* Posts by jonathanb

2530 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Aug 2009

Microsoft pops preview of 'biggest, most ambitious' Office yet

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: So...

Office 2003 still works and you can still use it.

Apple rejoins EPEAT green tech cert program

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Re: Batteries glued to the case?

They replace the case as well as the battery.

Phishers use less strident subject lines to deliver new cunning attacks

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Now ask me why ...

Email exploits these days don't have infected code as an attachment or a script, they encourage you to visit a website that contains the payload. As a result, it makes no difference whether your email client is Outlook or an ASCII only client.

Retina MacBook Pro nukes Apple's green credentials

jonathanb Silver badge

You can't get it apart safely - you end up with battery goo all over the place. That means when the battery goes, likely to be the first thing to go on it, you can't replace the battery, you have to get a new computer.

Microsoft sets October date for Windows 8 release

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Will have to buy a copy.

I tried Windows 8 on a Parallels VM on my Macbook. It is certainly faster than Windows 7 on the same hardware, and only slightly slower than XP, which is what I use most of the time.

However, two problems with Metro. First, you have to hunt through all the non-important stuff (eg. Canon Utilities which you run once to set up the printer, then never look at again) to find the progs you actually want to run. Second, if you run your VM in window mode, useful if you regularly switch between Mac and Windows progs, finding the exact pixel on the screen that activates the Metro UI isn't that easy.

jonathanb Silver badge

Anyone with a hotmail account already gets free Skydrive. Do you get more storage if you have Windows 8?

How to screw LIBOR and alienate people

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: They're watching you - but how?

If the authorities want to know the location data for 07700 900 123, they can get that easily enough.

Getting location data for a pay as you go phone that has a strong correlation to the location data of a bank issued phone, and probably isn't on the same network, isn't so easy, if that is all the information you have to work with. And this is back in 2007-2008, and they probably don't keep the data for that long unless they were asked to at the time.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: It would be conjecture...but

Barclays had written lots of interest rate swap contracts. Higher interest rates meant they had to pay out more money on these contracts. The total value of the LIBOR swap market was around $300tn, and Barclays is one of the largest players in that market. Barclays weren't the only bank involved in this scam, there were other major players who also stood to benefit from it.

That brings us to the SME swaps scandal, where lots of small businesses were sold unsuitable swap contracts. For example the contracts went on for a lot longer than the duration of the loan they were insuring against. As a result of the LIBOR scandal these businesses had to pay out a lot more money to Barclays and other banks than they should have done, and quite a few went bust or had to downsize as a result, leading to redundancies and unemployment. That does affect Joe Public directly.

Turning to compensation. The entire GDP of the UK is $2.2tn, so 0.7% of the swap market paid as compensation would wipe that out completely.

Study: Climate was hotter in Roman, medieval times than now

jonathanb Silver badge

In Roman times, Egypt was a major producer of wheat. Now it is a desert, so we've always known it was a bit colder back then.

Apple unveils tightened Mountain Lion requirements

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Puma redux

Because it is an incremental upgrade rather than a major new features upgrade, just like Snow Leopard.

British Gas bets you'll pay £150 for heating remote control

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Hmmm..

Or you can just wait 2 minutes once you get home. Switch it on, take your coat and shoes off and it will be ready by the time you get back into the kitchen. That's why nobody is buying these things.

Open source incest: GPL forked by its coauthor

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: fork !=war

The problem here is licence incompatibility meaning that people can't combine code from two different projects with different string copyleft licences. For example Linux can't offer support for ZFS because the licence that the free version of Solaris is released under is not compatible with the GPL.

New UK network touts FREE* mobile broadband

jonathanb Silver badge

Where do I sign up

They didn't pick a very googleable word. A search on Google for "samba" comes up with the following

News articles from other news outlets reporting on the same story

Some server software for sharing files on a LAN

Various things to do with Brazilian dancing.

the Society for AMBulatory Anesthesia[sic], whatever that is

GPS spoofing countermeasures: Your smartphone already has them

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: WiFi MAC database flaw

When I tether my iPod Touch to my Android phone the wifi location on my iPod is pretty accurate, even if I am on a train travelling along at 125mph.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: @Dave Bell

It doesn't have to be free wifi. It can pick up the location from WPA2 protected hotspots even if you don't know the password.

Microsoft names Zeus ringleaders and notifies FBI

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Re: "Or do you prosecute a bank robber for one crime if they've hit ten banks?"

If, for example, you have a burglar up before the magistrates court for one offence, and he is found guilty, he may tell the court he committed 100 other acts of burglary and ask for them to be taken into consideration. The reason he would do that is because the sentence for committing 100 burglaries is a lot less than 100x the sentence for committing 1 burglary. By pleading guilty to these other burglaries and being punished for them, it means he can't be prosecuted in future for them.

These people are guilty of 779,816 counts of unauthorised access to a computer system. English magistrates can only take into consideration the offences they committed in England, possibly Wales and maybe in limited circumstances Scotland and Northern Ireland if there was an English or Welsh link to the offence. They have no jurisdiction in any other country, and can't punish them for offences committed there.

YouView recommends radio hams' pet peeve

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Out of cat5 range?

Or alternatively http://www.maplin.co.uk/cat-5e-network-cable-utp-solid-76

Of course using all 305 meters of it as a single length of cable isn't recommended.

Apple will only reinstate mute kids' app if makers win patent case

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Sounds like an opportunity

We are talking about a table app that doesn't require a network connection to run, and if the kid needs it to talk to people, it probably isn't going to be used for anything else. The app costs $300, so it is a major investment, not an impulse purchase. If you support even just one model of android slab, that gives people exactly the same amount of choice that the had with the ipad app. A wifi slab would be perfectly fine, and the wifi is likely to be switched off most of the time to extend battery life.

They could even buy a load of slabs and sell them with the app pre-installed.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Sounds like an opportunity

With Android, you don't have to distribute it on the Play store, you can sell it yourself, and email it, provide password protected access to a download site of whatever. Most Android devices support non-market installs and the company could provide a list of the slabs they support. People would buy that particular slab just to run the software on it.

Assange takes refuge in Ecuadorian embassy

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Just use a search engine.

Probably because if you want to know what happened in Scotland, or in Northern Ireland during the times they were responsible for extraditions, those records aren't held in Whitehall and you would need to ask the question in Hollyrood or Stormont rather than Westmister.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Just out of curiosity...

Technically, they logged on to their Natwest Stockbroker accounts and sold their holdings of Enron shares before they went belly up, as a lot of people did. The Dept of Public Prosecutions here thought there was no case to answer, and I really don't understand what jurisdiction the US authorities have over the matter.

iOS was SO much more valuable to Google than Android - until Maps

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Licensing payments for search

If it is anything like Mozilla, Google will pay Apple a % of the advertising revenue they get from iDevice users in return for making them the default search engine.

Tesco grabs Peter Gabriel's musical streamer

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Self-service checkouts

Back when XP was the latest and greatest, the ATMs used NT4. They use old versions of Windows because it means cheaper hardware, and also because most of the bugs and security holes have been fixed.

Scottish council muzzles 9-year-old school dinner photo blogger

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Excellent Work by the Council

The powers that be are quite happy to have millions of cctv cameras everywhere to watch over us.

Why are they so concerned when we deploy a few of our cameras to watch over them?

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Quantity

There is an obesity crisis because the school dinners aren't sufficient to fill the kids up, so they supplement it with crisps and chocolate.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Utter Disgrace...

Deep fried mars bars are about as easy to find in Scotland as frogs legs are in Paris. Everyone says they know someone who has seen one, but nobody actually has seen one themselves.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: A lesson in big business

As other's have said, the lesson isn't over yet. She had 2m visitors before the ban. How many hundreds of millions of new visitors will this ban generate. I hadn't head of it before today.

I've posted a comment on her blog suggesting that she gets round the ban by drawing pictures of the food, or by getting a friend who is good at art to do it for her. Other people have suggested the same thing.

Blighty's new anti-bribe law will do more HARM than good

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Blame the US - Yep

The foreign currupt practices act only bans bribing of foreigners. Bribing American politicians in the form of campaign contributions is perfectly legal.

The Bribery Act bans it everywhere, UK included. The first prosecution was against a magistrate's court clerk who accepted bribes for "forgetting" to log motoring offences on the DVLA database.

Retina Display detachment

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Apple took out the Ethernet port

Your thin light laptop isn't so good if you have to carry round a bag of adapters to go with it. They may not be very heavy, but trying to find them is a pain.

jonathanb Silver badge

"He really ought to have torrented some films before catching his flight"

This being apple, he ought to have bought his films on iTunes, then he can stream them, wirelessly of course, from iCloud.

Scots council: 9-yr-old lunch blogger was causing 'distress and harm'

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Ban lifted

It was the lead councillor who ordered the ban to be overturned.

jonathanb Silver badge
Happy

The ban has now been lifted

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-18454800

It didn't take long.

Vodafone's small, controversial tax bill validated by UK.gov

jonathanb Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Rich get richer etc

For basic rate tax payers, the % is effectively 0%, for higher rate tax payers it is effectively 25% and for additional rate tax payers it is effectively 36.111111111...%

The dividend tax rates are 10%, 32.5% and 42.5%.

Dividends are treated as being paid net of a notional tax of 10%, which is not refundable. You have to pay the balance due if any. A basic rate tax payer will have no further tax to pay. The company doesn't actually pay this notional tax.

If you are a higher rate tax payer, and receive a dividend of £90, it is treated as being a £100 dividend with £10 tax deducted. Your tax liability on that is £32.50, of which £10 has already been paid, leaving £22.50 left to pay. £22.50 is 25% of £90, hence the 25% effective tax rate.

This was Gordon Brown's invention, it used to be much simpler.

That new 'Microsoft GCSE': We reveal what's in it

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Good words

Or, given that they probably still have the same computers that they had when I was at school, BBC Basic.

Apple's Retina Macs: A little too elite?

jonathanb Silver badge

I believe Windows 7 itself does, but a lot of the software written for it doesn't.

Three touts 'unlimited' Euro data roaming for a fiver a day

jonathanb Silver badge

O2 doing it as well

A message I got yesterday

"O2: From July, we're changing the way you can use your mobile in Europe. You'll pay a 50p connection charge to make or receive a call, then use your UK call allowance. And no more than £1.99 for a day of data. For more info (including standard tariff alternative), visit http://go.o2.co.uk/o2trpm"

When you follow the link, you find that "unlimited" means 25MB, about 1m 15s of iPlayer streaming.

Thief open-sources Richard Stallman's laptop, passport, visa

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: I hope he has learned his lesson

There's no reason why he can't rsync his data to one of the FSF servers.

Brit judge orders Facebook to rip masks from anonymous cowards

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Will Facebook take any notice

I don't think Facebook are being obstructive here. It would be against the law for them to release someone else's personal data without a court order. Now they have the court order, I'm sure they will hand over the details.

jonathanb Silver badge

Not quite

It means she can now find out which ISP to serve a Norwich Pharmacarl Order on. If it is a mobile network or public wifi, then they probably can't be traced.

Otherwise, the next problem is to find out which of the account holder's children is responsible for the trolling.

Japan still in love with the fax

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Yes

It means "You have not changed the default paper size in Word from US Letter to A4. Please cancel the print job, change the settings in Word and send the document to the printer again with the correct paper size."

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Fax.... machines?

They are like a photocopier where the scanner and printer are at opposite ends of a telephone line.

Samsung's projector phone beamed up to Blighty

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: 720p...

It is 15 lumens. I did a quick google search for projectors. The first link was a google ad for dell, and the cheapest "small room" projector they do is 2500 lumens. If you ask their sales rep what it is like, they would probably say it is OK, but you are better getting one if their more expensive and brighter projectors. 15lm is probably around the typical brightness of a phone screen, fine to look at, but not to look with.

16GB BlackBerry PlayBook flushed away by RIM

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: What a load of...

While a webmail client may be a work-around of sorts, it is much more convenient to have a native email client, especially if you have lots of email accounts. The native email clients on the iPad and Android slabs will download emails in the background, tell you via the home screen how many unread emails you have, and let you check them much more quickly. The only time webmail gets used on my fondleslab is when someone else wants to check their email on it.

Euro 2012: England is semi-final probability

jonathanb Silver badge

What does the octopus say?

Paul the Octopus was far more accurate in his predictions last time round. He's no longer with us, but if there are any other octopi around, I am more interested in their predictions than those of football statisticians.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: University of where?

The bookies balance their book so they have to pay out pretty much the same amount no matter who wins.

Because people in England will bet on their team winning regardless of any objective assessment of their team's potential performance, the bookies will be overweight on England, and have to adjust the odds accordingly.

Ten... bits of Jubilee tat tech

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Here in Sonoma, CA ...

I don't know whether the Faux News studios are based in Hollywood, but other than that, their perception is entirely correct.

HMRC Tax Calc

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: PAYE?

It is useful if you want to know how your salary will translate into money in your pocket if you get a new job, a pay rise, or start a new tax year in your current job and pay.

UK websites: No one bothers with cookie law, why should we?

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: While we are on the subject...

It's called the "do not track" header. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/01/advertisers_angry_do_not_track/

Most sites seem to ignore that when determining whether or not I have given them "implied consent".

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: 55 websites?

Actually it will if the sample is properly selected. You don't actually need that big a sample.

AMD and Intel extreme desktop CPU workout

jonathanb Silver badge

A better comparison

How does the AMD compare with an Intel chip at the same price point?