Posts by gratou

FYI: Yeah, the cops can force your finger onto a suspect's iPhone to see if it unlocks, says judge

Re: Doesn't compute

Here the data is the call's contents. The conversation. That's what (they claim) they don't have. Not the call itself.

Other data about the call, on top of contents, is date time duration etc.

Data about the call itself:

Date

Time

Duration

Byte-stream contents

Towers

Nb bytes

Etc

Data about the concersation:

Name of caller

Name of recipient

Languages spoken

Speed of speech

Nb of pauses

Transcript

Translation

Etc

Now they didn't get the second set of data but they sure get the first one. But one.

Anyways. Potahto potayto. One thing is for sure. The so called metadata is at least as useful to them (and unwelcome to us) as the conversation itself. So saying "it's just metadata" is pure deception. It's very much data. And private data too.

Re: Doesn't compute

>its specifically data that describes another piece of data.

Except it's not in this case.

Metadata is: The duration is expressed in seconds.

Not: The call lasted for 57 seconds.

Metadata is: The IP addresses are in the IP V4 format.

Not: The visited website was 121.131.141.151.

Metadata is: The time is using a 24-hour clock.

Not: The call was made at 20:53.

Liars!

Microsoft says it found 1,000-plus developers' fingerprints on the SolarWinds attack

Yes but they are good attacks.

Can we exhale yet? EU set to rule UK 'adequate' for data sharing in post-Brexit GDPR move

Re: curious to see

I was thinking the same thing. Being aligned with the US and with the EU is impossible. Choices will have to be made. The wellbeing of the citizens will come first I'm sure.

President Biden to issue executive order on chip shortages as under-pressure silicon world begs for help

Or you have to regulate.

Oh we screwrd up offshoring and pocketed the savings for years, now please give us more money so we can undo the totally unexpected damages this off shoring policy caused.

British owners of .eu domains given an extra three months to find a European address

Re: Good read

Also BoJo following Trump's "just a flu" line until he got it himself

Re: Good read

Very small nation? You mean second GDP in the EU.

Propping up? You mean special terms and special rebate,

Sheesh.

Don't scrape the faces of our citizens for recognition, Canada tells Clearview AI – delete those images

Re: Clearview.

And issue arrest warrants for their executives.

Windows' cloudy future: That Chrome OS advantage is Google's to lose

Re: Apples and oranges

You can install MS office from the play store nowadays. So chromebooks do what the vast majority of people use their PC for: browse the net, watch movies, basic office work. The issue sems to be that most people buy a chromebook because it's the cheapest possible PC. And therefore the hardware is usually crap.

Chromium cleans up its act – and daily DNS root server queries drop by 60 billion

Re: Truer words...

Having separate search and address fields was too simple.

Indian government slams Facebook over WhatsApp 'privacy' update, wants its own Europe-style opt-out switch

Re: GDPR

They can choose whom to sue

GDPR

Just write your own legislation with x% of income fines, India, instead of throwing a tantrum.

If you're a WhatsApp user, you'll have to share your personal data with Facebook's empire from next month – or stop using the chat app

Re: Does this apply here?

Opt in or else is allowed. You needn't accept. It's opt in by default (ie opt out) that's disallowed.

Windows might have frozen – but at least my feet are toasty

Re: Only once

And the alarm goes off when it triggers. Stupid language it tell you...

$900bn coronavirus stimulus bill includes $600 for most Americans, $50 in monthly internet subsidies, $1.9bn to help rid the US of Huawei kit

Re: Pardon me / Pardon you

You put BJ on the wrong list

Re: Please, ANYONE: help with critical details---

I'm sure many people know the contents. Those who wrote it and those who told them what to write.

Pure frustration: What happens when someone uses your email address to sign up for PayPal, car hire, doctors, security systems and more

Re: Doesn't just happen with email

Your existing provider will sort it out for you. They want to keep you. At least where I live.

Companies toiling away the most on LibreOffice code complain ecosystem is 'beyond utterly broken'

Styles are an utter mess in MS word.

Brits may still be struck by Lightning, but EU lawmakers vote for bloc-wide common charging rules

Re: 'Standards can be revised'

Who's Banana?

Bloke in Belgium tries to trademark Je Suis Charlie slogan

Re: WELL DONE

Furthermore, the fact that prophet is not to be represented is quite recent. There are many muslim paintings showing him. You can easily google them.

MWC: The good, the bad ... and the Galaxy S5

Re: Lacking new ideas? Features I want

And dual sim. And keep the plastic body, it doesn't mind being dropped unlike fashionable shiny metal that will crack the screen without fail.

Lacking new ideas? Features I want

Gimmicks like video pause on eye movement is not one of them.

Waterproofness is (thanks sony).

Screen usable in daylight (no useless 4K thank you very much)

Theft/loss prevention that works.

For car use, GPS navigation that works and dashcam feature would be great too,

A bluetooth standard that is standard (can't ne used in a VW system)

Better camera image stabilisation and low light performance.

Dual Xenon flash.

I love apple's "save the entire phone" backup.

Built-in DLNA for streaming

The self healing rubber of the Nokias

And the usual like better battery life ( I like the b&w screen on low battery) and of course keep removable battery and SD slot

Australia puts digital frontier at heart of national security plan

whose

Not: who's

It is not difficult, really.

Virtual sanity: How to get a grip on your home PCs

Sony

Who buys Sony these days? Don't you guys learn?

Sony proved over and over they will always screw their customers when given a chance.

Silence ≠ 'yes', watchdog tells lustful ad-biz bakers

English is such an imprecise language

No wonder French was the language of diplomacy.

"good practice aimed at enhancing transparency and consumer control".

as in

"good practice aimed at enhancing transparency and control of the consumer ".

or

"good practice aimed at enhancing transparency and control by the consumer " ?

Hey, Music Industry. You're suing the wrong people

@ D wilson

Yeah, but you still trade good cash for nothing.

The online model means you no longer own anything, just a right of use really, but your money has been exchanged for nothing you can reuse, as raised just below by grumpy.

ownership is the (one?) real issue

I buy stuff from itunes or wherever. What do I have?

Nothing: the stuff I bought has no economic value, as has been mentionned here before.

Supposing I am lucky to still have access to it in 20 years (ie. it is still playable, some DRM hasn't crapped out, my rights haven't been changed, I didn't lose my account or my licence, etc) - and that's a major assumption-, in the meantime it is still a pain to use on a variety of supports (in the car, the tube, etc), and I can't do anything with it but use it.

I can't give anything to my friends or kids, I can't sell; I have nothing.

So we have content that: is hard to freely use, is worth nothing, and has a fair chance of being lost. On top of being quite pricey.

Mmmm, I wonder why this online thing doesn't take off faster...

SMART unveils smarter, faster, fatter SSDs

drives are exciting again.

About time too, CPUs are Meh since they went multi-core instead of Hi-GHz, HDDs stopped evolving 15 years ago.

At least some exciting and fast-paced improvements to look fwd to in IT.

HP's fondle-slab dilemma: What to do when you're No 2

Obvious flaws

5. USB ports

6. SD slot

Sheesh!

Aussie online shoppers take $AU6 billion offshore

no choice

Tried buying a gigaset dect phone in NZ? Good luck.

Oz retailers might have a few but don't ship here.

UK retailers have lots to choose from, run specials and are cheaper than anything this side of the world to start with (US retailers are out, as their shipping prices are usually stupid, and their 110V power supplies suck).

Sad!

Shale gas frees Europe from addiction to Putin's Pipe

less cocky

OK, Iran and Venezuela will be less cocky. Good.

Now, what would it take for superpowers to be less cocky?

Cocky icon obviously...

Dell considers Google+ for video customer support

HR

Same old: the myth that investing in fancy tech will replace investing in good, trained staff.

Oracle revs VirtualBox, mushrooms memory

so no RDP to the guest from V4?

Do I understand correctly? Time *not* to upgrade then.

Diary of a cameraman at the last shuttle launch

education

Go read the definition of the words you use please. And grab a history book too while you are at it. Sigh...

fuel is fuel

What fills up the tanks wasn't exactly carbonprint-free, regardless of what chemical compound it is.

Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker

average income = meaningless

The median income is a lot more useful to estimate what a population earns, or who really is "average".

The average is too skewed by high earners.

Average *is* interesting however when used together with the median: the gap between the 2 shows the inequality (The gini coefficient is a slightly better measure).

Median annual houselhold income is $50k in the US, average is $70k, which is a rather large gap (+40%).

A few ginis:

Slovakia 25

OZ 35

USA 45

Brazil 57

States consider saner 'sexting' penalties for teens

2 sets of laws, once again?

Kids get heavily punished, who cares? A politician might be too. Woh, pass a law, fast!

Or did I miss stg?

Microsoft becoming Apple with Windows 8 control freakery?

control

Controlling the hardware is one way to increase stability. Not nearly enough though. The underlying architecture must also be sound, which windows definitely isn't, being the broken spaghetti mess that is. And mostly the attitude must be right. Apple aims at small high-margin volume, but wants perfect experience, and is anally retentive about it. MS goes for volume rather than quality and doesn't give a s**t as the xbox (100% controlled by MS, never fixed) reliability fiasco shows.

Seagate, WD should put a gun to Brussels' head

Only govts can create monopolies?

You look like the clueless one now, Tom.

For example, last time I looked, the power lines and the phone lines here belong to a private monopoly that will never be challenged because the cash outlay to do so is too great.

Same for my city's airport, etc. You can't have two sets of wires running down a street, the return on the 2nd set will never cover the huge cost.

As for private companies doing a better job just because "the market knows best" look at the british railways and weep.

Think PCs will drop in price? Think again, warns Intel

"make sure we get paid for the features"

or not.

I only buy AMD CPUs as they provide ECC memory support in their chips for a fraction of the Xeon prices.

Paris coz it s no-brainer.

Kiwi virtual world creators get $2.5m

crock of shite

Trade Me is has many flaws for sure (like crap search), but is head and shoulder above ebay. Better GUI, better fees (no listing fee for general items for a start), better customer service (yeah I know, that doesn't say much, but nonetheless it is). I dread the day ebay buys them.

And Fairfax's ROI is almost 7% and steadily growing. I doubt they kick themselves.

Sheesh.

Note to Mozilla: We don't get the Firefox billboards

So you only buy caged-hen eggs Matt?

Not everyone does.

Thankfully people look beyond pure price/service ratio and ethics play a growing role in decisions.

Egg-head icon.

Feeling heat from Macs, Microsoft sells PCs sans crapware

own medecine

>They also come with “just the software you need,” which is code for saying the machines don't contain crapware such as promotional versions of antivirus software that can drastically hamper performance.

No trial version of MS office then?

Prepping the great Windows 7 migration

@AC: ancient, etc.

The same non-sense was uttered by Vista proponents.

W7 is hardly better than XP, and struggles to justify the expense of buying the licence, deploying it, upgrading HW, training users, etc.

MS will still sell it because most IT depts are afraid to leave MS and can' t use an unsupported OS, but XP would still do fine without the politics.

'Self-incriminators' may be forced to tell the court what they know

Indeed

Human rights come *after* corporate rights don't you know?

Even worse in the US in some respect [not the one mentionned in the article] where corporations, despite not being natural persons, are recognised by law to have rights and responsibilities like natural persons ("people"), and can exercise human rights against real individuals and the state.

Sick world indeed.

Microsoft bricking lesson bodes badly for Elop's Brave New Nokia

@stim

Usual tactics of those either malicious, dim-witted, or losing an argument: attack the messenger rather than discuss the point.

Elop: The worm is in the apple

I'd be so sad if I were Finnish.

One of Europe crown jewels is gone. If Elop's gamble succeeds, MS (and Elop) will benefit and Nokia will be an also-ran. If it doesn't, Elop doesn't give a damn and Nokia will disappear.

Microsoft won't pursue keyword trade mark users in US

Who's surprised?

There's a lot more money to be made if these keywords are accepted, so if the possibility exists, it is a no brainer really.