Posts by Dan 55

Whois? Whowas. So what's next for ICANN and its vast database of domain-name owners?

Re: Great article

And mobile users wouldn't see it.

Rejected one year moratorium oddly similar to 12 months they say they need to devise a new model

I wonder how many times they can be sued in that time.

So why do they need 12 months to decide how to do what European registrars do now already?

TSB meltdown latest: Facepalming reaches critical mass as Brits get strangers' bank letters

Why do they still have customers?

There's data clusterfuck that's still not over, not even a month and a half later.

Scamming still carrying on, possibly due to crappy website security.

Seems like the bank hasn't rolled out extra customer support channels.

The only thing that's going to happen if this is allowed to continue is other banks won't bother either.

Indiegogo grants ZX Spectrum reboot firm another two weeks to send a console

Re: The gift that keeps on giving

It seems Indiegogo haven't got a clue what's going on because Sky has nothing to do with the delay or games or the lack of them, just the ROM and the instruction manuals. And Sky will probably be as equally confused by the question.

Is it wrong of me to think that perhaps RCL made some shit up to get them off their backs just a couple of weeks longer?

Re: Spectrum rights

And after Murdoch it's going to Disney or Comcast...

Half of all Windows 10 users thought: BSOD it, let's get the latest build

Re: Twice a year please doctor

Microsoft have publicly committed to xx03 and xx09 Windows releases so they will ship on the last day of those months or heads will roll

And they throw in all the bugs still open on the last day of the month for free! Why are you even complaining, people?

Re: One of two down

You know, if they're already using LibreOffice and Firefox, it's a small step to migrate to Linux.

I guess a Redmond theme should do the trick.

Re: Microsoft Up To Its Usual Tricks

This time they didn't even bother to pop up a window for you to close thinking that that would be the last of it before installing.

Re: Needs saying!

Indeed. Now throw in embedded devices, servers, and mobiles.

Re: Try the LTSB...

Anyone who doesn't want crap like Windows Store, Metro apps, Cortana, and Edge.

Samsung escapes obligation to keep old phones patched

Re: Odd judgment

We are in the future, nine years since the first Galaxy was launched. Isn't it obvious by now that Samsung don't keep their phones patched?

Amazon can't or won't collect sales tax in Australia

Re: I sympathise

but the work involved with keeping up with all the global forms and rates of sales tax could be a nightmare

Yet somehow they manage for corporate tax purposes.

Re: 47 different state sales taxes

They also do different VAT rates for the EU.

So basically their reason is they can't be arsed because Australia's too puny to stand up to them.

VMware declares energy-guzzling blockchains 'immoral'

"I think we're very much following the Adobe model"

Did they say that like it was a good thing?

Britain mulls 'complete shutdown' of 4G net for emergency services

Let's look abroad to find an alternative

And a quick look at Wikipedia shows that TETRA is used pretty much round the world. Maybe there isn't an alternative to TETRA and we should just concentrate on upgrading it with the extra features we need.

Officially cancelled, then

Yay government IT.

Lessons learned from Microsoft's ghosts of antitrust past: Step up, Facebook

The MS of 20 years ago was a good deal less cuddly than the caring, sharing cloudy behemoth of today

But it didn't slurp.

Storm in a teapot: Anger brews over npm's jokey proxy error messages

Remind me

Why is it Web developers still insist on linking to this Agile clusterfuck^W^Wwork in progress on production websites?

Businesses brace themselves for a kicking as GDPR blows in

Re: Had to obtain a SIM in India once

That'd kill the second hand market stone dead.

Chief EU negotiator tells UK to let souped-up data adequacy dream die

Re: Well, duh

1. Can't be done. Not in todays world where countries need to work together. Total exit is unrealistic. We've got to work with our international neighbours, even when there's an ocean between us. Perhaps even more so when the water is only a few miles across.

2. Simply, it will not happen anymore through participation as a member inside the EU institutions, but instead through negotiation of an outside 3rd party with the EU. Since many others have done so already, there's no doubt it's possible.

3. Technically speaking, why not? Works for Norway & Switzerland. It's politics, anything is possible.

The UK's red lines are the SM & CU and the ECJ, which also rules out the EEA and EFTA. That's the politics.

If you say you don't want to be a part of any existing way of working with the EU then complain the EU doesn't want to work with you, well, who's fault is that exactly? If you want something else, special, just for the UK, then that's that Tory party exceptionalism again.

Re: Well, duh

Perhaps the UK should stay in the EEA? (The ballot paper never mentioned leaving the EEA.)

Otherwise, if you leave absolutely everything so there's no legal basis at all for what you want to do, this is what happens when you do that.

Well, duh

Is it really a surprise? You can be in the EU and opt out of things, but you can't be out the EU and opt in to things.

Why? There's about the same legal basis for the UK doing that as there is for Australia doing that, i.e. none. All the remaining 27 countries would have to re-write every law and treaty that makes the EU what it is to accommodate the Tory party's exceptionalism. Presumably if you went to Eton and Oxford this seems perfectly normal to you, but not to everyone else.

Dixons to shutter 92 UK Carphone Warehouse shops after profit warning

Re: Another Maplins in the making.

Whenever I visit their stores, the only "buyers" are foreigners (mostly east Europeans) or visitors. Rarely do you see locals/regulars popping in to check the latest offerings and deals and upgrades

That's pretty much a given since you pretty much only need to visit a CPW when you buy your first phone or just before your contract comes up for renewal (if you're still not buying SIM-free).

Softbank's 'Pepper' robot is a security joke

Re: What could go wrong?

Phew, luckily it was commented out.

"an intolerable and disappointing finding"

Sounds like IT in general in 2018.

ISP popped router ports, saving customers the trouble of making themselves hackable

Re: Only an id10t...

Pray tell, how was this port opened in the first place and, more importantly, how did the ISP close it without a backdoor?

TR-069

You might be able to go to the router's webadmin page and turn it off, however some ISPs set things up on the router so you can't. Lots of potential for fun because the port your ISP uses for TR-069 is bound to become public knowledge, the ISP might not have shut everyone from outside their network out because they're clueless like that, and then you have every botnet around banging on that port for that ISP and something's bound to give.

Android daddy Andy Rubin's Essential axes handset, is 'actively shopping itself' – report

Re: If it were anyone other than Google who bought Android, Inc...

having a proper sandbox and permissions model from its 1.0 release.

Nope. If it were proper you could have denied each permission individually, and you've not been able to do that until only recently. And the app may crash or refuse to work.

Android was better OS than alternatives available at the time

Then you didn't try Symbian or WebOS.

If it were anyone other than Google who bought Android, Inc...

... I doubt they'd have had the same business model (subsidise it forever and run everyone else into the ground) and Android would have been one choice out of several. It was pretty terrible until relatively recently and the only way it's survived is due to its price tag.

Perhaps if Google hadn't bought Android, Essential would have had more of a chance.

US websites block netizens in Europe: Why are they ghosting EU? It's not you, it's GDPR

In my case it's my fucking bank leaking my email address (I have a unique one just for the bank).

They also say that due to GDPR they won't be able to transfer money from another bank by direct debit, which was a fairly common way of doing it in Spain as it sidestepped tranfer fees from the other bank. I guess it was fine when they were growing as they needed the customers but now they're king of the hill it's just another costly service they wanted to get rid of and "because GDPR" was a nice excuse.

Go to another bank, you say? There really is no choice, they're all as shit as Sabadell.

Best Viewed with Internet Explorer 4?

Re: Am I mistaken?

It applies to all businesses processing EU citizens data.

So in the EU every organisation will be GDPR complaint, even for the US visitor.

Outside the EU I guess few will bother about checking everyone's nationality, but if they want business from EU citizens in the EU they will become GDPR compliant for everyone everywhere.

Max Schrems is back: Facebook, Google hit with GDPR complaint

Re: that isn’t free choice

Google's business model doesn't require slurping to fling adverts.

You know that silly fear about Alexa recording everything and leaking it online? It just happened

Re: Wondering why...

Maybe Kieren didn't see the funny side this time as regular commentards know his home is full of these things. Right know if I were in that position I'd be getting rid on all of them, a sort of modern-day version of the end of Poltergeist.

Reds under your bed

And in your Echo.

Re: Anyone dumb enough

Lol.

Re: Anyone dumb enough

prior to my S9 Google was set to only listen when I pushed a button telling it that it was allowed to listen.

Nothing can go wrong there.

Uninstall or disable all Google apps except Play and Services, remove microphone, location, and camera permission from those and pray they don't alter the deal further.

Some more creepiness for you

Google Duplex sounds human when it calls to book appointments - Google Duplex will disclose that people may be recorded during conversations

This appears to be something that allows things to be booked or ordered via a Google app or website and it rings the business in question and talks to the person to book or order whatever it is.

There's a recording in the link. I hope any business puts the phone down on the Googlebot when it calls, if they can tell the difference (apparently only those places where they are legally obliged to say their call is being recorded).

Re: Great move Amazon

If they refund their money, Amazon won't be able to say no to everyone else who will want to return their wiretaps as well.

As Tesla hits speed bump after speed bump, Elon Musk loses his mind in anti-media rant

Re: unexpected honesty

Given the major stories each one has broken and the work that went into producing each one, the Grauniad and the Heil aren't exactly equivalent...

You can also argue the public has lost respect of the journalists given some of opinion pieces and straight made-up bollocks that is passed off as news.

Mobile app devs have, oh, about 9 hours left to decide whether to stay on Google's ad platform

Re: Facebook

Seems like there's no difference between Facebook and Google, except Google's made developers show a dialog box so it looks like the developers have a responsibility for something, which they don't because Google have defined themselves as the data controller. They can't have it both ways.

Re: Wow look at this !

On Tumblr you have to click Manage, Manage, show and show, then individually disable each one.

On Forbes, you can't comment unless you accept advertising cookies.

They both need better lawyers.

Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04: Make yourself at GNOME. Cup of data-slurping dispute, anyone?

Perhaps, if GNOME started gathering some basic data on a larger scale about how people use GNOME the project would make different decisions.

Doubt it, if you take the other example (Firefox) it turned into competition between UXers to see how they could out-stupid each other, using metrics to justify their decisions where they could and ignoring them where they couldn't.

Finally: Historic Eudora email code goes open source

Re: 460MB of code?!

What's changed? Nowadays if you wanted to make a native-looking multiplatform app you'd have the Qt libraries on both systems.

Kids and the web latest: 'Won't somebody please think of the children!' US Congresscritters plead

Re: Well thats one way to up the social media entry age.

In some ways you have to be thankful for US social media companies believing COPPA applies everywhere, because the UK didn't do a damn thing. If they applied UK law to UK residents then it would have been a free-for-all from age 0.

Re: Yes, because we all know how well laws work....

Read their T&Cs for Europe - they have COPPA cut-n-pasted into them courtesy of the firm belief that the only law which applies is USA law and it is universal.

So much this.

And they can replace that with GDPR. The boot's on the other foot now.

Servers crashed and burned. So, Qualcomm's back to Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V'ing Arm cores into phones

classifying food snapped in pics

Obligatory: Not a hot dog.

'Clive, help us,' say empty-handed ZX Spectrum reboot buyers

The court might be in a position to siphon back the money that Levy siphoned off to his other companies.

Not even the QL was late by two years.

Re: Software problems now

It seems they had gained the rights for the Vega but nobody (or nearly nobody) was paid, so now programmers are explicitly stating RCL don't have rights for the Vega+ just in case RCL claim they have the rights for the Vega line of consoles.

Maybe this is part of the reason for a Vega+ V2.

Senator Kennedy: Why I cast my Senate-busting vote for net neutrality

Re: Does not compute

They wouldn't bar you from calling specific people or businesses unless you and and whoever you were calling paid a special fee.