Posts by Ian Cumbers

Jamie Oliver's ministry of malware served slops AGAIN

Re: Yeah

>> If someone who doesn't understand the internet is told a lie by someone he trusts to know everything, then the lie becomes fact, doesn't it?

How does the saying go - Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Imagine - I buy a restaurant and Jamie O is the chef. 5 customers are poisoned by bad food and he said "These things just happen, not my fault, but don't worry I'll make sure it never happens again. How about I don't charge you for next Sundays work". I might accept that, but the second or third time in as many months and I'd no longer accept the story, regardless of how little I know about catering. At the very least, I'd find out whether all owners just have to put up with customers going face-down in the dessert bowls.

I'm unsure as to why common sense, that people apply to all other walks of life seems to go out of the window when dealing with IT.

Undetectable NSA-linked hybrid malware hits Intel Security radar

NSA - Nice Sensible Authority

I'm not sure which I find most unsettling... The suggestion that a government *might be involved in subverting personal or corporate property or the fact that we are now all so used to such behavior, comments on The Register revolve around the failings of vendor quality control and capability, ignoring the reference to the NSA.

* I say might, as we have no proof. However, post-Snowden, it's unlikely that we'd be shocked by anything.

And whilst I'm at it, I'd just like to say that I think the NSA are a great bunch of people who deserve a pay rise for their invaluable work (just in case they're reading this).

Elite:Dangerous goes TITSUP

Re: Another One...

<quote>Yeah Frontier really need to improve if they are going to beat deleting boot.ini and bricking customer's PCs. (EVE actually did this.)</quote>.

That sounded interesting and so I Googled it and found this: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/about-the-boot.ini-issue/

Bad mistake, but so refreshing to see such a full and candid response from a software company.

And to follow on from other similiar comments - I had long periods of not being able to play BattleField3 (EA Games) due to their server problems, but my sons played Elite D. without a problem.

Rock star physicist Cox: Neutrinos won't help us cheat time

When is a fact, not a fact?

I'm not qualified to talk about Quantum/Relativity theories as I don't have a Twitter account, but that won't stop me...

The thing I find slightly irritating is that some 'experts' are too often cock-sure that 'facts' are static - but they aren't. Facts (or 'truth') are relative (sorry) to our understanding at any one moment in time. Scientific history is littered with 'immutable facts' over the centuries (earth is flat, thylidamide is safe, Norwich will never make it to the Premier league).

Knowledge is always constrained by the bounderies of our understanding. As our understanding expands, so does our knowledge. It may not be verbally elegant, but adding "... to the best of our current understanding" to the end of every 'factual' comment by an expert would be more accurate.

And wasn't Brian Cox just saying that *if* these incy-wincy particles were travelling faster than light, we would just need to adjust our understanding and come up with an alternative theory that explained all the 'facts' as we see them? The world won't end... well, not for ages.

Google Chromebook: Will the revolution be subscribed?

Another good idea. Won't amount to much though...

This is clearly 'the next big thing'. And probably like about 95% of such monumental changes, it will amount to nothing in the real world.

I think the biggest positive about Google's move is that it continues the trend of trying new ideas and options. If companies didn't try new things, we'd stagnate and all be sitting here with run-time Windows (or GEM!) and Word Perfect.

From an ergonomic viewpoint, particularly for people who have a low number of 'simple' apps, that they use intensively, the laptop form-factor just doesn't cut the mustard. But that's an easy one to solve (so why is the Chrome desktop unit not out yet???).

I think the whole ChromeOS device is confusing two major elements; replacing conventional 'fat' devices to reduce IT support costs (that far exceed the capex purchase costs) and also introducing the concept of cloud computing.

As a new client device, it offers little that can't be had from Wyse type terminals in the office and netbooks hooking back into corporate systems for mobile people.

As a new model of managing data and deploying (cloud) apps, the world - by that, I mean the vast majority of major companies - just will *not* release their sensitive data to some foreign company.

It's rather ironic that in an attempt to answer functionality criticism, Google are offering a more capable local file system. For all the imperfections of todays corporate IT, Google may end up making Chrome far more like existing OS's, just to get acceptance (and meet real every day needs), and that's going to lead to the mother of all compromises.

In a world with 6 billion people, you can always find a market for a new idea. ChromeOS may be relevant to some people, but it won't change the world, nor the way that we work. But good for them, for trying!

Rackspace backtracks over toff-proof sign-up process

Validating email is for their benefit, not yours ;-)

-On a related note, why do web forms make us repeat our email addresses (or, more likely,

-copy box 1 and paste into box 2)? We're deemed capable of getting a 16-digit card number

-right without repeating it.

I think that's because they can validate the, err, validity of the CC number straight away, but if you get your email address wrong, you won't get their crap^h^h^h^h useful marketing material....

Farewell, Novell

Beware - Netware ruins relationships....

Come on - am I the oldest CNE on there? Remember the v2.12/2.15 installs via floppies, with a setup program that would compile the kernel, based on the detected hardware, at install time??? 25 disks??

I remember the NLM API was the final nail in the coffin of my relationship at the time. We'd gone on holiday together and she threw a fit when she realised that she'd been lugging the huge/heavy NW3 NLM API in her bag. She threw the manual away shortly after, and we then split up. I still miss the manual.

Blighty's carriers to field Windows Phone 7

Thank god...

I saw the title and thought this was a reference to our glorious new Aircraft Carriers. I was assuming that the article was going to explain that the 2 year delay in delivery was because they didn't want to launch the carriers until Win7 SP1 came out...