Re: Well they need to do something about it

"If you look into the crown dependencies, you discover an interesting fact - they're not really under parliamentary control."

I didn't say they were, nor did I imply it being very specific about their relationship to the UK. But they can be leaned on.

e.g. the UK scrapped the Low Value Consignment Relief which was implemented so Jersey could export things like flowers to the UK but ended up allowing Amazon, Play.com et al to export goods out of the EU, into Jersey and then back into the UK to avoid VAT.

I'm sure there are various punitive measures and incentives that can be dangled in front of these places to change their minds about particular loopholes.

Re: Smart watches are still pretty dumb

A "dumb" watch runs for years between charges. Why should someone have compromise so severely on that or need yet another charging dock / stand just for a watch?

A screen that turns off is also huge problem. A "dumb" watch has an always on display. It does not need a free hand to turn it on which someone might not have if they are driving, hauling a bag, or talking on the phone (oh the irony). It's just inconvenient to have push a button to see the time.

The G-shock is the only one of the current crop of smart watches which I consider acceptable in either regard. The Pebble's display at least is always on, but approximates time to save power which is pretty crap.

I think once phones catch up to the tech that there may be something to say for smart watches. At the moment they're just clumsy power sapping gimmicks.

Re: JimmyPage : they can suspect all they want

""they can't *prove* it....." Yes they can. All they need is a surface level scan of the drive and a professional to stand up in court and say "

Then you wheel out your own expert who says how full of crap theirs is. That Truecrypt is a popular, free and ubiquitous tool that it's a considerable effort to set up a shadow volume, that they've offered no evidence that there is one, that the effort required to make one renders the presupposition highly questionable and that if there is a shadow volume it would be virtually impossible to test because of the way the software functions.

Then you get your defence to reiterate that the defendant has been completely forthcoming during the whole investigation and the only reason he initially refused to disclose his password was the highly personal nature of the "my genital wart pictorial diary" content on the volume which he subsequently relented to show and he knows nothing about the arms smuggling allegations the prosecution is on about.

Re: And then...

"If they suspect you of something and you're using Truecrypt, they will suspect the hidden volume is present."

They can suspect all they like. Convincing a judge is another matter, which is why it might be a good idea to make the fake volume as sensitive and personal as possible. Just not incriminating.

Re: And then...

"On certain police investigations - if you can't provide the key to an apparently encrypted file then it's a criminal offence. "

Certain crypto products like TrueCrypt provide a measure of deniability by offering a shadow volume functionality. Basically two keys work on the same data, one leading to the real data and one to the fake data. Providing your data is sufficiently "sensitive" but not incriminating you can disclose that key and the cops and CPS would be hard pressed to convince a judge you had not complied. e.g. fill the phony volume with pictures of your knob, suicidal thoughts, scans of your bank statements or anything else someone might wish to keep secret but of no relevance to the investigation and give it up when requested.

I doubt it would be easy to do in the context of a realtime conversation on a phone though. The device would have to generate and throw away the session keys so it was utterly impossible for someone to give them up even under duress. Additionally perhaps the app itself could make "phantom" connections between nodes mimicking real traffic, or act as a proxy between other nodes (a la freenet) as another form of deniability.

I doubt very much if Mr Page cares about the science. If he did he wouldn't continuously cherry pick (and usually distort or embellish) findings and ignore the rest.

Since the point wasn't spelt out or even implied, I chose to address the technical aspect. Also, it's not like there was an open standard for plugins in other browsers. Netscape's NPAPI is as proprietary in its own way as ActiveX.

And maybe Google are forcing it, which is why it's more important than ever that there be an open standard equivalent to it in terms of capability and performance.

Re: NaCl <> asm.js converter

The asm.js FAQ suggests it could reduce the 5x overhead of running code over JS down to 2x compared to native execution. Sounds like a worthy thing to do for the likes of emscripten. The bottleneck is still the need to convert to JS, even a subset.

PNaCl is different than ActiveX. First, programs are expressed in an intermediate format called LLVM bitcode so they either run in a VM, or they can be laced with memory & security checks as they are turned into native code. So the program would essentially have its own address space, heap, stack and file storage space separate from other apps or the OS. Second, the APIs that they can use are restricted and implemented by the browser host which can do additional security checks. Thirdly apps are only hosted through the Chrome Webstore which IMO limits the tech's usefulness but does allow them be tested for malicious behaviour and removed if necessary.

An ActiveX component is just a native DLL or EXE. It can literally do anything it likes, OS security permitting. So if it was registered as as safe for scripting, and was exploitable, any malicious website could instantiate it, exploit it and own you.

None of this means that PNaCl is going to be bug free but that's an implementation issue which can be fixed rather than a flaw in the concept itself.

I wish other browsers would implement something similar but browser agnostic. Emscripten is a project that allows C to run in a browser by compiling it to LLVM bitcode and compiling that into JS which is what gets run. Performance is naturally horrible. Running the bitcode directly would be much faster, potentially near native.

Re: Buy an ultrabook

"All things being equal, why would anyone prefer a clamshell?"

Because not all things are equal. The Surface Pro (perhaps living up to its name) has a larger surface footprint than an equivalent size ultrabook. The high center of gravity and lack of stiff hinge means it has a kickstand at the back to support it at a fixed angle and the keyboard is flimsier so it needs to fully rest on something too. Balancing it on your knees in bed or a chair is an extremely precarious proposition.

Chances are if you need an i5 it's no big deal to have a clamshell. And if you don't need an i5, there are more appropriate and cheaper devices for the tablet form factor (some of which come with keyboard docks with stiff hinges).

Re: Got off lightly

"LulzSec hacked Sony, which required Sony to bring down PSN, and fix PSN's codebase so that it was fit for purpose. What proportion of the $20m total cost are you assigning to Sony for being incompetent, and to LulzSec for exposing their incompetence in a criminal manner?"

Oh I see Lulzsec were just doing them a favour! It all makes sense now.

And if I kick in your door, smear faeces all over your bed and walls, and steal your home sex tapes and bank account records and release them on the web I'd be doing you a favour too for not having a stronger door. You'd thank me for it. Right?

Re: Got off lightly

"Nonsense. Even the quoted "damage" cost was not more than the equivalent of a class 4 felony criminal damage to property,"

Which article are you reading?

One accused was making $2500 a month from running a botnet of 100,000 computers and charged with 6 offences. Please tell me how much it would cost to clean a botnet up? How much loss would you put on each of those PCs in terms of its degraded performance and denial of service to the people who owned them?

How much total would you put on a rampant spree of attacks that went on for nearly two years, stealing information from various sites and the consequent harm both financially and reputationally to various companies?

Just Sony alone claimed they lost $20 million which is not unreasonable given how long PSN was down, the loss of reputation, the loss of revenues and the theft of 24 million account details.

Go do $100,000 aggravated property damage over and see what sentence you get. The simple fact is these people got off extremely lightly.

Re: I don't get the appeal

@Roger I hate to break it to you but virtually every laptop running Windows "just works". Turn it on you get a desktop and you do stuff.

Re: As a contractor...

When I first contracted I went into a scheme where money was paid by employers into an account on the Isle of Man through an umbrella company and then accessed through an international account. As far as I'm aware it was legal but god was it a pain in the arse to use and expensive to administer and I still had to file tax returns which meant paying for an accountant.

So as soon as the contract was up I just found a contracting firm to do it - all the billing, processing, tax returns, expenses etc. for a flat fee. Much easier.

Re: How do they manage to make a loss?

"The eyebrow pluckers need to be paid at least minimum wage, and the rent and council tax needs to be paid on their premises. "

Well quite and that's still less that a similar sized premise which cooks food or sells a physical product which is a cost to the bottom line that cannot be discounted away. That's the point. The eyebrow pluckers can pull some figure out of their backsides, e.g. £60 for their service, halve it to £30, give Groupon / whoever £10-15 and still make money.

As for rivals, I expect you could negotiate a better deal but how many people would bother? Perhaps they end up driven out of business or add to the noise of service industry dross on Groupon by joining themselves. Probably why it turns into a sea of shit after a while and why Groupon is lacks the good will to sustain anything more attractive.

Re: How do they manage to make a loss?

I expect they make a loss because the company hyper inflated while at the same time conducting scorched earth policy that left every market they passed through a barren wasteland of "service industry" offers - car waxing, eyebrow plucking etc. All the businesses which actually sold a product either went out of business or got so badly burned as to never use Groupon again. It's only service industries which can survive in the world of coupons because they can invent some preposterous figure for their service and "discount" it and still make money because there are little material overheads.

So they have the massive infrastructure and sales teams and not enough business to sustain it. On top of that their business is hardly unique. There are probably 4 or 5 rival services in most of the markets they compete in, and perhaps some of these are more nimble, have lower overheads and are better to deal with as far as businesses are concerned.

Kindle is only a great cross-platform solution if you consider buying all your content from a single store to be a good idea. Personally I think it's desperately short sighted idea.

There is no reason that any consumable media that a person purchases like music, video or books should be tied to a single device, or to a single store. At the very least the DRM and formats should be supported by a wide variety of stores and devices. The closest thing to that for books would be EPUB with Adobe Digital Editions as the DRM.

Of course a far worse problem is that technically nobody is buying books at all, just the licence to read the book. And book sites lock themselves in with publishers into contracts that don't explicitly collude to keep prices high but the contracts essentially mean prices are kept high.

Re: Nook

"Barnes and Noble are currently saying there is no stock. Nook UK are saying they are shipping. Someone is telling pork pies."

Maybe Nook is fulfilling existing orders and can't sell any more until they get new stock in, assuming they ever do.

I know from personal experience that last Saturday Argos didn't have a single Nook in the whole of Northern Ireland and neither did any branch of PC World or Currys. The Nook website said temporarily unavailable. I was lucky to have sauntered into an Argos Extra on the Sunday and their system showed there were 230 in stock in their Home Delivery service. Now home delivery shows there are zero. Fortunately I ordered one while they were there with free p&p too.

Basically they're gone.

I think you would have to be talking loudly into a bluetooth handsfree ear piece and wearing an upskirt camera device on your shoes to come anywhere close to the chilling effect these things will have in social situations.

They're probably more useful in a commercial setting - people fulfilling orders in large warehouses and so on where a HUD might be useful.

Re: I wish the Nexus 4 did have a button.

Battery life is about 2 days for me with light internet use / periodic twitter etc. though I tend to recharge daily. Screen is excellent. Call quality is excellent. CPU and graphics are extremely responsive. Vanilla Android is (IMO) vastly better than the customized shit that most vendors slap on top and gives a superior and clutter free experience plus timely updates. The best bit is the price which is considerably cheaper than an S3 or other comparable spec devices.

Downsides - Storage is acceptable but non expandable. Battery is non replaceable. The glass on the back gives the phone a worrisome tendency to glide off tables. Camera is okay but nothing special.

For the price it's an excellent phone.

Re: Frist

"Here's how it works: Cite sources, say what you want them to say and hope nobody follows them up, it's becoming an MO."

Climate change deniers tore a page from the same book of denial tactics used by creationists, 9/11 truthers, holocaust deniers, moon hoaxers, anti-vaxxers.

1. Make liberal use of mined quotes. Make sure they're out of context and preferably presented to imply the original author supports the position even when they're usually against it. Or that the author is part of some vast conspiracy to fabricate the evidence or further some agenda.

2. Cherry pick data. Pick out the favourable data even when it belongs to a larger data set which goes the other way.

3. Pseudoscience. Employ it liberally and often.

4. Place enormous weight on unreliable or low quality information and use it to deny or ignore high quality information. e.g. favour crank blogs over peer reviewed publications.

5. Compile a list of canards and repeat them ad nauseum no matter how many times they are debunked.

6. Nitpick. Get so lost in the minutiae and statistical uncertainty that the big picture somehow magically becomes irrelevant.

7. Arguments from authority. Compile big long lists of scientists who "question" the conventional explanation, even if most of them on inspection turn out to have little or no expertise in relevant specialisations.

8. On no account ever produce a credible alternative theory which more adequately accounts for the data

Re: Might be logical

"I'm sorry, are you trying to imply logic plays any part in this?"

The premise seems reasonable if you read the text. Climate change predictions suggest millions could be forced into starvation and poverty and women's health in particular could be adversely affected.

That said, the bill doesn't really propose any remedial action other than make various affirmations and ask the president to do something to address it.

Re: Albedo

"You really have no idea of how minuscule the output of heat from man made sources is compared to the heat the Earth receives from the Sun, or even the heat due to tidal forces from the Moon, do you?"

CO2 concentrations have increased by nearly 40% since pre-industrial times. Activity such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, methane from cattle and so on has increased the amount of CO2 and other so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As the name suggests greenhouse gas absorb more thermal radiation which in turn affects the ambient surface temperature.

The "miniscule" argument doesn't even bear much scrutiny either. Even if it were miniscule If you had a set of scales perfectly in balance then dropping a "miniscule" weight on one side (and continuously doing it over time) will still cause the system to come out of equilibrium.

You figure it out, or read the IPCC reports which will explain it to you. Or just deny it. Reach for one of the usual gambits of the denialist movements to pretend man kind has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Re: Not out of the woods yet...

My wife was picking a phone to replace a broken Lumia 800. The choice was between a €129 Luma 520 or a €149 Huawei G5120. Even though the Lumia 520 would have had a more familiar experience, the Huawei was in most regards a better phone for only a little more. She chose the Huawei.

In Nokia's defence I doubt it would have had as much Vodafone crapware as the Huawei did. Nor would I have had to spend a considerable amount of time replacing the godawful Huawei launcher with the ADW launcher to give the phone some semblance of sanity.

Re: Next "innovation" in Macs

"One of my side-bet predictions is an ARM+x86 iOS/OSX hybrid multitouch detachable where the (retina) screen as tablet has passive cooling and you have choice of battery + higher powered CPU etc. in keyboard section. "

It seems more likely to me that they'll start leveraging clang and LLVM and describe a universal binary format which runs over any CPU at near native speeds with API that cherry picks functionality from iOS and OS X. Kind of surprising it hasn't happened already really.

XBMC isn't the only solution on Android though. There must be dozens of DLNA clients on the store and they could be coupled with VLC or some other video player. Providing the media framework is hooked up to use hardware codecs, the performance should be okay.

I think XBMC is a bit too fancy for its own good on low performance devices though. Even the Confluence skin is a bit of overkill. I expect a skin that dials back on the animation, transparency and overall memory consumption would probably squeeze a few % of performance which might make the difference between usable and unusable.

Re: 4KB RAM ?

Somewhat tangential but someone managed to produce a gcc / nasm / hand edited "Hello World" for Linux in 142 bytes.

http://timelessname.com/elfbin/

""Only" 10 billion dollars in profit? Yup, that's a company that's really sliding down the toilet."

The markets don't work like that. The share price is a reflection of the market's confidence in a company to make money and make it according to expectations. If it exceeds expectations then there are momentarily more buyers than sellers trying to get the undervalue stock and the price goes up. If it doesn't meet expectations then there are more sellers than buyers trying to exit the overvalued stock and the price goes down.