Posts by Joe Montana 818 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Mar 2007
1, yeah i agree here, however this is a niche requirement at best, most people are more than happy to drop their phone into a charger next to their bed every night, and there are always external battery packs... Also it charges from USB, how often are most geeks away from a device with a usb socket?
2, lack of memory card slot is a nuisance, but again its more of a niche requirement... most people i know who have phones with memory card slots only have a card in there because it came with the phone, and the phone has little/no in built storage.
3, the walled garden business model is actually a benefit for most people, it doesn't suit me but then again i have no problem with it so long is open enough that non walled garden options are available, and there are plenty of unlocked android phones available.
4, a lot of smartphones make mediocre phones, i wouldnt say the iphone is worse than any others i've seen lately tho
5, personally i couldnt care less about fashion...
6, i dont care what stephen fry likes or dislikes either
7, doesnt appear to be more expensive than comparable handsets from other manufacturers, although admittedly it has been superseded since being released.. and since the article is about the iphone 5, whos to say it wont be competitive with others handsets on the market today?
8, just because the iphone 4 had a badly designed antenna, doesnt mean the iphone 5 will
9, the iphone 4 had a decent screen when it was released, perhaps not so much now... but it is over a year old, what will the 5 offer?
10, about the only point i agree with...
// presumably you mean by having a tiny install base that's not worth targetting...
Exactly, if instead of one huge target we had a number of smaller ones, then these problems would all be far less serious... Why do you think browser exploits are less common now that no browser commands 90% marketshare, and the most common attacks now target software which still has a huge market share.
I find that many people without a degree are often better than graduates...
You're either good at it, in which case you will have self taught yourself before even reaching the stage of taking a degree, or your not naturally inclined towards the subject and thus took the degree solely because you saw money in it...
And in a fast changing area like IT, you will probably be learning old tech at any educational establishment anyway... True enthusiasts will keep up to date on their own.
Hackers will go for the largest possible target... A few years ago when 95% of web users ran IE it made an attractive target, now that it is down to 40% it's less interesting.
On the other hand, the programs which are being targeted are still on over 90% of users machines, including those using non-IE browsers.
If these programs had competitors such that the market was split up, then they would be much less attractive targets too. Monocultures are very bad for security.
Another problem that compounds the issue, is the lack of a centralised package system on windows... Every app needs its own crufty update system, which waste resources and end up getting turned off. Linux has a much better approach, add your repository to the system package manager and then it will get updated at the same time as everything else.
The article states that the breach most likely occurred due to an individual developer account being compromised, so it was not necessarily the security of MySQL or whatever software they happen to be running which is at fault...
What was the developer running, and how did his credentials come to be stolen? Did he do something stupid like send them over an insecure channel, or was his workstation compromised?
I don't see the point of this device...
No support for thunderbolt, as used on the new macbooks...
No USB hub...
No integrated power, so fiddly to connect it up separately...
Lots of connectors, so if you insert the macbook wrongly you might break the connectors...
Macbook will get quite hot with the lid closed, no extra cooling?
Do the audio connectors support optical? The macbooks do, but does this dock disable that feature?
You'd probably be better off buying an Apple monitor, then you just need connect up thunderbolt and power from the monitor to the laptop.
MS is one of the biggest reasons hardware vendors want to get out of the beige box business... They do not really produce products in their own right, they are just one of many Microsoft OEMs and are utterly dependent on MS for their business who could cripple any OEM at any time by refusing them volume discounts on windows. Similarly they cannot really differentiate their products, they are all built from the same components and run the same software.
OEMs have the ability to bargain over hardware, since any given piece of hardware has an easily swapped competing alternative... They cannot argue with MS as there is no direct replacement for windows.
It's no coincidence that the only desktop manufacturer with any decent margins is Apple, the only vendor who is not dependent on MS.
What matters is apps, until you have an equivalent selection and quality of apps as Apple do, you won't be able to compete with them head on... Your product will always be seen as inferior, and people won't be willing to spend the same on it as they would on an Apple device.
Instead, you have to offer your tablets cheaply and compete from below. Slash your margins, or even put out a loss leader ala HP... Had HP not dropped the touchpad, and simply offered it at the price they did anyway they would likely be sitting on a respectable market share right now.
Once you have the user base, apps will be developed... Few people will develop apps if there is little or no target market for them, and few people will buy a device for which there are very few applications. It's a catch 22, and something drastic like an extremely low price is needed to overcome that.
Surely developers need a stable platform that isn't going to suddenly change underneath them and break all of their existing code and force them to learn a whole new system?
That's exactly what MS did when they replace windows mobile 6 with the incompatible version 7, as well as various other products they dropped - such as kin...
And exactly what nokia did by dropping symbian.. I wouldn't trust either of them, why should i make a significant investment of time and resources to learn a platform that might be abandoned by its sole supplier at any time.
This is ridiculous, what right does someone who made some music in their 20s have to continue deriving revenue from that music in their 90s?
These people should have to invest their money wisely when young and set up pension schemes etc, just like everyone else.
Copyright terms of 50 years were already far too long, 70 years is just insane and the swedish representative had it right, the more ridiculous copyright terms are the more people will feel justified in ignoring it.
I did GCSE IT in 1996, and they basically taught us how to use wordperfect for windows, that was it... I understand modern GCSE is no better, or perhaps even worse.
I learned more in the after school "computer club" than in actual classes, where the teacher (the same guy) was free to teach what he wanted.
While teaching basic programming is useful, they have to do it properly... They need to teach logical constructs and general ideas, rather than getting bogged down in the specifics of one particular language.
Similarly while it's useful to teach students stuff like word processing, it would be far better to teach than the general concepts rather than the specifics of one particular application. You never know what applications, and what versions thereof students will end up using once they leave school so the more exposure to different programs they've had the better. Our wordperfect and quattro pro classes were all for nothing, i've not seen a single company using this software since leaving school.
Apple have always been a premium vendor, they are the current market leader and have a much wider selection of apps available than any of the competitors.
Anyone looking to compete with them will either have to do so on price (see hp) or offer a significantly better product for the same price.
Motorola seem to have the right idea, and are heavily discounting the Xoom, the 32gb model can now be had for under £300 compared to the 16gb iPad 2 at £400, and their tablet is android based so it has far less app availability problems than HP or RIM faced.
These vendors need to take a punt, and offer their tablets at break even price in the short term to gain market share.
If given the choice between the market leading, premium ipad2 or a lesser known non premium brand with less apps available for the same price, what would you choose?
Windows phone has a mountain to climb, like windows mobile before it but even worse...
Windows is associated with crashing and viruses... It only sells in the desktop space because people don't see any alternative or are locked in and unable to make a choice anyway... In the mobile space it's a newcomer, and why would anyone want to saddle their phone with the same crap that makes computers such a hassle?
And the desktop situation is reversed in mobile, both android and iOS have huge catalogs of applications, while windows phone has very few.
They also have the legacy of windows mobile to deal with, people who gave it a shot despite the name got left with a sour taste in their mouth...
Ask the average guy on the street if they'd want a windows phone and they'll say no and usually for the above reasons.
Had they branded it something different they might be in with a shot, look at the xbox... no windows branding, reasonable sales... Would it have sold at all if it was branded "windows game" or something? Probably not, people want consoles that just work, and windows has a reputation for not working and generally being a hassle.
UEFI is nothing new, it's been around for years and MS just happen to be the last OS that bothers to support it. Linux has had support for it for many years, and OSX has required it ever since they made the switch to x86.
It's very dangerous including AV in the OS, if you have a single dominant AV product then it becomes too big of a target for the malware authors, who will simply write new malware specifically to neuter the AV.
AV was only ever effective against relatively dumb malware... It is useless against active and organised groups, these people can download the latest av signatures themselves and modify their malware to be sure it's not detected. It's really not hard, there was a competition to do this at defcon a few years ago. And if you make your AV too sensitive to try and pick up new malware, you will end up getting false positives.
And does anyone else think the boot sector checking is more about making sure you haven't installed a linux boot loader rather than keeping the users secure? And speaking of which, i played with reactos yesterday and found it had a feature windows has been seriously lacking for years - it doesn't blindly overwrite your MBR, it gives you the choice!
ZoHo and Google both want to provide the best web based application suite they can, and don't care what platform you use to access it...
MS have different goals, they want users to continue buying their desktop software and to be tied in to their desktop platform. Their online suite is a grudging response to competition from Google, and they would have preferred not to have any online version at all. They will keep it mediocre, and always ensure it is a poor alternative to the desktop suite, or tied to it in some way.
The better online suites become the less people will require desktop suites and can replace their expensive power hungry windows desktops with cheap linux based terminals.
I bought a touchpad in the recent fire sale...
I wouldn't say it was a dud, but it was certainly overpriced given that its a newcomer to a market dominated by Apple... Had the touchpad been cheap from the start, not as cheap as it ended up but somewhere in between it could have sold reasonably well, and higher sales would have translated into developer interest and thus more apps.
The hardware itself is perfectly decent, and WebOS seems fine... From a geek perspective its also the easiest tablet OS to get a root shell on.
HP should have sold it not at a loss, but at a break even price in order to establish a place in the market, and provided incentives for developers to port their applications. Given that the touchpad runs linux, it could also have been made easier to port or directly run android applications.
It seems that Motorola are following suit, the price of the Xoom seems to be dropping every day lately... I would buy one, but with the frequent price drops i don't want to run the risk of buying it today and it costing half as much tomorrow.
They should bring back the physical flash enable jumper...
But there's not just the BIOS to worry about, virtually all of your hardware has a small upgradeable firmware attached to it, video bios, hard drive firmware, even keyboards have firmware... Plenty of places for malicious code to embed themselves.
There were systems announced a while ago to USE gps to enforce speed limits, and to charge road tax or insurance based on what roads you drive on...
"The antenna is inadequate in really bad weather. I drove up last Friday night and in a torrential downpour it kept losing accuracy. Several times it had me on a minor road running alongside the M40 instead of the M40 itself."
The lack of accuracy could be a problem, driving down the motorway at 70mph and your gps suddenly thinks your on a small adjacent minor road and slows you down to 30mph... I believe it might actually be illegal to drive so slowly on the motorway, because it's certainly very dangerous.
As mobile phones do more, so they will render obsolete individual devices that offered the same functionality...
Pagers
Low end cameras
PDAs
Electronic organisers / address books
And now it looks set to replace lowend GPS devices, although i imagine there will still be a smaller market for higher end ones and specialist (bike/truck) units.
What i would like to see however, is a universal phone dock standard which could be used in cars....
Consider a standard cable/cradle which combines HDMI, USB, Power, Audio in/out, Antenna... You get in the car, drop your phone into the dock...
Larger GPS/GSM antenna on the roof of the car for improved reception (esp at speed)...
Your audio routed through the cars speakers.
The in car microphone routed to your phone.
Steering column controls connected to the phone.
Phones display routed to the in-dash screen, where you can use the GPS.
Why would you want to use either MS or VMware with such ridiculous prices?
It's no coincidence that the major cloud providers (amazon etc) are rolling their own setups based on free software...
It would be economically infeasible to build such a setup using proprietary software... Not to mention that the whole idea of a cloud, easy scalability, goes out of the window when you have to pay twice as much for the software than the hardware it runs on.
If you want to encourage recycling and reduce landfill use...
Bring back the old bottle fees, where an extra 10p is added to the price of anything in a bottle, and you get it refunded when you return the bottle. I believe they actually still do this in Holland. Do the same with other types of packaging.
Also when recycling glass bottles, don't smash them up and melt them down... Just clean them and reuse them.
Reduce packaging, especially horrible types of packaging like blister packs, back in the days stuff used to come in biodegradable brown paper bags... There is no need for fancy packaging, its whats inside that counts and if companies are concerned that generic packaging will prevent their product from standing out, then institute a blanket ban so everyone is in the same boat. You can also have promotional material on the shelves rather than the packaging. 99% of my household waste is unnecessary packaging.
Reduce plastic packaging, use paper or card whenever possible... Plastic is mostly only really needed for holding liquids, and then the bottles can be reused as above.
Treat biodegradable waste separately, that can be rotted down.
Have convicts and the long term unemployed sort rubbish according to its type, so it can be more easily recycled. Make working a condition of receiving any benefits, if you don't find a better job this is what you do.
There really isn't a whole lot that needs to go into landfill, most can be recycled or rotted down (i.e. natural recycling)...
This is such an old scam, and usually the box will contain something mundane... What makes this all the more insulting however, is that they actually went to the trouble of painting the block of wood.
It's not as if the fact its painted helps the scam in any way, its blatantly obvious as soon as you open the box so why else would they do it other than to have a final laugh at the victim's expense?
Not only are the wrong type of open zone hotspots not usable, but if your phone is configured to automatically connect to the BTOpenZone SSID you will often find yourself connected to these things but completely unable to do anything.
I have pretty much given up using openzone because of this, and when my plan comes up for renewal will be looking for one without it.
While a Radeon 6990 is very fast at bitcoin processing, how many users actually have such cards? I bet the market share of reasonably new radeon cards is relatively low... Intel has the largest market share for video cards, and their cards cannot do bit coin... Nvidia cards are considerably slower than AMD, and even those users who are using AMD cards, only the higher end 4xxx 5xxx and 6xxx series are worth using, lower end versions of the cards as well as anything older than 4xxx aren't worth it. I would imagine that no more than a couple of % of potential bot hosts have usable video cards.
That said, a smarter bot herder could target places where people likely to have such cards hang out, like gaming forums etc, but gamers will very quickly notice if the malware makes a significant impact on their bot. Non gamers are very unlikely to have such cards at all.
Also, bitcoin involves a large number of integer calculations, not floating point, this is primarily why nvidia cards are so poor (optimised for floating point) compared to AMD.
And this malware is not trying to defeat the safeguards of the bitcoin protocol, they are attempting to participate in the bitcoin network and thus earn a share of coins for doing so (aka mining)... Profit margins on doing so are a lot higher if you aren't paying for the hardware or electricity yourself.
The authorities absolutely love proprietary single-vendor services for that exact reason...
Whereas with SMS they have 4 operators to work with, with BBM they only have one.
Same thing with Twitter, a single source for them to get information from.
That's why they hate p2p technologies, and open technologies like email, xmpp and IRC where there could be potentially hundreds of different providers offering services.
One advantage of quad core, is that 3 of the cores can spend 99% of their life turned off to save battery life but unlike a lower spec cpu, can still perform if necessary.
Someone else made a good point tho, android is saddled with an interpreted runtime and wouldn't need such resources if it ran compiled native code... Also, if they used native code instead of java, oracle wouldn't be suing them right now.
As for a one day battery life, most people seem to consider charging every day perfectly acceptable. You have to sleep sometime, so why not just put the phone on charge as you sleep?
The claim that if a single mac is compromised, then its easy to compromise them all is amusing... Not only does this require a particular configuration involving an OSX server configured to push updates to the clients... But it also seems to require exploitation of a specific bug, which i imagine Apple will be fixing in short order..
But it's also EXTREMELY easy to compromise a windows network in the same way, get onto one system and you can grab hashes, either of the local users (how many places build from images and all the local passwords are the same), or of logged in domain users... And then you can use these password hashes to access other machines without even having to crack them!
Get a semi competent pen test company to do an internal audit of your windows based network, give them an ethernet socket and nothing else... They will almost certainly have domain admin access before lunch.
While issues may exist in OSX, they look like fixable bugs whereas many of the holes in windows are serious design flaws that will break all manner of things if fixed.
Also another point, the assumption that at least one employee will fall victim to a social engineering attack and run a malicious binary... There is a simple solution to this, ensure that users don't have execute permissions for any device they can write to. Typical users have no business running anything that's not been preinstalled by the admin staff anyway.
And finally, even assuming that macs are just as insecure as windows, their presence still improves security because it creates diversity.. Sure, they may also have serious vulnerabilities but now the hackers need to have 2 sets of tools and 2 sets of skills instead of just 1.
I also don't have any debt, but i still use credit cards for 99% of spending because they're more convenient...
I get cashback on what i spend, only a small amount granted but i spend a lot on work expenses which get refunded by the company too so its effectively free money...
Interest free debt can also be a good thing, take out a card with say a 10k limit and a years interest free, do your normal purchasing on it until you reach the limit but instead of paying off the bill every month put that money into a savings account. At the end of the year, pay off the card and keep the interest you earned in the account.
I also finding counting out change, and carrying it around with me extremely inconvenient.
Similarly while some shops and customers behind you may get annoyed if you try to pay with a card, i have seen many situations where people paying with cash have attracted similar negative attention especially when counting out large numbers of small coins.
The fact that no single browser has a dominant market share is a very good thing.. It means that web developers will now have to test their sites with at least the 3 major rendering engines. Hopefully it will level out with at least 3 browsers having roughly equal market share.
Another thing worth considering, is that many users are forced to use IE at work or on public terminals while very few people are forced to use the other browsers. As such, most of the non-ie browser users explicitly chose to use their given browser, while a proportion of the ie-users don't have the choice.
It would be interesting to see if the stats could be updated to see the IQ of people who chose to use IE, i imagine the average IQ would be even lower.
A common kernel, and then different userlands to suit different purposes... That sounds very much like the approach currently taken by Linux...
And it's about damn time too, products like windows mobile and windows ce are very offputting for customers, they're branded as windows which implies compatibility.
On the other hand, Linux benefits from the majority of its applications coming with source code, which makes porting to different architectures relatively easy... Windows apps are typically closed source, so you would have to convince vendors to compile for a number of different platforms, something that a lot of them simply won't do.
Something else that should be looked into however, is the apparent prioritisation of traffic to the popular speedtest websites...
In my rudimentary testing using a 50mb virgin connection, i see that:
I consistently get 50mbit/sec when using speedtest.net
I can sometimes get 50mbit/sec when downloading from virgin's mirror sites (eg gentoo.virginmedia.com)...
Downloading from a server hosted at the same ISP as one of the speedtest sites, connected via a gigabit connection i get between 10 and 20mb, depending on the time of day... The server itself is idle, and is capable of uploading at 100mbit or faster to servers hosted elsewhere.
Similar speeds are seen when downloading from other places
I wouldn't be surprised if other isps do the same thing, knowing that many users trust the speedtest sites and won't do more thorough testing themselves.
The problem was going with vmware in the first place... Now your stuck with a company that's heading for a downward spiral and wants to screw as much out of people now as it can before it loses the chance....
Vmware won't be able to compete with hyper-v, xen and kvm long term... MS will nodoubt play dirty, while linux/bsd users will choose a platform that actually supports them properly, and all of the competitors are free or bundled with products the customers are likely to already have bought.
Or, you don't have to update anything...
The organisation will already have paid for current versions of msoffice, and can continue using them for their legacy apps/documents, while using libreoffice for anything new.
Generally, infrastructure gets refreshed every 3-5 years so any apps which were dependent on msoffice will have been replaced with libreoffice compatible apps within 5 years and as such the legacy applications can be retired. There's nothing stopping them keeping one or two of the (Already paid for) msoffice installs around for any remaining stragglers, most large organisations have all kinds of ancient equipment hanging around to cover niche apps that haven't been migrated yet.
I encountered machines running SunOS 3.x at a hospital a couple of months ago, they had clearly been there a very long time and were the backend servers hooked up via serial to a big piece of medical equipment and some dumb terminals. It's also not unusual to encounter VAX systems, typically running accountancy systems, running at organisations which have been around a while.
You don't even need to port all the apps right away...
You already have your old version of msoffice that works with the bespoke apps, and upgrading to the latest version might also break the apps anyway.
You move to libreoffice for what you can, and retain msoffice for legacy uses, requiring that all new documents are in ODF format and any new applications must be compatible with libreoffice.
Do the same with browsers, keep IE6 for legacy apps (but lock it down to only access those apps, don't let it on the internet) and deploy firefox or chrome for everything else... Require that any new apps you purchase must be standards compliant and work in all modern browsers. When your an organisation as big as the NHS you have the ability to dictate terms like this.
Similarly any other apps, demand apps that are browser based if possible, or cross platform if browser based apps are not suitable. If you have single use terminals that only run one app (fairly common in medical facilities), deploy them on a stripped down linux.
Keep stats about how often the legacy apps are used vs the new apps, and keep track of all the reasons why the legacy apps were used.
Fast forward a few years, and the usual upgrade cycle will have obsoleted most of the old applications and you can start removing the legacy applications for the vast majority of staff. Eventually, in a large organisation you will just have a small handful of very old crusty apps still using the legacy junk, a problem that probably already exists in any large organisation (lost count of the number of times i've seen win3x, dos, vax and ancient unix systems running).
The problem, as usual is the arrogance of management...
They think they know better, and won't consult the people below them who actually have to deal with things on a daily basis, such as the people who run the existing fire control centres on a daily basis. Surely they will have a good idea of where money can be saved, and there improvements can be made.
IT outsourcing companies are exactly the same, the views of non technical managers are treated like gospel, while the views of staff lower down the chain who know the systems inside out are ignored. So you get competent technical staff lumped in the same boat as incompetent technical staff, and both are expected to run systems that were chosen by people with no technical knowledge and no knowledge of the requirements of the people who will actually have to use these systems.
Traditionally you could run a large number of services on a single host OS... However, through a combination of security concerns, poorly designed operating systems (mostly windows - lack of chroot) and poorly designed applications, it's no longer fashionable to install multiple services on a single OS.
Virtualization (yes its been around a long time - often as a glorified chroot), was primarily useful for hosting environments where each customer could have root on their own virtual environment.
I personally am not a fan of vmware for a number of reasons...
Proprietary management/console tools, tying you in to windows (they used to support linux but not anymore)... By contrast, KVM can be managed via SSH and VNC. Also seems rather foolish to create a dependency on windows, when microsoft are trying to kill them with hyper-v.
Expensive - they give you the base hypervisor for free, but its pretty useless on its own... any remotely useful features are nickle&dimed... Considering most of the competitors are free, vmware is massively overpriced.
Flakey - vmware esx seems to use some pretty crufty hacks to improve performance, but these are only tested on specific guest os... If you want to run something else, or build your own custom kernel etc you can have all kinds of problems.
Questionable licensing terms - their EULA prohibits benchmarking, why would you do that unless you have something to hide? The obvious reason is because vmware performs very poorly compared to its competitors, and they don't want that fact made public.
Their stated reason that they don't want erroneous benchmarks put out is ridiculous, their own benchmarks are highly likely to be erroneous too - in order to make their product look better... What users need is a range of benchmarks from different sides so users can draw their own conclusions.
Personally i feel vmware have no future, they are the new netscape... Sure, they were a pioneer in virtualization on x86 and were once the only game in town and could rake it in. Now, they're a dinosaur, charging for a product everyone else gives away for free...
They will lose windows customers to microsoft, as hyper-v comes with windows, and will offer better support for windows (and who knows, ms may even modify windows so as to cause problems when running in vmware - wouldnt be the first time)...
They will lose linux, bsd and solaris customers to kvm and xen, they have already alienated the linux users by dropping support for the console and forcing users to run windows management hosts...
They won't make much of a splash in the cloud hosting arena, because the idea of the cloud is to scale and that doesn't work when your paying through the nose for software...
But when will we actually be able to buy hardware based on this? I want to buy a small low power mips or arm based server, but there doesnt seem to be much on the market.
MIPS might make a better choice for servers than ARM, there is already a well specified tried and tested MIPS64 variant which should work well for servers.
The whole idea of these super injunctions is ridiculous and unfair...
Domestic media cannot report it, but we live in an interconnected world where we can simply get the information from foreign sources.
Similarly, having a system whereby rich people can gag the press while the average joe finds themselves all over the papers is utterly unfair. If you have chosen a career path which makes you famous, then you have effectively given up your right to privacy. If you don't like being in the media, then you should have taken a different career path.
Ofcourse, it seems most of these celebrities are not very bright and are completely unaware of the Streisand effect... Very few people would have cared if the press had printed the stories in the first place, and people would have forgotten all about it in a few days.
Now there are far more people talking about it than there ever would have been otherwise.
The reason to bother, is that RedHat are offering an open stack, while vmware tout a proprietary one...
It's much easier to compete with open, as it's much easier for a competitor to provide a migration strategy. Migration away from a proprietary stack is often much harder, by design.
Also KVM is not really a RedHat technology, it is part of the standard Linux kernel...
My biggest gripe with VMWare is that you are tied into their proprietary management tools, i would much prefer to be able to manage my virtual machines using standard tools like a browser, ssh client and vnc. I certainly don't want to be forced to keep a windows machine around to run their proprietary binary applications, and be prevented from managing my virtual machines from new devices such as tablets.
The annoying thing about the macbook pro hard drives...
The first unibody models, had the battery and hard drive easily reachable under a clip on cover at the bottom.
With subsequent models, you now have to undo 10+ very tiny screws to get the bottom plate off just to change the battery or disk... Big step backwards.
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