Posts by KroSha

Game pirates 'donate' compute power to Bitcoin miners

Re: Internet Security?

Suuuure they are.

I sold 10 MILLION iPhone 6es at the weekend, says Tim Cook. What did you do?

Re: If my company sold 10m on Saturday

I'd like to see the data for that as well. But he didn't say "S5", just "Galaxy". There's still plenty of S3s knocking around.

Register journo battles Sydney iPHONE queue, FONDLES BIG 'UN

Re: odd ...

Big queue at the Covent Garden Store this morning.

Court flushes VirnetX's $368m check from Apple down the toilet

Software patents; ultimate in FAIL

Bonking with Apple has POUNDED mobe operators' wallets

Re: I don't like it.

You do realise that there are costs involved in cash transactions as well? Banks charge businesses to deposit and withdraw cash. The only way around it is if the shop owner uses some of those takings to pay their staff in cash. And you can imagine how common that is these days. Other wise it gets deposited in the bank and they charge for it. They charge to provide card services. They've got retailers coming and going! The end consumer will always be paying for those services in the long run

Re: Crazy.

Not true in London. TFL now accepts contactless payments for the Tube and buses.Quite a few pubs and retailers do too.

Netscape plugins about to stop working in Chrome for Mac

OSX will only run an app in either 32-bit or 64-bit. A 64-bit app will not run 32-bit plugins and vice versa. If you have a plug-in in the "wrong format", the app has to relaunch to run it. System Preferences does this if you try to run an old 32-bit pref pane.

All Macs using Core2 or later are 64-bit, so this only affects pre-2008 Macs, which are probably on the way out by now anyway.

iPhone 6: Advanced features? Pah! Nexus 4 had most of them in 2012

I get why the vitriol is spreading, but a large part of the reason that NFC is being included now is because Apple have found a use for it. Sure, they could have included it years ago, but why bother? I can easily see someone querying it in the design stages for the 4S or 5, but being dropped because they didn't have a compelling reason to include it.Now they have Apple Pay, there is a useful scenario, that adds value to the product.

Tim Cook: I'm NOT worried about CRAP iPad sales. It's just a 'speedbump'

Re: In its way, a good sign

Apple stop making parts after 5 years. You can still get them in some 3rd party shops. My Late 2008 MBP is still working, even if it does feel slow compared to an Air. I'll only ever replace my MBP when it goes seriously tits up. My iPhone 4 won't be able to run iOS 8, but I'm not replacing it until the iPad 3 is left behind too.

London cops cuff 20-year-old man for unblocking blocked websites

Re: Example of a Breach

@ AC 12:42

No, you do not need a TV license to watch iPlayer. "You don't need a licence if you don't use any of these devices to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV - for example, if you use your TV only to watch DVDs or play video games, or you only watch ‘catch up’ services like BBC iPlayer or 4oD." http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/how-to-tell-us-you-dont-watch-tv-top12

You only need a license to watch broadcast TV, whether you watch on a TV, laptop or any other device. If you do not own a TV, computer tuner device or watch live TV via the BBC website, and are only using the iPlayer app on your phone, you do not need one.

I do not have a TV and have not watched broadcast TV at home for over a year. I do not have a TV license.

Study: Users don't much care about Heartbleed hacking dangers

Far too much hassle

For most people, this is way to much hassle. The vast majority of users have a handful of passwords that they use for all the sites they belong to. And they belong to far more than they can remember. Given this, unless the site sends them an email asking them to change their password (which they've been trained to ignore as a phishing attempt), who is going to bother?

Only people who have a password manager system are likely to maintain secure, unique passwords and even then it's an issue finding out which accounts to update.

I use Lastpass, and it's taken me an hour to update the sites they informed me needed to be changed. Probably a waste of time, but what's an hour?

ISPs' pirate-choking blocking measures ARE effective – music body

There's a checkbox in the Account Playback setting to prefer Silverlight or HTML5, where available. You can only access the setting over the website, not from an app, and it depends how they originally encoded the show.

SHIVER ME TIMBERS, it’s Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag

Hoping it's better than AC3

All 3 episodes of Ezio's storyline were great; Connor's was noticeably worse. It would seem from the current crop of reviews that they've kept the best of AC3, the sea battles, and dropped the rampant collection-fest that plagued Revelations and AC3.

Still, I won't be buying this until the price drops. AC3 was too much of a disappointment to splash out that kind of cash.

Why Teflon Ballmer had to go: He couldn't shift crud from Windows 8, Surface

Re: Change or Revert

"MS needs to do what worked well for it in the past and then build on that"

I seem to remember that they got convicted of monopolist crimes doing that. It may not be the way to go.

Mystery of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'

Re: Huge flaw in article

"not least of which the fuser assembly and the memory"

I think you meant the formatter. The fuser is usually just a pair of heated rollers to melt the toner in place. Image formation happens earlier in the process and most fusers just have a power connection and motor.

Flash! Ah-ahh! Saviour of the universe? It'll save every one of us?

Re: Best upgrade...

"My biggest worry with spinning disks on a hard drive is reliability and file errors and every few months having to do a scandisk /f and crossing my fingers hoping for the best."

My biggest worry with SSDs is reliability. When flash dies, it goes down HARD, with zero chance to get data off. Pray that your customer has a recent backup.

Kodak's new life to begin in September

When the shareholders heard they get nada

That's a Kodak moment!

Sony sets dates for US and Euro PS4 unleashment amid Xbox heckles

A console has its advantages

As stated, there's no ongoing maintenance. It's a buy-once item, so need for OS upgrades, driver upgrades, graphics card upgrades, etc.

My PS3 has sat under the TV, acting more as a entertainment hub than a games console, for several years, where the main use it gets is iPlayer, Netflix and discs. We rarely watch broadcast TV any more.

I played a LOT of games during some convalescence, and here the PSN+ subscription came in to its own. It's actually a fantastic deal; worth far more than the subscription for anyone with the time to game. Just the free games makes it worth it, never mind the discounts.

I won't be getting a PS4, as I really don't need one. In time, some new killer feature or game may persuade me otherwise, but for now the PS3 is still bloody ace!

Screw you, Brits, says Google: We are ABOVE UK privacy law

Re: Nuts

"As far as I can find, there IS no UK office.

The closest one is in Ireland - which is not in the UK.

Now, after the London office opens there might be (well, have been, as I would guess it won't open either)."

It's just off St Giles High St. You can see the Google logo behind reception. Google Maps even lists it, at 51.516067,-0.127234

Password-keeper LastPass plugs up IE cache leak vuln

I've been using Lastpass for a couple of years and have found that it's really useful, especially when combined with the Xmarks bookmarking service.

Being able to access any website, each of which has its own secure password, from mobile, home laptop and work desktop makes web browsing far easier. You only have to remember one master password, which can be changed quickly. The browser plugins detect when you change a site password and update the vault accordingly. The "Fill Form" function makes online forms a doddle, especially given that you can have multiple forms for different locations. Logging in to one device even logs any others out, and this is all from the free version.

I did pay for the premium version for a year, but found that the free version was enough for me, as it probably is for most people.

Blighty street has hottest Wi-Fi hotspot hottie in Europe: We reveal where

Re: Wi-Fi Tracking.

Airplane mode is great. Not only does it stop you being distracted whilst reading, but it extends battery life immensely!

Apple erects measures to stop app-happy kids splurging parents' dosh

"Besides passwords, another option is to not associate a credit card with the iTunes account and to fund it with iTunes gift cards instead"

This is the best option, if the devices is mostly used by the child in question. I have friends who have bought tablets, iPod Touch's and other shiny for their children as a placebo. Not associating a credit card is by far the safest way to go. If it is just a password, then they WILL figure it out eventually.

BlackBerry: It's the end-to-endness, stupid

The market is still there,

if not the one they want. Businesses want and need a good, secure device for work communication. OK, it may never grant the megabucks that Apple & Samsung pull out of consumer devices, but there is a place for a well designed, controllable, work-based system for serious companies. I know several companies that already deploy BB, and they only reason that they will consider staying with them is if the control and deployment is easier than a multitude of iOS / Android / Exchange compatible phones.

O2 tears wraps off £26-a-month mobe sport, music, games (and 4G)

3 are easily the best value

OK, I live in London, so the network is good.

But I recently wanted to get a personal hotspot. EE wanted £26 for 8GB/month. 3 offer 15GB/month for £19. No contest.

NSA gets burned by a sysadmin, decides to burn 90% of its sysadmins

Weasel words

"No one [at the NSA] has wilfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies. There were no mistakes like that at all."

Because they changed the law and kept it a secret! They didn't try to invade your privacy, they succeeded. Plus it wasn't by mistake, they intended to do it.

Apple: 'Average' iPad toiler does a mere 46-hour week

It really isn't.

There are plenty of people who will easily work 10 hours a day, especially those who run their own business. I used to do 60 hour weeks when I was 16, working for my Dad.

What heat wave? Pay still frozen over for 70 per cent at Capita ITS

You smell that?

"Just so you're aware, we're not enjoying the benefits of big pay rises or bonuses either," he claimed. "It's not one rule for one group and one rule for another. Everyone in the business is feeling the pain..."

Yeeeeah, riiiight. Somehow methinks that the bosses on 100K+ aren't quite feeling the pinch as much as the field / call staff on 20K.

Chromecast: We get our SWEATY PAWS on Google's tiny telly pipe

Re: Energy saving, PS3 off occassionally?

Depends. If you have a Sony Bravia TV (I don't know about other brands), then the remote will control the PS3, via the HDMI. I've watched lots of Netflix, iPlayer, & DLNA video using the PS3 without touching the controllers.

The only thing I had to use the controller for was ITVplayer, as the direction buttons didn't quite move the cursor properly and it needed the joystick.

Re: Well I want one, but am I a small and unusual?

It could also work well for people on holiday in, say, a caravan or canal boat. Lots of these have small TVs, so add a phone and a MiFi, and you have IPTV.

Apple's shock treatment: An authentic charger-spotting guide

Re: A self proclaiming prophesy

The same can be said of phone and laptop batteries. Given some of the horror stories (icon) in the media, and my own bad experiences with the lifespan of "compatible" batteries, I'm sticking with branded from now on.

Only 1 in 5 Americans believe in pure evolution – and that's an upswing

Re: belief in non existing things

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.

+With thanks to TP+

=====================

The problem comes when people believe that the little lies are *all there is*. They can't see beyond the Lies to Children and don't want to investigate the Lies to Adults that allow us to glimpse how things might work and how we fit in to the mechanism of the cosmos.

Re: Let there be.....Ignorance?

With apologies to Dr Jones: "Science is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall."

SIM crypto cracked by a single text, mobes stuffed with spyware

"the ITU is planning an advisory to all mobile phone operators"

And they'll do what? Push out a firmware update, send everyone a new SIM or try and sell you a new phone?

Apple Maps. Remember that? Apple does. It just gobbled Locationary

The thing really lacking in the Map app is the ability to submit new data. You can report a problem with an existing location, but not if it doesn't have a marker already. There are a lot of places that just don't exist in the Apple / Yelp database. They do exist on Google.

PEAK APPLE: 'iPhone sales STALL' at first sniff of fresh droid competition

The market for expensive phones is saturated. Everyone that wants one, has one. Future growth, if any, is going to be in lower end handsets in emerging markets. The first world smartphone thing is pretty much done.

Tablets? Check. Mobes? Check. What's next, Apple? Fondlable CARS

How can a touch screen tell which button you are actually fumbling toward?

I'd like my car (and TV, and for that matter, phone) to just work. I don't want my driving data to be posted to Farcebook, or slurped by my insurance company, any more than I want my viewing habits given to Sky.

Microsoft admits it's '18 months behind' with Windows 8 slabs

The Enterprise Tablet

Even with their current message, MS don't seem to know what their current market is. They seem to be pitching The One Surface. But they are pitching it to consumers and enterprise, without tailoring the message for the markets.

Consumers consume stuff; they watch videos, email, browse the web and play games. All of which the iPad and Galaxy Tab do very well. In order to get a piece of this action, Surface will have to do these better, as Jobs predicted when he launched the iPad. That's a hard task, as iOS and Android are pretty good at what they do.

For Enterprise, it's going to have to do content creation better than a laptop. Another very hard task, as RT & 8 haven't exactly covered themselves with glory thus far. And do MS want to sell a Surface, or an OS license?

Surface is going to be joining the othe MS hobo, Zune.

Admen's suggested tweaks to Do Not Track filed straight into the bin

I've come to the conclusion that the only way is to run in private mode almost all the time, and resetting the browser at the end of every session. This means I only get ads for financial services, which are the only things I need a regular session for.

Fanbois get Outlook app for iOS, but only if they sign up for Office 365

Re: Hope it's better than OSX's Outlook

Be thankful that you didn't have to use the abortion-in-progress that was Entourage. When MS shifted to OSX and abandoned Outlook For Mac (OS9) I didn't think it could get any worse. It did.

Outlook for Mac (OSX) is several steps better than both of these, but still horrendous compared with the basic interoperability built in to iOS and OSX.

And the remote wipe feature works in iOS Mail as well, administered from OWA.

Poor iPhone sales mean Verizon could owe Apple $14bn

Standard business practice

Most manufacturers of anything will have a minimum order value. There are plenty of warehouses the world over that have a part pallet of old stock that some buyer optimistically ordered and they've never managed to shift.

It's just that the order value here is just rather more than Verizon have managed to sell.

Oh please, PLEASE bring back Xbox One's hated DRM - say Xbox loyalists

Gouging

The publishers are having a larf! MS and Sony both want total control of the games market and to move us all to tied licenses. But they also want to keep gouging us for £30+ per game, which just isn't realistic.

I saw a talk by one of the founders of Oddworld Inhabitants, inventors of the extremely lovable Abe. It’s very illuminating; both in the way that this small developer chooses to work, and for a telling fact. When they shipped boxed product, a game that retailed at $60 would pay a royalty of $7. The rest went on manufacturing costs and licensing and other sundries. Now, distributing their titles via PSN, Steam and XBLA, a sale of $10 nets the same $7 royalty. And this is for games that cost $4m to produce!

The full talk is here: http://www.oddworld.com/2012/10/oddworld-does-eurogamer-expo/

Prince of Persia: Baggy trousers and curvy swords

Available on Sands of Time

The original game is available, in some form, on the Sands of Time game. Gamespot has details for the different platforms. http://uk.gamespot.com/prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time/cheats/

Cache 'n' carry: What's the best config for your SSD?

Backup needed

The one downside of a SSD is its lifespan. And once it goes, all the data is gone. Traditional platter recovery methods don't work and anyone who has a single SSD, perhaps in a laptop, has to have a regular backup strategy. Otherwise, one day, they are going to get a nasty shock.

A new Mac Pro coming this spring? 'Mais oui!'

Nah.

I'd be surprised if they change the form of the most recognisable workstation on the market. And it's fairly well designed internally. We're probably just talking a new system board to support newer CPUs and graphics, USB 3 ports and maybe eSATA.

Hard drive sales to see double-digit dive this year

Re: Still using them here

4 copies with 2 brands, actually. One of each to the reference Library, the others to offsite storage.

Still using them here

DVD and BD are by far the most cost effective archival medium for lots of people. I used to work for a games manufacturer, and we had rooms of DVDs keeping the reference copies of old work. Not business critical, so not on tape, but needed and important to have available on short notice.

Re: consoles

Don't bet on it. Sony wants to move to download only. That way they only sell licenses, kill the 2nd hand market (which they currently make NO money on) and have total control of the distribution.

BT to end traffic throttling - claims capacity is FAT

Still worse service and speed than Be, for roughly the same cash, over copper. Fibre is still a white elephant, unless you live right next to the cabinet.

Coming soon to a theme park near you: Shocking ANTI-PIRACY NAG ADS

Re: Worse than pointless

>As for the nagware campaign. I just love the "you would not steal a car" thing at the start of a DVD I just paid for. Makes me want to run off some copies and hand them out on the street corner.

Unskippable too. That really pisses me off, to the point that I haven't purchased a DVD or BD for 18 months. That and the fact that just haven't been any new films I want to see that much. I'll probably get the new Batman at some point, but at the moment, online offerings make more sense.