Posts by Lotaresco

Re: Wait...

"Apple builds servers?"

They used to, the Xserve range.

Re: WIDtf

Ah, voices of callow youth. Way back <fx: wavy lines> at the turn of the millennium Wireless Information Devices were all the rage. Symbian were pushing the WID as hard as they could, WAP was seen as the way to provide information over a wireless network that could be shown on tiny LCD screens (in monochrome if necessary). It reduced most web sites to a cascading series of links that went on forever. It was like using Gopher but with some tiny low-res images.

I had a look at it and wrote a paper "WAP is crap" for my employers. It was fairly clear even then that developments would leave WAP behind because no one in their right mind would want a 96x95 pixel or even a 320x240 pixel view of the WWW.

Re: Absolutely agree

It's damn them, damn them all. The history of the industry reads like a list of lost opportunities.

Apple make some interesting things, although inevitably all of the things they make are flawed to some extent because that's how life is. No one can achieve perfection. There's lots of room for improvement.

It would have seemed sensible for the handset manufacturers to respond to the challenge and up their game to compete effectively with Apple. To exploit Apple's weaknesses.

RIM had an edge with secure communication technology but didn't seem to realise that there was value in improving the handset and the services. By the time they woke up Apple had got themselves established. Even now, Apple are not offering as good a corporate or government system, but continue to nibble away at that market.

The other makers seemed to mess around at the time doing things like making a device look a bit like an iPhone but without the functions of the iPhone. It was like trying to compete with BMW by sticking some plastic body panels onto a tired old model of car. Oh hang on, wasn't that what Rover tried?

I'm not sure why execs didn't get that this was something that was going to encroach on their market and that further assaults on their market would happen just as soon as another maker or consortium produced something that offered similar look and feel to the iPhone. It's a story that had already happened elsewhere and not just with Apple. Manufacturers get cosy apparently thinking they can do the same thing with minor variation for ever and then the new kid on the block steals their market.

Re: FFS NO!

"There are all sorts of reliable, proven, and simple ways for chargers to deliver more power when needed and reduce the power later."

Yes, and I agree with your sentiments but the problem of BadUSB isn't really tied to the management of power delivery. In fact it's one of the few things we can legitimately blame the EU for[1]. The common external power supply (common EPS) standard specified a micro USB-B connector for charging a mobile phone. Hence anyone wanting to build a rogue device can be sure that the majority of users will use a data cable to charge their phone. Bingo, all you need to do is to build your charger with enough logic to attack the phone via the USB port. Users don't expect to open a charger and look at what's inside and most chargers are sealed anyway.

There is a way to easily defeat this which is to remove pins 2 and 3 on the USB A plug, provided that the charger doesn't legitimately expect some data from the phone.

[1] Please, no EU flame wars. I'm tired of them.

Re: How on Earth did the Supremes come up with that interpretation???

I think you will find that the Supremes came up with:

"But all you do is treat me bad, Break my heart and leave me sad"

Which seems to perfectly fit the current state of politics.

Re: Who cares?

"with rhetoric that sounds like it came straight from the script of "V for Vendetta"."

Yes, from the wrong side though. I fully expect satire to become an arrestable offence and possession of the Quran to become a capital offence the way things are going.

"Adam Susan is the leader of the Norsefire party, and the ruler of the dictatorship that holds Britain in an iron grip. A firm adherent of pure fascism, he values order above all else and sees civil liberties as unneeded luxuries which are ultimately threats to a secure society. He states early in the novel that he believes in "the destiny of the Nordic race", and subsequently despises anyone who is not white, Christian, male and heterosexual."

Insert the name of the fascist du jour and whichever political party is currently most barkingly pro-Brexit at the moment.

Re: Apple invented everything...

"Microsoft had Smartphone 2002 and Pocket PC 2000 which were eventually merged into Windows Mobile and, interface aside, were vastly superior to the iPhone's iOS."

I had to evaluate every phone technology available in 2002 for a government agency. I'm sorry to say that you're wrong by a country mile.

The weak spot for Microsoft was that it decided to run telephony in the application layer. This meant that any problem with the OS would result in telephony being lost. Symbian provided a telephone which could function as a computer. The telephony was a low-level service and even if the OS crashed completely you could still make and receive calls. Apple adopted the same architecture, interface and telephony are low level services which are difficult to kill.

Does it matter? Well, I recall the anecdote of the Italian journalist pleased as could be with his shiny new Windows phone. He told me lots of times about how great it was. Right up until the day he went skiing and broke his leg. He was off the piste by a few tens of metres and people were passing by not seeing him, so he dialled for help (118 medical emergency) BSOD. After several attempts he realised that he wasn't going to get through on 118, so he tried all the emergency numbers 112, 113, 115, 116 and even 1515 for a forest fire. Every time the phone BSOD'd. He tried turning it off an on again - no use. He tried to call his wife, best friend etc, BSOD. He ended up screaming at the top of his voice for over an hour until someone heard him. The phone ended up in the bin and he went back to a boring Nokia because at least it worked as a phone.

Re: Apple? Invent?

"That's like saying they invented fast cars. It's the car that's important. And again, that comes under 'brilliant design applied to existing concept'."

With respect, you are not understanding the nature of invention. It's not even a good analogy. Until QuickDraw the companies producing GUIs relied on the fastest systems that they could to make the GUI fast enough for the users. Even then it was slow and a user would have to wait significant periods of time for the screen to redraw. Atkinson got an interface that was more responsive than the Xerox star to run on a Motorola 68000. Rather than a "faster car" he found a way to make a Nissan Micra 1.0 as driveable and nippy as a car costing 20 times as much.

Continuing to flog your "car" analogy, which is completely wrong in this context, it's rather like Toyota creating the Prius. The car already existed at the time, but no one had designed a car that integrated generators, battery storage, electric motors and planetary gearboxes with regenerative braking to squeeze as much as possibly out of a litre of fuel. That was invention, and development and yes design.

Re: I am puzzled by the premise of this article

"RIM grew rich on producing what managements wanted."

Apple has played a clever game here because they have worked to meet what management want as well as what the consumer wants. After a colleague of mine criticised some aspects of iPhone security and advised that government should avoid the iPhone until these problems were fixed we were approached by Apple who then spent a lot of time and money understanding the detail of the criticism, proposing design changes and then fixing the issues in the next releases of iOS. They have also worked hard to provide the assurance that government needs that the phone is fit for purpose. The government market is tiny but the security features also appeal to big business, no one wants to think that commercially sensitive information is being compromised.

Re: mobiles and cars

"For 60 years we saw this circumvented in national car markets - where manufacturers didn't have to give a shit what customers wanted - they gave them what they felt like giving them - cheap rusty shit.. it just needed to be as good as the cheap rusty shit your competitor was also selling."

I think you've hit a nail on the head and missed the point at the same time. Yes the phone market and the car market were pretty much the same in the way that they structured sales. The point you've missed is that the customer that you perceive - the end user, isn't the one that the phone makers and the car makers were servicing. The phone makers provided phones for the networks. The car makers provided cars for the fleet and hire car markets. Sales of new cars to consumers were much lower down the scale.

So a phone had to meet a price point and last for at most three years. A car also had to meet a price point and last for at most three years. So that determined the kind of cars and phones we got. The only concession to end-user expectations was to have cars put into variants to met different grades of management, hence the L, GL, GLi etc badges; each associated with a different management grade.

The change happened for cars when companies decided not to run their own fleets but to lease. Staff were given a band of monthly cost and discovered that the lowest depreciating cars had the lowest lease costs. Hence the rep who used to get a Sierra discovered that he could have a BMW for the same monthly cost. The person who was wedded to BL/Rover cars (such people existed) discovered that a Rover 45 was in the same group as a BMW 520. That sealed the fate of Rover.

Phones were the same. Motorola and Nokia failed to realise that suddenly the end user was important.

Re: Apple? Invent?

"They don't invent much, really. If anything."

This is a FRBUM (Frequently Repeated But Untrue Meme).

Apple has invented about as much, and probably more than other companies in the IT/Technnology sector. A responsive GUI? Thank Apple, Bill Atkinson in particular because that was his doing. Although GUIs existed before Apple's interest they were relatively clunky and needed significant computing power to work. Atkinson worked out QuickDraw which had features no one else had thought of (BitBlt, GrafPorts, Regions among them).

Like all other companies they adopt an approach of only re-inventing the wheel when the wheel is shown to be inadequate for the job. However to claim that they don't invent much isn't supportable.

"I'm suing the person that I ran over for leaving a dent in my car!"

I wouldn't laugh. A few years ago a motorbike rider chose to ignore a "STOP" sign and drive across a dual carriageway at a junction. They hit the passenger door of my car and knocked themselves out (but fortunately lived). The police investigated and determined it was the biker's fault for ignoring the sign. Later the rider sued me for the damage to his bike.

Re: Ramp

"There are other ways to survive being rear ended at high speed."

I had a bet with myself before clicking the link that it would be a crash cushion. I won. I used to work designing roadside electronic systems for the HA and was around at the time these were introduced. They have saved the lives of mobile workers several times now. You still have to wonder at the driving skills of someone who can plough into the back of a massive truck with reflective markers, flashing lights and a massive illuminated arrow showing which side to pass.

MPG may be an issue, also the cost of an MOT test and the shortage of places to put the weekly shop. Parking at Lidl could also be a headache. As you say, costs more to run than the average family car.

The Texas solution would be to drive a Yukon or an Expedition though which probably cost as much to run.

The ones I recall looked bigger than the one you linked to. I remember that the drivers wanted a huge pay increase to sit in these things. Despite the impact absorbing features it's still not nice to have a car plough into the back of one of these and the driver can still die if they are hit by an LGV.

Re: Sad

Before suing Apple, the family should be suing the state of Texas which permits drivers to use their mobile phones while driving. Because Freedom! presumably.

Re: Apple have a patent for a system that would have prevented this.

"By the same token Toyota have the tech available to them that would have stopped the car running in to the back of them at such a speed (if at all) and prevented this accident."

Do they also have a time machine that would let them go back and retrofit the system to an antique SUV? They call it the 4runner for a reason, it was an old design when it was new.

I live in Texas

"Yee", and if I may so sir, "Ha!"

Religious sedan

"If you're as obsessed with IIHS.org crash tests as I am... Still, while I am a religions sedan owner"

If you're a religious sedan owner shouldn't that be IHS.org?

And what does a religious sedan look like?

Re: Lawyers...

"I have seen an innocent man walk from from child molestation charges because my mother (a barrister) defended him"

And I have seen an abuser walk free from court and a paedophile escape with just a slap on the wrist because an excellent barrister defended them. Unfortunately the criminal law is a blunt instrument that presumes innocence, hence bad people walk free. If you recall Kenneth Noye walked free from court after killing a police officer, later he murdered Stephen Cameron.

Re: Hipsters discover SlimFast...

"there is no basis in fact for making that claim."

Correct.

I think what's happening here is that people want to believe that they can slurp down some gruel and that life will be fine. If someone has got to the stage of thinking that food is just fuel then a I pity them.

Re: Where's the IT angle?

"I am biased as I have gone through the afore mentioned subjects to a degree level before converting to IT"

Blimey YMYA.

I'm sort of laughing at the person who claimed I know nothing about nutrition, and at the concept that it's possible to produce a "shake" that has all the essential nutrients. Given that we're still learning what the essential nutrients are and that beige powder has no flavonoids I think it's a reasonable guess that it's about as nutritionally complete as a beer mat.

Here's a clue kids, beige food is bad for you, that's the law.

Re: Encryption, please?

"if the data had been encrypted"

For Top Secret data this isn't the panacea that many imagine it to be, no commercial encryption meets the requirements for Top Secret.

"seeing a hand-written list of programs, user names, and passwords, just doesn't fill me with confidence"

The fact that you are seeing it doesn't fill me with confidence.

The fact that several different accounts and services are listed on the same sheet doesn't fill me with confidence.

The use of a paper based password log doesn't worry me. If you think about it if that log were in a safe designed to the appropriate standard it would not be accessible to a hacker. I'm also shocked that some dweeb didn't understand why passwords were recorded on paper and chose to scan the sheet and put it on an insecure system.

What also shocks me is the list of commercial services used, including QuickBooks. For special operations? That's careless to the point of criminal negligence. Someone's sensitive parts should be in a mangle for this. Just think, if the US is this bad at national security, should you be sending any of your personal data to the USA?

Re: An easy first step

"would be that all those new 'Starter Homes' and 'Garden Villages/towns' (and even all new homes) must be built with

Can someone remind me what the appropriate emoticon is for long, uncontrollable, hollow laughter?

My home is close to the proposed location of four of these "Garden Villages" each of which will be several times the size of any of the nearby market towns. There are no services and there's no consideration that Hampshire is short of water. The infrastructure planning is non-existent.

The locations seem to be so poorly chosen (one is in the green belt and is an ex-military test track) that there's more than a whiff of "big bung may be associated with this decision" about the whole business. For "Garden Village" read "packed-in cardboard boxes without gardens".