* Posts by Thomas Chippendale

11 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2009

Softcat scores big in Scotland: Many a mickle makes a muckle

Thomas Chippendale

Re: But what do they do?

They may appear to add no value: but do not underestimate the vital importance of a sanitised telephone.

For Fark's sake! Fark fury follows 5-week ad ban for 5-year-old story

Thomas Chippendale

Re: Time to get with the times.

I suggest "B Ark".

Get ready for mandatory porn site age checks, Brits. You read that right

Thomas Chippendale

Leisure Suit Larry

I propose a return to the use of 'Leisure Suit Larry' adult verification questions. Even the keenest of porn-consumers is likely to be put off when asked five questions like this:

Who was not Vice-President of the United States in 1973-74?

a. Gerald Ford

b. Nelson Rockefeller

c. Thomas Hayden

d. Spiro Agnew

More serious answer - completely agree with the sensible commenter who points out that the most likely result of this is going to be that young people simply leave the web and its relatively regulated content, and obtain less mainstream porn through less mainstream methods such as BitTorrent. Or possibly be more inclined to sexting, which again is not necessarily a great outcome.

Idiot millennials are saving credit card PINs on their mobile phones

Thomas Chippendale

Best option

It's the only practical option. It is impractical for most users to remember all the details required. One bank I use requires all of: A user ID number; an online password; an online PIN; a telephone banking PIN; a password for using the debit card online; and finally a debit card PIN. This is separate from the sort code and account number, or the debit card number, all of which I must already remember.

Each of these six additional security items must be either remembered, or documented. Like many consumers, I have several bank accounts with multiple cards, and each of these has a similarly long list of details required. I have seven accounts with banks or credit cards. If each require at least four security values that is already twenty-eight separate items, on top of the card numbers and account numbers which many users will already remember as a matter of course.

And it is not just banking: even transactions which did not previously involve any self-service access or any password now generally do. Examples include electricity or gas accounts, car or home insurance, airlines, railways or TfL, Uber, or any number of things.

I do work hard to remember things and set proper passwords, but a few years ago the volume of passwords and ID numbers required made it no longer possible for me to do so without writing them down. There may be people who are able to remember the fifty or a hundred passwords needed regularly without writing them down, but I think most people are simply not able to remember a very large number of separate passwords.

The realistic options are either:

- to use the same password and PIN everywhere.

- to write the passwords and PINs on a piece of paper.

- to store them on a mobile device or computer.

The third option is not perfect but it is much better than the two alternatives. It is, at least, encrypted. An end user must take some responsibility for security of a system and this is by far the best option of the three.

I wonder what the article's author suggests as a better option?

There is always the option of writing security details down in lemon juice invisible ink and then revealing the writing later by holding it near a candle. But you may not always have a candle (or lemon) to hand when out and about.

Microsoft calls out Amazon's humble hybrid cloud

Thomas Chippendale

Re: No real hard numbers to back it up...

The earning statements don't say anything of the kind. The earning statements say:

AWS sales Q4 2015 - 2.4 billion USD

Azure sales - Unknown. Microsoft releases figures for what it calls 'intelligent cloud products'. This includes Azure, but bizarrely also includes all Windows Server licenses and associated CALs, and the entirety of the SQL Server and associated product family.

To muddy the waters, sometimes Microsoft releases separate data showing 'cloud services' including Office 365 and other subscription license sales, along with Azure. They have even been known to add in mobile phone hardware revenues to count as 'cloud'. But Microsoft seems reluctant to ever reveal numbers for Azure alone.

The shift between one murky segmentation and another did make it possible for analysts to accurately estimate sales figures during mid-2015 - the estimate was then 400m USD per quarter, well behind AWS.

I am agnostic as to whether Azure can grow larger than AWS. I am not sure it matters much either way, currently competition is working well and prices of both are falling while capabilities of both increase.

BT to shoot 'up to 330Mbps' G.fast into 2,000 Gosforth homes

Thomas Chippendale

Re: Standard kneejerk response

I don't really see why speeds around EC1, should not be worth investing in. It is a real peculiarity that neither FTTC nor VM are available in most of the city of Westminster or any of the city of London (though I think they are in some of the outer boroughs.)

At my own home in EC2, I struggled to get a reliable DSL connection above 3mbps. Eventually my building installed a private fibre network which is 1gbps to the home (and to my surprise is genuinely and regularly capable of a real-world 900mbps.) But this option is not feasible for single homes or smaller blocks, and was implemented simply because the connections available via OpenReach were so poor there was little option.

Internet speeds at work in EC1, EC2, WC1, WC2 and W1 are terrible too. The whole of Central London seems to have no FTTC, and no due date.

It is a mystery why the market is neglected so. I did look into what the options were for improving broadband speed if you are in an area with poor speeds. There is an entire government website about this, but it suggests the solution is to request funding for your area for 'rural broadband'. It does not say what the best course of action is to improve urban broadband.

Not sure if its policy to leave out London, or if it's technical (perhaps a different sort of exchange?)

Your security is just dandy, Apple Pay, but here comes Android

Thomas Chippendale

"As such, kitting out all your stores with Apple Pay and then having to replace it because it wasn't the most popular system is what will hold people back - as the article implies, adoption is years away. Hell, stores have been "able" to take PayPal on your phone for years now... nearly a decade? How many of them actually do it? How much of their transaction totals go through it? Nearly zero. So you spend all the money for the kit based on the manufacturer's promises and end up not profiting from it at all."

I don't understand this. What special equipment does it need? I have not found a card machine yet that doesn't accept Apple Pay - it seems to work on the bus, in Tescos, in all the various shops and coffee-stops this week, as well as some oddities such as at an ice-cream van in Milan, and a petrol station in Switzerland for chewing-gum. It also seems to work on the perfectly ordinary unmodified card terminals attached to the EPOSs at our client sites, which I know we have done nothing new to, and which are pretty elderly. So far Apple Pay doesn't seem to have any lack of functionality requiring any special equipment, system or agreement, and seems, like other ordinary contactless cards, to work perfectly well across borders - regardless of whether the function is enabled in that country for a locally-registered device.

Perhaps the error is the odd branding, which does imply rather that it is some separate system. I don't know why it even has a name rather than just saying 'keep a copy of your contactless cards on your phone or watch.' But it appears to work as a perfectly ordinary contactless card, universally.

Confused by comments like the above though - is there some other element to accepting payment that I am not understanding - is something required other than any ordinary PDQ machine and merchant account?

No, really, the $17,000 Apple Watch IS all about getting your leg over

Thomas Chippendale

A puzzle

What does sex have to do with reproduction? This is not the olden days.

All the people I know with children are both sexless and cashless. I'll stick with being the hedonist end result of thousands of years of evolution.

Google heads out the back with rifle, puts down POODLE

Thomas Chippendale

Cupertino ≠ Mountain View

New .london domains touted tomorrow amid usual tech hypegasm

Thomas Chippendale

Re: why .london instead of...

Is that you, Alan? "Go to London! I guarantee you'll either be mugged or not appreciated. Catch the train to London, stopping at Rejection, Disappointment, Backstabbing Central and Shattered Dreams Parkway."

Govt powers up electric cars with £5k subsidy

Thomas Chippendale
Go

If only there were any electric cars

I hope it works to increase demand, so that there are some electric cars to buy. I'd really like to buy one. But after all these years, there still aren't any for sale. There are four-wheeled quad bikes with closed cabins which are inexplicably described as a 'car' in the press despite failing to be legally classified as such in the UK. But no real electric cars. It doesn't have to be anything huge. Even an electric Smart car would be alright. At least it's a car.

Often I read reports that such a car would be no use since it would only travel fifty miles or so on a charge. But my journeys tend to be less than ten miles. So it doesn't matter much. Thirty miles or so would be range enough for me.

Sometimes people remark upon the difficulties of charging them. But I could charge a car at the private car park both at home and at the office. Or even at the public charging posts near both my home and my office.

I do not imagine the car manufacturers are stupid. The trouble is that someone like me - who makes short journeys, has another car already which would work for longer journeys or holidays outside the city, is prepared to pay the cost of an electric car at more than the sub-10k cost of quad bikes like the G-whiz, and parks in a staffed and secure space at home and at work where power could easily be made available - is just not usual enough for the concept to be profitable.

So it would be nice for me if the £5k changed the balance enough to make the manufacture of electric cars viable.

Not that I think it is a good reason to tax people, mind you...