Posts by ContentsMayVary

Shock: Brit capital strips Uber of its taxi licence

Meanwhile on change.org...

More than 450K people have signed a petition to reverse the decision.

https://www.change.org/p/save-your-uber-in-london-saveyouruber

(Not saying I agree - just mentioning it...)

David Bowie: Musician, actor... tech admirer

Re: You Tube link

If you search for "Bowie Paxman Interview" on YouTube it seems there's lots of copies still up.

Re: Nomad Soul

Indeed.

And people should really watch this interview he did with Paxman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0-51IkWpFE

Listen carefully to what he has to say about the internet, back in 2000.

Further confusion at TalkTalk claims it was hit by 'sequential attack'

This, Jen, is the Internet.

If MR ROBOT was realistic, he’d be in an Iron Maiden t-shirt and SMELL of WEE

While much you say is true, to say that there are no female hackers is a typical piece of male prejudice... http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/16/the-rise-of-female-hackers-for-good/

And http://www.computersciencedegreehub.com/10-notorious-female-hackers/

If the Internet of Things scares you now: Cisco's CEO is bent on hooking up robots, everything

Just need to hook up SkyNet and the job's a goodun.

Ship-swallowing GREEN BIO-STORM spotted FROM SPAAACE

All seaweed is algae, but not all algae is seaweed. Specifically, the type of algae that causes a bloom is NOT seaweed.

Microsoft: Hey, you. Done patching Windows this month? WRONG

Strangely, this patch doesn't show up for me on Windows Update (running Windows 81). Or maybe it did install it, but I just don't know what to look for... But there has been no indication of any Critical Update being available or installed in the last 3 days.

Anyone know what I should be seeing?

UK Outlaws CD Ripping Again

UK Outlaws CD Ripping Again

This seems insane, yet I can't see any articles about this anywhere. Apparently the High Court (in response to an action by the record companies) has overturned the relaxation on the law that prevented you from putting copies of your CDs onto your MP3 player/Phone/Whatever.

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/uk-high-court-outlaws-cd-and-dvd-ripping-again-1299568

Stupid judges....

This one weird trick deletes any YouTube flick in just a few clicks

>$1337 - strangely specific amount to pay out for this 'vulnerability'...

Clearly they think he has 1337 h4x0r skillz

Virgin Media goes TITSUP, RUINS Tuesday evening

Re: Hmm @Lee D

>And if it was only a few people affected why was their customer phone line in meltdown such that I've never seen before with any other company of a similar size? If they can't deal with the calls coming in then that suggests the impact is far bigger than you think it is.

It probably affected a sizeable percentage of their customers. Anything more than 10% is likely to cause customer phone line meltdown. But it was far from all of them. (I'm in Scotland, and obviously it didn't affect us up here.)

Gamers! Ransomware will scramble your save files unless you cough up $1,000

Re: World of Warcraft (WoW) etc

About 1/2 hour for me... Certainly less than $1,000 dollars worth of time!

Windows XP's market share grows AGAIN!

Shame the handy cousin didn't just install Classic Start Menu...

Time travellers outsmart the NSA

I expect the time travellers often leave incriminating evidence around. However, if they get caught they obviously just go back in time to erase the evidence before it gets spotted. Duh.

Microsoft now using next-gen Roslyn C#, Visual Basic compilers in house

>>more amazing is anybody using .NET, its the crapest framework ever, and every executable is 2.3mb after a release build even if it has no code in

I just did a test with a "Hello, World" executable, and it was 5K in size...

THIS is the kind of clout a British Prime Minister has: Facebook pulls ONE beheading vid

>The British are really anal about everything.

I somehow doubt the infamous Superbowl wardrobe malfunction cause have the same kind of hysterical overreaction here, compared to what happened in the U.S...

Guardian lets UK spooks trash 'Snowden files' PCs to make them feel better

Re: Wait a minute

I too misunderstood the use of the word "partner". Why they don't just use the word "colleague" instead is beyond me.

Google Glass eye-cam to turn us all into right little winkers

>> I've taken more pictures today than I have the past 5 days thanks to this.

And also thanks to his nervous tic.

Reddit: So very sorry for naming innocent man as Boston bomber

Re: unmitigated baloney

>>Looking at Britain, which has one of the toughest sets of laws controlling guns in civilian hands in the western hemisphere. Astonishingly the use of guns in crimes including homicide has increased steadily since the passage of those laws.

Oh yes? Have a look here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-winning-battle-against-inner-city-gun-crime-8463957.html

From which I quote:

"Firearms offences have fallen by more than 40 percent in less than a decade, with the rise of “gun culture” in Britain’s inner cities apparently reversed because of improved police intelligence.

Figures out next month are expected to confirm the long-term decline in gun crime which resulted in 39 people shot dead in 2011/12 compared with a high of 96 ten years earlier."

Take that, freetards: First music sales uptick in over a decade

0.3% increase? And inflation is what, just now (worldwide)? So music sales are still on the way down...

> Where are the Pink Floydds? The Queens? The Guns n Roses?

There's still a lot of big (as in, can play to full stadia) bands going, but whether they are to your taste or not is a different matter. The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Muse, Coldplay (not my cup of tea mind), The Killers, Florence and the Machine, Radiohead (still touring!) and Jack White to name but a few.

Look out! Peak wind is coming, warns top Harvard physicist

Re: One question I have always asked myself

The main effect would be one of cooling. All those winds blowing around eventually end up as thermal energy - unless they are converted into some other energy first. A lot of the wind energy currently gets converted into wave energy, but even that eventually gets turned into thermal energy.

Meet the stealthiest UK startup's app Swiftkey - and its psychic* keyboard

Re: WTF?! "This App is not compatible with Nexus 7

WTF indeed! And you can't post a review stating "Won't work on Nexus 7" unless you've actually installed it... While I can see the reasoning behind that limitation on reviewing uninstallable software, it's a bit annoying.

Amazon patents digital resale market

While I fully understand many of the comments here, I still do feel a bit for the artists who create the stuff that everyone thinks they should get for free (or at least, be able to buy once and then sell for the same amount).

I suppose the market is just changing - artists should make their money from touring, right? Although, I'm not totally clear how authors will make much money doing that, but the likes of the Arctic Monkeys should be ok!

(Yes, yes, I know that the big companies get by far the biggest slice of the pie, but I assume the writers get something - but that will be much reduced if people don't pay for as much stuff. Artists/Writers = Good, Big Companies = Bad, but stealing from the Big Companies = stealing from the artists and writers too. :( )

BANG and the server's gone: Man gets 8 months for destroying work computers

It could have been worse...

He could have used Kitchen Gun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-7NDP8V-6A

YouTube's hilarious cat videos could soon cost you $5 a month

It's interesting how quickly this went from the proposal about creating *some* pay channels (created by the producers, not by Google) to OMG GOOGLE ARE GOING TO CHARGE FOR YOUTUBE *RAAAAAAGEFAAAACE*...

:)

Shiny, shiny! The window's behind me...

We are given a choice at work

Fortunately, we're given a choice between matt and gloss here at work (we're all developers with 2 or 3 screens).

NOT A SINGLE PERSON (out of 20 or s) has opted for gloss... I think that tells us something. :)

China's Android users warned of giant botnet

Re: A question or two

>Why no giant botnets or other malware on iOS with its larger market share?

There *IS* malware on iOS. The thing is that you need to jailbreak your device to load apps from anything other than the Apple app store. With Android, you just need to go to settings and enable sideloading to load apps from the SD card.

However, you still do need to explictly go and enable that setting, and when you do it pops up a big warning message saying something like: "ATTENTION: Your phone and personal data are more vulnerable to be attacked by applications from unknown sources blah blah blah".

Re: This is why

>>The average user does not have sufficient knowledge brains to make informed consent.

Maybe so, but I think that your average user will only download stuff from the app store...

Time has already run out for smart watches

Re: No-one wants smart watches?

>>Errr, because the kickstarter types don't know anything? I'd like to see them prise ten million smackers out of a >>red blooded private equity investor for this tat.

But a load of people have ALREADY PAID FOR THEM BECAUSE THEY WANTED THEM! It doesn't matter if "kickstarter types don't know anything". They still wanted the watch, didn't they? Which clearly means that it is not true that no-one wants them. Surely this is trivially obvious?

No-one wants smart watches?

The article wrote: "But that begs a question about just why anyone is targeting a market with products it seems no-one wants?"

No-one wants? If that's the case, why did the Pebble Bluetooth Smart Watch kickstarter gain more than 70,000 pledges and more than $10,000,000 in funding?

Personally, I'm not interested in them - but to say that no-one wants them is clearly untrue.

Fatty French Kilogram needs a new-year diet, say Brit boffins

Re: Post vanished into the ether.

>>The metre is defined in terms of physical constants.

>>The litre is defined in terms of metres.

>>One litre of pure water weighs 1kg.

>>Where's the problem?

One problem is that a litre of pure water AT STANDARD TEMPERATURE AND PRESSURE weighs 1KG,

Pressure is measured in Pascals, which is defined in terms of Newtons - which is itself defined in terms of Kilograms. And there's the big problem - you are trying to define a kilogram in terms of something that is (indirectly) defined in terms of kilograms. Clearly, that's totally bogus.

Latest exoplanet discovery is a virtual CLONE of Earth

Re: just call me picky

>>I'd rather the comfort of a GSV, myself.

Just try to avoid the Sleeper Service. That's my advice.

Kill that Java plugin now! New 0-day exploit running wild online

That reminds me - I forgot to re-enable Java in my browser since the last time this happened. Happily, that means I don't need to do anything now. Seems I don't really need Java enabled in my browser these days.

Amazon puts up CD rack in the cloud, unearths your OLD stuff too

Re: D'oh, for cripes' sake...

>>Will they blow me off and just keep piling up auto-ripped tracks in their cloud until it hits the limit and they start charging me?

You post on a technology site, yet you think that they'd keep a separate copy of identical music for each user? D'oh!

'Shake to charge', similar crapps foul up Amazon Android store

Re: In the Google Play store ....

The Nexus 4 clock looks good to me. Doesn't need special permissions, and it's free.

But if you want to pay for one (shudder), there's ones like "SImple Analog Clock" which look ok.

US patent office: Nice try Apple, but pinch-to-zoom is NOT a new invention

Is it not an "obvious" thing anyway?

Well, it seems a little obvious to me. In the physical world, you can make something bigger by stretching it, or smaller by compressing it - like the design on a balloon. The pinch gesture is an obvious analogue for a touch screen. I realise that double-tapping can also work, but it doesn't make the pinch gesture any less obvious.

* Disclaimer: I clearly know feck-all about patenting things. ;)

Wikipedia doesn't need your money - so why does it keep pestering you?

Well-known Wikipedia-hater in Wikipedia hating shock!

Herpdiderp, I guess.

Stroustrup on next-gen C++: I didn't want to let go of my baby

I programmed in C++ from 1987 until 2005, when we switched to C#. I still do have to maintain our old legacy C++ code from time to time.

My personal opinion is that switching from C++ to C# was the best thing we could have done! Most of what we were doing was UI code, and C++ is frankly totally crap for that. It's pretty good for device drivers and graphics libraries and other low level stuff. But for anything else, it's truly awful. And I say that from a position of having a GREAT DEAL of C++ experience.

Yes, I read - and understood - the seminal C++ books "C++ Templates" (Vandevoorde/Josuttis) and "Modern C++ Design" (Alexandrescu). Oh. My. God. To think I used to think it was all so cool - now I just think the language crawled up it's own arse and died... ;)

That square QR barcode on the poster? Check it's not a sticker

>>But do these apps come up with times that are less fictional than the 'countdown' displays on London bus stops?

The Edinburgh ones are amazingly accurate. Sometimes the buses get delayed in traffic, of course, but normally the times are accurate to within a couple of minutes.

Bus stops in Edinburgh have QR codes (there's an android and ipad app to give you the arrival times for the next few buses at a bus stop). The QR code takes you to the bus times app.

Anyway, I think it's a good example of a QR code which is NOT used for advertising.

The best e-readers for Christmas

(Can't edit my previous reply)

I meant to mention: My wife's pretty much stopped using her Kindle at home now. She always uses her Nexus 10 instead.

Nah, I don't get any eye strain at all. I spend all day reading computer screens - I'm a software developer!

I tell you what I do find makes the most difference - using a 10 inch tablet rather than 7 inch ones (including the Kindle). Reading on my wife's Nexus 10 is amazingly better than reading on a Kindle.

Re: Tablets are NOT e-readers!

I can read on my Nexus 7 for more than 12 hours (reading, not playing games of course).

That's more than 6 times as long as time you mentioned...

I personally don't suffer from eyestrain when reading backlit text (I'd have a nasty time doing my job otherwise), but I do find it easier to read ebooks. I'd have thought the solution to that problem would be to, you know, not sit reading in a dark room?

However, does anyone read actual real books in darkened rooms? With some kind of magic see-in-the-dark eyes?

The Times Newspaper seems to like the Nexus 7...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/20608145

Seems the Times Newspaper likes the Nexus 7, since they'll give you one for £50 if you take out an 18 month sub for the newspaper. (Seems like a good deal if you were actually going to read the Times...)

Slash A THIRD off Surface RT price or it's toast, Microsoft told

>Something sporting a Tegra 3 and running JB4.2 ain't "low end".

But when it only costs £159, it HAS got the low-end sown up, when the other "low end" tablets are a similar price but with much lower specs.

Hearts, minds and balls: Microsoft's Windows 8 Surface gamble

>>Microsoft, true to its name, is a software company which does not do well when it attempts to do hardware.

In fairness, XBox and the Kinect did ok. In fact, isn't the Kinect the fastest selling consumer electronics device ever?