* Posts by theblackhand

924 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Oct 2009

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iPhone addiction will RUIN YOUR LIFE – if only that were true

theblackhand

I did a test last Friday....

I met a journalist friend at his office for a drink - when I said we're off to the pub, there was visible shaking from those that still had work to complete and couldn't come to the pub immediately.

Maybe they should have wrote half-assed stories about "Beer/crisp/pork scratching addictions will RUIN YOUR LIFE". At least they would have got to the pub faster but not sure if the content would have been appreciated in a technical publication.

Is that sufficiently scientific or should I continue to repeat the experiment to gather more evidence? Am I eligible for a research grant?

Tax Systems: The good, the bad and the completely toot toot ding-dong loopy

theblackhand

Re: Transaction taxes

Doesn't this demonstrate Tim's point?

B2C users can't easily set up their own trusted payment system, so end up paying - B2B users can afford to set up/use their own payment system (BACS) so avoid the additional cost.

If there is a way of minimising taxes, most people will - whether that is paying trades people for cash jobs or employing specialists to create tax-efficient organisational structures or operational practices that avoid or delay when tax needs to be paid.

Get your special 'sound-optimising' storage here, hipsters

theblackhand

Re: It's true

Dear frank ly

I have good news and bad news for you.

The good news is I can fix it. The bad news is that it will be expensive.

But don't worry, as part of the upgrades you'll get this lovely new coat that only intelligent people can see....

I look forward to doing business with you

Right to be forgotten? That’s not Google’s call – data MEP Albrecht

theblackhand

Re: WT Everlasting F???

They say free trade is a good thing.

I'm unsure what the TTIP will be and everyone who does know either won't say or will end up in jail.

I guess we'll just have to wait until the good ol' US of A comes and rescues us Brits (and the rest of Europe) and imposes some democracy....

Ford recalls SUVs … to fix the UI

theblackhand

Of course they go together.

Options:

Sport option pack: The sport option pack consists of a racing strip and an additional sports button on the gearbox (add $999)

THREE MILLION Moonpig accounts exposed by flaw

theblackhand

Facebook vs Moonpig

I couldn't see where to enter my address and credit card details on Facebook so posted them as a status update.

Am I doing it right?

Qualcomm prez says nowt about $1bn China fine rumours

theblackhand

Let me guess...

China will settle the "abuse of market position" charges in exchange for Qualcomm dropping claims relating to China's 3G technologies and with a cross-licencing agreement for 3G IP?

JPMorgan Chase mega-hack was a simple two-factor auth fail

theblackhand

Re: one one of the biggest data security breaches in history.

AC - if I have two servers that need to talk to one another (lets say a classic client-server app where a front-end website talks to a back-end database).

How would choosing a protocol other than TCP/IP or a protocol supporting encryption provide me with more protection than a well firewalled (i.e. only necessary ports opened between zones, ensure zone separation for non-related functions), TLS-encrypted transport stream running over TCP/IP? In terms of one continuous network, firewalls provide an easy way of addressing the "one continuous network" issue to provide security, assuming they aren't configured with allow any rules.

The problem isn't TCP/IP, the problem is poor implementation - alternative network protocols will suffer the same issues.

ICANN's technical competence queried by Verisign report

theblackhand

Re: Sounds like a plan!

Security through obscurity?

I thought Verizon was highlighting process and operational issues rather than fundamental security issues. The key exchange process works (based on it being in use for sometime), it's just a little fragile - I suspect because it relies on people rather than automated jobs.

Fancy a .trust domain? How's $150,000 sound?

theblackhand

Maybe...

Would you be interested in a .itspracticallystealing domain for ONLY US$100,000?

Sony hackers dump more hunks of stolen data, promise another 'Christmas gift'

theblackhand

Re: They are done

Apple/U2's only mistake was not giving users the choice or their new album or a video of Bono falling off his bike in NYC.

Why would anyone need more than two choices?

Hold the front page: Spain's anti-Google lobbyists lobby for Google News return

theblackhand

Re: oops

Popcorn?

Surely it should be cake as AEDE appears to want to have their cake and eat it too....

BT to gobble EE for £12.5bn – BTEE phone home

theblackhand

Re: You guys have it all wrong.

DT taking over BT? That sounds more like an OFCOM fantasy - beat up the nasty foreign company to make them give rural customers broadband versus rolling over and letting BT tickle there belly as OFCOM playfully try to swat them away.

Uber? Worth $40 BEEELLION? Hey, actually, hold on ...

theblackhand

Re: Surprise - the bailouts were profitable!

Careful when comparing US mortgage debt with other countries.

In the US, Fanny Mae got into trouble when people couldn't repay their mortgages and choose to wlak away. The asset passes to Fanny Mae and the borrower is left with nothing (no asset but also no debt) which leaves Fanny Mae with a large loss that has to be filled with government money but can be quickly rescued (assuming you don't ask too many questions about where all that government money comes from and the side effects....). Hence Fanny Mae is now profitable.

In many other countries (i.e. the UK), failing to pay your mortgage triggers a mortgagee sale and then any difference between sale of the asset and the outstanding debt remains the responsibility of the borrower - this leads to a large pile of debt that continues to accrue interest with something that will eventually be written off (it's labelled "toxic debt" as it will never be repaid). As this debt can only be written off as banks make more money, it greatly slows an economies recovery.

Note: there are some generalisations but the post is long enough as is...

Nothing illegal to see here: Tribunal says TEMPORA spying is OK

theblackhand

Thank goodness!!!!

I was worried they might be doing something bad, like breaking the law....

Brit smut slingers shafted by UK censors' stiff new stance

theblackhand

UK law

UK politicians don't make laws to be enforced, they make them to win votes of whatever vocal minority they are trying to please at the time.

Enforcement is someone else's problem...

HALF A BILLION TERRORISTS: WhatsApp encrypts ALL its worldwide jabber

theblackhand

Re: WPA2 is pretty unbreakable

WPA2/AES is only as secure as the key. If you are using pre-shared keys, rainbow tables (i.e. http://www.renderlab.net/projects/WPA-tables/) take you a long way to getting access to some ones Wifi to then sniff traffic.

Using one of the 802.1x options for authentication via a RADIUS server with regular re-authentication periods largely addresses that (i.e. re-authenticating every hour will mean separate brute force runs over each hour of captured data).

Are MPs smarter than 5-year-olds? We'll soon find out at coding school – Berners-Lee

theblackhand

Re: Doubt it

That's a little harsh.

There are also unskilled conservative, unskilled liberal democrat, unskilled regional loony, unskilled loony, unskilled dope smoking layabout etc

You know where Apple Pay is getting used a LOT? Yes - McDonalds

theblackhand

So....

Will iPhone buyers now be asked if they want fries with their order?

Sky: We're no longer calling ourselves British. Yep. And Broadcasting can do one, too

theblackhand

Re: It used to be that...

Didn't the ECC and IRB sell cricket and rugby rights to Sky to help develop the game and international players?

I know it means those that want to watch the game have to pay, but doesn't the counter argument also apply? Why should those with no interest in these games pay for them out of the TV licence fee?

As for Sky - can you create a Sports product without football as an option so that those who watch rugby and cricket don't have to pay a fortune for something that we never watch? I know - they won't kill the cash cow...

Net neutrality, Verizon, open internet ... How can we solve this mess?

theblackhand

Re: ISP costs re: theblackhand

Cheaper for the ISP - ISP's will typically not pay for data transmitted via a peering arrangement (a direct connect between the ISP and the content provider) but will have to pay a volume based fee for transit traffic (content that traverses one or more ISP's and a peer to reach your ISP's network).

theblackhand

ISP costs

"It costs the ISP the same for me to download a 1MB document from netflix as it costs to download a 1MB document from Google."

Are you sure? And if it is valid for 1MB, it's likely due to a rounding error - does it still apply for 1GB/1TB/etc?

Content from providers directly connected to an ISP will almost certainly be cheaper than content that has to transit one or more other providers.

TalkTalk's 'unbeatable signal strength' and 'fastest Wi-Fi tech' FIBS silenced by ad watchdog

theblackhand

Dear Talk Talk

If you stray from "Talk Talk - we're crap but cheap" you're going to get in trouble....

7 questions we're dying to ask the internet's most exciting bloke

theblackhand

"greater sexual equality"

It's an attempt by telecoms people to get as much sex as the rest of the IT community. Men/women will be multiplexed into available slots to prevent "bandwidth hogs".

Don't worry, I won't be here for the rest of the week....

Data protection laws come to the rescue of poor, underpaid UK MPs

theblackhand

Re: MPs: Lying, thieving, corrupt gits who think the rest of us are stupid RE:AC

Of course people vote along party lines rather than based on the integrity of the individual - how many politicians do you think we would have otherwise?

It's Big, it's Blue... it's simply FABLESS! IBM's chip-free future

theblackhand

Re: FutureShock999

"This effectively spells the end of the POWER architecture too. Knowing that the support contract to produce new chips is only for 10 years"

I think you maybe reading a little too much into the move by IBM. I don't think IBM is trying to stop POWER (even unintentionally) - this is about securing GlobalFoundries medium term future as a manufacturer by allowing GF to present rosey forecasts to banks and investors to ensure they stay in business. And I would expect future agreements.

With AMD struggling against Intel and a lot of TSMC/UMC/Samsung capacity tied up for the foreseeable future, keeping GlobalFoundaries in the game is important for IBM (and AMD).

Origins of SEXUAL INTERCOURSE fished out of SCOTTISH LAKE

theblackhand

So....

They may take away our lives, but they'll never take our invention of sexual intercourse!

It's even GRIMMER up North after MEGA SKY BROADBAND OUTAGE

theblackhand
Coat

Re: Are Eccles Cakes subject to the appellation controlée laws?

Exactly - what is the point in having a petty, bureaucratic organisation if they aren't going to be petty or bureaucratic?

If something isn't done to stop this, foreign cakes, with their fancy icing, will flood UK cake shelves and cause good, honest British cakes to be left on the shelf.

Vote some random organisation to stop or start this outrage!

Mines the coat with Labour/Conservative/Lib Dem/UKIP crossed out and replaced with "what is the point?"....

NetWare sales revive in China thanks to that man Snowden

theblackhand

Re: Cheyenne ArcServe.

I suspect a lot of people feared Arcserve as it had a lovely habit of abending their servers.

And while they could he fixed with the appropriate patches, getting said patches (from Novell and Cheyenne) wasn't always trivial. Even after we upgraded our Internet line from 9k6 to 256Kb.

LTE's backers vow to KILL OFF WI-FI and BLUETOOTH

theblackhand

Re: Another 'systemd' moment?

A corporation can also:

- return money to investors

- split the company into multiple entities

- fail

And probably many more.

Growth provides a path to increased revenue (and hopefully profit), but as long as a company is earning sufficient revenue to survive the rest is just negotiating with shareholders to ensure that they are happy (or happy enough)...

Meg Whitman: The lady IS for TURNING. HP to lob printers'n'PCs OVERBOARD

theblackhand

Re: good

Rebranding will provide you with more driver goodness than you currently have.

Or were you expecting "better" as in "worked better"? That would cost money and we decided to blow that on a new corporate logo.

Ingredient found in TASTY BEER is GOOD for your BRAIN

theblackhand

Re: GAZZA'S been researching this for years...

Gazza has the full effect - you should have seen him before the Xanthohumol. The guy was a mess - he even signed for Spurs....

Ellison: Sparc M7 is Oracle's most important silicon EVER

theblackhand

Re: the black hand RE: the black hand Nice

I also said "Cat... Meet pigeons..."

So Itanium's dead by 2020 then?

Any idea when HP will release the x86-64 version of OpenVMS/Non-stop/HP-UX so customers can transition to something acceptable? It would be nice to have something in between good and fast (POWER) and good and slow (Itanium) - who knows, average all round (x86-64) might even bump those server revenues that have been disappearing for so long.

theblackhand

Re: the black hand RE: the black hand Nice

Saying everyone will move to Power or Xeon isn't backpedalling.

SPARC and Itanium have been in a race for some time to see which platform outlives the other - I suspect SPARC will live longer in the real sense (new hardware and performance bumps) but Intel/HP will keep kicking the dead horse inspite of providing a migration path to Xeon. Sure Itanium to Xeon will be bumpy, but so was the migration to Itanium (what happened to all of our SAP performance when we moved to Itanium? Come back PA-RISC...).

Is Intel planning anything more than a clock speed increase for Itanium or is even that too much to hope for? Is there one more die shrink and cache bump or is all the R&D cut off....

theblackhand

Re: RE: the black hand Nice

Not a sunshiner - I just like throwing my hook in the water to see how long it takes for you to bite Mr Bryant.

And I agree that everyone will move to Power or Xeon.

theblackhand

Re: Nice

So much negativity.

I'm sure all those Itanium sites out there will be looking to move to SPARC M7's when they realise there aren't going to be any more performance bumps on the Itanium road map....

Cat... Meet pigeons...

Want to see the back of fossil fuels? Calm down, hippies. CAPITALISM has an answer

theblackhand

Re: Tim's hopes for solar and wind are doomed

"The Sun does shine at night. It's just hiding. If we could find a method to coax it out"

If we could flatten out the earth to stop the spinning and maybe use a few rockets to adjust the position a little we could have perma-daylight.

And it would make all those idiots that didn't believe the earth was flat finally admit they were wrong. Mwahahahahaha.

PEAK IPV4? Global IPv6 traffic is growing, DDoS dying, says Akamai

theblackhand

Migrating from IPv4 to IPv6

One of the major issues with IPv6 IS that performance for high end routers and switches is half the speed for IPv6 versus IPv4 and takes more memory.

Part of this is caused by the differences in address length - part is the expected growth of the global routing table due to the availability of more address space in IPv6.

This doesn't affect home routers (assuming they support IPv6) that rely on a default route via the WAN interface but global Internet routing table growth has already caused problems a number of times in the past when hardware limits have been reached.

Supercomputers: The Next Generation – Cray puts burst buffer tech, Intel Haswell inside

theblackhand

Re: Permission to drool, please?

The same pills as the designer of the CS400 rack doors took?

EMC, HP blockbuster Borg: Big potential or total CATASTROPHE?

theblackhand

Re: Cisco?

EMC market cap: ~US$60 billion

HP market cap: ~US$60 billion

Cisco market cap: ~US$127 billion

HP merges, Cisco swallows (fnarr fnarr....)

Heatmiser digital thermostat users: For pity's sake, DON'T SWITCH ON the WI-FI

theblackhand

Re: Reverse Engineer

And from observational experience, how easily it came apart.

Can you pass me that hammer, I need to remove a mobile phone screen.

Not that one, the bigger one next to it.

Yahoo!... Our Alibaba stake's worth BILLIONS. Oh – our shares are in the toilet

theblackhand

Re: Further Explanation required

Re: "But for a mobile phone carrier to admit, in effect, that they didn't know how to spend money to expand the business is a bit of an admission."

Or they don't know how to spend the money and provide an acceptable return on it. Spending US$100 billion to improve your presence in region X when it will only make you US$1billion revenue/year over the next 10 years may be an option but your shareholders may not thank you for it.

Phones 4u demise: 1,700 employees laid off with redundo package

theblackhand

My understanding is:

- margins in the mobile phone business are tight

- Vodofone/EE were looking for a reason to dump CW/P4U/both to improve their margins

- BC Partners took a lot of money out of P4U and replaced it with loans

- the increase in debt at P4U increased the risk of non-payment to phone suppliers in the event of a business default

- Vodafone/EE smile and say "sorry, but you present too high a risk of default"

- P4U loses....

- BC Partners weigh the assets stripped versus losing the business - verdict unknown

Got your NUDE SELFIES in the cloud? Two-factor auth's your best bet for securing them

theblackhand

While you're offering advice...

I'm unable to save my nude selfies to the cloud.

My cat pictures save OK but all my nudies are rejected?

Do I not meet the clouds standards?

I've tried different phones and have also received a cease and desist letter from the NSA.

Attackers tapping on SNMP door to see if it's open

theblackhand

Re: Who lets SNMP in the firewall?!?

And what about the devices that sit outside your firewall?

Do you have an ISP or locally maintained Internet router that your firewall/firewalls plug into?

Brit telcos warn Scots that voting Yes could lead to hefty bills

theblackhand

Re: The real issue here

"From a South of the border perspective, I want a Yes vote because it will help in the continuing bust up of the traditional two party cartel running Westminster. Letting the Scots run their own affairs and sending their MP's home is bad news for the traditional Westminster left, just as Frage is piddling on the Westminster right's chips. More, please!"

Losing 59 Scottish seats will likely result in a change of the traditional two party model to a one party model unless the Lib Dems discover a backbone or UKIP manage to expand beyond being a single issue party.

theblackhand

Re: duh

Doesn't that plan fail though?

If the UK exit the EU, then a EU-based office won't bring any tax advantages from the UK.

If the UK doesn't exit the EU, then Scotland has to apply for membership - this maybe a formality but still leaves a limbo period.

theblackhand

If they say yes...

...can't the UK just invade (point at Trident as a potential weapon of mass destruction - what the hey, bring back Tony to say it all again) and repossess them legally?

If they get upset, offer them another independence referendum in 300 years.

My coat? It's the one over there with the copy of war and peace in the pocket. Yes, peace has been crossed out....

Snowden, Dotcom, throw bombs into NZ election campaign

theblackhand

Jargon buster

This seems like a misunderstanding - to help people understand what is being said:

"GCSB do not conduct mass surveillance of New Zealanders" - GCSB does not conduct mass surveillance of NZ citizens as we have outsourced it to the NSA.

"We do not monitor undersea cables" - the NSA monitor the cables at a land-based station due to the ease of access

Sun's MASSIVE solar storm belch to light up Earth's skies

theblackhand
Pint

Re: Climate Change Beer and CO2

So drinking beer reduces CO2 and saves the world? I'll do my best.....

It's Friday, I have a gun and I've started drinking...

Anyone want to disagree with me? Sure, I'll probably only hit my foot but there's a chance you might get hit.

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