* Posts by Barry Rueger

1154 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2007

CEO of smartmobe outfit Phantom Secure cuffed after cocaine sting, boast of murder-by-GPS

Barry Rueger

Re: "Spot the criminal" -game here

Basically the Police tells us here that if you have a phone like this, you are a professional drug dealer and then they invent lot of claims to support that, but no actual proof.

This. It always amazes me when otherwise intelligent readers accept whatever police say as being honest or accurate. I'm assuming that large parts of the article merely repeat what was in the cops' Press Release. Most of what's there can't be relied on until it's been corroborated by someone outside of law enforcement.

Beyond that this should terrify people: the US cops are now saying that anyone, anywhere in the world, that provides some kind of "secure" communication tool is open to prosecution unless they can "prove" that most of their customers are "non-criminal."

There's more to blockchain than dodgy cryptocurrencies

Barry Rueger

Re: Of course there is, until

For one thing, it will take at the very least a system for keeping private keys that is private and understandable to the below-average citizen.

No, the goal is not to make it understandable to some kind of "ordinary person," it's to integrate it in such a way that they don't need to think about it.

Cryptocurrencies right now are on par with PGP type encryption - about five steps too complicated for most people to be bothered. Unless either has a truly compelling case for its use, or is easy enough that it doesn't add to your effort, neither will ever really take off with the general public.

A good comparison is encryption using HTTPS. It's now pretty much ubiquitous, not because Joe Public decided that they really needed it, but because a large proportion of the industry as a whole decided to implement it, and eventually make it a default.

Blockchains right now are still largely a solution in search of a problem. Aside from edge cases where they are immediately needed I doubt that they'll really take off until the technology is rolled into other things so that it's more or less invisible. That won't happen until there's a really, really compelling reason to abandon what is in use now.

Good news: Apple designs a notebook keyboard that doesn't suck

Barry Rueger

Re: Or just make a proper keyboard and stop making everything so thin...

Typing? On a *computer*? How terribly 1990's, darlings!

Well, if by "typing" you mean "selecting the perfect emoji" for that corporate prospectus.

Oh, sorry, it's an Apple product - Animoji.

Got some broken tech? Super Cali's trinket fix-it law brought into focus

Barry Rueger

Not just phones and tractors

Breville kettle lasted about a year when the connector between the kettle and base failed. Replaced under warranty with new kettle, with beefier connector.

Two year later, that one failed. It's actually repairable but Breville won't sell me the part.

I like Breville, and their support people are very nice, but 40% off a new kettle (retail c $120) is not the same as $5 + shipping for a 20 minute repair.

Android P will hear no evil, see no evil, support evil notches

Barry Rueger

Pistachio

OK, not candy, but.....

Suspected drug dealer who refused to poo for 46 DAYS released... on bail

Barry Rueger

Re: London gang nominal?

"WTF is a 'London gang nominal'?

In Canada it's "Known to police."

A clever euphemism for "he's never been arrested, charged, or convicted of any crime, but trust us, we know he's a criminal."

Surely having yourself described this way in the media would never influence your likelihood of a fair trial?

La, la, la, I can't hear you! Apple to challenge Bose's noise-proof cans

Barry Rueger

Re: Fact or opinion

statement that Sony and Sennheiser both boast of superior audio quality

Of course, much depends on whether you listening to Vinyl or CD, or (God help us), MP3.

And whether you use mono-directional, oxygen free Monster cables.

Paul Allen's research vessel finds wreck of WWII US aircraft carrier

Barry Rueger

Re: Creepy...

You do know there's history other than WWII?

Not if "history" is defined as "wars that the Americans think that they won."

'Repeatable sanitization' is a feature of PCs now

Barry Rueger

Snake oil? I think it's brilliant to be able to wipe down a laptop without shutting off. This should be standard issue.

WordPress is now 30 per cent of the web, daylight second

Barry Rueger

Re: So many negative waves!

I'll follow up a bit. When I referenced people "hand-coding" web sites I was imagining someone sitting down with a text editor, a blank screen, and typing <html> and going from there. Obviously, and I've dealt with projects like this, there's heavy duty coding happening on any moderately large site.

However, and this was my point, I'm pretty sure that no-one, except for a few edge cases, ever starts from zero and builds a site from nothing. I'd wager that 98% of web projects begin with an existing, well-tested, well understood, well supported platform or framework, and builds on that structure. I can't imagine many cases where you won't take something "off the shelf" and then adapt it to suit a specific project. If a large part of the work has already been done it would be foolish to not use it.

I can't be bothered getting all pedantic about whether WordPress (or any other tool) is a "real CMS." The point of the exercise is to have something on-line that lets people add, subtract, and change content elements at will. In other words, Manage your Content.

If a nice little WordPress install is the right tool for a small job, that's what should be used. It's ridiculous to foist some gigantic, complex software package on someone just because WordPress is cool enough for you.

The success of WordPress rests on one thing: one heck of a lot of people and companies don't want to have the expense of an in-house tech developer just to have a little web site. WordPress, and lately things like SquareSpace, give them what they need with minimal expense and minimal hassle. That's not a bad thing.

And honestly, WordPress has come a long, long way from the days when it was just a blogging platform. It's more than powerful and flexible enough for a lot of small projects, is well enough supported that you can solve problems pretty quickly, and out of the box gives you something that looks not too bad on most devices.

Barry Rueger

So many negative waves!

Wow. Such venom. Would I choose WordPress to build Amazon.com? Of course not. Would I use it for a static ten page site for a Dogwalker company? You bet.

I've hand coded sites, back in pre CSS days, in notepad. And relied happily for years on Dreamweaver in the pre-mobile age, then early WordPress, abandoned it for several years for Joomla and Drupal, only to return to WordPress this year for a small project.

Anyone who claims to be hand-coding contemporary sites today is a liar, or a fool, or has a client who is one.

Joomla, Drupal, and large CMS are fine for people who use them day in and day out, but for anyone else they're ridiculous, over-complex, unintuitive, and break easily.

For someone who just needs something that is small, quick to set up, easy to maintain, looks decent on laptops and mobile devices, and most importantly doesn't require a four week hands-on training course to use, Wordpress is a good choice.

Yes you need to stay on top of security, but that's true of any software.

OK, who is shooting at Apple staff buses in California? Knock it off

Barry Rueger

Does any of the buses carry a W Tell Jnr on them ?

Google failed to tell me who W Tell Jnr is. Someone connected to Will.I.am?

Mobile World Congress: 5 buzzwords, an homage to Windows XP and a smartphone snorefest

Barry Rueger

Re: It is true that 5G will change everything?

Trust me, no-one in Canada is going to be downloading 15 gigs on a regular basis. The data charges would very quickly exceed the price of the phone.

Google powers up latest app it'll cancel in two years: Hangouts Chat

Barry Rueger

Re: ...but why?

So if you are anyone besides an organisation who is already running G-Suite, then why would you move off Slack or Teams?

Surely for the seamless integration with your Google+ accounts.

US Supremes take a look at Microsoft's Irish email slurp battle, and yeah, not a great start

Barry Rueger

A Minor Quibble

Surely, even if American courts chose not to acknowledge it, the article should have addressed the very real question of what a corporation should do if the American law conflicts with data protection law in the country hosting the server.

BBC Telly Tax heavies got pat on the head from snoopers' overseers

Barry Rueger

Of course you're already funding the CBC to the tune of a little bit less than $50 each year, so it's not "free." There has been a suggestion that CBC TV drop advertising, which would increase that funding. On average, government funding of public broadcasting in western democracies is around $80 per citizen per year.

Barry Rueger

Yes, we watch TV. Even the BBC.

And we're honest enough to admit it. And sometimes we even buy products that advertise on TV.

The operative word in that paragraph is "honest." As far as I can tell the phrase "I never watch TV" is code for "I torrent lots of crappy American sitcoms, so I'm cool."

In all honesty you people complaining about the BBC or Channel 4 have no concept of how good they are compared to the wasteland that is North American TV. For every "Sopranos" there are literally a thousand shows like "The Bachelor" and "Peoples' Court." And of course Fox News.

We happily pay for a VPN to watch the BBC from Canada (as well as the excellent BFI player) and would probably even buy a TV licence if they would let us.

TigerGraph emerges from undergrowth with 2.0 release in its jaws

Barry Rueger

Re: 'Scuse my ignorance of buzzwords

Without Wikipedia I would never keep up on my buzzwords!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_database

In computing, a graph database is a database that uses graph structures for semantic queries with nodes, edges and properties to represent and store data. A key concept of the system is the graph (or edge or relationship), which directly relates data items in the store. The relationships allow data in the store to be linked together directly, and in many cases retrieved with one operation.

4G found on Moon

Barry Rueger

My hopes and dreams, dashed.

Am I alone in feeling very sad that god-damned cel phones are considered to be the first thing you need to colonize space?

The phone OS that muggers wouldn't touch is back from the dead

Barry Rueger

Leave Android? YES!

With every iteration Android (like most Google products) becomes less useful and more encumbered with stuff I neither need nor want. And let's face it, 98% of apps are less than useful.

Once you've got email, text messaging, maps, and a browser I'm pretty much covered. Not being tied into the stifling Google omniverse is very appealing, as is "less is more."

My preference for Linux is rested firmly on my ability to have only what I want and need on a computer, and I would love that my phone, which many days is my primary computing device, could be the same.

Huawei guns for Apple with Mac-alike Matebook X

Barry Rueger

Awaiting evidence of reality

The company reckons you'll go from cold to a functioning Windows 10 desktop in 7.8 seconds.

Uh huh. Admittedly the wife's HP Envy laptop is a year and a bit old, but given the ridiculously long boot times I find this claim highly unlikely. Has there ever been a version of Windows that booted that fast? I can't recall one.

(OK, I suppose it might be possible, but that assumes that you're not booting after or during a software or OS upgrade. Which it seems is every single time the thing is booted.)

(Hmph. my guess is that the camera under a key thingy will give up the ghost pretty fast.)

Google gives mobile operators a reason to love it, and opens rich chat up for business

Barry Rueger

Re: Cool

We run a commercial dog walking business, one of about fifty companies in our locale. For nearly a decade operators relied on group text messaging in emergencies.

Open text message app, select "dog walkers" group from Contacts, send message.

Somewhere around Honeycomb Google introduced a hard coded limit to the number of recipients of a text message.

One text to sixty people became multiple texts to ten or fifteen member groups.

Bug reports ensued, answered only with "because spam."

Which is why everyone now uses WhatsApp.

Well, except for the lone BlackBerry user....

Trust me, this will NOT end well.

Here's how we made a no-fuss RSS vulture app using trendy Electron

Barry Rueger

TinyTinyRSS

Been using it for years. Easy to set up (some hosting providers even include auto-installers) and thus far has never stumbled.

https://tt-rss.org

Fun fact: US Customs slaps eyeglass taxes on optical networking gear

Barry Rueger

Re: Tax on Glasses?

To be fair, the obscene prices for eyewear are not due to taxes, they're the result of almost the entire eyeglass market being controlled by the Luxottica monopoly.

The fanciest frames at LensCrafters often sell for $400-500. Holding those little assemblages of glass, metal, and plastic that cost $25-50 to make in your hand, you might wonder how exactly you were roped into paying so much.

The answer is basic economics. Most frames are manufactured by a single company, named Luxottica.

RIP, Swype: Thanks for all the sor--speec--speedy texting

Barry Rueger

Blackberry KB

Google for the APK. For my purposes it's just dandy. Generally actually predicts what I want, and learns fast.

This job Win-blows! Microsoft made me pull '75-hour weeks' in a shopping mall kiosk

Barry Rueger

Record keeping

Stories like this, and those in the comments, are why it's important to keep careful records of hours worked, tasks completed, and exceptional circumstances.

It's also important to keep them off - site so they're available to you even if you're suddenly unemployed.

A print button? Mmkay. Let's explore WHY you need me to add that

Barry Rueger

The Naked Truth

Programmers generally design interfaces (Web sites too) for other coders. These almost always are horrible for ordinary users.

Same is true of documentation and help files. The skills and attributes that are needed to create a good user interface are not the same as for writing code.

Why print? Because, barring a house fire, the binders of printed records will survive hard drive crashes, power surges, and bankrupt cloud services.

Yes, backups are good practice, but paper is static, doesn't change, and doesn't get corrupted or locked by malware.

It genuinely horrifies me to see small companies that have everything in the cloud with no thought to "How do I get my data back if the company goes bust, or if Google discontinues the service I rely on?"

Teensy plastic shields are the big new thing in 2018's laptop crop

Barry Rueger

Deja vu

broken Lenovo machines can emit an audio tone that, when deciphered by an app, reveals the nature of hardware faults and even a machine's serial number.

Wow. They've invented BIOS beep codes.

Apple to devs: Code for the iPhone X or nothing from April onwards

Barry Rueger

Re: Have Apple learnt nothing from the Microsoft's Metro/Tile Interface forced rollout?

Win 10 and Office Ribbon.

Sigh. Is there any chance that some day, maybe in another decade, people will stop going on and on about the "Ribbon?"

Agreed though, Windows 10 is crap.

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Barry Rueger

Cool. Just Cool

Nothing you will ever do in your life will be as cool as firing a cherry red Tesla into orbit.

NASA's zombie IMAGE satellite is powered up and working quite nicely

Barry Rueger

Unless they're dancing...

if it can can money to fund the effort.

OK, the less said about Reg editing, the better, but this looks like a project small enough to be a good crowdfunding target.

You can find me in da club, database full of faces… but this ain't privacy watchers' jam

Barry Rueger

The New Normal

What's insidious about this is that they're training a generation of fairly young people, at an age when you honestly don't think about such things, much less the long term implications, to consider this as just a normal part of life. At that age I was just interested in two things: girls and beer, and possibly other substances. I wasn't giving a moments's thought to the wider world.

As with all of the on-line behemoths, the danger isn't so much that one club will have your data on file, it's that over the course of years or decades the data from hundreds of clubs, bars, web sites, libraries, and governments will be assembled to create a picture of you beyond your wildest dreams.

By the time you're at an age when you understand that the trails of data you've left behind might come back to haunt you, it's too late to stop it. Fifty years ago the only thing you really were concerned about was avoiding a criminal record. Now every single part of your life is being collected and analyzed. Us pre-digital oldsters can appreciate the dramatic difference, but if you've never lived outside of the data collection web you won't realize how dangerous that is.

I want life to be boring, says Linus Torvalds as Linux 4.15 debuts

Barry Rueger

Retpoline

If, like me, you wanted to know what retpoline is, and why it matters.

Perv raided college girls' online accounts for nude snaps – by cracking their security questions

Barry Rueger

Inevitable Consequence

Whenever I'm presented with one of these I find two things.

First, inevitably three-quarters of the questions could be answered by anyone with access to my Facebook account (assuming I actually gave FB the info) or even LinkedIn or a dozen other common sites.

Second, I invariably find that the sites with the most boneheaded "Security" questions are also the ones with the most boneheaded password rules, and are often the sites that wind up being hacked.

I seriously doubt that any authentication scheme like this is at all secure. Anything that relies on publicly available information is by definition insecure. And these days almost everything is publicly available if you know where to look, especially because so many sites insist that you log in using Facebook, Google, or other shared log ins.

Sack the Xerox CEO 'immediately', yell activist investors

Barry Rueger

Re: There is no old guard left

Maybe Xerox is still a force in some corporate settings, but on reading this story it struck me that it's been years (at least) since I thought of Xerox, much less saw a Xerox branded product.

I just assumed they were yet another company that used to be legendary, and a corporate behemoth, that had been clobbered by their own corporate ego while competitors adapted to and redefined the market.

Right I'm trying to think of one of the major 70s or 80s tech giants that still dominates an industry, and I come up blank.

Have three WINEs this weekend, because WINE 3.0 has landed

Barry Rueger

Re: Wine for Android

Does anybody know why Wine 3.0 is available for download for Android?

FTFY

The problem with WINE remains that it's really hit and miss whether a specific app will work. The WINE database is full of comments that basically say "this app version worked, but only with this WINE version," followed by a list of ways it won't work.

I get my bookkeeping done with a Vista VM, and save the hassle.

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

Barry Rueger

Re: Bags full of the stuff

Best advice ever, for paper, but also works for junk:

Box under desk. If you're unsure whether you need to keep/ file a piece of paper, toss it in the box.

When the box is full, tape it shut, date it, stick it in a closet, and start a new one.

If the box hasn't been opened in x months, toss it in the trash.

Once or twice I've had to dig out something, but it's exceedingly rare.

Flying on its own, Thunderbird seeks input on new look

Barry Rueger

Re: Now I'm feeling old

Sadly, there will probably never be a Linux version. If there were, I'd dump (al)pine in a heartbeat and pay money for it.

Me too. I just don't understand the resistance to a Linux version.

(I'd love to know why someone downvoted your comment. Strange people...)

Barry Rueger

Re: Now I'm feeling old

Pegasus Mail. Sigh. I could ANYTHING with program.

Barry Rueger

Re: "modern GMail UI"???

GMail UI is already old - and never was a great UI.

In recent years I've found the Gmail interface increasingly frustrating. Too much of what I don't want, too little of what I do.

Last week I needed a non-Gmail address for testing and decided to set up one at Yahoo.

Check it out. It's really a lovely UI, very modern, but also clean and simple.

Self-driving cars still do not exist even if we think they do

Barry Rueger

Re: They kinda do and kinda don't

It is possible that autonomous cars will negotiate between themselves as to who is closest to the passing place better than humans but I can see problems with one human driver and one autonomous.

I'm far more concerned with how the algorithms on (for example) my Ford behave compared to the algorithms on the approaching VW. What are the odds that the Ford's emergency default is "Emergency! Swerve LEFT!" while the VW's will be "Emergency! Swerve RIGHT!." *

Thus far we've learned that most software only works reliably if you're within a contained ecosystem. Anyone who has tried to move email from (for example) an Windows email client to an Apple client -- much less tried to sync calendars between different OSs and versions -- will appreciate that the likelihood of all car manufacturers developing software that will reliably work without conflicts approaches zero.

* OK, admittedly the VW software will likely just ignore every other car on the road.

FBI says it can't unlock 8,000 encrypted devices, demands backdoors for America's 'public safety'

Barry Rueger

Netscape Days

This reminds of the early days of the Internet when the US government decreed that a browser with a certain level of encryption could not be "exported" outside of the US borders.

I imagine this will be equally successful.

Memo man Damore is back – with lawyers: Now Google sued for 'punishing' white men

Barry Rueger

Coming soon!

According to at least one source, you'll be there by 2060!

EEk! Mobe network's customer services down for more than 24 hours

Barry Rueger

Why, oh why?

To all wireless providers: providing actual quality customer service is unlikely to be much more costly than treating clients like crap.

In fact it's probably cheaper than burning mega-bucks on marketing to capture competitors' clients when they become available during "churn."

'Twas the night before Y2K and a grinch stole the IT department's overtime payout

Barry Rueger

Re: Overtime payments

I always kept a spreadsheet of hours worked after my first long hours project where I was persuaded to take £1,000 bonus instead of time off in lieu.

Always a good practice for two reasons. Obviously good records - kept off site! - are invaluable if you need to dispute payment, especially after you've been tossed out the door.

Just as important though is that keeping careful daily records of hours worked and tasks completed really reinforces the reality of how much you work. Usually people grossly underestimate such things. Once you can sit down and see that you're only being paid for two thirds of hours worked you can consider whether it's time to move on.

'I knew the company was doomed after managers brawled in a biker bar'

Barry Rueger

Re: "and gloves were forbidden"

Canada, grade 11 and 12 math teacher, who always reeked of cigarette smoke, also worked as a waiter at a local beer parlour.

"Beer parlour" was a 70s term that carried a significantly seedy overtone. A large room with 24" round tables, covered with terry cloth. Beer was commonly drunk with either tomato juice or salt

No entertainment, no hard liquor, just serious drunkenness.

Until the 70s there were separate entrances and areas for "Men" and "Ladies with escorts."

Anyhow, the same math teacher refused to teach or test us on factoring square roots because "there's a table in the back of your book."

OK Google: A stranger with stash of pirated films is spamming my Google Team Drive

Barry Rueger

Re: Surprised?

OK, I'll give them spam filtering, although given that their business is delivering advertising I guess that's more about blocking the competition.

Barry Rueger

Surprised?

I have a serious question : is there anything left at Google that actually works or hasn't been ruined or removed?

Search seems worse every year.

Gmail becomes less useful with every "upgrade."

The whole of G Suite is a confusing mess.

There's no support for anything.

And Android.....

Get ready for laptop-tab-smartphone threesomes from Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, Asus, Qualcomm

Barry Rueger

Re: Hello! Real World here!

Is it just North America where cellular (and fixed internet) pricing is pure highway robbery?

Wireless in Canada is controlled by three companies, Bell, Rogers, and Telus (less a handful of tiny outliers, who almost always wind up being bought by the big three). These companies also own the lions share of cable companies, newspapers, TV and radio stations, much of production for both, as well as sundry other things like advertising and magazines. They can and do set prices at whatever the market will bear because for the majority of the population there is no alternative. (Two of them, Bell and Telus, even share the same wireless infrastructure!)

Back in the day, forty or fifty years ago, phone companies were well regulated by the government to ensure that they didn't use their monopoly position to gouge consumers. They made a healthy profit, but not an obscene one.

When cel phones became a thing Canada decided that the industry didn't need regulation, that surely competition would protect consumers. Boy, were they wrong. Profits for each are measured in billions.

Right now I pay $90 a month (about €60). That gets me a moderate amount of airtime, and includes 1 gig of data that costs $25, and voicemail for $5*. There's also a low end phone in there somewhere. Last time I checked extra data was priced at $5 a gig.

This is the best deal I could get after being a customer for around ten years.

* the voicemail scam is brilliant. Unless you pay extra you get a voicemail that will only store THREE messages. If you use your phone for business, or in an emergency, you can imagine how useless that is.

Barry Rueger

Hello! Real World here!

The argument ... is that people hate struggling with Wi-Fi networks - ... – so why not just put 4G/LTE connectivity into the PC and pipe the internet straight into the thing?...some Qualy staffers estimated, an extra $10 a month.

Why? Because a lot of users in the Real World don't have the luxury of always on, unlimited data wireless plans. $10 a month? Not from any Canadian carrier. There is no way I would ever consider this in Canada - it would bankrupt me in no time. I suspect that a lot of other people are in the same boat.

Beyond that, The number of places I'm likely to visit that lack wireless coverage is quite a bit larger than the places that don't have WIFI. The one exception to this is local hospitals which still force you onto the horribly expensive Fat Port WIFI.

I've yet to find anyone who finds it all that difficult to log onto whatever WIFI hotspot is available.

Hey Silicon Valley: get in your Tesla, drive 500 miles away from San Francisco, and go sign up for a cel phone plan, paid for out of your own pocket.