Posts by Pat 11

no surprise here

In other words, if some shady creeps are going to spy on you, it's going to be us.

Ciq eating googles lunch?

nice image

A human head, stripped of flesh and nailed down. What a lovely image with which to set up store. Is it a metaphor?

Looks like a decent system, though for the pirate demographic probably still not more attractive than rips.

they say that now...

But wait until they become the p2p seedbox / vpn / shell account centre of the world. It'll be like stoners to Amsterdam.

True though, all this missing money only exists in the whistful private jet, coke and hookers dreams of the execs of a fading industry.

you don't understand relative risk

A small RR ratio can be interesting if you're looking at population incidences. Small changes can mean large numbers of events. Small RRRs can still have narrow confidence intervals.

That clinic

They currently have a Special Offer boob job deal for £2750, 0% finance...I wonder if they've thought of doing a BOGOF on the airbags?

Grown up discussion, anyone?

There's pretty balanced review in this week's Nature Reviews Neuroscience:

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v12/n12/abs/nrn3135.html

the eu...good for something?

EU agencies seen to be about the only ones who care about privacy these days.

Who's next then

Well she's not been as bad as the last few. No nickname even, unlike the Nuttsacker, or, shudder, Wacky Jacqui?

Who's up next for the most popular job in the government? Shame David Davies ruled himself out of the cabinet, but he had a degree of integrity, and that's no good.

Please let the scrapers carry on

Been using an Android app which is scraping the data, I do hope they keep the API free. It's awesome, I use it every day, though a few friends have wondered why I have suddenly run off having realised that the bus up the road is the last for 15 minutes. I'd say I spend about 30m a week not hanging around and I get a seat far more often (I know it's worth waiting for the next, empty one if it's 1 minute out)

gouging

Lovely thing, I'd buy one like a shot if they stop pretending that 16GB of flash memory costs 100 quid

It's plausible that there would be a link

OK, I'll have a go.

Kids learn from example. Young kids do this more, in fact in the early years it's the main form of social learning. Kids whose parents are violent are more likely to be violent themselves. It's called modelling and psychologists have known about it for years.

Video games are getting better and better at portraying agency in a realistically simulated virtual world. Every increasing realism is one of the engagement techniques of the industry. Many games are violent. Some push boundaries be emphasizing the violence. Know any five year olds? Would you let them play the airport scene in MW2? If not, why?

To claim that very young kids could not model from this is naive. Most would not. But some would. There are plenty of dysfunctional families where toddlers are exposed to everything their older sibs get up to. Sometimes in the context of abusive parents. Or parents who just aren't there.

Anyone who thinks the dominant entertainment force in society has no relationship to how that society behaves is foolish. Anyone who thinks that relationship could only be unidirectional when the evidence is so hard to get and so conflicted has no grounds for that belief.

Privacy

Well they be able to inspect user files like dropbox?

So that's what it is

Been wondering what the brown slime is that builds up around the bottom seal of the dishwasher. I scrape it off, it comes back. Time to take precautions...blast it from , it's the only way to be sure.

10 - 20% meh.

Goodness, what will I do with all that time.

Fail...they should just make browsers play relaxing elevator music while pages load.

Blue sparks come from his hands

He is sith.

Move along please

Nothing evil to see here

Some things do not belong in the cloud

If you store your important logins on a remote server not under your control, the very best of luck to you. Some things are best not in the cloud.

Duplicity I reckon

It doesn't matter that cell.cache only stores the most recent entries... Each entry is the result of a lookup on google servers. If Google store all your lookups they have a complete location record. It's not clear whether this collection is done regardless of your opt in/out of location services.

Furthermore, now they have this map, it's such a rich dataset that it is robust - you can break bits of it, say by changing your MAC, and it can use the remaining data to relocate your new MAC.

Finally, does anyone believe the line that all this juicy personal data is not held in a way that allows it to be directly tied too your id? After all, what on earth could the world's biggest targeted advertiser (and their close friends, the world's most mercenary government) want with such information?

Fail

The reason tablets didn't take off last time is that they were running a dog of an OS (Windows tablet edition). The reason they are now taking off is IOS and Android. Windows can go wrong in so many billion ways that it's not suited to the casual sofa user.

The smart thing to do would be force it to Android mode when the keyboard is stowed, but switch to Windows when it's time to do some work. Shared storage for user content.

Tinfoil wallet sir?

difrwear.com

Or...

Just buy the cheap wifi one and use wireless tether on your Android phone.

Cheaper, thinner and more functional?

I might even buy one, but I'm really holding out for the version with the credit card slot on the side.

Libel

Does this have implications for libel?

Good luck with that vpn

Do you think GCHQ employs your mum our something? Anyone using out of the ordinary encryption would be making themselves for further attention.

Fox? Why?

Tom Steinberg and the test of MySociety do more for digital britain in their lunch breaks than that travel agent has ever done.

Bloat

Good luck with this, all their security crud just slows devices down, and I didn't notice an excess of processing power on my Android phone. What it does need is a firewall to stop apps guffing my personal info to all and sundry without me being able to even know about it. But that's not currently possible.

Nation state

Security experts say only a nation state would be able to assemble a hack of this complexity. Or they would do if they weren't busy claiming some worm was cyber warfare.

It's like 1990 all over again

Google = Microsoft, Apple = Apple

The ages-old schizm carry on, develop for Apple, under Apple's rules and on Apple's hardware, or run free on Android, bend it how you like and run it on any old junk.

Meanwhile, I wouldn't be buying shares in Microsoft.

Sub necessary?

I don't buy the idea that a sub is the only way to ensure nobody knows where they are. A nation with considerably less resources that the UK managed to keep the world completely in the dark about whether they had WMDs. As long as there is uncertainty, there is a deterrent

I'm guessing it gets a bit cheaper if you don't buy the vehicle.

I went

It *was* a load of wanky balls.

inverse square law fail?

If mobile phone radiation was going to have this kind of effect, would it not be the handset that was the relevant source, as it's very close to the body and incident energy falls off with something reated to the square of the distance? In which case, living far from a mast would be bad, as the phone ramped up power to keep a signal.

I would, but...

but my computer, like almost all other computers, doesn't show Quicktime movies.

OCD

The previous administration seems to have been suffering from something analogous to obsessive compulsive disorder. OCD is characterized by repetitive behaviours aimed at averting an imagined catastrophe, eg checking the gas cooker is off. Issues of responsibility seem to be particularly pertinent.

Similarly the Labour govt seemed prepared to go to any lengths to avoid a bad thing happening. For them, a bad thing meant "a thing for which we will be criticised by the press". Spending 600k to prevent one of those was a good deal for them. Sadly though in their OCD-like efforts to avoid all possibility of badness, they created this nightmarish erosion of civil liberties which is going to be hard to undo.

You can tell it came from a pathological state of mind because it is obvious to the rational observer that the surveillance society creates acute (false positives) and chronic (general loss of trust in society) problems which are worse than the very few bad things they were trying to prevent.

Basically, they were sick, and they had to go. Hopefully one of the Millibands will realise this and learn to live with risk.

own goal

Surely this is a cock up on their part... if you want to monetise personal information you have about someone, the first thing you don't do is publish that information.

Thanks

Thanks for doing this comparison. TMobile used to be pretty good here in London, but recently I and mates have been feeling very let down. Good to see that it's confirmed by a more formal test, albeit in a different location.

TMobile were really the first movers in this sector; they got a lot of business by offering the only "unlimited" deal in town at a decent price. Sadly it seems they haven't been increasing capacity as the clientbase grew. I hope they get some more bandwidth, but with 24m contracts common these days they have reduced churn and the pressure's not so great on them to fulfil their promises.

Early adopter

Where are the early adopter areas then?