Posts by Rob Clive 31 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2007
These privacy settings are presumably why some people I know got invitations to join FB with a list of people already on the site as encouragement. Worryingly they knew them all and the only link between them was the person getting the invitation. How does FB do this? It can't access the non member's address book can it? Can it?
if you're looking for strange things try here:
http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Swindon,+Wiltshire,+United+Kingdom&ll=52.535542,-1.930847&spn=0,359.858894&z=13&layer=c&cbll=52.538563,-1.933305&panoid=cGS_bf566ByCWuu7jZNkJQ&cbp=12,48.24,,0,5
Someone forgot to take the cover off - or maybe they were PAID to keep them on! Who knows...
How sad to see the Scheme still justifying its existence in national papers using the Soham case. The two girls wouldn't be dead if we'd been around is what they almost boast. Of course, this forgets it wouldn't: the girls went to see Huntley's partner who would have been checked. He wasn't and still wouldn't even under this huge over-reaction of a scheme.
Another b****y card with NFC functionality so you can buy a banana without entering a pin. Alternatively the card can whore itself about to anyone who asks politely. This is why mine's in a screened enclosure to cut down this over friendly behaviour. Will they ever learn about security?
Certainly they're better when earthed but the whole point of a Faraday cage is to equalize the potentials induced by EM waves. Which is why cars and planes make quite good ones; or would if the windows weren't so large.
Incidentally static shielding bags your piece of electronics came in are also good for attenuating RFID cards with 'Wave and Pay' logos on. (As in Wave your card and Pay everyone else's bill)
"OEM Microsoft Windows licenses do not have any transfer rights and live and die on the original computer they are shipped with and installed on, period."
This is a EULA 'feature' which began some time after XP came out but has been sneakily backported to 95. If you have an uninstalled OEM copy of any MS OS (even that antediluvian one) you can't sell it; I know because I tried. MS killed the trade in licence keys from scrap PCs by imposing this condition. They don't even like you re-installing the OS on a machine with a valid licence sticker. All in the name of more sales.
It would be nice if the EULA was tested in court. It might cut down all this chicanery.
Don't even get me started on the MS $1 = £1 conversion rate!
A classic example of a public sector service company: treat your employees like s**t, produce junk products but ensure they're mandated by the right people (eg SIMS), then sit back and let the £££s roll in. The best bit is you can debug the software as you go and people will pay over the odds for it.
Plus there's no real danger of competition or fear of losing out. I *knew* I was in the wrong business
Ha, ha!
They (the FSA) going to do HMRC next? After all £3M for 180,000 customers details lost translates to £416M for the loss of 25 million details earlier this year. Oh I forgot: it's the government: they can do no wrong in IT, can they? Neither can they be fined; there's probably some terribly good reason.
.... doubtless easier, faster and more secure (by design naturally) than any that went before. I wonder if there are any limits? A version of Windows that installs in 5 minutes, *completely* boots in 5 seconds and is immune to worms & viruses. Now that would be something to shout about.
... is inertia. As you say Office does what's required for probably 90% of users who don't need or want any more. Indeed most of them probably don't know about paragraph or font formatting; which is why nearly 100% of documents are in Times New Roman 10pt. Since Microsoft stopped completely changing (so that the older programs could make no sense whatsover of) the format of .doc and .xls at every release at Office 97 there's been no reason to upgrade. Of course they're now trying to re-introduce this lockin tactic with the docx/xlsx format and a spurious 'standard'. Good luck to them.
Why do they need to care about the OS anyway? Their application runs in the browser and is quite happy to use Firefox. It's just that some clever idiot decided to check the OS and throw a wobbly when it doesn't see the magic word 'Windoze'. This is just sloppy programming by some Windoze shop.
..this shower got some retribution. My son's phone display cracked after less than 2 months (and no he hadn't dropped it). The local branch which had been more than pleased to sell it to me didn't want to know (unless I'd bought their overpriced insurance.) Despite mentioning the Sale of Goods Act it was entirely the manufacturer's problem. They'd send it off if I liked to be looked at but if they (the manufacturer) decided it was my fault it'd be £17 to get it back, or £22 if I wanted it to my home address unrepaired. In the event the manufacturer must have decided it was their c**p design because it came back fixed. None of this was due to P4U who washed their hands of the whole affair. Time they accepted some responsibility.
So I must be part of the problem: I had a Morgan Stanley card which was sold to Goldfish who've now sold it to Barclaycard. Now I've got a nice shiny new card proudly proclaiming me a Founder Member (of what I don't know). It's also got a PayPass logo; something unmentioned in all the puffery I received. So I can look forward to having my card debited whilst it's still in my wallet. Don't you just love progress....
"...if the long-term interests of NHS patients and taxpayers are to be protected"
A change of direction then. The interests of neither of these groups have been of concern up 'til now. Just the shiny technology and its soundbite potential.
And no, I can't think which faceless civil servant might be next with the poisoned chalice.
"We are achieving nothing like the impact that we should from this technology," sayeth the man from BECTA.
... that's because you don't provide any training. As a school governor I saw all the teachers at the school given laptops microstuffed with software but no real idea how to use 'em. Result: it's a glorified typewriter. Try some training rather than paying monopoly prices for new software and you might get impact.
Wonderful things; if you ignore the odd form factor, slow starting brightness, poor cold performance and environmental unfriendliness. Of course most of them also have a power factor of 0.5 which means your nice lamps are distorting the mains current waveform. Good for the consumer but bad for the generator. Industry used to be penalised for a poor PF via their bills, I assume this will happen for domestic users when enough CFLs are installed. Suddenly they won't appear quite such a good deal.
This delay they're talking about is clearly negative since lots of people (self included) have clearly renewed early to avoid being put on the register.
The new biometric passport is very pretty btw, although I hope no-one wants to add anything to the observations page; it's covered with the chip & aerial. Just need to paste some tinfoil inside the front & back covers, accidentally poke through one of the connections or microwave it. Which would be best?
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