Posts by Boothy 1232 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2011
If you're on Sky Broadband, IPv6 is enabled by default, (once the local hardware is updated to support it of course).
I've got a ~3 year old Sky Hub, and noticed about a year ago, while I was looking into network configurations for a VM, that my desktop now had a v6 address assigned, as well as a v4. A quick look at the router config, and sure enough I now had a v4 and v6 Internet address, and v6 was routing to the local LAN.
As an example, the above mentioned test site (http://test-ipv6.com/) gives me a 10 out of 10 score on my Desktop PC.
Just as a warning, not all devices at home will support v6 yet, although I was surprised at how many did support it in my house once I checked them out!
As an example, my Sky Box (standard HD box from about 4 years ago, not the newer Q version), only picks up IPv4, and my NAS server is also only IPv4, although the later is simply me not getting round to doing anything about it yet (It's a Linux OS, and had v6 disabled by default).
But all other devices I have, do seem to support IPv6. So that's an XBox One S, two Android phones (OS 6 and 7), my TV (an LG smart from a couple of years back, although is usually disconnected from the network), an old Android LG Tablet that was never supported past 4.4.2, and also my first gen Nexus 7 (2012), all support IPv6!
Quote: "My only complaint is that they took away the bloody delete key..."
Just in case you're not aware, Alt+Backspace should be Delete (doesn't get the button back, but better than nothing!).
For anyone that doesn't know, there are tons of keyboard shortcuts in ChromeOS. To view them on the Chromebook, just hit Ctrl+Alt+? and an interactive overlay should popup, just press the Ctrl, Shift, Alt buttons to see what each modifier key does.
I found that some of the 'Admin' rights issues could be fixed worked around by installing apps to a non standard folder, like C:/Apps rather than to 'Program Files' (which of course is a special location for Windows).
Still works now for some legacy XP era apps running on newer Windows.
Didn't work for everything of course though.
Personally, I think disabling things like obsolete security options by default in a mainstream browser like Chrome is a good idea, at least for the vast majority of users.
Although I know what it's like trying to do development work with Chrome on older environments, as I've had issues myself with access etc.
It would be nice if Chrome had a Developer/Super User type mode, where you could then re-enable things, perhaps on a case-by-case basis on a chrome://somename page.
For security, you could even have it based on zones, i.e. specific addresses listed in zone 'XYZ' can use RC4 with TLS (or whatever is needed), anything not listed in zone 'XYZ' (or some other explicit zone) is automatically in the default zone, which still uses the default security, so leaves your Internet and other sites still locked down.
Judging by this chromium bug discussion.
It seems the previous 'Details' button, which took you directly to the Security tab in the Dev tools window, was always just a temporary thing to bring attention to where the security info is located (i.e. inside the Dev tools).
Looks like the plan was always to remove it after a while, as they seem to think regular uses don't need to view the certificates. (Not sure I agree with this myself!)
The new 'Learn more' button is for regular users, rather than developers, so just takes you to the generic web page documenting what the various icons mean etc.
Seems the chromium devs didn't like the idea of regular users landing in the dev tools: Quote '...so that regular users who are newly clicking on the lock icon (due to icon/verbose UI changes) don't click on it and end up somewhere unexpected.'
Like I said, not sure I agree with this approach, and a few people on the chromium forum even suggest having a new link/button to take you directly to the certificate details.
But for now, seems we are stuck with Ctrl+Shift+I, or the More Tools -> Developer tools menu, then click the Security tab :-/
The article seem to indicate that manufactures of Chromebooks would be annoyed....
Quote: "...it is almost certain that antitrust authorities will see it differently: as Google again using its position to force manufacturers to include specific Google software on their systems."
But this doesn't seem to cover the fact that there are no custom apps on Chromebooks! Everything on a Chromebook is already controlled by Google as they all get the same identical OS *.
Manufacturers have to differentiate themselves with the hardware, so the keyboard, screen, battery life etc.
I would suspect that Manufacturers will actually be very happy at this announcement, as it means Chromebooks, which are a tiny, although still growing market, are now more capable devices, without the manufacturers really having to do anything (perhaps some testing, but the devices are the same), and they can now be treated as large Android devices for marketing purposes.
* The one caveat being that eventually devices are dropped from support of the latest builds. Although from what I've seen, this seems to be typically be a much longer time period that a typical phone (4+ years), and support seems to mainly be around hardware capability, rather than New shinny, so old shinny has been dropped tm.
What promise?
I'm not aware of Google ever stating that the beta would be rolled out to any other devices other than the small handful they've been using to date.
The supported device list (linked in the article), that's been available for quite some time now (well over a year), isn't a roll out list, it's a list of devices that can support the new Android capabilities, and so they plan to support those once the final version is out.
My guess is the devices they chose to support in beta, cover a wide enough cross section of underlying hardware, to cover most (or all) of the other devices.
Quote: "No - the difference is MS never locked out all competing software like Apple and Google do."
Neither do Google.
Apple I can understand, but for Google, you're free to install 3rd party app stores on Android, for example you can download and install the Amazon app store direct from the Amazon web site.
Plus of course a lot of Android devices are the Amazon Fire Tablets, as they are cheap, and readily available (in stock in local supermarkets etc), and those don't come with Googles app such as their Play store.
You sure you've got your dates right?
Stewart was born July 1940 (76 years old).
NG aired in September 1987, so Stewart would have been 47 (on air date, perhaps 46 during filming).
Wheaton was born October 1972, so is currently 44 years old.
So still 2-3 years to go.
Still makes me feel old though :-/
Unfortunately 2 years seems to be about the sweet spot. Past that and you 'might' get security patches for another 12 months, but most likely nothing after 3 years.
The Nexus devices can last a bit longer, with support usually only being dropped once the hardware can't keep up, but unfortunately that range is no more (the Nexus devices still for sale are basically what's left of the stock).
To me the Pixels are too expensive for what you get, and I'm happy with my OnePlus3 anyway.
Quote: "New platform features arrive via new phones - hardly anyone upgrades Android from one major version to the next using OTA updates."
Isn't the issue here the lack of the OTA updates themselves, rather than the users not doing the updates? Which is what the sentence above seems to imply to me.
Most OTA updates are done automatically, click Yes to a prompt, and you've got an updated phone. Most current Android phones these days get an OTA update every month or two, (although normally just security patches), and most Android phones (at least in my experience) will usually get at least one major OS update in their lifetime (although rarely more the one).
One issue tends to be that manufactures time their new phone releases with new OS versions, and once the new phone is out, they typically drop support of older models in the same range. Perhaps still supporting one previous model, from the year before, but dropping support for models from 2+ years back (maybe just security patches, but no more OS version releases), even through the devices themselves could likely run the OS perfectly fine!
Quote: "Whilst the manuals state that, what did the salesman state?"
That's one of the things the judgement kicked up, basically stating Tesla needed to do more to make it clear in-car that this isn't a fully automated self driving car (at least not yet), and this needed to assume the drivers have not read the manual or other documents etc. i.e. like they've just jumped into a new car and set off, and then hit the autodrive button.
Not just unlawful access.
If something went wrong on the system, even if completely unrelated to your brother, and the investigation then showed unauthorised access around the same time, they could well assume he was involved and call the authorities.
Even if not guilty, just having the police requesting you come in to help with their enquiries doesn't look good to other people.
Quite: "Imagine if Facebook were to collapse overnight, and the servers were turned off. I don't think it would be much of an exaggeration to state that the Western World would fall to pieces.".
I think that's very much an exaggeration!
Facebook may be financially sizeable, but that's almost all (if not all of it) advertising revenue, due to the number of users of the service.
If FB where to suddenly vanish, all that would happen is that people would go elsewhere for their social 'fix', and the advertising revenue would simply go with them.
Ignoring the fact (initially) that this is something that we all know won't actually stop anyone that really wants to watch 'stuff'.
All this time an effort to (try and) implement age verification for porn sites in some way yet to be defined.
So what current problem is this actually fixing? i.e. why is this even being discussed?
Is this just another generic "Think of the children!" bandwagon that a few politicians have jumped on?
Business case: If effort out-ways benefits, then don't do it. Especially when the 'benefits' seem to be perceived, rather than actual benefits!
Quote: "You're then meant to create an "application specific" api key, which will only ever have permissions to do what is needed for that application. It is this api key that should be hardcoded in to the application, not the master key."
Yup this.
But one of the issues tends to be that some API services are very complex, and when generating a new application key, there can be a lot of boxes to tick/untick, and often the provided documentation isn't clear as to what is needed for specific functions/services to work.
I've gone through similar things myself (just for testing, not live applications), where an application key, ticked with all the permissions you think are needed after reading the documentation, doesn't work! Yet using a key with everything ticked, works fine, and it can be a sizeable tasks trying to whittle down the key permissions, to the minimum needed for the application still to work.
Not helped by the fact that often once a key is generated, you can't change permissions after the fact, and have to delete the old key, and generate a new key, for each new set of options to test, meaning you have to update your application each time before testing again.
My guess here is that some developers likely couldn't get a minimal key to work (or just didn't bother creating one!), and just ticked lots of options till it did, and unfortunately left in permissions that an application really shouldn't have!
Don't have any machines running XP native anymore, but I do have it in a VM for the rare occasion when needed (usually some ancient legacy game that is so it it won't run in 7).
It's like visiting an old friend, doesn't mater how longs it's been since you last saw each other, you know exactly what's what and it feels like home again!
Indeed.
People (marketeers) still seem to try to compare the current PC market, to the one 15+ years ago.
Back then a 2 or 3 year old PC could be replaced by a similarly priced new one, that would likely be twice as fast as the one it replaced, and with software getting more bloated advance, the performance jump was usually quite noticeable, and generally financially justifiable.
These days a typical mid-range PC (i.e. typical business use laptop), won't be much faster than one from 4 (or more) years ago. The main changes in recent years being focused on power savings, rather than increasing actual computational power.
A quick look at my now venerable business only use laptop, a T420 from mid 2011, sporting an i5 @ 2.5GHz, with 8GB of RAM. Compare that to a new shiny T560, and it too has an i5, which runs at 2.8GHz (but only comes with 4GB RAM! But does have a slightly faster HDD (SSD only in the top end i7 model)).
Granted it's a newer gen i5, but a quick look at some CPU benchmarks and there is perhaps a 10-15% increase in performance, this after ~6 years of CPU development!
Almost all changes in the last 10 years (other than SSDs) have been minor incremental improvements.
I was told years ago that unless the 'new' device was at least 50% faster than the current device, a typical end user wouldn't actually notice the difference.
Cost (including the effort to reinstall everything), to move to a new PC/laptop, just isn't justifiable with current devices (power users being the likely only exception).
At this rate, people are likely to keep their current PCs/laptops for at least 5 years min, perhaps over 10 years, or until they physically break. Which also means most users will still with the OS that came on the device.
The World has changed Mr Marketeer, get used to it!
Reminds me of the time I moved into a rented house about 12 years ago (no longer there), and I needed a phone line (on call, needed dial-up from home and this was before the company had VPN over broadband available).
The house had an existing line installed, with a master socket (an old one, no removable faceplate, but still a BT431A socket).
The line was dead, and the landlord wasn't interested in getting it hooked up for me, but said that I could do what I wanted with it myself.
So I called BT on my mobile, to get the line reconnected, to be told the house doesn't have an existing line! (The house also wasn't a new build, about 100 years old).
Me "But it does, I can see it!", BT: "nope, doesn't have one now, and its never had one in the past.", Me: "But I can see the socket". BT "Nope".
So I gave in and went through the process of getting a new line.
Turned out, they had a special offer on at the time, which meant no installation cost for new installations. A re-connection at the time was normally something like half the price of a new install.
The BT engineer turned up, started putting in a newline from the cabinet end, before coming to the house, only turned up once the new line was outside the house. At which point he noticed the old line going through the wall by the front door, and once let in the house, could see the existing master socket on the other side of the hole (no cabling inside the house)!
"Hmm, that's odd, oh well", and duly ripped out the old copper wire and socket, few in the new wire through the pre-existing hole, and fitted a new master socket.
So their poor records basically saved me some money, cost them some, and got me a nice shinny new line and socket!
Personally, I'd move on from Defender on the first boot of any new install.
Also bear in mind, these OS changes enhance the security of Windows, irrespective of the AV in use, so still better to use something more capable than Defender anyway.
I think even MS stated Defender was basically intended as a bare bones minimum, for those who simply haven't bothered to install a 3rd party option, or don't understand that AV is needed, and to provide minimal protection when first going on-line etc. (i.e. before a user has downloaded and installed a 3rd party AV).
If you look on av-test.org (at their home AV listings) Defender currently comes joint bottom for Protection (along with Comodo), and the same can be seen on other sites.
Even if you don't want to spend money, the free versions of Avast and Bitdefender give the highest (along with other products) protection ratings, much better than Defender. (AVG doesn't score as high, but is another popular free AV).
I switched from Avast to Bitdefender a while back, as Avast was getting more and more annoying with various pop up notifications that were not important, and couldn't be removed, whereas Bitdefender is focused on minimal intervention (ideal for none techie friends and family).
Hmm, I call bull
Open new tab to bing.com
Enter mozilla and hit return..
First result, taking up most of the page is 'Mozilla - Official site', https://www.mozilla.org
At least it was for me. (But I also have uBlock Origin installed, which is one of the first things I add to any new Windows install, so your search results may differ!)
Also replacing the old NTE5 Master socket with a vDSL Openreach one can help as well.
My ex girfield was a long way from the exchange (miles), and not yet FTTC enabled (old cabinet) and managed about 4Mbps at best, and was flaky.
I replaced the standard face plate (NTE5), with a Mk3 vDLS one, and it went up to 6Mbps, and was a lot more stable.
She later switched to FTTC once her cabinet was updated, and gets ~20Mbps through the same socket now (20 is what she paid for).
Just search for 'BT Openreach MK3' on Amazon/ebay etc.
Also if you don't use them, disconnect any extensions coming out of the master socket. My old house had two extensions, and as I used a wireless phone plugged directly into the master socket, they weren't needed, so I just pulled the wires out from the back of the little removable plate. I went from ~16Mpbs to 18Mpbs at the time.
Quote: "It may have been installed by Openreach, but if it's a LLU line (e.g. SKY, TT), BT will have no idea what telephone number they have allocated, so the number checker will fail and the address should be used instead."
Yup, it was Sky.
I was moving to a new build, with no phone line yet (copper in, but not connected) and BT wanted something like £70 to connect it up.
Whereas Sky would do it for free, and install a new Satellite dish, as long as I signed up for another 12 months of TV and landline rental with them (TV I was going to do anyway, and at the time Sky line rental was cheaper).
Tried that site before, they don't seem to have full records, which is odd for a BT wholesale site!
If I put my land-line number in I get this:
"There is no data available for this number. This could be either because it is not a BT line or it is a new BT number that has just been provided. Most new numbers will appear on the checker 24 hours after BT has installed the line."
It was BT wholesale/openreach who put the line in. I know this, as I was there and spoke to the guy who did the work, he was in a BT Openreach van. (This was about 4 years ago, a new build, so well beyond the 24 hours!).
The alternate address checker states the data is 'indicative', and not specific to your line. (Although it does now seem to have more data than it used to a couple of years back).
Quote: "...when on the day of activation there isn't capacity on the cabinet/exchange"
Why would they not know this in advance?
Isn't this what records are for?
Shouldn't BT know exactly what the max capacity is at every cabinet, know exactly how many much has been provisioned so far, and exactly how many are in the queue to be activated, and therefore know what capacity is available?
Keeping records goes back to imprints in clay, and knots in strings, so surely this ins't outside of the reach of BT (and BT wholesale) to manage?
If they don't have this information available, then to me that means BT are incompetent, and shouldn't be allowed to be in business anymore!
Quote: "You could improve VR/ER by tracking eyeballs and only 3d rendering an apparent circle of focus 4 feet deep whilst rendering the rest in 2d."
Basically already on it's way.
What you're describing is close to what is known as foveated VR rendering (by nVidia), although it still renders the whole scene in 3D, the peripheries are not done in any detail (blurs out to the periphery).
Companies like Qualcomm are also working on foveated rendering for mobile devices.
This apparently reduces the required GPU load considerable, as the processor only needs to concentrate on a central cone of view. This means a large overall reduction in the GPU overhead for current VR.
This should help lower the entry level needed for current VR, and also allow more detail going forwards with existing top end cards, and pave the way for things like 4k per eye displays at 90+ Hz.
At the moment the tech from nVidia doesn't do eye tracking, but other people are also working on that as well, and there is no reason they couldn't be tied together.
Personally I think 'default' passwords, admin and WiFi (and SSIDs) shouldn't even exist.
Part of the initial set up should be to force the user to log into the router/modem and put these details in themselves, with minimum standards on the complexity etc.
Even with an issue these days being that not everyone has an Ethernet enabled device, that could still be handled.
A possible option could be to have an initial, default but restricted Wifi SSID and password (and possibly a restricted Ethernet), restricted to a DMZ that only allows access to the routers admin page, and not the Internet itself.
So the user connect to new shiny router, with <any device with WiFi/Ethernet and a web browser>. And if via WiFi, uses the initial 'temp' SSID and password.
User is presented with a simple configuration web page (irrespective of what URL they typed in), that forces the user to set up a new admin password for the router, and then a new WiFi SSID and password (or to disable the WiFi if they don't want to use it).
The router doesn't enable Internet access until these steps have been completed.
If you only put in the new admin password, and don't change the WiFi SSID and password, then only Ethernet get Internet access, with any WiFi connections still being DMZ restricted to the router admin page.
It's an unfortunate situation for PC gamers I think.
I'm a keen PC gamer, (strategy games, and FPS games using Keyboard and mouse mostly) and likely 95%+ of the games released are Windows only. Often new games won't play under Wine or a VM (at least not in a playable state).
Quite a few indie titles tend to be cross-platform these days, often supporting Linux natively (and more rarely Mac OSX), and I thank the Devs for this.
But for the A+ titles from larger studios and publishers, it's still very very rare to have any none Windows version (other than consoles). Which is a real shame. :-/
After every main update to Win 10, I go grab the latest version from O&O and run it again, just in case!
I have noticed items that were previously disabled, have occasionally switched themselves back on after a patch!
Plus O&O do update the app, in sync with the Windows changes, so something turned off (or on) previously, they might now have changed their recommendation.
I also like that the O&O method, gets rid of Cortana, and Internet searches from the task bar, but still leaves you with a standard functional search box (for local apps/documents etc. Some other tools I've used, just got rid of the search bar completely, which i didn't want.
(It's very rare I ever launch the Start menu in Win 10, most everything I need is either Right click on Start, on my desktop, or a few characters typed into the search bar).
Quote: "So go to 'Choose what the power button does', then 'Change settings that are currently unavailable' and turn OFF 'Fast start-up'. Then it doesn't part-hibernate, and takes only a few seconds longer to boot. Power pack still lights the motherboard, though."
Yup, what Steve said.
Also not recommended to use Fast start-up on an SSD, as it increases the writes to the drive quite a bit, (dumping GBs of memory to the SSD on every shutdown) and it's not really needed on an SSD anyway (you might shave a couple of seconds on boot).
And unless you want to use hibernate, doing a 'powercfg /h off' from the CMD, gets rid of the old hibernate file, so saves a bit of space too. (Turning fast startup off, and even turning off hibernate in Windows settings, doesn't seems to actually switch it off fully and leaves the hiberfil.sys file behind, which can be several GB in size!).
Quote: "My windows 10 work pc has an item on the srat menu called power \ shut down , and when i click it the pc appears to switch off .
I'm not sure though i think its just pretending , in order to show off how quick it can "boot" up.
pstools say its been awake for weeks!"
Win 10 shut down is some form of hybrid hibernate. It shuts down apps, but as far as I know the OS itself is basically hibernated. It only gets a real full shutdown, when re-booting after updates etc.
There are some gloves that have actuators on the back. As you grasp objects in the VR world, the gloves provide variable feedback, per finger, so you actually get tactile feedback to each finger individually, as if really holding something.
Apparently it good enough for people to be able to recognise different objects due to their 'feel'. i.e. recognise if something is hard or soft, what it's shape is etc.
Early days yet though.
If your using Firefox, just go to about:config, then find media.autoplay.enabled, and double click to disable.
If your a Chrome user, try this extension: Disable HTML5 Autoplay
It's Open Source for those interested in the code on github.
The BBCs HTML5 support is still in beta, so it's opt-in currently.
Although if you don't have Flash installed/enabled in your browser, it will automatically switch to HTML5 anyway, without the need to opt-in.
As above, just go here to opt-in : http://www.bbc.co.uk/html5
There are also lots of technical details and other info on that page.
First, as people have mentioned, names like GTS, GTX etc are quite generic amongst performance devices.
nVidia also seem to have Prior art, as they've been using GTS since the 'GeForce2 GTS' in 2000, and GTX since at least 2005.
Hardware Labs, as far as I can tell from some searching (please correct me if anyone knows different), were founded in 2005, and made car parts back then!
At some point since then (and presumably after nVidia had been using the GTS and GTX names), they switched from producing car parts, to PC cooling radiators, and it's these radiators that have the GTS/GTX name.
So the only commonality, other than the name, is they are both for use in a PC, but otherwise are completely different product categories.
How exactly is anyone going to confuse a liquid cooling radiator, with a GFX Card?
Especially as these will be PC enthusiast components, i.e. people who build their own systems, and so can easily figure out what's what!
I can't see how Hardware Labs has a leg to stand on here, and I'd think this could even damage their own market, as any nVidia fanboy out there (and there are lots), on hearing about this, are likely to add Hardware Labs to their black-list, and go get their cooling solution from someone else!
Wouldn't a better analogy be more like a fire sale?
From other comments, it seems Pebble were circling the drain already, with layoffs earlier in the year, and basically surviving on investor money (i.e. not actually making enough income to cover costs).
All they've done is sell off what bits they could (i.e. some/all of the IP), and try to protect a few jobs, before closing the doors on the business for good.
Court confirms patents "were not patentable"
Step 1. Patents are resided.
Step 2. Any existing court cases referencing the same patents are amended to remove those claims (if other patents are still in dispute), or court case is dismissed fully if only resided patents were involved, with any costs automatically going against the organisation that raised the case.
Step 3. Any members of staff at the Patent Office who were involved in approving the patents, are re-trained, disciplined and/or sacked, as appropriate.
Step 4. All existing, and any new Patent requests from the same organisation (or any related to them) to have additional scrutiny applied, for a period of time determined by how serious the issue was (e.g. for the next 5 years, and assuming no further stupid requests are made (i.e. if a stupid request is made, the 5 years starts again)).
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