* Posts by Rich 2

980 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009

Can ad biz’s LEAN avert ADPOCALYPSE?

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Ads

The fundamental problem with adverts is that nobody actually wants them.

It's no different to ads on the telly. Yes they find the station etc etc but that doesn't change the facts - the business is trying to shove stuff out to an audience that is t interested.

It's quite depressing that 99% of websites have so little imagination that they can't think of other ways to fund their product. As a result the whole internet has become one huge advertising platform to the point where it is pretty much it's raision d'être

Paying a PoS*, USA? Your chip-and-PIN means your money's safer...

Rich 2 Silver badge

Re: Blame the banks

Sorry. That should've card. Nor Car's. Bloody phone!

Rich 2 Silver badge

Blame the banks

The reason Car's fraud is so common is because for the most part it doesn't cost the banks anything. If it's not the innocent punter that foots the bill then it's the equally innocent retailer. The banks are happy to refuse to accept responsibility and u til they are forced to, it won't change

The web is DOOM'd: Average page now as big as id's DOS classic

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Not surprising

Not at all surprising when most web pages seem to drag in one or more mb of JavaScript libraries (and then use 5% of them) because their authors don't have the know-how or inclination to do something more intelligent.

A perfect marriage: YOU and Ubuntu 16.04

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ZFS and GNU

What has any of this got to do twitch GNU AND that Stallman ...person?

Surely, if there is any legal issue at all it is up to the Linux people to make a noise (if they want to). Just because GNU provide the licence words, it doesn't give them the right to dictate to the Linux people how it should be used

Adobe issues patch to nix its Mac-killing Creative Cloud update

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What????

Even for Adobe, that's quite crap!

Please stop releasing software Adoobe. ANY software. You're not very good at it.

Untamed pledge() aims to improve OpenBSD security

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Re: Stupid idea

If you get the pledge right then the only way the program can break its own rules is if it's corrupted in some way. Why would you want such a program to carry on running?

If you get the pledge wrong then you don't understand what your program is doing. In which case, you definitely don't want it to run!

El Reg celebrates Back to the Future Day

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Stuff

i call this one the "Pepsi Challenge". All you have to do is correctly guess which sugar-laden drink will rot your teeth, make you fat, and promote diabetes and osteoporosis the fastest.

Standards body wants standards for IoT. Vendors don't care

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Re: Fridge on the Net

I really don't see the point of the IoT thingie. A fridge that can tell you when it goes wrong? That would be an idea except how often does your fridge go wrong? Every 15 years. 10 if it's a really crappy one? It's just not worth it.

As for re-ordering some milk when you run out - well if you're too bloody lazy to make a shopping list then there's no hope.

Maybe a toaster that emails you when it pops up? Or a washing machine that ....errrr randomly emails you to tell you to do some washing? Goodness knows.

We made a new Do Not Track thing – not like you'll use it or anything, huffs emo teen EFF

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.....or

just install ghostery

Sue us for Safari ad tracking? You'll be lucky, peons, cackles Google

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Money

why does there have to be a "financial loss" for the case to be considered?

Not everything is about money

Get root on an OS X 10.10 Mac: The exploit is so trivial it fits in a tweet

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*nix

i really hate that "*nix" nonsense. If you mean Unix then say Unix. If you don't then say what you really mean.

Right. I'm off to make some *ea. or do I mean *offee?

An EPIC picture of Earth, sunny side up, from one million miles out

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Let's hope...

....we don't do anything silly like poison the seas and the air we breath. Or go out of our way to wipe-out half the species that live there. Or chop down all those lovely green forests and jungles

Apple taxpayers swarm to stone-age iPhone 6+ purely for the bigness

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UI

Not defending Apple or anything like that but why have a go at the UI?

It works. Why change it juat for change' sake? Or do you think they ought to follow the desktop PC market and change it so that it pisses off existing users with no tangible benefits?

Apple Watch WRISTJOB SHORTAGE: It's down to BAD VIBES

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Obsolete within 10 years?

That sounds very generous. I would think 2 or 3 years is more like it

Google drives a tenth of news traffic? That's bull-doodie, to use the technical term

Rich 2 Silver badge

Re: How many of these are using Google as their address bar?

I second this. Even tech savvy people use Google as an address bar. I know my wife uses it exclusively like this - she never taps in a url directly - and she's reasonably techie.

Google has very successfully managed to engrain itself into normal web use. They are now doing exactly the same thing with media - Google TV, YouTube of course, etc. It is very much getting to the point where there is no choice but to use Google

SMACK! EU set to hit Google with 'abuse of dominance' rap

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Not the problem

I've never had a problem with a company pushing is own products - that's what they're in business for. MS got accused of doing it and most of the major net companies do the same. And why not?

I think a much more important issue is goggle's cavalier attitude to privacy, ownership of content and general we-are-above-the-law attitude.

And along with Fartbook and Twaddle, the way it is (has) become completely engrained in daily life whether you want it or not.

Ding Dong, ALIENS CALLING

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Err duh!!!!

Just put your forward Shields up.

Boffins bothered by EU prez's proposed science funding cut

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Ahhh

"...in order to boost the european fund for strategic investment"

So they want to get rid of a bunch of science to make way for some flatulant business analysts?

Yea, that sounds like a great idea!!!

The SHOCKING storage truth: Everyone's buying spinning rust

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Spinning rust usage is up

Until flash storage reaches sensible pricing, what alternative would you suggest?

Chewier than a slice of Pi: MIPS Creator CI20 development board

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Friendlier than C

odd that you say the mips board supports C and that you think that I isn't friendly. The thing that put me off a Pi was that it was Python based and not C. C is far better for twiddling about with something like this

It seems today's kids think Java is "low level"!

'Utterly unusable' MS Word dumped by SciFi author Charles Stross

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Re: Content and Style

Even if you are responsible for the presentation, Word is not the right tool. Its formatting is basic at beat; cmpare it with the output you get from TeX to see what I mean. It's a shame TeX isn't easier to use because it generates lovely text formatting

Super-cookie crumbles: Verizon vows to kill off hated zombie stalkers

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Does nobody have any imagination?

God It annoys me that 'internet' seems to be a synonym for 'advertising opportunity'

It's all any web business does. It's just one huge network for grabbing much info as possible from everyone and shoving adverts at them!!

Is this the ONLY business that anyone has managed to come up with? Selling ads? Nothing else?

Microsoft cracks personalisation without prying

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A small flaw in an otherwise fine plan?

If (say) Google weren't teacking you and generally invading your privacy in the first place then there's no problem with the exiting mechanisms. If they ARE though, (and assuming this idea needs server support) why would they want to implement a mechanism that stops it?

Facebook privacy policy change leaves Dutch stomping feet

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Groan...

oh for the halcuon days when the prime focus of the web was NOT to pry into everyone's private lives and to not push advertising at the general public at all costs.

Is there ANOTHER UNIVERSE headed BACKWARDS IN TIME?

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Time

Why does physics view time as going "forward" anyway?

From a day-to-day perspective then fine - it's convenient to view it as such.

But from a physics perspective, why isn't it viewed as ...I dunno ...going "sideways" or even not actually "going" anywhere; just changing?

Hawking: RISE of the MACHINES could DESTROY HUMANITY

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Not difficult

considering how stupid some individuals are and how the human race as a collective is even more stupid (we seem bloody determined to destroy ourselves one way or another) it's not difficult to think we can be easily surpassed by AI.

We're probably already interlectually surpassed by the average Cornish pasy!

Chromecast video on UK, Euro TVs hertz so badly it makes us judder – but Google 'won't fix'

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24 fps

In this age of digital cinema, why is 24fps still used? If cinemas moved to 25 fps then the problem wouldgo away. Granted, it won't solve the 50/60 Hz issue

Google Contributor: Ad-block killer – or proof NO ONE will pay for news?

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Why!

Rather than giving google even more money, why don't the sites just run their pwn subscription service?

Do we need google for everything????

Simon's says quantum computing will work

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Question

Can snyone out there explain how a quanrun computer works? Ie- how do you tell it what to do. How do you get data into it (and what does it look like)? What does a 'program' look like? That sort of thing

Behold the Lumia 535 NOTkia: Microsoft wipes Nokia brand from mobes

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Lovely hardware

....shame it's MS.

Yea, it's a tired old comment but face it, that's the reality. If they put Android on it it would probably sell a bundle. As it is, errr.... It won't

Apple's strap-on will set you back just '$5,000' – what a BARGAIN!

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$150 for a watch strap?

Apple are asking $150 for a stainless steel case and strap? Wow!!!!

Ironic really - I wouldn't be surprised if the aluminium case cost more to make.

Improving JavaScript: Google throws AtScript into the mix

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JS is shote

Title says it all really. Writing in a language to have it converted into another? The huge numbers of frameworks and abstraction layers designed to try and plaster over JS's problems? It's a joke. JS is awful in pretty much every way - it's got a stupid object model (I use the term loosely - a bit like JS does); 'this' may as well refer to a bloody penguin for the good it does. It offers no compile -time help witth types. Etc etc etc.... It is crap and is unlikely to improve without some major changes which basically means rewriting the whole ugly thing. We should bite the bullet, agree on a better alternative (anything will do!) and let JS die off.

Slap for SnapChat web app in SNAP mishap: '200,000' snaps sapped

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Should never have cone to this

I blame Google and (I assume) Apple for ever allowing snapchat in the first place. It was always blindingly obvious what it was going to be used for and the resulting car crash was inevitable.

Lies, damn pies and obesity statistics: We're NOT a nation of fatties

Rich 2 Silver badge

Bollocks

We bloody are getting fatter. I din't care what any statistics say; you only have to walk down any high street to see that there are lard-arses aplenty!

And not just tubby; I'm talking grossly revolting fat.

Righr - off to the fridge to find that extra-large pork pie I spotted earlier.

NASA rover Curiosity drills HOLE in MARS 'GOLF COURSE'

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Balls

Sio why disn't it look closer at what looks like (as near as makes no odds) the unnatural perfect stone sphere? Could it be because it IS an unnatural perfect stone sphere?

IT crisis looming: 'What if AWS goes pop, runs out of cash?'

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Yes they did

Off topic but....

"Nobody predicted the financial meldown..."

Actually quite a few people did but nobody listened.

80 PER CENT of app devs SUCK at securing your data, study finds

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Not at all surprising

Software dev falls into a few catagories - here's just a few that spring to mind :-

1/ The guy in his bedroom hacking some iPhone/Android app - He doesn't give a monkeys about security; he's far too interested in how whizzy he can make the thing look (at the cost of normal functionaily)

2/ An open source "community" project - Don't give a stuff about security either, as long as they have the new "skin" framework in place for the next release

3/ "Proper" (I use the term loosely) engineering environment - Depends; if it's some industrial plant control then security issues might make a showing (Stuxnet? Oh yea.. .I forgot about that one). If it's some consumer electronics thing then the mantra from management is usually "get it out of the door ASAP so we can start on the next version". Needless to say, security tends to fall at the early hurdles.

4/ Some start-up or e-commerce site - Security? Errr.... what's that?

Lots of different reasons for security failure, but the end result is the same; nobody gives a fuck.

Apple Pay is a tidy payday for Apple with 0.15% cut, sources say

Rich 2 Silver badge

Eh?

I don't get it. Your acerage credit card company takes a MUCH bigger cut than 0.15% and nobody seems to care too much about that.

Why the issue?

Britain's housing crisis: What are we going to do about it?

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Solution

Less people?

Boffins attempt to prove the universe is just a hologram

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Excellent

I first heard about this about 2 years ago on a Horizon program entitled "What is reality?". As the first poster indicates, the idea is that "reality" exists only on the surface/edge of the universe, and everything inside it is just a projection of that surface.

If something as bonkers as this is proven true then (a) it would be very exciting and (b) it might explain other strange phenomena like odd socks being eaten by the washing machine.

Slapdash SSL code puts tons of top Android Play Store apps in hack peril

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Approval needed

My strong guess is that Apple's approval process consists mostly of making sure there's nothing in the app that will impact Apple's bottom line. Everything else, and that definitely includes security and privacy is very much secondary.

Disclaimer: I have an iThingie. Ooo-errrr!

NASA's rock'n'roll shock: ROLLING STONE FOUND ON MARS

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And squirrels!

...though in true NASA fashion, they try and ignore that bit...

http://www.zdnet.com/was-a-squirrel-discovered-on-mars-7000016191/

Take the shame: Microsofties ADMIT to playing Internet Explorer name-change game

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What SHOULD Microsoft call its browser?

Shite?

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

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Jolly good work.

It's good to see our no bobbies engaged in top crime prevention. None of that soft stuff like people being beaten up or killed or raped or kidnapped or kept in the cellar (ooo... that reminds me) etc etc etc. NO! Downloading stuff over a length of cable is where the REAL crime is.

Linux users at risk as ANOTHER critical GnuTLS bug found

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Re: Open source - crap code

"...if and when you see bad code that you're getting for free, if you are able to judge its badness and can fix it, you should submit a patch"

That should keep me busy for the next thousand years :-) It's rather difficult to submit a "patch" when (a) the code is incomprehensible in the first place and (b) the "patch" would consist of "delete all lines from 1 onwards and replace with this".

"Where did you get this expectation of getting millions of lines of perfect code for free?"

I never said I did. And just because it's free is no justification for it being crap. Do you think that if you're writing code commercially that you should do it properly, but if you're planning on giving it away for free that you are duty-bound to make a hash of it?

And I can't comment on the Firefox or Postgresql codebase but I can say that some of the Linux kernel code is awful; especially some of the driver stuff.

Rich 2 Silver badge

Open source - crap code

It is an unfortunate truth but a lot (I'll not say "most" even though I think it is justified) open source code is, quite frankly crap. Oh yes, it works. And a lot of it works very well. But if you actually look at the code (and relatively very few people ever do), you will find 99% of the time that it is very badly written, often full of random "goto", "break", and "return" statements, virtually totally uncommented, and generally a very sloppy mess apparently written by someone without the first clue about software design. This all leads to code that, although in theory "anyone can look at and change if they want", in reality "it'll make your head spin trying to understand what the f*** is going on and you will eventually give up".

I don't know why code quality is such a non-existent priority for many people, and I've definitely seen my fair share of it in the commercial world too, but it seems to be, and this contributes in a big way to why even really obvious bugs go unnoticed for years. The other reason is that nobody actually bothers to look.

Of course, there are exceptions; there is open source code out there that is well written and understandable. But it is VERY few and far between.

I will, of course, get modded down for this, but I question the justification for that; I firmly believe and stand by this assessment.

Apple: We'll tailor Swift to be a fast new programming language

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@Nigel 11

Your comment makes no sense at all. Are you saying C DOES have bagage or not?

Rich 2 Silver badge

...without the bagage of C

What "baggage"? C is one of the most simple and sparse languages there has ever been. That's why it works.