Posts by P. Lee

Microsoft thought of the children and decided to ban some browsers

Re: Move on, Move on. Nothing to see here

Yeah, get office365.com on the block list.

And don't run with scissors.

All sensible precautions.

Appliance-maker Liebherr chillin' with Microsoft, prototyping another Internet fridge

Use case

There's only one I can think of.

I've just used the last bit of something in a packet, I want some more, so I scan the barcode to add it to a shopping list, sync'ed to my phone. Or you could snap a picture of it or add a voice memo and have that added to the list.

Nothing you couldn't do with a phone, as far as I can tell, though a large button you can press with your elbow and a wireless mic/camera for "hands-free" operation might be nice.

Cloud not required.

When Irish eyes are filing: Ireland to appeal Europe's $15bn Apple tax claw-back

Re: EU power grab?

The rules are consistent with creating a level competition playing field so its within its purview. However, the logical conclusion of the EU is a single centralised government, so it is consistent with that too.

Re: Exported untaxed profits under the guise of importing IP rights

>Solution: All that the nations of the Earth need to do is slap an Import Duty on imported IP Rights.

Or you can just see what profits the shell company has made, divide it by number (or estimated number) of units sold locally, and tax the local company based on that value. No duties or WTO required.

For good measure, you can declare that you won't be offering a tax concession ever, so any shareholders holding out for that are out of luck. Maybe even have a stepped increase in the tax rate for repatriated funds based on how long the company has held onto the cash.

If companies aren't playing nice, there's no reason the government should.

The survivors: Intel's Apollo Lake netbook CPUs stagger from Goldmont bloodbath

Re: Apple to finally enter a (useable) netbook market?

Isn't apple already their with their "one-usb-socket-for-everything" macbook?

Oh, wait, you said "usable" netbook...

Census fail to get Oz Senate probe; NDIS fix promised this year

Testing at scale

Being a test client is one thing the public cloud might be good for.

That's after you've done you're internal load testing.

Cooky crumbles: Apple mulls yanking profits out of Europe and into US

Re: I'm pretty sure

>Taxing a company for having more money in the bank just seems bizarre.

Corporations aren't taxed on "money in the bank" any more than people are. They are taxed on net income.

With zero corporation tax, you can store money above your needs in a corporation, go traveling for a year (becoming non-resident) and then bring your money back into the country as "wealth" rather than income, or simply retire and never go back to the US. Think of it as adding 35-40% to your pension every year.

The US may think its jurisdiction is "the world" but other countries do not.

Tim Cook: EU lied about Apple taxes. Watch out Ireland, this is a coup!

Re: Well, bears in the woods etc.

>so all that extra profit must lie in the IP (design, ecosystem, brand etc.). And that is based in the US, and taxed under US rules. So Ireland hasn't provided state aid

I thought the opposite was true. Apple-Ireland holds the IP but the Irish government doesn't make Apple pay tax on sales outside Ireland.

The question is whether Apple's arrangement was fair and comparable to any other corporate in the same position.

Australian geoboffin discovers 3.7 billion year old fossils after ice melts

>Thank (diety) for (man-made/natural/magic/alien) climate change. Extending our knowledge of the earth's past with every extra fraction of a degree.

And how much fossil-fuel were the stromatolites burning to heat the earth to the point where the Greenland glaciers had melted and the rocks were exposed?

Intel's makeshift Kaby Lake Cores hope to lure punters from tired PCs

>decode 4Kp60 HEVC at up to 120Mbps ... for watching high-quality films and TV on the internet

I guess your internet connection is better than mine.

Re: Thunderbolt & USB

>I fail to see how that could be desirable.

For server clusters which need to sync data?

Not all external devices are untrusted.

Uber lost $7m a DAY in the first half of this year

>Stupid investors put money into company with a repeatable, unprotectable business plan and fail to ensure it makes any kind of profit whatsoever.

And the fact that investors put money into this kind of long-shot is a grave indictment of the rest of the economy.

Perhaps higher interest rates on savings might see off this kind of madness.

Re: Not my idea of a 'sharing economy'

>>"trouser profits monstrously disproportionate to what they put in"

>Or in this case, lose $7m a day.

Trouser personal profits - its only the company which is losing money.

>"Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!"

What a marvellous song that is, "German, German Overalls!"

-Flanders & Swan

Li-Fi with my little eye … a vulnerability

Re: Reliability & infrastructure

>There's a problem waiting to be solved out there, but I've not figured it out yet.

Light is easier to contain than parts of the radio spectrum which pass through walls. Easier to contain = more bandwidth (if you have walls). For home use, probably more secure than traditional wireless and more bandwidth as the signal doesn't leak to the neighbours or get disrupted by 2.4Ghz devices, microwaves etc. You have more wires (to each room), but you have a lot more bandwidth.

EU verdict: Apple received €13bn in illegal tax benefits from Ireland

Re: What I don't get...

>This is State Aids

And indeed, would a European firm have done better if they had the same tax arrangements as Apple? Or would another country have got the chance to be Apple's host if Ireland hadn't created this arrangement?

Level playing fields etc.

$329 for a MacBook? Well, really a 'HacBook' built on an old HP

Re: 1600 x 900

1600x900 isn't that bad and ... probably a matt screen!

That might be worth the price.

Robot babies fail in role as teenage sex deterrents

Re: Bah!

>Because teenagers are genetically wired to want to bonk no matter what their parents say or teach.

>And bonk-minded teens aren't thinking of the consequences when the urge hits hard.

>I offer into evidence ... well, the world. Look around. Also, try and remember your own teen years.

Genetically wired, yes, but that doesn't tell the whole story. All the media is telling them that commitment-free sex is not only possible but desirable. Unlike real-life, media-entertainment thrives on conflict and drama. In real-life, that sort of thing destroys relationships. I've seen the macarena done at toddlers' parties. Look at the moves, hands out in invitation, a hug, pelvic thrusting, move on to the next partner. Listen to its words, "my boyfriend was out of town, so I cheated on him." Does it have an adverse influence on toddlers? No, but it does demonstrate a complete lack of thought on the adults' part with regard to the culture with which they surround their children. Look at the sitcoms - Happy Endings, Friends, Home & Away, whatever, everyone takes turns in sleeping with everyone else. There is the assumption that "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" or "going out" means "having sex" in pretty much any film where the subjects are 17 or older. Dancing has gone from telling a story like swan lake, or the rigid frame synchronisation and grace of the waltz or even the social mixing of a "country dance" to jiggling breasts and pelvis and spreading legs in a rather unsubtle simulation of sex, or at best, a "look at my primary/secondary genitals" display in a high-volume scenario which makes anything but visual communication impossible. And Society as portrayed in the media appears to be ok with this. Classical music is the domain of psychopaths, serial killers and the socially stunted.

Then we allow children to grow up with passive visual entertainment. For hours on end their prefrontal cortex which activates during critical thought and the exercise of love for another person goes dark and their emotional response centres are lit up, leading to the brain's pruning of unused areas affecting their critical-thinking capacity, while decision-making shifts to their over-developed emotional centres. Are we surprised when they make poor decisions about sex and fail to consider the long-term implications of their behaviour in general?

Don't have sex because of babies is a stupid KPI - of course it doesn't compute. Hormones and under-developed teenage critical thinking see to that. What is criminal is neglect of the moral principle of human worth. You don't refrain from sex because of babies - that's just a government policy problem - you do so because having sex exposes those involved to deep physical and emotional vulnerability to another person. For oxytocin -laden girls, the bonding is even stronger making the breaking of that bond later all the worse. What does your sex-partner think of you? Are they going to swap you out when their hormone level subsides or if they find you a bit irritating? If they aren't, get them to say so, in public. That's what marriage is. If they don't commit for life, they are holding out an option to ditch you. You deserve better. Don't let people treat you as if you're nothing but mammals. That's generally just short-hand for "I think you're here just to serve my pleasure."

As for my teenage years, I made it through without having sex. This isn't evidence of superiority, but it is evidence that teenage sex isn't inevitable. You can control it - but it helps if you don't let situations develop which promote sex. I'm not convinced even the Puritan practise of "bundling" is a good idea. You (and by that I mean the children) need to make a decisions about your social life and plan activities and situations. That means you (the parent) have teach children about their worth and where that comes from. Of course, if you think people really are "nothing but mammals" then a coherent and useful idea of human worth is a difficult one to develop and instil in your children.

Tech fails miserably in Forbes' most innovative companies

Re: What is "tech"?

Worse - tech success used to mean solving customer problems. Now it means restricting the use of powerful hardware and using your network-effect lock-in in combination with "support & maintenance."

IBM must be feeling so nostalgic.

Notting Hill Carnival spycams: Met Police rolls out real-time live face-spotting tech

Re: V

>Plus of course that blacks have more trouble getting good education and a good job.

Neither a lack of education nor poverty are an excuse for crime. If the crime is begging or stealing bread, I"ll be happy to revisit the issue.

EE looks at its call charges, hikes a bunch, walks off giggling

Re: When your currency goes down...

>When your currency goes down......prices go up. It's a third world reality I know all too well.

Only for stuff you are importing. But any major financial change will be used as an excuse to bump prices, eh?

Are they suddenly funding a massive new program requiring new hardware? I'm guessing not. More likely acquisitions have been done with debt which needs to be paid off. Like the price hikes Dell had after they went private again. Of course, if you have outsourced most of your business abroad, then you are hostage to currency variations. But the business manager knows that, right? That risk was always accounted for and the decision was made based on short-term profit gain.

Angler hooks German's todger at nudist lake

not an official bathing lake

How very German. How very germane.

Re: tackle on tackle action

Ah, I've missed this placeplaice......

FTFY

Sex ban IT man loses appeal – but judge labels order 'unpoliceable'

Re: downvote here

>Don't conspiracy crimes generally have more than one defendant?

Or at least some, er, conspiracy. i.e. some active planning & preparation. I'm not sure just having thoughts about things which are illegal is illegal.

Who hasn't had a violent fantasy about the person in front of them doing 20 below the limit in the outside lane?

'NSA' hack okshun woz writ by Inglish speeker trieing to hyde

Re: Threat?

>Apparently the threat is rather too veiled for me to understand.

Something along the lines of expelling diplomats known *not* to be spies, to show you know exactly who the spies are and you aren't worried by them.

I'm not bothered, its nice to see the NSA's bad behaviour proven and spoilt a bit. Chipping away at the public respect for those who are so lost in their games that they've forgotten what they are supposed to be protecting.

Paper mountain, hidden Brexit: How'd you say immigration control would work?

Re: ID Cards

>Without compulsory national ID and residency cards and the hooks into immigration and police systems (as they have in the rest of continental Europe) the UK will never be able to control who is in the country.

Why? There weren't ID cards before Maastricht.

We already have a visa system which we use to control non-EU nationals. We have border controls which we use to record and control immigration.

We can use pragmatism and be overly generous rather than going OCD on edge cases.

Perhaps many people who voted leave weren't doing so because they were following some loser politicians or are particularly worried about immigration, but because they don't like the political direction the EU is taking. Many people desperately want Leavers to be racist in order to justify denouncing them all, but that may not actually be the case. Politicians' statements are not the only truth. You can have voted Leave *and* think Farage is a bit of an idiot *and* not be bothered by free movement.

Re: Let's hope

1. DELEGITIMISE THE VOTE

...

3. ECONOMIC RATCHET

4. OPERATION PANDORA’S BOX

5.ENVISIONING A SUCCESSFUL OUTCOME

-http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/28/bong_eu_reentry_plan/

4/5 In one paragraph and a title. Well Done!

Five-storey Blue Screen Of Death spotted in Thailand

Re: It sucks when it's your bank's ATM...

>I will raise you rust, rats and the neighbour wot <sic> saw you do it as equal economic threats.

You'll need to get your shovel and go out in the dead of the night so your neighbour won't see you digging a large hole at the bottom of the garden. If rats are an issue - put the metal box inside the tupperware.

Systemd adds filesystem mount tool

Can I just add

I hate binary log files.

I don't need /var/log/messages to be in a database format. There isn't enough random access of these things to warrant database usage. Now I need some journal doohicky instead of cat, less and grep.

Its just another level of complexity I don't need. I don't need to do db queries, chained greps are fine.

I'm happy for parse-able formats, just don't hide the data away somewhere I can't get to it.

OpenFlow controller design killing SDN, say network boffins

Re: Object Oriented

+1

OO is for developer efficiency, not run-time efficiency and as later comments suggest, keeping up with ASIC-based line processing was never going to happen.

However, I think we probably want to make sure the concepts actually work before committing them to ASICs.

I didn't know network stacks were written in FORTRAN. Hmm.

UK IT consultant subject to insane sex ban order mounts legal challenge

Re: "He was found not guilty, therefore he is innocent"

I doubt arguing with someone who takes their history from Monty Python is a winning strategy.

Dumb Yanks not withstanding, the Church's general view is that witches don't exist - its basically a pagan fantasy which won't die and generally tried to ban media which talked detecting them.

I wouldn't suggest that the Spanish Inquisition was staffed by good people but the main distaste for it in northern Europe/the USA comes via Protestantism's assertion that that Catholicism is a corruption of Christianity which misrepresents God. The issues are theological. As an icon of All That Is Wrong With Over-Reaching, Intrusive, Torturing and Executing Government it pales into insignificance alongside our current "liberal" governments. There is no need to go as far as looking at the Internet's Favourite Bad Guys.

As to the case at hand, there are a few things I would mention:

1. This kind of system makes a mockery of the legal process. Why bother with a trial if the police can do this? Is this any different from the Inquisition, if you can just go to a judge who can effectively overrule a jury verdict?

2. If this kind of restriction can be placed on those who have committed no demonstrable crime, how long will it take for these powers to be extended? Who is safe if the authorities no longer have to follow the rule of law?

3. I'm sure the police and the judge have a very reasons for this order. I'm sure I'll get downvoted for this, but all that old-fashioned morality which told women not to be alone with men? That was not about spoiling your fun, that was about protecting you. Sure, "No means no" but guess what? There are lots of bad people who don't play by the rules. Do you really want to have to be the one who has to sue for Assault and Battery? Even if you won, that would not be justice - justice would be never having been beaten. Find a partner you can trust who is capable and willing to love you for life - you deserve no less.

Microsoft’s Continuum: Game changer or novelty?

Re: This has been done with Android by many manufacturers

>Also, is this a solution that is looking for a problem?

I suspect here's where USB3 /Thunderbolt come in.

One cable for charging and connectivity to the screen, which has a hub for other USB devices.

I do something similar at the moment. My laptop has USB2 and DP connectors to my screen which also has DVI to my desktop. Only the USB cable needs switching to go from laptop + big screen to desktop, taking keyboard, mouse, DVD and webcam with it. USB3 would do it better, thunderbolt would be even better (higher-res, wired network).

The trick is to make the dock cheap and hide-able-behind-the-screen... and to have a phone which can do something useful on the big screen which you can't do on the small one. That's going to be the tricky one, unless Linux on ARM takes off. I can't see Android on the desktop being much of a thing - slightly easier emailing with a keyboard perhaps.

UK's mass-surveillance draft law grants spies incredible powers for no real reason – review

re: "Give me 6 lines from an honest man and I'll find something with which to hang him."

"Which is really useful if he has said, or we think he might say anything which might paint us in a bad light."

It isn't that more data is better data, but that all data means we can stop "leaks" about MP's expenses, or Snowdens' thing. Hmm, why is that MP talking to a journalist?

In fact, if people know we collect all data, we don't even need to process it, the fear will keep them in line.

Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10 UI – with a 3D Holographic Shell

Re: The glorious future

Thus it is revealed!

Phil works for Mordac, Preventor of IT Services.

(An evil entity starting with M. Coincidence? I think not!)

Seriously, 3D is rubbish for data processing. Did I misread? This isn't VR or AR. This is using cameras to detect the real world and then render it in VR space. I'd guess VR is not the actual application for this. This is about the ability to recognise objects - think autonomous cars. The VR bit is just a demo to get people excited enough to pay to be alpha and beta testers.

Microsoft promises free terrible coffee every month you use Edge

I skimmed the article too and didn't catch this until I read Mark 85's comment.

Do people really get adverts in some version of Outlook? Hah, that's like having a special window that iterates through your spam folder. Kudos to MS in getting people to think that's a thing - and then getting them to sell their privacy to get rid of it!

How low can you go?

The calm before the storm: AMD's Zen bears down on Intel CPUs

>Used to like AMD as they saved on heating costs in the winter.

My 3930k fills that function quite nicely.

I'd love AMD to do well. I just hope people are buying new PCs in sufficient quantities to give them good sales. However much I might like them, I doubt I'll be changing to anything anytime soon. Let's hope the server market is kind to them.

Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell for Linux, Macs. Repeat, Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell

Re: "On Linux we’re just another shell"

>Because it's an excellent shell system. Consistent, well thought through, object oriented, and works well with dotNet.

That may be true but other factors are involved:

1. Open source is pointless unless the community is happy to pick it up and run with it. "Open source but only developed by MS" leaves users just as exposed to fickle business strategies as closed source does. They don't even do their own voip solution for their own phones. What's the chance of them having a vested interest in unix administration?

2. A wrapper for crontab is all very well, but its still a windows wrapper for a unix tool. Who's going to rely on that having a future? Unix people won't - they won't trust powershell to be on all unix systems. Windows people still need to learn the wrapper for cron - a unix tool. Could the skills gap be fixed in a better way by adding a "this is the format of crontab" comment at the top of the crontab file?

3. Different distros do things differently. Does updating /etc/resolv.conf directly mess with how Yast works? Do we think MS is going to keep pace with all the distros and their updates, or will this tool quickly fall to bitrot? The use-case appears to be "administering some bits of unix from windows." I'm not sure "some bits of unix" administration is enough to make the project worthwhile.

4. MS control many of the apps running on Windows servers and they can powershell-ise them. What happens when you don't control the applications? You're back to text output and parsing that using regex's and so on. The point about scripts is that you can edit them and update them to suite changing needs. The point of powershell is to remove that requirement - and that skill - and place it in the hands of the powershell developers. Powershell is a typical windows application. It does what it does well, but extending it at a sysadmin or user level, rather than developer level. is almost impossible. Can you pass powershell objects to something other than powershell? Maybe, but you'll still need the "other" skills, so your net gain is very small.

Of course, if systemd et al is the way of the future, swapping text for binary formats, much of the unix advantage of simple human-readable formats will be lost anyway. Yeah journalctl, I'm looking at you with malice.

Verizon fingered in Android bloatware-for-cash cram scandal

Re: Meh.

> It's a bit like the PCs that used to come bundled with MS Office

Yes, but what we really want is phones to be more like PCs. Give me the drivers for my phone. I do not want a vertically integrated stack, where a particular OS and application version are required for particular hardware. The drivers and the OS layering are supposed to solve the problem of applications talking directly to hardware. That reduces support costs. The fact that they don't do this makes me suspicious.

Bundle the apps if you want, but also give me the license keys for applications so I can re-install.

Android Pay now works for paying speeding fines

Sure!

I'll use a pay service from a data-slurper to process speeding fines... using my own personal location-tracking device.

I can't see how that could go wrong!

Some Windows 10 Anniversary Update: SSD freeze

Re: Leaving Microsoft

It depends what you think "school" is for.

Some institutions do job-skills training, in which case, go ahead with the industry standard.

Primary, secondary, and higher education are about teaching people to think, about the learning process. Industry can pay for its own training. If you're learning about light and shade at a conceptual level for graphic design or animation, you don't need to know the key-presses for a particular product and it isn't the role of educational institutions to further the business interests of a particular vendor. If vendors want to also offer students discounts, that's fine, but the educational institution should be focusing on the teaching and the learning of ideas and skills which can be applied generally.

Colour us shocked: ISPs not that keen to sign up for Universal Service Obligation

Re: BBC

>my internet is too slow to stream it.

And here's the problem. Everyone is obsessed with real-time streaming. An official BBC torrent system would make those problems go away. The tech is quite capable, but so many organisations are intent on making everything difficult.

Microsoft bins Azure RemoteApp, says go with Citrix instead

Re: Rug Pullers

Part of their "very, very rapidly evolving" Azure suite.

London cops waste £2.1m on thought crime unit – and they want volunteer informers

Re: We still love you Ms Bee!

I hear she's moved on from taking down posts, to taking down US warplanes.

Microsoft: Why we had to tie Azure Stack to boxen we picked for you

Re: Hmm...

>Where did all the industry standards for say networking, storage and server build standards suddenly go ?

Indeed, this is why we have layers of software and swappable hardware components.

What's wrong with with a published HCL? For everything else you're on your own.

>Microsoft’s ability to restrict access to Windows among server and PC makers is what helped make Windows reliable, and thus successful, in the first place.

Really? Of all the things contributing to MS' success, that wouldn't have been one I picked. Or did I miss the <sarc> tag?

MoD flings £800m at Dragons' Den miltech startup wheeze as post-Brexit costs bite

Hahaha!

Brexit costs calculated based on currency exchange rate trends not changing for two years!

Apart from that assumption being hilarious, perhaps not buying killtech would be a good option.

Someone in Australia wants server sales hidden from view

Re: I dunno

>Do 3 trained monkies equipped with an abacus each count as a server?

Are you kidding? That's core-tripled parallel-processing HPC.

Monkey's are mobile so Apple has a patent on that and you'll need a license for each of those rounded beads.

Native Skype for Windows Phone walked behind shed, shot heard

Cloud - The two edged sword

If all you provide is a pop, webrtc and an addressbook, anyone can replicate that.

If all MS are providing is the fact that if you don't have a skype account then you can't contact skype-connected people, then they are going to be in trouble. They don't have the locked-down clients Apple have for facetime - an application I shun purely because it is Apple-only.

Post-Silk Road, Feds bust chaps for 'dealing heroin, coke' on world's largest dark web souk

Re: meh.

>The modern prohibition of narcotics seems to be about as effective, and just as pointless, as the prohibition of alcohol was in the 1920s.

It depends on the drugs. If you can easily make it yourself, its hard to control. If it has to be processed, there are choke-points which can be squeezed. Do we want to bring back the opium dens of yesteryear? Having gone to the bother of mostly eradicating tobacco on the grounds that addictive substances which damage your health should be generally banned, do we then want to allow far more addictive and destructive substances?

Either way, the real barrier is social acceptability. As with prohibition, the social acceptability of alcohol (then, any other drug now) even when it was illegal, fed the criminal gangs and violence which was mostly hidden from the direct consumers allowing them to mentally disassociate themselves from the problems their habit creates.

Taking down the silk road maybe a good example of the Streisand Effect or the increased revenue may just be an indicator of the size of the silk road, with subsequent demand being diverted to other souks.

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook ads

Re: I find the best way to avoid adverts on Farcebook...

>And what if the only point of contact someone has with you is through e-mail because you don't have Facebook?

If you have a mail client - software under your control, then you'll be an advert-free happy camper.

If you run a web-browser to someone-else's mail server, you'll get adverts.

These days, spam is pretty obvious. You could count it as an adverts, but it is relatively innocuous in that downloads aren't generally concurrent with display and they are fairly easy to filter. A decent mail client will filter out html and will also filter the remote content in html.

How do you securely exchange encrypted-decrypted-recrypted data? Ask Microsoft

Re: All this about encryption when we don't trust MS anyway !!

Its just theatre for cloud security.

"Oooh look at our effort to plug tiny risks"

"Oi, stop looking at the big risks."