Posts by bitmap animal

Sony didn't steal the user data, thieves did

It's all too easy to blame Sony for this theft. I don't know what levels of security they had, but like anything if someone is determined they can break in and get what they want. Someone made a conscious decision to break in and steal from Sony, never forget that.

As an analogy say if demonstrators decided to blockade Tesco distribution depot then some people broke in and stole things, would that mean Tesco are rubbish or just mean there are demonstrators and criminals out there.

How would you feel if someone broke into your home/business and stole from you. Would you be saying you deserved it because you didn't have Fort Knox level of security around your piggy bank?

Doesn't surprise me

There are quite a few people at my work who would struggle with that TV question, the standard of basic maths is generally appalling.

My son was at the supermarket recently and the cashier (20ish year old man) had real difficulty in counting about 80p in change. It's everywhere.

They are there to do a job

They are there to work and their work isn't as a reporter. It's to listen and take part in debates. If they become reporters then who is doing to do the actual debating.

There is a press gallery already there for people to do reporting, if they want to tweet then they can stop concentrating on their job and go up and sit with the hacks.

Tabloid headline grabbing!

Very disappointed to see tabloid headline-grabbing tactics of valuing one plane using the total project cost against the build costs of individual production aircraft. That is grossly unfair and IMHO discredits the rest of the article despite the costs being clarified later on. I’m sure everyone here is intelligent enough to read through that but a silly and meaningless point.

Also (car) alarms

There are / where some car alarms that were based on the car moving when not authorised and I think this may also be use to allow certain systems to only work at their defined ‘home’. If this affected those there would be an awful lot of alarms and failed systems for people to contend with!

This probably won’t affect land based as per the earlier comments so shouldn’t be a problem in these particular tests but is another eye opener into the impact of civilian GPS failing.

Not a spelling error

It's not a spelling error on the calendar as their story says. It's written on the hoarding behind the players at the pitch and the photo has been cropped to focus on the players.

It should have been spotted and the photo cropped in a different way, but on small run calendars these things are easily done.

Decimal time, here we go again!

Is this another attempt to move the world over to decimal time? It's been tried a few times in the past but never managed to get enough momentum. Now there is Google behind it perhaps it will happen.

"it's one hundred times faster. "Something that took a minute to execute two years ago takes a second to execute today," Pinchai said."

(or is it an otherwise boring slip of the tongue)

stolen classified != public domain

Just because the documents have been stolen and released does not change the fact the documents are still Classified (or whatever rating each document is). The Wikileaks publication does not change the classification.

I would assume that the discussion about Federal documents being in the public domain relates to documents that they have PUBLISHED into the public domain not security rated internal documents. If that was the case then there would be no secrets at all.

The documents are still security rated therefore someone who does not have the security access to read them technically should still not have the access to read them.

Is this the Sum?

Headlines like that really get my goat. The only thing they do is whip up anger in those who don't understand business.

How much do the coffee beans in you coffee cost? How much do the contents of your sandwich cost? How much does the pub pay for that bag of peanuts. These are simple retail costs.

With this you also have the R&D, paying for the factory to put it all together, shipping costs, distribution costs, retail costs, advertising plus ensuring there is enough in the pot to cover warranty problems etc etc.

Will they let her back home?

I thought you couldn't get into the USA if you have a drugs conviction. Surely they don't have different rules for their own citizens and she is going to be refused re-entry on the way home.

Just think, she could be stuck airside for the rest of eternity.

re Megapixels on camera

Possibly they have finally realised that posing a 10mega pixel picture is a waste of time for what most of their users do with it. They either view it on screen or post it to facebook etc where the 0.7MP is more than adequate and because of the technology of image sensors should give a vastly superior picture.

A good game then?

He is suing them because he thinks it is such a good game he played it too much! That is bonkers, no other way I can think of it.

Regarding the EULA, if developers/publishers were liable for everything that users felt was a consequence of a problem with the software then there would be nothing written because the potential cost risks would be much higher than any income they could generate. There would also be the amount of time fighting “you software didn't save the document so I missed out on xxxx”where there would difficulties proving it wasn't user error.

Open season against the software industry – not good.

Re correlation and causality @ 22:33

That would backfire, software industry enforcing nanny state, stopping gamers play when they wanted to. That would also encourage people to start using hacks to skip those levels and that is a slippery slope to spoiling gameplay.

Perfect system in place

There is already a perfectly good system in place that covers un-green vehicles, 'uneconomic' driving styles and miles driven. It's called Fuel Duty.

This covers all the things these other stealth / side taxes need to cover with the exception of targeting individual stretches of road.

Road charging just forces those who have to travel to pay extra tax.

to sum up....

For me, this quote from DS1 perfectly sums it all up :-

"Nominally, I loosely support the idea of wikileaks. And I support a notion that it can do some good, with targetted and responsible use. As with all freedoms, come responsibility."

What's the target?

This appears to have been targeted at the control systems so would have been developed for a weakness in whatever hardware/software/human systems were in place.

Every system has vulnerabilities, the more they are in use the more likely they will be found. In this case it happened to have been on Windows which may have made it easer because of the wide availability of knowledge about it.

I'm not defending the security record of Windows, just thinking about it less emotively.

Refund indeed

I bought a pair of jeans online, they are the right size but the cut is wrong so they don't fit me well. They have gone back for a refund. It never occurred to me that I should call in the lawyers to make the jeans manufacturer take them back and change the design.

I suppose I should also sue Ford because I'm traumatised that I can't fit into their GT40 – the possibilities are endless.