading this site when they learn to write actual English.

GitHub probes worker's claims of hostile, sexist office culture

jb99

Hmm

The complaints all sounded slightly concerning until the last paragraph about hula-hooping... Umm, yeah what did you expect if you do that in the office?

Apart from that I don't feel qualified to have an opinion on this as I have no way to know what happened.

Panasonic slaps Freetime EPG on 2014 smart tellies

jb99

HDCP?

Is that screenshot trying to sell HDCP as a *feature* when it's entire purpose it to prevent you from using your device if someone else doesn't want you to?

Lenovo banks on $1 BEELLION Moto turnaround in SIX quarters

jb99

I actually believe this

Most companies I'd be very skeptical.

But somehow I believe this might happen.

Github brews text editor for developers

jb99

I'll continue to use gvim.

This won't be better.

MtGox has VANISHED. So where have all the Bitcoins gone?

jb99

Time to buy

Yay, cheap bitcoins. I'll be buying. Some. Not going to spend my life saving on it, but it seems like it might be a good time to risk 1% of them as nothing fundemental has changed about why it's a good idea.

Saving private spying: IETF Draft reveals crypto-busting proxy proposal

jb99

Ughhh

Can we please just stick to http for 99% of things, and https where necessary?

This http2 stuff seems to be incredibly complicated to no actual benefit.

Facebook gobbles WhatsApp for SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS

jb99

What is that?

A quick poll round the office, not one person had ever heard of them.

Which seems strange given how many users they are claiming to have.

/not evidence, just strange

Reports pump fuel into iCar gossip: Apple in 'talks' with Tesla

jb99

Seriously?

I has a lot of respect for tesla.

But if they turn evil by talking to apple then they entirely lost it.

WD My Cloud EX4 four-bay NAS

jb99

Synology?

I have a synology device which I think works really well.

How does this compare?

Bad luck, n00bs: Mozilla to splurge ADS inside empty Firefox tiles

jb99

Sound like a "feature" that nobody could possibly want.

One good thing from the Flappy Birds crapp flap: It's a handy 'tech' media rating system

jb99

Noooo

I had no interest whatsoever in this at all until all this fuss.

Now I'm finding myself wondering where I can get it.... Noooo!

Minecraft developer kills Kickstarted Minecraft movie

jb99

Maybe...

Maybe they can come to a deal and try again...

CCTV warning notices NOT compliant with data protection laws – ICO

jb99

The other issue

The other issue is that it's no good having a sign if there is no reasonable way to look at the sign and opt out which is essential impossible for most of the cases given here. The sign is pointless if you can't say no I don;t agree to this, and have reasonable alternatives.

Fujitsu launches lappie for oldies

jb99

Re: There was a time.....

Couldn't agree more!

I'm not yet at the age where I need this, but mid 40s I have got to the point where it's not quite as easy to see close as it used to be. And I broke my arm a few years ago and my right thumb and first finger never *quite* entirely recovered their strength. I don't have any actual problems using modern equipment, but a bit of thought and it could be so much easier.

Three-yaarrgh! Major UK mobile network's data goes down

jb99

Slightly affected.

It meant I couldn't read my work email on the way to work and couldn't read some web pages I wanted to (not for work). Not entirely happy...

But it's fairly reliable normally. I've had few problems over the last two years.

A short outage every year... ok...no big deal.

If this happened several times a year I'd be unhappy. But it hasn't.

Elderly Bletchley Park volunteer sacked for showing Colossus exhibit to visitors

jb99

I don't understand

Can someone explain what has happened here?

I don't understand what the organisations involved are, the connection between them, or what exactly has happened. The article doesn't seem to explain that very well...

Valve showers Debian Linux devs with FREE Steam games

jb99

Re: Can't resist

Yeah...

I don;t buy that many games but these days when I feel like a new game I *first* look what it available on Linux and if there is anything I like I'll buy that. I'm not going to buy a game *just* because it runs on Linux, but I will look there first now and only if there is nothing I want will I look for windows games. I'd rather run it on my linux machine than my windows machine (which I keep mostly for gaming now).

Icahn slurps another $500m in Apple shares, demands buyback AGAIN

jb99

"What I don't understand is why any company in the past has paid attention to him?"

Because at least in part it's *his* company. The management are the people employed to run the company he owns (in part).

jb99

Good...

Good, this should damage apple or at the very least distract them.

I dislike Icahn immensely but he's doing some good work here :)

If your telco or mobe provider hikes 'fixed' contract fees you can now ESCAPE - Ofcom

jb99

Contract

The real problem is that the contract you are given to sign does not accurately reflect the contract that you are lead to believe you are agreeing to. Yes you should read and agree to the details. But if the advertising and the person in the shop tells you the price is £19.99 a month for 2 years then that's what it should be even if the document they give you to sign has a little star by that claim.

I don't want them to have to spend half an hour going through a boring contract with you in the shop, but the law for consumer contracts should simply be that any terms and conditions that are not what a reasonable person would expect from the advertising and what they were told in the shop should not be enforceable.

Chrome lets websites secretly record you?! Google says no, but...

jb99

Microphone?

Why would my computer have a microphone?

It's a computer, not a phone.

Windows 8.1 update 'screenshots' leak: Metro apps popped into classic desktop taskbar

jb99

Just get rid

They just need to admit that metro apps and everything about their interface on desktop PC from the apps themselves to the tiled start menu is a complete and utter disaster for both usability and functionality and just scrap the whole thing. Seriously. The whole thing is just an unmitigated disaster.

HP sticks thumb in Microsoft's eye, extends Windows 7 option for new machines

jb99

Good

Microsoft need to admit that their phone style apps for windows (I don;t even know what to call them, which is a symptom of the whole fiasco) are just awful and nobody wants them, and that their new start menu is simply *worse* than the product they had before.

Scrap the whole thing while retaining the nice things widows 8 did otherwise, and call it windows 9 and they'd sell a load :)

ANYONE on Google+ can now email you, with or without your Gmail addy

jb99

I laughed at all the people a few years ago calling google evil

Turns out they were right.

I was a huge google fan a few years ago. Now I can't wait for my android phone contact to expire so I can cut my ties to them completely.

Whoa, hold on, Earth: Wolfram's discovered the 'Internet of Things'

jb99

Wolfram language

It uses the Wolfram language?

I can't see it going anywhere then, that is just a great big huge mess.

Block The Pirate Bay? Arrr, me hearties, new P2P client could sink that plan

jb99

They'll stop this

Eventually we are going to end up with an internet where you are only allowed to connect to shopping sites, approved entertainment sites run by large companies, and google.

Haswell micro: Intel’s Next Unit of Computing desktop PC

jb99

If only

If only the graphics were better this would have made a really nice steambox.

Go on, buy Bitcoin. But DON'T say we didn't WARN YOU

jb99

Good luck even finding if I have any bitcoins, let alone stealing them!

See brainwallet.org

My private key doesn't exist anywhere so can't be stolen. It can be generated at any time though using an algorithm from a long passphrase stored only in my mind. So good luck telling that I have any, let alone stealing them!

(And yes I know there are other risks while making transactions etc...)

jb99

Re: Tulips !

So use a wallet that doesn't download the entire blockchain. There are several choices, they use an online service to get information but your wallet is still secure on your pc.

Recommendations for private cloud software...

jb99

Re: Bittorrent Sync

Another +1 for bittorrent sync. It works very well indeed and seems to be secure.

Blighty's laziness over IPv6 will cost us on the INTERNETS - study

jb99

Seriosuly?

How can an ISP that doesn't provide ipv6 access be legally called an internet service provider. Sure they provide an internet service, but the name kind of assumes that they provide a proper connection.

We need to come up with a name for "ISPs" that don't provide a proper connection to the internet and start using that to distinguish them from actual ISPs,

Tesco's new fondleslab winks at Apple's stealthy NFC assassin iBeacon

jb99

Adverts?

" These gizmos are called beacons and the idea is that they beam data - anything from vouchers to details about the location -"

So it will be used almost exclusively for beaming spam and other advertising at people then? So nobody will ever turn it on?

Ubuntu 13.10: Meet the Linux distro with a bizarre Britney Spears fixation

jb99

Re: I don't want any of this.

Sure, and that's fine.

If they want to go off their own way producing stuff nobody wants then that's up to them.

The problem is that they also have a lot of good stuff, and it's not fun to have to decide if putting up with the bad stuff forever is worth the gain.

jb99

I don't want any of this.

Does anyone want any of this?

They seem to have had a meeting where someone asked "How can we make linux worse" and all their recent decisions are based on it.

HTC staring down the barrel of a US sales ban after Nokia's patent coup

jb99

Maybe not so bad

Patent claims usually make me angry,

But this time it looks like the patents concerned were for reasonably innovative improvements to the radio reception that were not essential to making a phone. The kind of thing that patents actually exist in order to encourage.

But I dont know the details well enough I guess

Dog bites man: Apple's Macs trounce all Windows PCs in customer love

jb99

What do you expect

They paid far too much for their device so of course they are going to pretend they love it.

Objectively apple sell overpriced gear that few people buy. It's just that those who do waste their money on it go on and on and on about how good it is so they can feel they didn't waste their money,.

Microsoft's swipe'n'swirl pic passwords LESS secure than PINs, warn researchers

jb99

It's not aimed at high security

The purpose of these locks is to stop your friends from picking up your phone and sending joke messages, or to stop the person who picks up your phone from your desk from making chargeable calls. For those this level of security is fine for the convenience it gives.

As long as people know this...

iPhone 5S: Fanbois, your prints are safe from the NSA, claim infosec bods

jb99

The real reason...

The police and courts already extensively use people's phones to try to prove people's locations when they are accused of a crime. But there is always the defense that it wasn't you that had the phone. That it had been stolen for example.

But now they get to "prove" it must have been you carrying the phone because you unlocked it with your fingerprint.

Basically it's just an upgrade to the government tracking devices that most people _pay_ to carry around with them.

The scary thing is that this would have seemed like paranoid ranting a year ago. Now it just seems obvious.

Modular smartphones floated by Dutch designer chap

jb99

No

They are not using tablets or smartphones as computers. They are using them as media players and simple games consoles. They are not computers, I don't know why the press thinks they are.

Dyson takes Samsung to court in UK over vacuum cleaner

jb99

I really dislike dyson

I've read quite a few reports of them doing this over the years.

Basically when I bought a cleaner my main requirement was "anything except a dyson".

Second-gen Surface and Surface Pro rumored to be minor upgrades

jb99

Price

My main problem with the surface pro is the price. It's just a bit too expensive. When I compare it with a nice samsung ultrabook or something, I can just get a much more capable computer that's sufficiently portable for my use for the same price.

If they were to find a way to cut the price by another 25% or so then it might be worth it to me. They do look quite nice

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