* Posts by Aslan

153 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jun 2007

Page:

Yes, we know Active Directory cloud sync is a MESS, says Microsoft

Aslan

2 errors in the last paragraph

There's no word on the various enhancements Microsoft promises to deliver will land, but [erhaps some will emerge in the forumMicrosoft has erected to discuss the new tool. ®

[erhaps should be perhaps

and

forumMicrosoft needs a space between forum and Microsoft.

UN to Five Eyes nations: Your mass surveillance is breaking the law

Aslan

@Charles Manning. Sorry about taking issue with your name I see you have a long posting history here, you got in just before I did. It has been shown that governments take an interest in social media and other such things. If we haven't seen their effects yet we most certainly will in the coming months and years. I do reiterate however, Just because there's murders who haven't been caught yet doesn't mean the those who break and enter shouldn't be brought to justice.

Aslan

I don't pay much attention to the UN and when I do I'm wary of it, worrying that it looks to usurp national sovereignty, but this, this changes things a bit. The organization I was concerned about taking away my rights and freedoms is now the one standing up for them. That's the wrong side of the issue for the USA to be on. If the UN can arrange protection for Snowden and keep up the pressure on this issue I'll be suitably impressed and at the least, will feel they're due some respect.

@Charles Manning

Funny you should say that here with the supposed last name of Manning. Just because there's murders who haven't been caught yet doesn't mean the those who break and enter shouldn't be brought to justice.

Sit back down, Julian Assange™, you're not going anywhere just yet

Aslan

If I could cost a government $16,000 a day by sitting there, I might just do that for life just because. What about you?

Popular password protection programs p0wnable

Aslan

Thanks to the boffins for doing the research. I use a password manager myself. @AC I know that having a unique password for the 300+ sites I use is better than having 4 passwords for everything per my previous solution. Using a password manager puts me in a much better place than I was before, where I'd have a password get compromised and have to change my password on 50 websites. This has been the year of password compromises for me. 3 major companies I did business with allowed my password to be compromised and another two might have. I've few worries about using a password manager on a mobile device as on android, proper security can be installed. Lookout Mobile Security is a good one.

Infected Chinese inventory scanners ships off logistics intel

Aslan

Re: scanners and website-hosted software

A useful barcode scanner these days is a PDA with a pistol grip mount, a touch screen and wifi. It ties into the inventory system, and can access stock levels and locations, deliver messages, clock workers in and out, navigate the warehouse. They're pretty amazing tools. If you can't trust your suppliers who can you trust?

Presto! After Supreme Court loss, Aereo says it's a cable company now

Aslan

Re: Apparently they honestly thought....

Thanks for putting it so succinctly. You'd thing the author didn't appreciate the convenience of Aereo maintaining the TV antenna for you and including a DVR too the way the author dismisses the classification the supreme court put Aereo in.

It's not that I haven't climbed a 30' tower to do seasonal maintenance on a 65 mile antenna and equipped it with an expensive amplifier, it's that I'd prefer having the option of having somebody else do it. At my current address in the USA I have Time Warner cable and they want $30 a month for the most worthless cable service ever or the world best antenna. Basically it's a collection of all the stuff you'd pick up with an antenna and PBS, plus, TLC (junk) and CNN (tiresome after a point), and they force you to use a set top box to receive it and want an additional $8 for that. I told them to fuck off. Other than Aero I have no other options. Satellite isn't an option here. The fuck is wrong with broadcast television that they're actively hostile to me being able to watch their 20 minutes of commercials an hour?

Ham-fisted farmer fear: A peanut-butter-and-iPhone sandwich

Aslan

I love The Register.

I love The Register.

MIT and CERN's secure webmail plan stumped by PayPal freeze

Aslan

My bank doesn't provide anything like that here in the US. They've got AMEX travelers checks, but then that's AMEx, and they aren't everywhere, and in this day and age businesses hate taking checks. As a consumer one can receive money in any currency from people around the world, say a group buy on software, or a birthday present where overseas postage would cost more than the present, or to get money to family. Many artists craftsmen and bands use Paypal, that would be commercial, but only in a small way. If Paypal sees something that looks like fraud Paypal can disable your account, thereby preventing you from making any purchased or accessing the balance held in your account.

With Paypal in the US money is moved faster, 3-5 business days to get funds into a Paypal account from a bank account, and there's an option called instant transfer where if you have a credit card on file you can make a purchase or send money with funds in your bank account.

Hating on Paypal has been popular for a few years now, and while the articles do amuse, and Paypal has been foolish in their policies and PR, Paypal is a good option for many people and it's the one I choose for the moment. Admittedly I miss their initial zeal from when they were founded, about destroying banks and breaking down international barriers, they look more like a bank each year, but noting better has come along. That said, I'm long on Bitcoin, but Bitcoin doesn't address the market Paypal does.

Aslan

Re: Paypal has issues, but I like them

Astroturf? You're the one commenting anonymously where as I have a long history on The Register. I was a member before Goggle permitted searching for the word the. After Google permitted searching for the word the, The Register held the top spot.

I did attempt to fix that after I posted but by the time I did so edit was disabled. To expand on "Credit card companies are supposed to provide some protections, but they're legally required to. " Credit card companies in the US are legally obliged to limit your maximum liability from fraudulent transactions to $50. This is something they're required to do not something they want to do, so they make the process confusing, and difficult. As opposed to Paypal which exists in part to facilitate transactions between people and small businesses. I'd say that Paypal's popularity depends on it's customer service.

Keep in mind your credit card company is out there to make money. Remember the "Verified by Visa" program? You would register your card online get a special pin and when you paid with that Visa card you'd be redirected to Visa's site where you'd enter the pin. Sounds like a great way to prevent fraud right? I thought so, then I looked a little closer and found that the terms and conditions of the use of the service transferred all fraud liability to the consumer instead of the credit card company, relieving the credit card company of the US governments legally required $50 maximum liability to the consumer limit.

Further AC you attack without offering a solution. I've looked at Google Payments, and have an account. Google payments offers some protections to me as a consumer, but the ones offered by Paypal are better. I haven't interacted with Google Payments customer service, but I suspect Paypal's customer service is better. For the time being I choose Paypal.

Aslan

Paypal has issues, but I like them

Paypal has some major issues, but they serve and protect customers in a way that Credit card companies don't. For the consumers, Paypal always has someone there to chat with or speak to on the phone. Paypal works to resolve the issue and makes sure things end well for me.

I've made a lot of purchases online over the years and on more than four occasions Paypal has helped me out.

1) I bought an $80 toy (out of production) on eBay, the seller sent me another toy by the same name, but not the model of toy pictured. The toy they sent was in production and worth $10. They said they accidentally copy pasted the wrong picture, I think it was a scam, but it doesn't matter I had Paypal at my back. Paypal had the eBayer pay return shipping costs and send me the correct item.

2) I bought the plastic piece of a laptop that goes above the keyboard with the media buttons and a power button on it. In the service manual the part number displayed in the auction included the electronics. The eBay seller shipped me the plastic piece without the electronics. After I contacted him, he told me to keep it and refunded my payment.

3) I've bought many computer products from companies with unpronounceable Asian names that I've never heard of before, because I knew Paypal would be there for me if the product didn't function as described. I wouldn't have done business with these people otherwise.

4) I bought an expensive and heavily, nastily DRM'd piece of software from an independent author because it was exactly what I needed. I provided all necessary information through Paypal, but not my address as the author would not be mailing me anything. The less people who have my personal info the better. The author ignored me. After I followed up he insisted on an address I declined to provide it unless he wished to mail me a copy on disk. He ignored me. I followed up and he finally said he was not giving me a key now or ever. The author did not refund my money. I contacted Paypal providing a record of the conversations and they forced a refund. I've been pirating that piece of software ever since. I'm very grateful to the pirates too because the nasty DRM that secure deletes (makes unrecoverable), if the program has a licensing issue, the data files that the program creates has been removed.

A business accepting Paypal for the most part means they are a legitimate respectable company, that they will do what they say, and that I'm safe ordering from them even if I've never heard of them before. It means while I deal with the company first if they don't do what they say, or deliver what I ordered, I've got somebody to back me up

Credit card companies are supposed to provide some protections, but they're legally required to. With my Chase Credit card when I had an issue with a merchant, I found the people I talked to disinterested, they frequently transferred me and gave me run around answers eventually I got Chase to solve the issue, but it took 4 hours and a huge amount of effort on my part.

Paypal makes international purchases safe and easy too. In fact I'd go so far as to say that if a business on the internet doesn't accept Paypal I'm going to find a company who does and buy there instead even if the product is 10% more expensive. So while I'll acknowledge Paypal has issues for those selling goods I must say many of your competitors selling goods on the internet are scamming fraudsters, and I feel I need protection from you on the whole. Paypal allows me to have the trust to buy from you.

Google buys shagadelic playlist biz Songza

Aslan

The Lumberjack song

The Lumberjack song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZa26_esLBE

ASUS launches 5-in-1 Android Windows Phone laptop tablet (breathe)

Aslan

The headline runs past it's bounds in Chrome. You need a space after each slash to get it to break right.

HALF of London has outdated Wi-Fi security, says roving World of War, er, BIKER

Aslan

Re: VPN's are safer...but are they safe?

The solution is just get root already you really should have posted your phone model here so you could be helped with that, and then install Cyanogenmod. If you're a nervous Nelly about getting root access through some security hole your phone manufacturer has allowed to persist for the last year (on Windows these are the updates that get a critical label), the buy a Nexus 5 phone which allows you to easily and officially take root privileges. https://www.google.com/nexus/ or if you're really serious there's always https://www.blackphone.ch/

Basically any VPN that blocks traffic before there is a VPN connection is going to be hacking your phone as bad as anything that give you root privileges unless something changes in a future version of Android.

Aslan

Free Wifi for all

My connection is unencrypted and open to all it's rare I have to block a MAC address for using to much bandwidth. Internet should be free to anyone who wants it.

AMD posts $1.4bn in sales, beats Wall Street moneymen's predictions

Aslan

Bitcoin

This quarter saw AMD not need to lower the MSRP of their graphics cards, and selling through as many of them as they could in North America due to the Bitcoin craze, that time is over. Due to China more or less outlawing Bitcoin and the resulting decrease in value due to the users realizing the currency was overvalued, the average bitcoin miner can no longer turn a profit with AMD produced graphics cards. This will reduce demand in the following quarter, but only a bit as non bitcoin miners are waiting to purchase their graphics cards. As for what this will mean for AMD, I don't know, but I feel it will have an impact and I think the author is remiss for not mentioning it. I'd love to know exactly what sort of impact it does have.

Hightech4us is not wrong, but Oh Homer is absolutely right, we desperately need an alternative to Intel. I say we need an alternative to Intel enough it may be worth seeing government funding for AMD and other alternatives.

Bitcoin will continue to be a somewhat useful means of moving money and making purchases as there are many who do not trust their governments money / want an alternative. Bitcoins principles are sound, but it's value will continue to fluctuate, an those who use bitcoin be warned it has a higher volitility than a Latin American countries currency in a financial crisis. I hold bitcoin and see a strong future for it.

Web data BLEEDOUT: Users to feel the pain as Heartbleed bug revealed

Aslan

Re: How to update your router

Thanks for that. I "knew" that, but didn't think of it. That's a better solution, but mine doesn't involve the command line and in most cases that's exactly where you'll find consumer equipment. If fact I've never personally seen a consumer router out side of those default ips except where a user changed it.

Aslan

How to update your router

In short, yes.

I'd recommend finding the IP of your router, most commonly 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.100 or 192.168.1.101 or 192.168.2.200 or 192.168.1.201 you already seem to know it's IP so you're a step ahead there. Type the addresses in one at a time and see if you get a webpage requesting a username and password, or a message about could not connect.

Once you've found the IP for the router you need to login, most commonly this will be Username: admin password: admin , Username: admin password: blank, do not type blank here leave password blank, username: administrator password: password If that gets you in, look on the router itself, if you're lucky/unlucky you'll find the username on the router. If so try that, if not, find the model number on the router and search in Google model number manual pdf , read that and you should find it.

Once you're logged in, there will be pages of settings arrayed either across the top of the page or the side go through those one by one, looking for options that say something along the lines of update router or check for firmware update. If you do click that and see what happens. pay attention to the date on the update, if it's before the 8th of April 2014 chances are it fixes other things and should be installed, but it doesn't fix the SSL issue if there is one with that device. If you don't find a firmware update from the 8th or later then you should logon to your router each week and do another check, for a month and then after that check for updates once a month. Alternatively if there is an auto update option select that. The second thing to look for is remote management or remote administration. If you see such an option make sure to deselect, or uncheck, or disable it.

Know that on many routers after you change settings on a page you must click update, confirm, or save at the bottom of the page. Otherwise the router will forget you made any changes. After you click the save button most routers will reboot, taking anywhere from 15-90 seconds or more. The router will usually inform you what to do.

Some would say it's best to disable UPNP (Universal Plug and play) while you're at it as that is often poorly done and has security issues, but UPNP makes games and file transfers to the internet work, in short so I wouldn't mess with that setting.

Or get the brand, and model number off your router and call support, but usually support is pretty worthless.

In general I'd recommend to anyone who doesn't already know the above to buy a copy of Windows For Dummies. I mean no insult by this suggestion. I've used a lot of computer books, and by far the for Dummies series is the clearest easiest, and most logical resource you'll find. It will take a person from not knowing where they saved a file on the computer to an advanced intermediate level of skill.

Good luck.

Aslan

Re: remote management?

Store and access files on router connected storage.

Bittorrent

Music and movie streaming

Bandwidth and data management (caps)

Clueless family

DYN DNS type service

Whitelist or blacklist sites

Change traffic priority rules

Restart a consumer grade router that ran out of memory

See if your house is there after a disaster

There's probably a better way to do many of these things, but remote management through a simpler than setting a box up yourself webpage makes them so simple. I can remotely access my router, just in case. (Turned off atm until I can call support tomorrow)

Aslan

It will not save you, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/31/cert_fail_bricks_old_juniper_kit/

maybe.

Aslan

Fuck

Fuck, like fuck, it feels like there's nothing I can do to be safe on the internet.

Craig Foster that site is reporting mail.yahoo.com as an A letter grade when it's known that yahoo mail is vulnerable, i wouldn't trust that site.

Bendy or barmy: Why your next TV will be curved

Aslan

I think you're looking in the wrong places, look for returned tvs on sale, manufacturer refurbished ones, other refurbished options are hit and miss but manufacture refurbished from a place you trust can be an excellent resource. Also enthusiasts with money, they go through new kit every few years unless it's particularly exceptional, find where they sell the old stuff online, usually in forums where there's enough people about to ensure a certain level of trustworthiness. The kit will be a few years old, but top of the line.

If you want a smart TV you really need to just use an HTPC or another box connected to the TV, afaik no one does good smart TVs with updates. I'm sure you know the Chromecast plus a video converter is a pretty good and cheap solution. I'd love to see something like an Intel Nuc sized computer with software included with hardware and software based on open standards that you could just slot into a TV and replace it's brains. That way you could buy a smart TV brain from someone who cared enough to update it and swap it for a new one when chips got faster

Aslan

Re: Given we normally look up to wall mounted screens

I believe if you're looking up to a wall mounted screen you've mounted it to high. I don't have it here, but I believe the THX spec states that your eye level when seated should be roughly a 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the screen. That's the height I've got my 46" at and it feels great. I expect a curved one would too for up to 3 people if it was sufficiently large.

Aslan

My next screen...

I'm currently running a 24" 21:9 screen in flipped portrait (vertically) dedicated to a tall thin app I need open 24/7. I have a touch screen overlay for it so I can react to it quickly when I need to. I'm totally satisfied with my Sharp Aquos SE94-U Special Edition 46", List was something like $3900 but I got it manufacturer refurbished 16 months after it debuted as Sharp's top of the line model at CES at tigerdirect.com for $700. For my next TV I know I definitely want 3D, but that purchase could be 5-7 years out. There's enough content now to make 3D worth it, but it's just I don't need to purchase another TV.

Google kills fake anti-virus app that hit No. 1 on Play charts

Aslan

Re: Nerdy tweaks etc... Mostly have a place

The app took care of that too it knew about the other hardware buttons on the phone. You had your choice of using the up volume key, the down volume key, or clicking the trackball among others depending on the model, to turn on the phone. I used a click of the trackball. Now, this wouldn't work to turn the phone on from being all the way off. For that it was necessary to plug in the phone to the charger remove, then replace the battery, and then phone would boot. The easiest way was to carry an external USB battery with you. After that initial boot you could put the phone to sleep with the on screen button equivalent to tapping the power button, or launch the app and shutdown or restart the phone as needed. No need to plugin and jumpstart the phone until the next time it was fully turned off.

This was for my Nexus One, which I bough on launch day and paid for Next Day Air without a second thought, when Google didn't deliver I bitched them out on the phone, got a refund for the shipping, and got my hotel in the next state to receive it. At the time I was going to be spending 60 hours in transit over a 3 week period. It was after all the first "superphone" 1GHZ processor 512MB ram and 800 x 480 AMOLED screen. It was an amazing phone. When the power button broke over a year and a half later I didn't have nearly the kind of money I had when I bought it and nearly despaired, then I stumbled on the way to power on the phone and looked for a way to turn it off and found that app. I loved that phone. I had three extra batteries for it, and an external battery charger. I did a calculation at one point and figured out that 92% of my life waking or sleeping involved that phone.

Before the Nexus One I used RAZR 2v8m for voice and light web-browsing and a Nintendo DS with the Opera web-browser loaded on an "M3 DS Simply" flash cart. Others were amused I used it for business but it was a very serviceable web-browser if the page didn't have excessive amounts of pictures or complexity. For example it could load TomsHardware.com fine, and image galleries up to 20 images or so, but would choke on an image gallery with 25.

The RAZR 2v8m is right next to the Nexus One for my favorite phone. Mainly for the crazy amount of capability it had for being a consumer phone. Launched October 15, 2007 it had dual 240 x 320 screens with a touch screen on the outside of the phone. It had EDGE, a web browser, GPS, 2GB internal flash, on device movie and audio player as well as streaming capabilities. Yes I was listening to radioparadise.com and watching Youtube on T-Mobile's $5.99 unlimited internet plan (When others paid $30-40 or more for capped data. There were months I used 15GB). It was fun to have a phone that made other people say how are you doing that. I even once had that happen with the manager of a T-mobile store.

Aslan

Nerdy tweaks etc... Mostly have a place

There's a lot of apps explicitly for power users in the Google Play store. Most of what you're calling garbage there, is actually meant for the power user. Many of these apps aren't as important with a modern version of Android, but they still have their uses I like Advanced Task Manager https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arron.taskManager I can see how much battery an app or process is using, move an app to the SD card, kill the app (apps occasionally hang on Android), kill any or all background apps to save battery. All with a much better interface than stock 2.3 Android. Another good one was Battery Monitor Widget Pro https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ccc71.bmw.pro It gives you stats and graphs about your battery, shows you how long it will last for a given task, movies, games, music, and tells you how long it will take to charge the battery. It also warns you when the phone is getting to hot or the battery is to hot to charge. My Nexus One would regularly hit 120 F and quit charging the batter or even 140 F when gaming on an 80+ F day when I was living without air-conditioning. The solution was to take the case off, or maybe even the back battery cover while charging and gaming.

My favorite App you might look down on is "Fix Broken Power Button" which allows you to turn off your phone with a button on the screen if your power button is broken, which has happened to me.

Aslan

You need to understand,

You need to understand that Google Play only runs an automated check to see if an App is malicious. If the automated scan determines it's not it's posted with no human interaction. Responsibility for the apps is on the developer and the user who downloads/buys the app. A human only ever looks at things if there's a certain level of complaints. The Google play store has very few restrictions on Apps compared to other app store and this allows users more choices and interesting apps. This is generally good. To really get what you need to have a bit of intelligence, and be willing to learn a bit about your phone. If you need safety in general, and don't care to learn about your phone you'd be much better off with an iPhone.

Lookout Mobile Security is my favorite Android AV. It even got my phone back once after it was stolen.

'Yahoo! Breaks! Every! Mailing! List! In! The! World!' says email guru

Aslan

The Good thing about Yahoo

The good thing about Yahoo is that it isn't Hotmail. I otherwise hate Yahoo for their broken web-mail interface, but I keep the account open just to catch any emails from people I've lost track of. I use Gmail for personal and business reasons. I was using paid email for ~ $50 a year ifriendly.com and they refused to match Gmail, further they suffered three outages in a two month period one lasting nearly three days. They didn't respond to support requests. So now I use Gmail. It's free, faster than email I paid for with more storage space, and much superior uptime, nearly perfect in fact. True there's no support, but who needs it when there are never any problems with the product?

Beat it, freetards! Dyn to shut down no-cost dynamic DNS next month

Aslan

Re: So what are the alternatives that people recommend?

I'd recommend running Teamviewer as a service on their computer. I run a copy on all my systems, and I can access any system, or my moms from anywhere. (Admittedly this requires some level of trust in the company and government) You also get a nice display of what the status of each computer is without having to login to the computer. The Android client is brilliant. Funky navigation, but it works better than any other way I've seen of navigating a big screen on a small device.

http://www.teamviewer.com/en/download/windows.aspx you want the one labeled "For unattended Access - Teamviewer host"

I still need to find a Dyndns replacement for me though. Oh another thing I used Dyndns for was to connect to an SSH server on my home computer while I was out where I had a ton of useful tools, among them being Lynx a terminal based webbrowser. The computer also hosted a Java SSH terminal. This was like right around 2001 or so. That was fun. Tech is so much easier these days it's losing it's special feeling.

Aslan

What's the point?

I've used DYNDNS for over a decade, but I have to ask, What's the point of paid service? For $25 a year I can have a real domain name. If I feel like it I can set a 60 second TTL for the IP address for it to resolve to and update it as often as I see fit. I'd find value in the service at $5 a year. The only time in a decade I ever contacted support was to cancel a "free" trial they forced on me. They buried the cancellation option 4 pages of options deep. You know it's not like I was wasting their money on support. In 2003 I set up a group collaboration website for 30 people team1014.dyndns.com I think it was, with a forum, easy to use file storage before dropbox, and a mailing list, and hosted it on a home cable internet connection with a 768kbps upload speed, plenty fast for most things. Each day the file storage was copied to a HD and shared with any team members that needed to grab extra large files or upload them to the site, and changes synced in the evening. I visited a lot of good sites through DYNDNS.

Technology is murdering customer service - legally

Aslan

Excellent Customer Service

I'm in Ohio in the united States. I've gotten excellent customer service from 3 companies I can think of.

www.Newegg.com They respond fairly quickly by email, quickly by chat or even by phone without to much hassle. On two occasions they've screwed up the free items badly. Particularly memorable was a free 2GB microsd card they sent me a 4GB SD card. I'm like this is great, but I've got plans for the microsd card. They said keep it. So they tried again, same results. So I called them up a third time they're like sorry about that, but at this point you have 2 4GB SD cards from us for free, can we leave it at that. I said sure but I'm disappointed you couldn't ship the right item. I ended up buying the card I needed from them anyway. Newegg made the effort and gave me free stuff. I'm willing to spend a few dollars extra, even $5-10 on a hundred dollar purchase, because I trust and like them. Though often their prices match or beat competitors.

Wide Open West, or WOW. Cable company taking on the incumbents. Always works to make you happy. They answer the phone, help with problems and give you a bill credit if they're in error or maybe even if they aren't. I'm sorry to have moved away from their service area. Further more their prices were reasonable.

Crutchfield.com Wow, these guys give you free lifetime tech support for any product they sell. If mom wants to buy a smart tv, have her buy it here, plug it in for her and let Crutchfield answer all her questions. The bad news is most things are MSRP and many of the products they sell don't require any support. It's a rare sale at Crutchfield that hits 20% off. If the price is the same everywhere or only a bit higher at Cruchfield I'll shop there every time.

Some of the worst tech support ever? Dell. trying to get Dell to send you a product by part number is hopeless. My model of laptop had a 90 watt charger, the 150 watt charge worked just fine with this laptop, and let you use the laptop while charging the battery. My 150 watt charger went out. I called them, gave them the exact part number they read it back to me, everything was good they then changed the order to the 90 watt model and shipped it. I complained on receiving it, they sent me out another 90 watt instead of the 150 watt one I provided the part number for and they verified they would send me. Finally i spent four and a half hours on the phone and talked to a manager and they sent me out the 150 on the condition I sent the two 90 watt chargers back. I got my 150 watt charger, and said fuck you Dell and sat on the 90 watt chargers. Dell chargers tended to get breaks in the non removable power cable, so I gave the two 90 watt chargers away to friends who needed them.

Organic food: Pricey, not particularly healthy, won't save you from cancer

Aslan

Good to see the study done, but I don't think this is the last word on it. Remember in the early 1990's, the brick cellphones caused brain cancer. If you looked at where the cancers occurred it was obvious, studies were done, but by the time the large ones were technology had moved on and modern cellphones of the early 2000's were found to be safe. Organic food tastes better, I choose it when I can. I'd like to see more testing to enforce laws on pesticide residue, and consequences for the law breakers for organic and normal food. Disappointing to see the British soil association pick and choose like that, everyone does it, but people know they should be above it. I rather think health benefits of organic foods will be found in future studies.

Facebook swallows Oculus VR goggle-geeks. Did that really happen?

Aslan

The Fuck Oculus?

I refuse to participate in Facebook. This means I'll be forced never to buy your product. I've been seeing lots of in game support for Oculus and looking forward to purchasing the retail version when it's made available.

Please do no ally yourselves with the evil that is Facebook.

Shuttleworth: Firmware is the universal Trojan

Aslan

Prudent

This sounds like a wonderfully prudent idea.

I believe the way this would work is the properties of the hardware are provided in firmware, and then the OS loads code to the firmware flash, or if code is already loaded checksums the content. Thus you see the same level of performance, but have a system you can check to see if you control.

Bugger the jetpack, where's my 21st-century Psion?

Aslan

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console) It's an open source hardware platform in the style of the article. dimensions: 140.29 × 83.48 × 29.25 mm (5.523 × 3.287 × 1.152 in) (314 ml) (5.51×3.27×1.06 in) closed, mass: 320 g (0.71 lb) I saw one in person, and it looked neat.

In this age of Phablets couldn't you just buy one of those with a Bluetooth keyboard cover? Like http://www.amazon.com/Minisuit-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Nexus-Rubberized/dp/B009WSCW4S or something similar?

I had my heart set on a Nokia Personal Communicator 9290 the official device of TechTV.

Flying fondleslab causes injury after plane hits turbulence

Aslan

So can babies

The same is true of babies. Babies may also become projectiles. Make sure strap your baby into a seat.

Comcast Corp to merge with Time Warner Cable in MONSTER $45bn deal

Aslan

Kill it now

Someone please kill this deal. I have Time Warner now and while I do not like Time Warner they're the second best ISP I've ever had. I've had 7 technicians out and been through 4 modem replacements in 14 months. I've made 24 calls for loss of service, and lost service about 30 times. I find Time Warner's prices for cable ridiculously high $30 extra to bundle 20 channels some of which I suspect pay Time Warner for service. (I subscribe to Netfix for $8 and watch what I please when I please) That said Comcast was worse. I paid for business class service with them, $140 a month for the exact same service they provided a residence next door to my office for $35. It took them 4 installation attempts to install the cable properly, and they never had the right tools for the job. I lost service more than 10 times in five months and went through 2 modems. Now that I've moved my business to a location they serve but refuse to install at (even for their customary $300 business install fee) they insist I owe them $700 for service they refused to provide.

Wide Open West of WOW was the best ISP I ever had doing a costly install free and they had 3 outages in 18 months of service with no need for modem or box swaps.

This deal would be bad for me, and bad for competition. I believe it would lead to stagnation in the already poorly functioning ISP market in the USA. Further I use 1TB worth of data on a 15/1Mb line and Comcast would want to cap that at 250GB. I'm not a glutton, that number I expect could be more than 2TB.

Time Warner has been good to it's users not turning over private info such as IP address without a proper court order, and not throttling services.

Time Warner has tried caps before and only backed down because their financial statements showed more data delivered for less cost per unit of data and less cost overall than the year before, thereby showing them to be liars when they said caps and overages were financially necessary. I'm certain under Comcast we'd see caps.

Google to banish mobe-makers using old Androids: report

Aslan

Different versions serve different devices

If the program is just as the Register describes, then Google is missing what I as the technically inclined user desires, that being,

1) The latest point updates for security and performance. This is only addressing major point releases. I started using Android mods because they fixed security holes and I've helped some friends who cared do so too. I'd like to see manufactures required to provide security updates in a timely manner for 2 years after the last phone is sold as new.

2) The 2.3.x branch is great for low performance devices and there is a large body of software for 2.3.x I feel like I'd be better off running 2.3 than something more current on a low end phone. I know new versions of Android should use less resources, but there's a lot to be said for that existing body of software targeted at right around those specs.

So am I wrong on 2) here? Is the current version of Android so much superior that it would be superior on low end hardware?

German frau reports for liver transplant clutching bottle of vodka

Aslan
Joke

j/k Well if you're scheduled to get a new liver, best make good use of the current one, no?

El Reg's contraptions confessional no.2: Tablet PC, CRT screen and more

Aslan

I kept my Apple Performa 637CD Money Magazine Edition from 1995 on my desk until 2002 when my mom forced me to donate to the church. The machine had a 33MHZ 68040 in it and a 40 MHZ version was the last naturally occurring 68040 in the mac line. It was upgraded from 8MB ram to 40MB ram, and used SCSI internally and externally. I was pissed too despite having a decent AMD K6-2 333MHZ Windows 98 machine with a Voodoo 3 card in it, I still used the Mac for writing, creating, page layout and awesome Mac games. I know there's more professional options than Claris Works 4.0, but I've never found anything as cohesive, logical and Maclike as it. (I've yet to try Appleworks and it's successors) I still run Claris Works 6 on Windows when I need to do some layout, for this or that. It's amazing what you can do with that program if you know what a well laid out document should look like. Plus I had lots of extras for it, a high quality 300DPI Mustek scanner, an "Epson Stylus Color" printer (No model number because it was the first with that name), and a SCSI Iomega Zip 100 drive. It's a shame Iomega didn't conquer the world, and has been reduced to rebranding flash drives. Coming at the end of the 68K line and being a Mac there was a timelessness to it. I do love Macs even if I don't own one at the moment. I'd still use that computer if i could.

Other than that, a RAZR 2 v8m which has an opera web browser and can still render most web pages and stream internet radio, and stream Youtube videos. A fantastic phone for it's day. I want to brag about the old laser printers I have but I can't figure out what year they were made. I kept coming across laser printers for sale for $20 with a spare cartridge, and for $20 I couldn't say no. I now have 3 black laser printers and a sweet 1200DPI color one, and I paid $70 total. I shouldn't have to buy black toner for at least a decade.

FAT PIPE for ALL: Britain’s new tech firms take it from the telcos

Aslan

Good job man

Good job man. I've no time to say more of significance. I always thoroughly enjoy your work.

Reg mobile correspondent Bill Ray hangs up his Vulture hat

Aslan

Thanks for your articles.

Surface Pro 2: It's TOOL-PROOF and ultimately destined for LANDFILL

Aslan

Thanks El Reg

Thanks to The Register for reporting on this. Peter Bright Microsoft editor over at Ars Technica, one of my favorite sites, thinks your reporting this is a meaningless waste of time. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/new-surfaces-once-again-meaninglessly-dissed-for-low-repairability/ I say thanks to El Reg for taking Microsoft to task on this. I buy devices I can repair even if it take a high level of knowledge and skill.

NSA's Project Marina stores EVERYONE'S metadata for A YEAR

Aslan

Thanks to the Register for reporting on this despite not being the primary source, everyone needs to know this. Apparently the NSA doesn't know what information Snowden took as they're still lying rather than having a honest talk about their capabilities and why they collect the data. The NSA caught in another lie how amusing. The people of the United States need to bring their intelligence agencies to heel.

I've been reading the UK edition of El Reg since 1998 or 1999.

Xerox admits there's no fix yet for number-fudging copiers

Aslan
Thumb Up

OCR - Optical Character Recognition

Given the level of technical expertise here, I'm surprised that you're surprised OCR isn't 100%. Personally I think it's brilliant that Xerox came up with a file format compresses the original document by running it through OCR and building a font of the original images of the characters used. I'd love to know the sizes of files it generates for a given resolution. OCR is never 100 percent and shouldn't be used as the only method of storing/reading a document if every part of the information is important, or if you are going to be using OCR in such a case you need a human checking it.

I think the fault here is that Xerox did not provide warning on the machine of what the risks and limitations of using that file format were. Perhaps a solution would be to provide notice of the limitations on the machine and have the copier assess it's certainty that it was seeing the correct characters and switch to an alternate file format if the certainty was below say 96%.

Thumbs up to the guy who created this format. Xerox should have made end users aware of it's limitations.

Ten 3D printers for this year's modellers

Aslan
Flame

You can cast aluminum direct from a 3D print

You can cast aluminum direct from a 3D print

"Lost PLA Casting from 3D Prints

http://3dtopo.com/lostPLA/

This page describes my first successful attempt casting aluminum parts directly from 3D printed PLA parts. The process is practically identical to lost wax, but instead of burning out the wax, I burned out the PLA plastic (which is a bio-plastic)."

Not me not my site. I'm going to give that a try at some point. The process is involved, but allows one to preform all steps oneself at home. I have a Robo 3D http://www.robo3dprinter.com/ on order and am on the list for a Filabot http://filabot.com/ to bring my costs down.

Swedish military bras burst, melt during 'rigorous exercise'

Aslan
Megaphone

Pictures,

Picture please!

Everything's coming up Mozy in Shanghai cloud

Aslan
FAIL

online backup in China?!?

Wonderful idea, online backup in China. Now the Chinese thought crime police will be able to review each individuals data at will without any chance of detection.

Nice one China Telecom!

Microsoft moves to protect business from bank crunch

Aslan
Thumb Up

US Dictionary says,

While I don't have an UK dictionary, week in the article should beak weak.

Everyone's a winner in the Comcast - BitTorrent detente

Aslan
Thumb Up

Excellent Article

Excellent article, good solution, I think all parties should be able to appreciate this. I hope that the system is not to invasive into peoples internet use and simply keeps a factual eye on the necessary numbers.

I wouldn't mind setting the priority of my traffic on a per application basis if it eased network congestion and allowed me to transfer a similar amount of data per day.

Fortunately I have regular Road Runner and such things are not a problem for me as everything moves quick on their networks.

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