Posts by Fred Flintstone

Re: Top Secret security

Pretty soon it all stacks up.

.. which makes the abysmal state of their security (OPM being a very important case in point) all the more inexcusable.

Re: The only way to not be ridiculed...

Here in Norway the Army is testing it for use by tank drivers...

Sure, they may still look silly, but... would you say that to someone driving an armored vehicle?

Oh sure, but only after I paintball the cameras :)

Re: If it quacks like a duck

the demand has peaked out

I saw what you did there :)

Re: Whatever happened to LibreOffice Online?

I've seen no mention of it for ages.

Ah, do not despair! :)

The changes to the code that brought you LO v5 are apparently in preparation for that. I quote from their features list:

LibreOffice 5.0 is the corner stone of our mobile clients on Android and Ubuntu Touch as well as our upcoming cloud version. It is also the first version to come in 64 bits for Windows. As such LibreOffice 5 serves as the foundation of our current developments and is a great plaftorm to extend, innovate and collaborate with!

I'm personally not so keen on the idea, but I can see it being useful in many situations. It helps that they also managed to reduce the code base. Maybe I'm biased, but this new version feels snappier than v4 so I think the upgrade was worth it.

Re: id10t

What are the ways to beat a keylogger?

One time passwords? You can now even add TOTP to Linux logins, so if you want to go into paranoid mode it isn't even hard to do.

Re: Welcome to the cloud...

What's any of this got to do with Annie Lennox?

I think it's more Nine Inch Nails (yes, I know it's originally by David Bowie, I just like this version better :) ).

Re: Well...

If you are really into S&M to yourself run 4.4 with full disk encryption lol. So slooooooowwwwww.

That'll be Bruce Schneier's new book: 50 shades of crypto :)

I'd take the garden hose to one of these things in a heartbeat of it was over my property.

LOL. If you get the same kind of pressure as we get from Thames Water it would be safe from that whilst flying close enough to cut your hair :).

Re: Personally....

THAT, my dear friends ... would be a film worth watching. Let's be honest here, it would be a damn sight more interesting than yet another Marvel film.

Being Hollywood and all, tens of tons of money would roll in, thus paying for both legal teams, and Universal would still post a "loss" on the venture.

Ah, but the sheer irony of seeing that film being pirated would be worth it on its own :)

Re: Does Adobe sit on its hands and wait for people to report vulnerabilities before it fixes them?

That would still be a useful approach if their fixes indeed addressed vulnerabilities. As far as I can tell their fixes simply open up holes elsewhere - a bit like digging a hole to fill another one.

It makes you wonder what sort of approach to coding makes you end up with a game of security whack-a-mole.

Unless, of course, the original intention was indeed to code a game of whack-a-mole :)

Re: Perhaps

Miyamoto Mushashi must be spinning in his grave!

Ah, but between keeping his blades sharp, fighting people and writing about it he had no time left to trademark it. Let this be a lesson to all of you (etc). :)

Re: They're All Shit

Having digital art equipment reviewed by non-artists is about as useful as someone who can't drive reviewing a car after sitting in the driver seat, wiggling the wheel a bit and shouting "Vroom! Vroom!"

Love the analogy :).

I think YMMV - artists that need precision won't go near these products, sure, but I can see artists that spend their time sketching out basic ideas (or work with coarser strokes) jump at the chance of having something portable that doesn't cost the amounts that Wacom wants (let's face it, you've bought a second PC at their prices), yet has enough functionality to rough something out.

Anyone in the audience who professes to being an artist? (not me, I don't even feature in amateur league when it comes to freehand drawing anything more than stick figures :) ).

Re: New form of lift

Make a balloon shaped like a politician, and you don't even need burners to get off the ground

Mind you, it was already sponsored by a bank, so they weren't far off.

Re: a grand fundemental law of human relationships?

garbage in = Facebook out

FTFY :)

If only there was a way to shame companies into upgrading their security promptly.

Hmm, maybe something to prod the banking regulator with? After all, they are always in need of evidence to show they're actually doing their job, and this is pretty much a classic by now..

Let's avoid standards at all costs then..

5 years to prepare a 76 page document that any decent developer could have written in a few days...

It's a classic not-invented-here as well: the right answer to that has been around since 1995, but hey, that came from a British standard :)

Re: Apple sucks schweaty monkey bung.

Lawyers sue where them money is.

It appears there is no big difference in motivation between lawyers and bankrobbers then :)

Re: iMovie, Keynote and GarageBand are optional installs

I suspect just about any iOS user has a folder like that "rubbish I don't want but cannot delete".

At least you can stick such apps in a folder, out of the way.

Re: thoughts on Swift as a general language?

I think Swift's main attraction is that it's one platform to bind them all :).

I suspect the cunning plan is that by bringing Swift into Open Source, Apple ends up with more people feeling capable of developing applications for iOS and OSX, but being able to code doesn't immediately imply an ability to make it user friendly.

It'll be interesting to watch what happens. Apple tends to be less into public beta testing so I don't think it's a big risk for coders to invest time in Swift (it's not going to disappear overnight), but what interests me is how quickly they will adjust any issues or add missing features. Apple has never struck me at being terribly good at communicating (and by that I mean two-way, not marketing :) ), and Open Source only really works with bidirectional engagement.

What would make it really interesting is if an Android SDK emerged from a 3rd party, which is possible if it's really Open Source. I don't think it would harm Apple much, but their reaction would be worth watching.

Re: Connection nagging

So blame the developer of the music app and tell they if they don't correct this you'll find a different app

Umm, no, this is actually an iOS message. It's a shorter form of "as we get a share of revenue, it is our duty to remind you that you have disabled the last vestige of overcharging mobile vendors have when you're abroad". That message would just be too long to put on a screen, hence the shorter form. :)

I like iOS in general, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. This is a good example of one of those nuisances you have to put up with when travelling.

Re: Well that kinda sucks

What sucks is to have that kind of tech but also having to run along beside it pushing a cart with your mate on it so he can film it from a good angle. Of course the stop at the end sucks even more for your mate if you slip and fall.

Yes, that surprised me too. I would have expected a segway, a tracking drone (maybe they couldn't get one that wasn't armed:) ) or even another robot..

Re: Will it be accepted?

The canary for technical acceptance always has been, and always will be, centered around the adult industry.

Canary? I always thought that involved chickens. Ugh :)

Re: Upvote for the article..

Google just told me that summation is the process of summing something up, not the result :)

Yup, the price for posting pre-coffee :)

Re: So my choice is...

Well, you can still buy ink, fountain pens and paper :)

No, your option is a simpler one. Inform yourself of all the factors that matter to you and then make a choice that fits YOU. This is why interoperability is so great: for everything you do, you choose the gear that fits your needs, budget and risk profile.

This means you build a backbone focused on interoperability and then plug in whatever you need. I personally also prefer to use IMPA/SMTP/CalDAV and CardDAV rather than Exchange but for some that is a bridge too far. Your accountants like Excel on Windows? Fine, but make sure they save in .xls (not .xlsx - avoid the "x" formats as the bubonic plague they are).

Your designers are far more efficient on Macs? Fine - that is quite happy talking all manner of RFCs including SMB, and off you go. A bit of platform diversity also protects you from a complete cascade meltdown when another ILoveYou virus lands, or when someone codes an effective drive-by virus for a Mac or Linux box (that it hasn't been done yet is no guarantee of the future).

Want to go Open Source all the way (even if not entirely Free)? No problem - your backbone will support it.

Even before Sir Berners-Lee defined the URL idea we were already working on interoperability (which was easy then as most of it was Unix based). It's one of the most valuable features of the Net - make sure you keep that feature alive.

Is the US the last country on the planet to ban hand-held mobes while driving?

Well, on the plus side, they have the right to carry arms.

This one can be solved *really* quickly. All it takes is some pragmatic joined up thinking :)

Re: turn off by key

And on some cars, but probably not modern ones, turning the engine off by key could cause the steering lock to engage. Not a good thing in a moving car

I think that only happens when you actually pull out the key - just turning it to an "off" position will not cause the steering lock to engage. That is, in the cars that I have used, I don't know if this applies to all makes but it strikes me as a sensible safety measure.

Re: METADATA...

No biggy, remember, METADATA can't stop bombings at marathons, can't lead to the revelation of another person, contains nothing personal about you!!

Yup, we definitely need a <sarcasm> tag, but just on the off chance you meant it, the obligatory link to a remark made by someone in public about meta data. Note that there was no indication he didn't mean what he said, and he's in a position to know.

Re: Just for you townies...

a classic T-bone accident

Yup, spotted. Nice one :)

Re: Victim Compensation

It's the price you pay for cutting a service to the bone and expecting 5 people to police 200,000.

Let the down voting begin!

You won't get one from me, because that is unfortunately true.