* Posts by big_D

6775 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Nov 2009

Linux Foundation backs new ‘ACRN’ hypervisor for embedded and IoT

big_D Silver badge

Re: Intel? Embedded?

I certainly wouldn't trust a car that has single computer (ARM or Intel based), running a hypervisor for secure/critical systems and "non-secure" systems, like entertainment.

The other thing is, the entertainment system is outdated in a couple of years, so either it needs to be just a dumb mirror display for a mobile device or it needs to be cheap and replaceable.

Brit retailer Currys PC World says sorry for Know How scam

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Re: Set-up...

Except the manufacturer does that and the cartons were probably still factory sealed...

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Mushroom

Re: Sharp Practice

I remember being in PC World and a salesperson was trying to sell a Psion Surfer modem to a customer. I was standing at the end of the row and listening in... After nearly a quarter of an hour of spiel, he had nearly foisted the 150 quid modem on the customer, he said, again, that it was a great modem.

At that point I chipped in, "yes, it has just won an award in PC Pro..." Salesbod smiles... "for modem under 100 quid." Sales person turns red.

VPN tests reveal privacy-leaking bugs

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Coat

But google-analytics.com is 127.0.0.1 in hosts...

WhatsApp agrees not to share user info with the Zuckerborg… for now

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Re: They should anyway

The problem is, so many people use WhatsApp, it needs some momentum to get people to switch. Why use 2 or 3 chat clients, when you already have one you use with (nearly) all of your contacts? For the non-privacy and non-tech aware people, it is easy.

And, according to the German DPC, using WhatsApp is illegal, if you have it scour your contacts for, erm, contacts as this information is sent to the WhatsApp servers without obtaining the permission of those contacts first...

Crypto crackdown: Google bans ads for unregulated currencies

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Re: Here we go again

And that is the problem, all other forms of advertising have to do some form of due diligence, before they can publish the advertisements.

Unfortunately Google uses the "we are too big" or rather they do advertising at such scale, that normal rules shouldn't apply to them, because they would need to employ thousands of extra people to validate the adverts, before they can be posted online and that would drastically reduce their profits.

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Re: Can they ban tulips and devops ads too

Just ban ads from non-regulated advertising agencies...

OK, deep breath, relax... Let's have a sober look at these 'ere annoying AMD chip security flaws

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Headmaster

Re: Closed black box firmware

"but Intel's cheaper"

Their what is cheaper?

Elon Musk invents bus stop, waits for applause, internet LOLs

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Re: "Fact is, it's still just cheaper to ditch them in the ocean"

@Roj Blake

But what about the track - will it blend?

LMFTFY

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@tiggity so far, after 2.5 winter months, I've had one train cancelled (had to wait 10 minutes for the next one) and twice more than 5 minutes delay (but less than 15 minutes).

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Re: The old peasant wagon

Wall-E!

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In the major cities I've used public transport, the tubes, trams and fast trains have run at 5 or 10 minute intervals. The further out from the centre, the longer the wait, because you don't have multiple vehicles sharing the same track.

I used to drive to work, but have recently changed jobs. I now walk to the station (it is less than 2 miles from the house) and then walk the mile or so the other end to work. The train takes less time that going by car, but with the walk to and from the station, it obviously take longer in total, depending on traffic jams on the way into town... But it is a lot cheaper, a monthly ticket for the train costs about the same as a weeks worth of parking in town, let alone fuel costs (and insurance and depreciation, if we sell the 2nd car).

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Coat

The patent for letting the passengers alight and raise them up to the surface has already been taken...

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Just look at what happened in Cologne in 2009...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/cologne-archive-catastrophe-were-subway-builders-cautious-enough-a-612129.html

Even after all the planning, they still managed to mess it up royally.

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Re: Even the greatest minds have a few failures

I would think, a year won't cover it. The ROI for the hyper-loop is probably going to be *at least* a decade...

IBM thinks Notes and Domino can rise again

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I haven't used it in about a decade, but I can remember when it was cc:mail.

When Lotus and then IBM took it over, it became a bloated, slow mess. I remember using it at a customer in 2001, we had Exchange and Outlook and it was relatively fast, even over a modem connection, on the other hand, on a local Ethernet connection, Notes took ages to open up view windows and most user opened their Email view and never looked at anything else.

I then used it again around 2010 and its performance hadn't really improved...

I don't know whether both clients somehow managed to misconfigure their servers and clients, but I never saw an installation that worked in "real time", as opposed to feeling like I was waiting for batch jobs with low priority to be run in the background.

Tech giants should take the rap for enabling fake news, boffins tell EU

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Re: Too big

That is pretty much the excuse for not reporting political advertising during the US elections, Facebook and Google said they were too big, or their platforms are too big, and it would be impossible to do.

As media companies reporting political advertising is a legal requirement, they should have thought about it, before they got "too big".

Size isn't a valid excuse for breaking the law. If they/their platforms are too big to control, that is their problem and they have to find a solution, it doesn't absolve them of their legal responsibilities and duties. That it would be expensive to implement, again, is not regulators' or law enforcement's problem, it is a problem the platforms have to face as part of doing business.

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Too big

I hate the too big argument the big internet companies always spout.

They claim they can't be held responsible for spreading misinformation, because they are too big. They shouldn't be held to the laws of other platforms (such as disclosure about funding for political advertising), because Internet, because they are too big.

For me, it is the other way round, the laws were there before these companies were big, heck, most of the laws were in place before the companies founders were born, therefore the companies have no excuse for not following the law, they had a duty to build such safeguards into their systems, before they got big!

Air gapping PCs won't stop data sharing thanks to sneaky speakers

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The other thing is, most air-gapped PCs don't have speakers attached either, at least in my experience.

They are there to control some industrial equipment, so they don't generally need speakers (and a majority of late have also been fanless, which knocks out the 2nd attack form)...

But, yes, the question is, how do you infect the air-gapped PC in the first place? If you have properly air-gapped it, it can't be infected...

Auto manufacturers are asleep at the wheel when it comes to security

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My wife's 2004 Nissan Micra was the same, we stuck a 100€ Blaupunkt radio, with bluetooth and hands-free kit into it. Job done.

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Car manufacturers already have to provide spare parts for a set period of time. For me, the software is also a part of the vehicle, so they should have to ensure it is also of merchantable quality for the life of the car - and 10 years? That's a bit optimistic, I see a lot of cars around here that are closer to 20 years old.

Most car manufacturers make smartphone makers look like they care...

UK data watchdog raids companies suspected of 11 million nuisance texts

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SMS Spam is still a thing?

I haven't received any SMS from non-friends since I complained to O2 Germany, back in 2008, that sending SMS offering bonus minutes to people at 2 in the morning, when they are on call, is not appreciated and would probably have a negative effect on me wanting to renew my contract...

But I've never received real spam SMS from third parties, here in Germany. Maybe it is a cultural thing?

Does Parliament or Google decide when your criminal past is forgotten?

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Re: I'm with Google here...

@Pen-y-gors exactly, which is why we have the right to be forgotten. The person affected turns to the search engines (it isn't just about Google) and gives them the specific links that should be delisted in searches using their name (and only search terms including their name).

So searching for "TN1" won't return the information, nor will "TN1 conviction", "TN1 criminal" etc. but searching for "Alpha", "fraud" etc. would still return the relevant articles.

If Google would actually worry more about following the law, rather than thinking to itself, that it is cheaper to send lawyers on a wild googe chase, rather than follow the law, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.

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Re: Going back in time to modify history

@ DaveTheForensicAnalyst

They can't go to the source websites, in most cases, because they are public record.

The problem here is the ease with which this information can be found today, not that it exists. As I and others have said elsewhere, in the past, if you wanted to find the information you had to properly research it, which involved time and money. That was a natural barrier to finding spent information.

You had to go to the newspaper archives or library and sift through newspapers, until you found the information. That was something most prospective employers and casual searchers would never do. Therefore the spent information rarely surfaced, but was there if you really wanted to find it.

This natural "forgetfulness" worked as the law intended.

Google changes that, things that should be "naturally forgotten" to the general masses is not forgotten and, depending on how much interesting other stuff a person has done, turns up in a very high position in a web search. That means information that should have been forgotten is still turning up as most relevant, even though, legally, you shouldn't see it when searching for that person's name under normal circumstances.

Once the link to the person's name has been removed, only "relevant" information is returned, when searching for this person. Searching for the original crime under other keywords will still return it - you just have to want to find it.

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Re: Going back in time to modify history

@Aitor1 as has been said many times, the original article isn't delinked. It is still there and you can still search for it, just not with the banned keywords.

So, searching for the case itself (case number, investigating police officer, damaged parties (assuming they also didn't apply to be forgotten), employer, type of crime etc.) will still return information on the case, it is still there and still searchable, just not in conjunction with a name that the law has deigned to no longer be relevant.

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Re: Going back in time to modify history

@Bob Wheeler

1) Biography etc. is different and would be under the journalistic exemption, in all probability, IANAL. And, again, if you are doing an accurate documentation of an event, that is allowed. You would also cover, for example his prison sentence and the fact that he was reformed and released.

But Google aren't doing anything journalistic and they are not checking their results for accuracy, before displaying them.

2) Yes, Bing, DuckDuckGo and all other search engines are also covered by this. If they get served with a right to be forgotten notice, they have to remove results for those keywords as well.

3) Yes, that is true, but Google have also changed their system and I, for example, cannot get to google.com any more for searches, or google.co.uk, I am stuck with google.de. (Yes, I could hop through a VPN and come out in the USA and use google.com.)

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Re: If this goes against Google

No, it doesn't mean that at all. Public record cannot be deleted.

By removing certain keywords from the index, those crime reports won't be listed when searching for specific people, but will be returned on other keywords.

That is the whole point if the RTBF. The original article (and the majority of keyword searches) will still work, only those searches using the name of the affected party will not turn up those results.

(E.g. using the original article, searching for fraud or Alpha or any number of other keywords will turn up these results somewhere along the line, but using TN1 in the search result won't.

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Re: I'm with Google here...

@Alister, because in the past, those newspaper archives could be searched through by somebody who really wanted information about the demo, for example, but they would have to make an effort to go to the archive and find the information, it wasn't "generally available", which meant the vast majority of people no longer "remember" the incident.

Google circumvents this natural mass forgetfulness, even when the law says it should be.

The archive is still there, you can still search Google for the article, using other keywords, just the keywords that the law decides aren't allowed shouldn't return those results. So, using the example, searching for Zippy would not be allowed to show the article about being fined, whereas searching specifically for the demo would turn up that result.

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Re: I'm with Google here...

The thing is, with your demo example, if you search for "Zippy's Sausage Factory", you don't get any information about you being fined for protesting at the demo. If you search for the demo, you get the results.

The information is still there and it is still searchable and accessible, using terms that are deemed "legal".

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Re: Going back in time to modify history

It is not about re-writing history, the original articles aren't being taken down. The book isn't being rounded up and burnt.

What is being asked for is, in line with law, not to show the results when searching for TN1. If Google follow the right to be forgotten as intended, searching for Alpha or fraud would still dig up those articles, but anybody searching purely on TN1 wouldn't get the information.

It is a subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless. In the "good old days," the newspaper articles would have been used as fish and chips wrapping and most people would have forgotten about it, by the time he was released. He could, as the Rehabilitation Act says, be rehabilitated and this information should not prejudice him in the future, because he has paid his debt to society. If you were really interested, you could go to the library and look for the book or go through their newspaper archives, but you would need to put in a reasonable amount of effort to "circumvent" his right at rehabilitation. That isn't something most people would do, unless they had good reason to.

The Internet makes this "natural forgetfulness of the masses" a non-thing. The Internet doesn't forget, even when, by law, it should. That is why these safeguards have been put in place.

If you really want to do the research, there is nothing to stop you, but Google isn't allowed to help you circumvent the law. You have to do the legwork yourself, as was intended.

If the right to be forgotten meant that all news archives had to be burnt and books burnt or the original stories on the news websites deleted, I would be against it. But in this case, nobody is re-writing history, the history is still there, if you go looking for it, you just can't take the (illegal) shortcut of searching on TN1's name to find it.

'A sledgehammer to crack a nut': Charities slam UK voter ID trials

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You are technically correct, there is no "Mitführpflicht", but if you are stopped, you have to show it... I believe it is at the discretion of the police, whether you can go and fetch it yourself and go to a police station or whether they accompany you "back home" (or wherever) to collect it or held until somebody else turns up with your ID - a pain if you are visiting the friends at the other end of the country and have to wait a day until someone can bring your ID...

Certainly, if the Zoll (Customs & Excise) do a raid on a business, E.g. looking for illegal workers, they will usually accompany anyone who doesn't have their ID with them as they go and collect it or hold them until somebody can bring the ID along.

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Germany has had ID cards since before WW2. Although the allies introduced a reformed version after the war. This has been superseded a few times, before we come to the current version.

Everybody must carry a form of identification with them - I am not a German citizen, so I don't get the ID card (Ausweis), so I have to carry my UK passport. The German ID card is also chipped and can be used to register for some online services, although it is still not widely supported.

10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10

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Re: @deanb01 Display Memory

I never really learned anything at college, I just went there for the qualifications. I cruised through the whole course to get an A.

The second year, we learnt COBOL and I had taught myself enough over the summer, that I had finished the first semester assignment in the first week of "learning" COBOL...

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Re: Tape loading

The MZ-80B was the one I lusted after, it looked much more "complete", with the tape deck mounted vertically next to the screen, so the overall shape was more "finished".

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Re: @deanb01 Display Memory

My first day at college, we had to write a simple program to take a value and work out the minimum number of coins to give in change.

We were using CBM Pets, which I had cut my teeth on in school. I finished the program in around 10 minutes (it was the first lesson of the year and they wanted to see what level of programming we were at) and there was still around an hour of the class left.

Getting bored, I switched to machine code and drew a border around the screen, split it in two and used get instead of input to poll the keyboard and then display the value in 8x8 graphic matrices at the top of the screen and display small piles of "coins" at the bottom for the different denominations. The lecturer came round to see how we were doing and stared in amazement, saying, "wow, I didn't know you could do that with a computer!"

Erm, I'm the one who is here to learn!!

Once, I was visiting a customer and they took my boss and me out to lunch, back in the days where you could drink a few pints and still get back on site afterwards... I was a little addled and my boss had a meeting for another hour or so, so they sat me in a corner with an old HP 125 CP/M machine... To while away the time, I wrote a quick game of breakout. :-D

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I really wanted a Cantab Jupiter Ace, the looks of a ZX80, but with Forth instead of BASIC... But I went with a Memotech MTX500 instead.

Yes, I remember MSX. There was a long row of different MSX models one of the electronic stores in Crawley (Dixons?). Sony, Hitachi and a few others. Exotic designs, but they never took off. That was a Microsoft project, by the way.

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Re: Where are we now?

I remember my ZX81 cost me 6 months of weekend job money and my parents paid the rest...

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Re: Gateway Drug

I had a Bug Byte 16K RAM Pack and I built a base for the ZX81, the Bug Byte and a Kayde keyboard (real keys, woohoo!!!).

It stuck everything firmly on the base and it fell off my desk once and I didn't get a RAM pack wobble!

I had a dodgy extension lead, which could send a spike that would "break" a running program, even a machine code one with, which had disabled the break key press. This allowed me to them list the machine code and I could go in and, for example, change the shape of the space ship in Defendr (not a misspelling), which in turn would make it invulnerable to crashing into anything!

3D Monster Maze was my first experience of 3D gaming and was, for its time, amazing, considering the 32x24 display!

Facebook regrets asking whether it's OK to let adult men ask underage girls for smut pix

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Childcatcher

Re: A,B,C,D? Surely the answer is always E:

I miss the option about castrating the adult male and then informing the police... :-S

News lobsters demand to be let back into the Facebook boiling pot

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The other thing is, Facebook is about being in contact with friends. I am not "friends" with any companies, so they shouldn't be in my feed anyway.

Swiss see Telly Tax as a Big Plus, vote against scrapping it

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Re: It was a vote against their abolition

One of the, argued, reasons for the cost being so high in Switzerland is that the state broadcaster is forced to broadcast in the 3 national languages.

You can survive the migration from Windows vCenter server

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Holmes

Security patches will still be there, just Linux and VMWare ones, direct... But still security patches.

The advantage is that they all come from one supplier, so, you would hope, that there would be no compatibility issues...

Reg man wraps head in 49-inch curved monitor

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It is useful having one big screen, when you need to maximize a window across the "whole" display, instead of manually stretching it. Likewise not having the black bar in the middle makes a big difference, especially on the placement of windows.

Add to that that most modern OSes can automatically "maximize" to half the screen width, you don't have a real problem with getting 2 windows next to each other.

After a year using one big monitor, I find it awkward going back to 2 smaller displays. I also appreciate the extra vertical resolution on my Dells (3440x1440) over standard 1920x1200, or worse "glorified TV displays" at 1920x1080.

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I have a 34" Dell curved monitor, with 3440x1440 and it is a great step up from 2 24" monitors. Not having the black bar in the "middle" is a huge benefit, as is being able to automatically maximize spreadsheets etc. to cover the whole display, as opposed to having to manually stretch the window over multiple screens.

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Re: Still only 1080 Vertical

I have the curved 34" Dells (home and office), which are 3440x1440. A much more sensible vertical resolution.

I would also imagine, at 49", the resolution is a little blocky...

UK peers: Is this what you call governance of facial recog tech? A 'few scattered papers'!

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There is a ban on face coverings in Germany, unless it is for religious purposes, it seems.

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Paris Hilton

Judging by the videos on reality TV cop shows and YouTube, I would say most people don't even seem to know they are on camera most of the time...

My PC is broken, said user typing in white on a white background

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Re: No computer experience in 2005?

It isn't just Greece, there are still companies in the UK, Germany, Poland, Hungary and points in-between that still don't use computers today. It is becoming rarer, but they still exist.

As I said in the other post, we were still getting new customers in 2015/2016 in Germany that were getting their first PCs, because of changes in the law that required all livestock and food product movements be electronically recorded and transmitted to a central agency.

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Re: No computer experience in 2005?

I was working for a company providing hardware, software and services to the meat industry and we were still encountering customers in 2015 that had never used a computer. It was only the changes forcing the electronic trace-ability of livestock and meat through the supply and production chains that forced many of them to get computers at all.

Many were still writing everything in paper ledgers and saw no reason for these "new fangled" computers, it just made their job more complicated and expensive.