Posts by BenN

From slow batches to fast files, how Microsoft is luring folks into Azure

Re: Still sceptical..

"Can you really say with 100% certainty that Microsoft (or Google/Amazon!) will always be able to keep that data safe?"

Can your firm keep that data safe? If you work for Verizon, Deloitte, HipChat, Wonga, the NHS, Virgin America, Equifax... well that's just some of 2017's bigger targets. Chances are that if you work for a smaller firm you might not even know you've been breached, so why not let a larger firm take the hit for it? Let Microsoft/Google/Amazon worry about the cost of hiring security researchers and accrediting the infrastructure, whilst you worry about your *actual business*.

Microsoft haters: You gotta lop off a lot of legs to slay Ballmer's monster

Re: Hmm

Except that the number of baked bean tins sold by Heinz has no impact on the number of 'real' PCs sold.

On the other hand, many consumers who would otherwise have bought a 'real' PC found that they could make do with just a tablet or smartphone, or at least that they could significantly slow their 'real' PC upgrade cycle.

And what counts as a tablet anyway? Is a laptop with a touchscreen not a 'real' PC? Where did the old Compaq TC1100 Windows XP tablet fit in - 'real' PC or tablet?

Loch Ness Monster surfaces on Google Earth

And on Google Maps...

For thos without Google Earth installed...

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=loch+ness,+scotland&sll=57.214761,-4.570479&sspn=0.002208,0.004801&ie=UTF8&cd=1&rq=1&ev=zo&radius=0.09&ll=57.214369,-4.570436&spn=0.002208,0.004801&t=h&z=18

MoD judges clone-drone deathmatch

Innovation

I was on one of the teams (Silicon Valley Group) until January this year when I changed jobs. Whilst the majority of the hardware on show may not be extremely innovative, a lot of the effort from the teams is going into the software, aiming to make it as easy as possible for an operator to identify, confirm or just acknowledge the threat. A large part of the Grand Challenge is to automate the threat detection, so the rovers need to navigate (mostly) automatically, identify threats (mostly) automatically and make sure the operators know about these threats in the most timely manner.

There's also the point to make that the teams aren't given the largest amount of funding ever. I know my team would have (metaphorically) killed to be able to add more hardware, just to be able to demonstrate more of the software elements that were planned.

Just because the hardware isn't new, don't assume the ideas are old as well.

Program Names govern admin rights in Vista

Want an explanation?

They do this for legacy programs - no installer written for XP will know that it now needs to ask for admin privellages, so they took an educated guess that any file with "setup" or "install" in the title might require them and then ask the user to grant those privellages.

Contrary to the article though, any files not named setup or install are not "let through" - they don't get admin privellages so can't do any/much damage. If, when they run, it turns out that they want to do some administrative stuff, that is when Vista will ask the user to grant those privellages to the program.

Just a little fact checking required by El Reg required here.