* Posts by Jan Hargreaves

178 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2007

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Salesforce rules out Twitter bid

Jan Hargreaves

Twitter going down will help to save journalism, since hacks would have to actually work to write a story instead of just picking 10 tweets and pasting them together. Also it would stop stupid stories appearing about an equally stupid tweet.

I used to cycle a lot... and tired or not, falling off a cliff face such as twitter's share price since this announcement is not my idea of a fun ride Simon....

French programmers haul Apple into court over developer rules

Jan Hargreaves

I don't quite get this... can't they just publish an app to do all of that stuff instead? Then they are not limited by Safari's constraints.

A-dough-be: Photoshop flinger pumps profits 50 per cent

Jan Hargreaves

Complain all you want but it's a no brainer for people like me. I get the full master collection for $50 a month instead of a $5000 one time purchase (that reaches EOL after a few years). I would never have been able to afford that in one go. If I had taken a loan to get it, then I would have paid interest on top.

And saying there is no innovation and new features is just plain ignorance. They are constantly adding new stuff. Maybe it's not useful to you but doesn't mean they are just sitting on their hands. One of the new features I've liked is preview mode for InDesign where you can share interactive documents in the browser with just an URL. Great for clients to share their brochures or catalogues online with customers.

I think it was around 2009 that I started talking with a mate about Adobe and how they should add a subscription model. Very glad they did. If you don't like it then use the legacy CS6 or find other alternatives.

Nork server blunder leaks Kim Jong Un's entire DNS – all, er, 28 .kp domains

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Everyone knows you only need two, pron and cats

Which is which in your world?

Opera debuts free VPN built into desktop browser

Jan Hargreaves

Re: If you're not paying for the product...

Bottomless Venture Capital... just ask Soundcloud...

Jan Hargreaves

Re: An interesting move

Yes, there are exceptions, such as the content they own themselves. However in the case of something like Dr Who, they will licence this to TV companies in other countries for a large amount. Part of that deal will state that they cannot sell that content to anyone else in that region, including streams. It's much easier for them to outsource distribution globally. And Match of the Day - I'm sure the license to show that footage is very strictly UK only, meaning they can't just offer it up to other countries on an international version of iPlayer.

I can't see this changing any time soon; not until the use of VPN becomes so widely used that the buyers of the content cannot make enough revenue on showing ads on the content if most people will just stream it from source.

Jan Hargreaves

Re: An interesting move

Thanks for the PureVPN shout - will check that out.

The BBC don't offer licences around the world because they don't own the content. It's owned by small production companies who licence UK-only use to the BBC.

Skype shuts down London office, hangs up on hundreds of devs

Jan Hargreaves

Re: So, any suggestions for alternatives?

It already is bundled into Office 365. I just recently started subscribing to Office 365 because I had just had enough of Libreoffice not working well.

Tried Skype for Business but you can't transfer/import any of your contacts from your personal Skype so it seems a bit pointless unless you want to use it on an internal corporate network or to build your business contact list from scratch. Didn't try using it again.

I held out against Skype for a long long time but finally gave way this new year because my business contacts were on it and they were no longer using any other chat program (Yahoo was going downwards for years). I don't like Skype as an experience at all but it helps me get work done. I can live with it...

Ad flog Plus: Adblock Plus now an advertising network, takes cash to broker web banners

Jan Hargreaves

I agree with everything you say but tests have shown that ads without animation, or imagery are almost useless to the masses. Take an old magazine with ads in the back pages (e.g. Loot) .. be honest.. even I would probably look quickly at the ones that stand out the most. The simple one liner text ones imply that the advertiser is very stingy and will spend as little as possible on their ad, so why buy anything from a company like that?

It's an interesting debate. I don't like ads either, and have never bought anything from an online ad. I prefer subscription or donation for websites I use but a lot of websites don't have this on offer. And I realise I am in the minority who are willing to pay for content.

Jan Hargreaves

Optional

Nicely written FAQ page that explains everything.... that links to the ad criteria:

"What are the criteria for an ad to be declared an Acceptable Ad?

The criteria for what makes an Acceptable Ad can be found here​."

https://acceptableads.com/criteria

404 page not found. Nice work guys!

Europe to order Apple to cough up 'one beeellion Euros in back taxes'

Jan Hargreaves

US Citizen working outside the US - Must pay US taxes on ALL income, no exceptions.

US Company generating revenue outside the US - Must pay.... nothing...

US companies should have to follow the same law. Or at the very least pay full rate corporation tax on all profits accrued within that country. Close all the stupid loopholes like that they can license their "IP" back to the parent company for whatever equals the revenue. It may not be illegal, but it sure is unethical.

Farewell Patch Tuesday fragmentation: from October, MS will roll just one monthly patch

Jan Hargreaves

This seems like absolute madness. The number of times users of say antivirus software have had their machines rendered temporarily useless by an update - leaving other users to postpone the update is quite regular. Can't wait until I switch away from Windblows later this year.

Google Chrome will beat Flash to death with a shovel: Why... won't... you... just... die!

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Haven't most of us already done this?

I've never blocked flash. I've not even installed click to play. I started developing sites in Flash around 2006 but not done one for probably 5 years now. I have used the latest Flash to make an animated logo which was pretty easy but the end result file size was about 20 times what it would have been if .swf.

Not ONCE have I ever been a victim of an attack through Flash, a PDF, or had my computer 'prawned' or whatever that is.

Am I just really boring and not visiting Ukrainian fetish/ bondage sites enough to fall for this sort of thing?

Overall I don't see any issue with what Google are doing here - people who really want to play that game (including me), or learn in an education flash site can just click to play - and all those dodgy background flash trackers will get blocked.

However it feels like most people here in the comments are blaming flash for how the creepy advertisers or scammers are using it. People will exploit anything to make a buck... yes, it has a lot of bugs in it, and probably has too many features thus making it easier to exploit but you shouldn't knock a technology that millions of people use every day to play games, just because you don't like it.

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

Jan Hargreaves

Re: "...why not just tie access to the TV licence?"

Some of the programming is not licensed for viewing abroad, so they can't do that even if they wanted to. They would have to get all the third party programme makers to agree to worldwide licenses which they don't want to do because they sell their programmes seperately in other markets.

I see no reason why the BBC can't tie iPlayer access to logged in accounts, while still blocking access from non UK IP addresses (Don't Sky Sports do exactly that?). You seem to think the two things are mutually exclusive?

AdBlock Plus blocked in China: 159m forbidden from stripping adverts

Jan Hargreaves

Re: At least they can't block a hosts file

Never even tried an ad blocker. No Script seems to work fine, with the ability to easily allow for any site you want to, and blocking the rest by default. Keeps other "nasties" at bay too.

Never really understood why someone would have No Script AND an ad blocker but plenty seem to.

My Microsoft Office 365 woes: Constant crashes, malware macros – and settings from Hell

Jan Hargreaves

Optional

Was using Libreoffice for the past 3 years, but something annoyed me so much with it that I went and signed up for Office 365. I was creating a document for a client containing screenshots, and whatever I did, Libreoffice pixelated them so badly that they were mostly unreadable. It was so frustrating that I went back to the dark side. Also, that by default the file format was .odt - clients who have older versions of Word can't open them. So then you, or your colleague has to resave it, or you have to change the default format - it's just annoying.

Now I have the latest apps and some new ones like Sway that could help me make good looking reports and presentations. Excel is so, so much easier to use than Libreoffice's alternative - even simple things like dragging columns and sorting data. I don't use Outlook - have been on Thunderbird since 2005. Thankfully I've never had to go near Exchange in my life.

Yes, I'm paying £6 month for the privilege but seems a no brainer of a cost for my business - will save me time and increase productivity. Microsoft do a lot of things that I don't like (my next pc will not be windows), but Office by and large they do very well.

Microsoft adds useful feature to PowerPoint. Seriously

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Still

Randomly inserted slides of Karl Pilkington flying in, pointing at the "presenter" and saying BULLSHIT would be appropriate.

Avast woos AVG shareholders with $1.3bn buyout offer

Jan Hargreaves

Silicon Valley... or wall street, value personal invasion companies at around $60 - $100 per user account. So the valuation is no surprise.

It is however totally insane. AVG shareholders would be mad not to cash out. The software was cool in 2004. It's a total dog these days and an absolute nightmare to uninstall.

No means no: Windows 10 nagware's red X will stop update – Microsoft

Jan Hargreaves

"The new experience has clearer options to upgrade now, choose a time, or decline the free offer," Myerson said in a statement to The Register.

"If the red-X is selected on this new dialog, it will dismiss the dialog box and we will notify the device again in a few days."

- Sorry but what has changed? It is not clear at all. Where is the button saying I don't want to upgrade or No Thanks?

- Clicking the red x closes the window - how is it intuitive that this means you are declining the offer?

- So you are declining the offer for a few days then they offer it to you again?

FFS... I was a Macintosh user from around 1992 to 2005. I then switched to Windows but this year I'm planning to switch back. This sort of behaviour is driving users away and they STILL can't see it.

You're not cool unless you have an app store, apparently. So Docker's building one

Jan Hargreaves
FAIL

Requires Windows 10.... way to go to alienate a huge amount of the online developer world....

Microsoft mops up after Outlook.com drowns in tsunami of penis pills, Russian brides etc

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Why carry on sending spam?

"What bothers me is the spam that doesn't appear to have ANY purpose. A string of random sentences, stolen from some book of poems or something, without any links or images of any kind. No product messages, no weird formatting that makes the message readable to a human but easily missed by a computer, etc... What is the point?"

Probably has an invisible 1x1 pixel image in it which tells them your email address is geniune and the email was seen.

Twitter expands beyond 140 characters

Jan Hargreaves

"Geniunely changed how humans communicate?"

Is that rock I live under really that big? You do realise that actual geniune twitter users is just a fraction of the world's population. I've heard of some idiots actually saying hashtag in a conversation in a pub - followed by most sane people leaving the building.

Google asks the public to name the forthcoming Android N operating system

Jan Hargreaves
Coat

Surely... as it has to be sweet, begin with N, and to do with Google and you want a brand tie up... it so obviously should be Android Nerds

Meet the man who owns his own piece of the internet

Jan Hargreaves

I thought 9 was the very smallest you could go for text you want people to read. Maybe the legal garbage can be 8 or 7. 6 - I've not seen that. Are you sure you haven't got the site zoomed out or something? Other than that I only wonder that the font-size Nazis spend their days 3 inches away from their screen. Does seem bizarre.

Jan Hargreaves

So he's spent $250,000 on getting his TLD but seems like not one cent on a web designer for 9 years. Priorities seem rather odd...

Adobe...sigh...issues critical patch...sigh...for Flash Player zero day

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Amazing

Some examples:

1. Can't play sounds simultaneously in some browsers with HTML5. For games and interactive stuff this is a complete non-starter.

2. Video masking in HTML5 just isn't anywhere near what you can do.

3. Recently I was asked to animate a very simple intro logo for a website. I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea how to do this outside of Flash so I used it and exported to HTML5. The swf is just 15kb, but the export to js is 250kb. The technology/ or exporter is primative. It has a long way to go.

4. Syncing content - like sounds at particular points - this needs to be set on an event rather than a timer. I've had to use a timer on a recent project that doesn't always go at the right time. There may be a way to do this in jQuery - so forgive me if I just don't have the required knowledge on this one.

5. Just the overall compression Flash provided. On one particular forum I visit regularly, a lot of people have gif signatures and on some pages the browser will just freeze constantly. With flash you can have so much mixed-media content yet it's compressed and handled well by the browser. In HTML5 it really struggles at times. You shouldn't require your users to have 16GB, 16 core machines.

That said... Flash is on it's way out and I've known that for years. The smartphone basically killed it. Thanks Steve...

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Amazing

Never had a problem with crashing video drivers. Must be your video card.

Flash worked absolutely fine and there were some truly incredible websites built with Flash. There were also loads of sites that were awful and ads that behaved ridiculously. I'm guessing the wide ranging functionality of it led to it being more open to exploits than other software that didn't try to do so many things.

You give people technology and a few use it to create great things, and unfortunately many use it to create awful things. That is not the fault of the tech itself.

There is nothing out there that is even close to providing what it can do. It's a shame that a technology is aggressively retired when there is no viable alternative. Also it's obvious that a lot of you don't play browser based games as HTML5 is not even close to offering the same level of UI & UX.

Hey, YouTube: Pay your 'workers' properly and get with the times

Jan Hargreaves

While that piece of technology is impressive there are two major problems with it:

1. Now you see many distributors, labels etc all "claiming" the rights to the same song. They more often than not have rights in different territories but claim worldwide nonetheless. Meanwhile the songwriters and performers more often than not get nothing.

2. This technology is useless when it comes to remixes or DJ mixes. A remix can sound similiar to a track but YouTube will think it's one or the other.

With a DJ mix it's far worse - they wait for one person to claim the rights to one song, or detect one song in a 10-20 track mix and give them all the royalties. Meanwhile, because it's a mix, the copyright actually belongs to the DJ or the DJ's label and not any of the artists of the original songs. It's then the DJ's label's responsibility to share the revenue with everyone that contributes on the mix. And they pay the same royalty for a 3 minute pop track as they do for an 80 minute DJ mix. Maybe no-one at Google listens to dance music...

The case for ethical ad-blocking

Jan Hargreaves

Re: View from inside

I've said to the Grauniad many times that I would happily pay a monthly subscription, or "donate" an annual supporting/ membership fee for being able to use the site without ads. You would think it's not a difficult thing but they claim to have looked at implimenting it and decided that it would cost too much and would not make enough revenue to be worth doing it anyway (Maybe they asked the guys that did healthcare.gov for a quote!!). Meanwhile they keep pushing their membership scheme that involves events, debates etc but not the digital paper ad free which just seems odd in the extreme. If this user is logged in, don't serve ads. How hard can it be? And being able to attend debates is not exactly enticing to someone that is tens of thousands of miles away, and they readership is huge overseas. Since their new design mind... I have taken time off from visiting the site. Most of the content, on the whole, is decent, but the presentation is truly horrific.

Is ad blocking ethicial? If it's true that advertisers get paid only for clicks then I can't be alone in ignoring any ads I see and I honestly cannot remember the last time I clicked on an ad online. Like maybe a decade ago?

I'm just not interested in advertising at all, whether it be on the web, tv, cinema, magazines, newspapers, billboards. None of it encourages me to purchase anything, so I just don't watch ads. Period. I realise that I am in a minority with this opinion, but exactly what would advertisers gain by trying to force me to watch their ads? I'm just not interested.

An interesting idea for the ad men would be to offer people free internet but ridled with ads. I imagine a lot of people would put up with the ads because their internet was free, just so that they don't have to pay. It would not effect me as I'm quite happy to pay a premium for my internet and control exactly what I consume through my pipe.

Adobe scrambles to untangle itself from QuickTime after Apple throws it over a cliff

Jan Hargreaves

What's the problem if you don't use Quicktime Player to play video?

They said the security hole is if you play a malicious video. I honestly can't remember the last time I used QuickTime Player to play a video. MPC is my chosen video player.

I guess in the future there may be other exploits but by then it looks like Adobe will have sorted out their software to run without Quicktime.

Does seem odd on Apple's part mind you. It's not like they can't afford to get it fixed. Adobe brings in a lot of business for them. Is this bug so great that it can't be fixed?

Yahoo! kills! search! APIs!, games! and! Astrology! site!

Jan Hargreaves

A billion VISITORS a day. Yeah... pull the other one...

AdBlock Plus, websites draft peace deal so ads can bypass blockade

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Illegal?

Used to delete the cookies to read more than 10 stories a month. Now I can't get in at all. I disabled Ghostery as per their instructions and deleted the cookies and it still wouldn't let me in. So won't be going to their site anymore. I'm sure they are happy about that... I didn't generate any revenue for them (apart from when forwarding stories to people who don't have ad blockers).

One question I have though is this: It used to be that advertisers paid per impression but it changed to per-click. Why would you pay for your ad to be seen but not interacted with. Has it now gone back to impressions? I never, ever click an ad. I saw an ad the other day on another device and I then went to their domain name rather than click the ad (this is an extremely rare occurance). People I know say they also never click on ads. So by using an adblocker I wonder if I am denying them revenue. Paying by impressions would amaze me....

It is a problem for industries like newspapers. People will read online and not buy the paper anymore. They need to make income somehow. Not sure what the best way to go about it is. They offer access for 100 quid a year... not sure it's really worth that when I can read news elsewhere for nothing... I'm having trouble thinking about how much I would pay for an annual subscription......

Your jingle to take into the weekend: QuickTime security fixes to apply

Jan Hargreaves

Whether you like iTunes or not, it requires Quicktime to run. And a lot of people on Windows have iTunes installed.

Longing to bin Photoshop? Rock-solid GIMP a major leap forward

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Tough Sell

It will go nowhere if it keeps that name. How they fail to see that branding is important to be successful is beyond bewildering.....

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gimp

(1) a derrogatory term for someone that is disabled or has a medicial problem that results in physical impairment.

(2) An insult implying that someone is incompetent, stupid, etc. Can also be used to imply that the person is uncool or can't/won't do what everyone else is doing.

(3) A sex slave or submissive, usually male, as popularlized by the movie Pulp Fiction.

LogMeIn adds emergency break-in feature to LastPass

Jan Hargreaves

"A microsite explaining the changes is here or, for those who prefer it, there’s a short video on YouTube below."

I would have called it a web page.... what makes it a "microsite"?

Patch now! Flash-exploitin' PC-hijackin' attack spotted in the wild by Huawei bods

Jan Hargreaves

Re: When will the horror end?

When HTML5 can be anywhere near Flash for gaming in the browser. It's a LONG way away...

Facebook hammers another nail into Flash's coffin

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Is HTML5 pure and saintly

I much preferred encoding only one format rather than the two you need to for HTML5. If you have a lot of video, you now need double the disk space.

Also things like masking, transitions, overlays are terrible with HTML5 in comparison to flash but the web moves on/ backward.

New low for humanity: ONE BEELLION lost souls log on to Facebook in one day

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Phone Apps?

And how many were people who have 3 or 4 accounts (there are a lot of people who have multiple fb accounts)? How many are people who made an account for a business so their personal account is not tied to it? A billion souls - I very much doubt it.

And as for Zuck wanting to connect the other 6 billion, I will never, ever join facebook. End of.

And 15% of his own countryman have no interest in the internet and won't be getting it so a bit of an unobtainable goal really.

Blighty a 'smartphone society' amid rise of 4G middle class

Jan Hargreaves

Addiction

Seems some people took this poll way too seriously. Can't you see that the answers are made as funny stereotypical comments? I don't own a laptop, and only use a smartphone for testing websites. I'm not a big gamer at all but could see that picking the desktop option is the correct one for me.

On topic, for me at least, it's all about addiction. People who are sensible can use the phone when they need to for directions, looking up stuff, quickly checking email, social media etc. You can do all of this in under an hour's use a day if you wanted to. Unfortunately smartphones are extremely addictive. You see people on social media and games and they go for hours and hours at a time. Just sitting on that tube and thinking about stuff is now considered boring and you must be too poor to own a phone or tablet or a decent data plan. Like other addictions only the user can tell themselves that they are addicted and need to stop or ration its use.

I went to a party a few months ago and there were 10 people sitting around the front room, and every single one of them was staring at the phones and no-one talking to each other. If that isn't the epitomy of smartphone addiction I don't know what is. I got up and left; life is worth much more than that.

'Apple lures labels from free streams – and why is no one doing anything about it' shrieks group

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Sense of self entitlements are not good...

That is what Spotify is paying. Not sure what you mean by that statement. There are third parties involved in a lot of cases but the amount received from Spotify is reported, at least in my own experience. The artist then gets a percentage of that.

It may be what most of the major streaming players are paying; that doesn't make it a fair payment though. The irony of multi-millionaire musicians standing on stage asking for a higher cut must be lost on them, but their point is valid. If you think this is a fair rate then perhaps you should work for $10 an hour. Stuff the "living rage"; the market has dictated that $10 an hour is enough to live on in New York. How many streams is that....?

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Sense of self entitlements are not good...

I've seen it in reports from Spotify and many other ad supported models for artists I deal with but here is an online source:

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/11/26/spotifypremiumadsupported

Slightly old but the figures are accurate.

Spotify Free:

Streams: 220,571

Royalty: $108.40

Average per-stream payout: $0.00049

How anyone can justify this as a fair remuneration is beyond me.

Microsoft nixes A-V updates for XP, exposes 180 MEEELLION luddites

Jan Hargreaves

Re "Most remaining XP users are based in Pakistan and Egypt"

So NetMarketShare have never heard of the tiny country called China where almost EVERYONE uses XP. These stats are so meaningless anyway - what would be better to know is what percentage of users are susceptible to NetMarketShare's spying. Probably not that many.

Chrome version 42 will pour your Java coffee down the drain: Plugin blocked by default

Jan Hargreaves

Who has written such a thing for Chrome??? When I said better browser I meant better than Chrome. It's horrible.

Jan Hargreaves
Facepalm

Just use a better browser. What's the big deal?

Google, Amazon 'n' pals fork out for AdBlock Plus 'unblock' – report

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Sigh

When there is a Pacquio fight on national TV here, you get a 3 minute round followed by AT LEAST 15 minutes of ads. His second fight against Marquez - I was watching on cable live and chatting to my friend who was watching on the national channel. Totally spoilt the result for him. It was unintentional but he didn't talk to me for a week!

Facebook privacy policy violates European law, says report

Jan Hargreaves

Re: @AC

I've never signed up to Facebook. But I know they have pictures of me on the site. So they must have a profile of me on there. Do tell me how I opt out then, given that I never agreed to their terms.

Google looks to scrape away scumware, as only it can

Jan Hargreaves
Mushroom

Will it warn you on sites where the unwanted program is "Chrome"????? The number of times I have unchecked for Chrome to be installed....

It's apparently the devil's action when programs are installed as bundleware by Microsoft, software sites and anyone else but when it's a Google program it's an angelic act. The hypocrisy is incredible. And the irony of it is that Google is malware... it installs in a non install location on Windows, and spys on all your browsing.

Enough is enough: It's time to flush Flash back to where it came from – Hell

Jan Hargreaves

I guess none of you play browser games... The top 10 games in Facebook all use flash. What would the wife do if there was no flash I ask you? Is it not a good way to keep her quiet?

Apple's Beats, Google, and Sony hammered with unpaid royalty claim

Jan Hargreaves

Re: Sony

Alanis? She has absolutely no idea what irony is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg

Players gonna play (play, play): Google confirms YouTube Music 'access all areas' key

Jan Hargreaves
Stop

Almost any song... what?

"Google correctly claims that almost any song in the world is already posted on YouTube, somewhere."

You are kidding right? There are so so many songs I want to share with people but they are not on YouTube. Do you only like Taylor Swift or something?

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