* Posts by heyrick

6567 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Dec 2009

SHOCK research reveals Wi-Fi not as nippy as Ethernet

heyrick Silver badge

WiFi or just bad planning?

There is a little app on my phone that can display all the WiFi channels and their signal strengths. Sometimes when I am out in town having a meal, I fire it up to see what is around. I'll tell you what is around. There is one smart guy with the world to himself on channel 1. Then there is everybody else, bang smack in the middle of the band, all on top of each other. I'd guess there are seven to nine APs, but it is hard to read.

The app is "Wifi Analyser", I'd recommend anybody with an Android phone to try it to find a nice quiet channel you can call your own, instead of you router's default setting of "let's hog the middle lane".

Cute download Firefox, 'treat a cub' vid downed by IE glitch

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Happy

Kawaiiiiiiiiiiiii!

(see title)

Spooks want backdoor into your network

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Nationalised infrastructure?

Didn't we have a lot of that in the '80s before it was all flogged off?

What exactly is the reality of the threat? I mean, is it viable to panic over the risk of threats to the electrical network? If so, the question is not to spy on everybody "for signs of hacking", but rather to devise a way of the electric network to be fault tolerant, along with enhanced systems in order to mean that one compromised machine isn't automatically authorised to do whatever it wants within the system.

Hacker kills his own Pwn2Own bug for Android phones

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Hey, if it is so trivial to root the device...

...can we have a legit app to root and modify the hosts file to turn off some of the web adverts? It's kinda annoying in an EDGE-only area to wait, like, forever for something uninteresting to load up...

Amazon outlines Android bill of rights

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Cause and effect?

Would you count DVD ripping as piracy if it is my own DVD? What about those borrowed from a library? Point is, thanks to whatever they changed in Macrovision around 2000, many newer titles screw up my analogue TV and just point blank are not watchable on my netbook using the video capture box. Thus in order to watch some of the bigger titles I have to rip the thing (which on my geriatric hardware runs to maybe 8fps, so it is annoying).

Elsewhere you will see both DVD and Bluray images, so what purpose has DRM solved except to try to lock in customers - look at Sony with their anti-hack legal mess...

Sony wins subpoenas revealing visitors to PS3 jailbreaker site

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Unhappy

I had an old recycled Sky Digibox

I used it to watch stuff on both the Sky platform and the Astra 1 cluster. Given this was the days before BBC went free to air, I spent most of the time with Astra 1.

Now, we had necessary firmware updates to give radio channels a zero prefix, and along the way stopped the "Other channels" from working until the thing had valid up to date EPG data.

Likewise this, if I had a games console, I would not trust it to have any capabilities beyond those of being a games console. That it could run another operating system is...not a gaming function.

.

That said, with the "Other OS" referred to in any advertising literature, on the box, etc? If so, maybe those affected could look to launching their own action against Sony, as it shouldn't be too far beyond the realms of reality to demonstrate that the choice and purchase of the equipment was based heavily on a feature that was later arbitrarily removed. But if there was no publicity promoting the feature, let this be a lesson...

Unhappy face as what is the big deal so long as you aren't trying to cheat, rip off games, or otherwise deprive Sony of income...

Android malware attacks show perils of Google openness

heyrick Silver badge

You might have answered your own question

You say "if I buy an app". Fair enough, but what about all the free ones and the updates and revisions? Who will pay to verify there is nothing nasty in any of those? Apple/Google might be willing to offer a full vetting process. Are you willing to pay?

heyrick Silver badge

What would be useful...

...is if we stopped accepting crap like manufacturers putting out outdated versions, lack of support, and reliance on the chain of command.

I am writing this on a Motorola Defy. It is running 2.1. Why? Because Google make a version, Motorola hacks it to fit their phones, then Orange hacks it further to fit their package. Thus if a vulnerability is discovered, I'll get an update when?

These things are tiny computers running an actual operating system and real applications, so they should have a proper update/patch system.

Red Hat: 'Yes, we undercut Oracle with hidden Linux patches'

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WTF?

WTF?

Are you certain you even understand what this article is about?

Microsoft and Google tag-team GeoTag patent

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Stop

This is getting silly

How much longer do you think it will be before they realise that the patent system is messed up, the e.d. court of Texas has shown sufficient bias that one wonders if there is any actual justice served there, and that patent trolls serve no useful purpose.

Really, it is like "the law" has given one of the world's largest economies a way to repeatedly shoot itself in the foot (while making itself increasingly marginalised).

Tainted apps worm into official Android store

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I wish Google would man up

...and allow us to allow/deny app permissions ourselves. A problem is full internet access is required for embedded adverts, but the same could be used for pushing out stolen data.

Sheila's Fails? The statistics of biological risk

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WTF?

If this makes it much further...

Then by the time I'm old, we'll be able to claim age discrimination so I can get myself medical insurance for the price of a twenty year old (despite plenty of evidence that I'm more likely to conk out expensively).

But I'm not stupid... what this means is a twenty year old will be able to get medical for the same price as an OAP...

Kinect blesses rescue robot with 3D sight

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"Microsoft bad, the rest of the world good,"

???

Where you been this last decade? There's a new guy vying for the evil megacorp honours. To give you a clue, "do no evil" is their mantra, but perhaps they're the only ones who actually believe it. Don't get me wrong, the new megacorp has done some amazing things for the world, it's just that they don't seem to get the concept of privacy.

As for Microsoft... There's an equal viable choice that I can use without buying some weird specialist computer. In fact, it will happily co-exist on the same machine as Windows. It can do pretty much all the stuff Windows does. It comes with an office suite too, So Microsoft's days of buy-and-extinguish are history. I think deep down inside Microsoft is having to face some difficult decisions as the world is fast catching up, and I don't think it will be too long before the likes of Ubuntu pass The Granny Test. Hell, it already installs and configures itself more quickly, it is just stuff like installing printer drivers and apt-get for "dirty" codecs that get tricky. But that'll come... I guess what I'm saying is does anybody, these days, much care if Microsoft is evil or not?

It's that other one you gotta watch out for.

Anon Mail commenters to stay anon

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@ John F***ing Stepp

"people who think our President is a Fundamentalist Christian Muslim"

A what?

I'm sorry, my brain just raised SIGSEGV and is core-dumping all over the floor. There are some things that just defy any sort of rational logic...

heyrick Silver badge

One downvote?

That would be the obligatory Mail reader?

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@ Is it me?

Where were the moderators?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/08/user_comments_ruling/

German data regulators move to tighten IP address laws

heyrick Silver badge

Problem...

So if Germany implements this law, what effect would this really have? Surely it will just stop German sites from cluttering up with klingeltöne adverts and such, but what about when a German national visits a British site (El Reg), an American site, a Chinese site... what hope is there for German jurisdiction to mean diddly-squat in an international context?

Man found guilty of battery after ejaculating in co-worker's drink

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@ Stuart Duel

Perhaps some of us just have standards?

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@ AC

Did the guy have "learning difficulties" or was he just acting like The Stifler was his role model? And, frankly, what does "learning difficulties" have that would excuse this sort of behaviour?

I speak, by the way, as a person with "learning difficulties" (with scare quotes and all) who gets a bit pissed off when this reason is dragged out to excuse all sorts of nonsense. If he had problems reading, or writing, or adding up... fine, that's one thing. But to think doing this was okay? Come on...

heyrick Silver badge

Ditto

There are many things I won't allow in my mouth: octopus tentacles, snails, olives, semen... see where I'm going with this?

Protecting users from themselves

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Stop asking me to change my damn password!!!

I have a set of passwords that I use (no, I don't recycle them). I am not going to go into detail but I use words from four languages, numerics and (where permitted) symbols. Everything makes sense (because I can't get the hang of "fksje04csw" type passwords). They rank as medium-strong to strong. The sites with these passwords have a little story which describes the password. Crazy stuff, but memorable. I can look at a site and bash out a complicated 12 character password using this method.

Or you can tell me I have to change my passwords every X <period>, then I'd need to start writing passwords down. And when they're no longer safely stored in my head, any hope of security (on my end) vanishes.

Thankfully, for the time being, most sites with forced changes are braindead so I can set my password to "sacrif1ce" (obligatory digit!) and immediately change it back to what it was. ;-)

I'd like to hear if anybody has any evidence to say that forced password changing increases security; for I know my bank in the UK used to do this (NatWest, circa Y2K) and I saw the customer advisors look up their current password from notepads and such several times, and as for my work, in a certain office, the back of a catalogue has a long list of previous computer-generated passwords, each crossed out as a new one is written. These examples, to me, would seem to fall into the category of protecting the user from themself, but then is the user really the problem, or the misconception that getting everybody to regularly change passwords makes everything more secure?

Mobile spyware tool helps paranoid spouses prove themselves right

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Affair fail?

Surely the simplest solution to cheating is to pick up a cheap pay as you go phone (my supermarket will do one for a mere €20), disable the ringer (or keep it off when at home), and simply use that instead of your regular phone. Benefit? If it all goes to pot, just chuck the phone, or get one per girlfriend...

For what it's worth, I'm single, and not speaking from experience.

Malware endemic even on protected PCs

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False positives?

Just thought I'd add my €0,02 grumble for bloody ClamAV (etc). Doing a site upload the other day, I was warned of a trojan. Something Avast didn't catch? I tossed the file to VirusTotal and three products (ClamAV, TheHacker, and something with a Chinese-sounding name) reported the file was infected with a trojan, though neither agreed on what the trojan was. So I looked up info on the alleged infection, tore the file to bits. Then sent info to the author of the software involved, who confirmed it was a false positive.

It is stuff build using the latest version of the ClickTeam Installer (I use this as it is to-the-point without loads of complications). Anything built using that will trigger those three A/V products. And warn of a trojan in the machine.

So given some antivirus products miss things, while others see what isn't there, I would be highly sceptical of a report claiming these sorts of things...

Kid spanks a grand on Xbox using Mum's bank card

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The "security code"

I've ordered stuff from a few (secure) American sites, who have not asked for this code. Perhaps Americans don't use it as much as Europeans?

heyrick Silver badge

Doesn't it have parental controls?

Spending limit?

ROBOT COP scatters LIVE GRENADES in San Francisco STREET

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"Are you kidding me?"

Didn't something fall out of the bag, tearing it slightly, before we all saw the grenade fall out? I wonder if there was another one...

I watched it on YouTube, it suggested this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhKKJ4UQ3_A - purile, mindless, stupid, and childishly funny. ;-)

Punters 'pooh-pooh video on demand'

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Choice?

I rarely watch broadcast TV. I record stuff I'm interested in on my OSD and watch it when I feel like it. Partial benefit for recording while I am at work, and partial benefit to making it a doddle to skip adverts, title sequences, etc.

If I had true on-demand video, the choice would be simple (and probably not supported). Cute Asians, zombies, and loads of fake blood. Failing that, any film with that stringy-haired Japanese ghost-girl... Stack 'em up, let 'em play.

I guess the secret to enjoying VOD is in first knowing what you enjoy.

Motorola Super Bowl ad rips Apple drones

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Coat

Disappointed

So this amusing earbud-wearing planet is on screen, with swirly stars and the words "One authority", then "One design", and then "One way to work". After that it went on about choices and stuff.

Bah. It should have said "One ring to rule them all".

BOFH: There's no 'I' in team, but there's a 'u' in suck

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@ Will Godfrey

"Oh, and cattle prods are so last decade :)"

Indeed. Surely we've upgraded to illegal import tasers by now. So small, so discreet, so vicious.

Flickr flap illuminates cloud concerns

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@ Ian Michael Gumby

Maintain *what* backup? Does Flickr provide a way to retrieve all of the comments and such associated with an account? Does it provide a way to replace 'lost' pictures with replacements retaining the same URL? It isn't about whether or not stuff is "backed up", it is about all of the added services (metadata) that enrich the site and the user experience that cannot be easily restored.

However, this article does have a valid point to make asking what your recourse is in cloud computing, as enterprising people are finding more ingenious ways to provide services and functionality that operates "in the cloud". Sure, it might be nice if I was a globetrotter to be able to sign in on any compatible terminal/phone/etc and do my wordprocessing and check my accounts, but if we think going cloudy is the way of the future, we better think a lot harder, for the outlook is cloudy with a chance of rain...

Microsoft issues temp fix for serious Windows security bug

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@ AC

Hmmm, how about you actually read the post you are replying to before screaming about how we all slag off IE and we're wrong to say it is tied up in the OS.

Here's a hint. Find a way to nuke "mshtml.dll". That big ol' DLL is the heart of IE. Lots of stuff won't work properly. No worries, just fire up System Restore and backtrack to fix... oh, wait... it wants mshtml.dll because ta-da, it is written in html/javascript (take a look inside \windows\system32\Restore\rstrui.exe). Perhaps Microsoft have "unbundled" IE from being supplied with Windows, but we are probably talking \Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe - unless you really think a complete modern web browser is a 91K program.

There, in fact, I have highlighted a rather interesting situation. System Restore, helps clean up crappy messes, needs the IE engine to work. As does a bunch of other stuff that is NOT a web browser. Hence my original question - what ELSE would be affected by something that supposedly affects IE, given IE's tight integration with the system.

heyrick Silver badge

Why IE is still around

Have you looked at the Windows filing system interface lately? It is heavily dependent on IE, on core IE parts, and in some places gives a rather IE-like behaviour.

I guess an interesting question would not be "is IE affected", but rather "what other things may be affected"?

heyrick Silver badge

Internet Explorer is the only attack vector for the vulnerability,

The title says it all, over and over and over.

I am, however, a bit surprised by the anti-IE-post downvotes. Is there a secret IE fan club or something? Well, not that it matters. A hundred thousand downvotes won't make it all better...

UK.gov braces for Anonymous hacklash

heyrick Silver badge
Pint

Life lessons...?

So there is no such thing as clever psychology to push a point that might be otherwise missed? Don't you know the Good Cop/Bad Cop cliché? How about items being punted by attractively underdressed females? Or how about a declaration of war from a group thought of as troublemakers being pushed around "open source" websites (somewhat less than accurate) as opposed to "forums" (somewhat more accurate). But, hey, believe what you will. Maybe I am tilting at imaginary windmills. I do notice I'm not the only one to spot this inaccuracy. So I try to look behind the words to understand the motivation. Mistake or agenda? Don't listen to me, make your own mind up!

Oh, and for what it is worth, please don't mistake me for somebody who supports Anonymous, or Assange. I am interested in Wikileaks for the fact that there have been too many lies and too many cover-ups by the major governments. Do we have trust in them? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Will airing some dirty little secrets help? Perhaps, perhaps not. It is an idea. A good one? A bad one? I think it says a lot about our society that something like Wikileaks turned up in the first place.

Three things I can say, for definite. 1. I don't like Assange. A man doing what he is doing shouldn't have an ego that size. I half expect him to turn up to his next interview wearing a Superman outfit. Or maybe Batman, the "caped crusader". Whatever, it isn't important. 2. Nor are suggestions of "megaleaks". Either the info is there, or it isn't. Going all "oooh, this is gonna hurt baaaaad!" is, frankly, a bit pathetic. 3. And the final thing? Anonymous are straying into Epic Fail territory with their denial of service plans. It means exactly diddly-squat. You see, fourteen hundred thousand computers bringing uk.gov to its knees is not a protest. It is just a bunch of possibly hijacked computers firing off packets. Whoo. We might get an article about it in El Reg (concentrating more on the attack vector than who&why). You want a protest, how about fourteen hundred thousand actual real living people (though in these days of rampant apathy, I'd settle for zombies) standing around the streets of London waving placards. THAT is a protest. That might carry some weight. That might make the world headlines. That might bring about change.

heyrick Silver badge

@ Matt Bryant

"No, it is not well established at all, it is rare as a form of political protest," Maybe he is French? It seems barely a month goes by that somebody here isn't out on strike for something. But, then, the ability to withhold your services in order to defend your conditions of work is something that is codified (in a complicated way) into the Code du Travail [union backed, not wildcat]

"Yes, it's called democracy, also known as the will of the majority." Oh, that's cute. Don't forget the so-called democracy allows a voter to choose the *local* candidate for which party will represent them in their locality. All of this is added up to determine which party shall prevail (or <cough> not) in Westminster. And the leader of the party? The ideas guy who shapes the view of the party and influences the direction of the country? Ummm... Yeah. Unlike numerous other western countries, the British voter didn't get a tick-box for "David Cameron" (etc). Then there's the Scottish problem of what powers Holyrood has vs Westminster. The UK has a constitution of sorts, but nothing is codified in one place. But then under British law, the government has supremacy, thus even if there was a constitution there would be no grounds for arguing that a new law is "unconstitutional". The best we have is to say that it would be contrary to agreed EU legislature. But even that can be ignored - retained DNA samples being an example. Oh, and incidentally the voter turnout for recent UK elections has been around two thirds. Democracy can be decided by a mere third of the populace. Does this represent a majority, or only those who bothered to get up off their asses and vote?

That said, what do Anon think they are going to achieve screwing with government servers? "Oooh yes, we crashed www.taxdisc.direct.gov.uk, oooh, oooh". Yeah. Right... They do understand, don't they, that the arrested members were arrested because what those people did is considered illegal under British law? If Anon want to do something useful, why don't they fight the extradition of Gary McKinnon? Or is it better to big it up and provide a warning from "the citizens of the world". How could they write that with a straight face? There is some truth in their letter, but is DDoS the protest for the new millennium? <yawn>

heyrick Silver badge

@ Matt Bryant

Before you consider my view to be an alternative reality (and thanks, I'll take that as a compliment ;-) ), why not try it? The open letter begins "Dear UK government, We are Anonymous". Google that phrase. Look at the results provided: pdfarchive, facebook, indymedia, rage3d.com forum, politicalfailblog. And in the immediate list of results, how many "open source" sites do you see listed?

This isn't to say that there is no open source site carrying the letter, however I believe that "This has since been circulated around many open source websites" would read a lot better, and more accurately, as "This has since been circulated around many forums and chat rooms".

While it is a bit foolish to kick "the Man" at every given opportunity (for therein lies the danger of tin foil hats), it is equally foolish to implicity trust. The governmental use of open source may be purely motivated by economics, both now (lack of licences) and future (not tied to the whims of a specific vendor). I'm not asking you to join my "alternative" view, I'm just asking that you open your eyes a little wider.

heyrick Silver badge

@ Scorchio!!

While what you say is technically correct and they merely stated a category of website where such material is to be found, you must look deeper to understand the psychology involved. Was it merely stating that open source websites circulate this propaganda, or is it subtley trying to sow seeds in the minds of readers (knowing that the more gullible hacks will completely misunderstand this) to give them the impression that "open source = evil"? And while we are at it, it would be nice for a list of said "open source websites" to be provided because I'm having trouble imagining that planetsourcecode and sourceforge (etc) would be a willing host to declarations of war from a hacker group against a bunch of governmental miscreants who obviously want to test if their web server is suitably hardened.

Well, I guess I might see the threat on an open source site if it was rewritten in Cobal or FORTRAN (come on, do it oldschool!). Otherwise...

heyrick Silver badge

A serious declaration of war...

...as opposed to, what, a half-hearted one?

World shrugs as IPv4 addresses finally exhausted

heyrick Silver badge

IPv4 and IPv6

I wasn't talking about the NIC, I was talking higher up. IPv4 capable software *cannot* talk to IPv6 sites. There is no transition, there is no 00:00:ip:v4:ad:dr.

heyrick Silver badge

Rails and canals? Or old and new?

On my network I have an assortment of machines, some of which are older and not IPv6 capable (and probably never will be). I would hope somebody could come up with a clever solution like you want to visit www.theregister.co.uk which is at something horrid like 54:34:2d:ec:49. The router (Livebox, etc) will intercept this and feed you a packet from 192.254.1.3 (addresses assigned incrementally). When your machine tries to talk to 192.254.1.3 the router will see this and fudge it to be the correct IPv6 packet outgoing.

Just an idea, might be technically bogus. The problem as I see it is you are IPv6 or you are IPv4, there's no "both" option. So it isn't quite the same as introducing colour TV (which still works with black and white sets). It is more like digital TV where you need a new one, or a plug-in box (plus hookup complications)...

Flash versus HTML 5

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Flash is horrible?

Motorola Defy. Some Flash is tragic, like trying to play YouTube videos in the browser instead of the dedicated player. But I've just discovered that there are KFCs in France to rescue me from the monotony of McDo. www.kfc.fr. It's a big wodge of Flash. Which worked. On my phone. The only thing that didn't was the store locator - I think that is Java or something? Android's browser doesn't have a "view source" option.

Oh, and not having NoScript on the phone, I see quite a lot of Flash. Which is slow and annoying over EDGE... but works. Doesn't drag the phone to a crawl, and if the browser slows down, you don't need the task manager, you just need to close the window by tapping menu, then windows then tap the '-' next to the one to close. Don't "back" out of the browser as it seems to me that Android is incapable of actually quitting an application...

Anyway. Flash. Some works, some is slow. Just like a PC.

Motorola Defy Android smartphone

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Heart

A few points about this phone

Firstly, the music player looks nice. Mine is pretty tragic. It would appear that not only is Android different between manufacturers, but there's a third layer of abstraction with the provider. In my case, Orange. The "Connected Music Player" is poor, but it does Shoutcast - I listen to that a lot. I have installed WinAmp, but it doesn't do Shoutcast on 2.1.

You got 720p to work? Perhaps that is the difference between Motoblur and without? I can *almost* get it working, but the picture is jittery. Maps, navigation, all that stuff is a delight to use. I know the great GoogleBot can track my every move when I have GPS on, but it's kinda cool to be driving down the road looking at your little arrow moving on the map (child at heart, and no, I'm not the driver...).

The camera is pretty naff. It is fast and does all it is supposed to, but it seems like the pictures are too heavily compressed, so much that everything looks just a little bit blurry. But, then, it's a camera on a phone, not a dedicated pointy-clicky. It is useful to have handy.

I must tell you a few things about Swype. Where's the dictionary? It doesn't integrate with the phone's user dictionary. It has no "learning" mode, instead words tapped in my hand will be accepted into the Swype dictionary (typos and all) when you press Space. You can remove things that get in the way ( i'll instead of I'll ) but there is no way to view/edit the dictionary, and there is no way to switch off its learning mode. When you're taking part in forums with code and part numbers, you really wish Swype wouldn't remember all this stuff. There's also a security implication - is it remembering passwords too?

Voice quality to a landline is lovely. Voice quality to a mobile isn't. I find it echoey and - get this - when *I* am speaking, the other person is muted. WTF?

The "Data Manager" sounds like a nice idea, but there is a fatal flaw. With the data manager on, the News app will not sync my RSS feeds (maybe 100K tops). Conversely, the email app will happily attempt to fetch a 10Mb attachment. Over the mobile network. With Data saving options enabled. Hasn't it heard of fetching headers? Well, I guess I am asking too much of an app that insists on sending everything base64 encoded!

.

It isn't all bad. Battery life is acceptable. I don't know what is good and bad as my last phone was nowhere near this sophisticated. Let's just say if I forget to charge it one night, the world won't end. There is also a useful "Flight mode" to turn off all the radio comms, and a cute back door that you can engage Flight Mode and then turn WiFi on, making it a little mini-tablet thing. The display is lovely. I mean seriously nice. A clarity such that you can read the browser even when zoomed out to the smallest text size. The phone, in general, is fairly nippy in operation.

I have serious complaints regarding the version of Android used, and also the lack of controls (script/cross-site/etc blocking), but much of this rests on Google's head, not Motorola. Even if a version 2.3 of Android appeared for the Defy tomorrow, would we get 2.4, 2.5? Why can't the operating system perform its own security updates? It is a real operating system in there, time we realised that.

I picked the Defy from the ones available because it was solid looking and had a good display. My main criteria, as I don't use the phone part much, was to play music, to have a decent web browser that can work from WiFi, and something that can be a pocket-sized PDF datasheet library. On all three counts, it hits a home run.

.

My advice, if you like reading, don't bother with the Kindle app. I don't know about in the UK, but here in France I think Kindle was "epic fail". There's scant mention of it at amazon.fr, and I get pointed to the American kindle store, where prices are in dollars, some free stuff isn't free here (why!?) and some things simply aren't available here. Such as a favourite childhood story "The Secret Garden". So instead go to Google market and look for an app called "Laputa" (wasn't that a Ghibli? Castle in the sky?). It is a free app to read free books. There are no new blockbusters, but there's loads of older stuff (including "The Secret Garden"), plus authors making their own releases. I'm currently reading an odd (e)book called "Tokyo Zero". I can lie in bed on my side with my Defy reading... It's quite relaxing.

Summary: It isn't perfect, but I think I've found a new friend.

Assange relishes US banks 'squirming' over 'megaleak'

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What a dick

Assange.

Please.

STFU.

And these new leaks, I hope they are better than the recent US "cables" which seemed to me an exercise in stating the obvious...

Drive-by exploit slurps sensitive data from Android phones

heyrick Silver badge

Abandon privacy all ye who enter here

Ditto everything Hans 1 said. And add extra because the built-in browser, while nifty and good-looking, is APPALLING when it comes to basic security issues. There's no filtering what can run on the browser (a la NoScript). There's no per-site preferences, scripting is either "on" or "off" (likewise Flash, etc). There's not even a way to view/edit/manage remembered passwords (if any). I will wait patiently for some version of Firefox for Android.

Right now marks my first week of owning an Android phone and it is pretty amazing compared to the sort of stuff I am used to. However it seems to me that the big flaw is Android is that it seems to be a case of some developers throwing in every single "awesome" feature they could think of, yet the system is not mature enough to have the features you really need. For example, using the Motoblur version as an example (and there, as Hans said, is fragmentation - there appears to be a huge lack of consistency between different brands), there is a useful "Data saver" to help me not burn silly amounts of data when on EDGE/3G. But the actual implementation is broken in that the news app will not sync a dozen RSS feeds, but the mail app will try to pull a 10Mb attachment to an email. It should, for a message that size, retrieve the headers and prompt if you really want to do that over mobile comms. But the system is immature. Far better for cool bells and whistles. Take for example to Market. You select an application, you get asked to accept the required permissions. Um, so where are the tick-boxes to say "you can read my SD card but you ain't touchin' my contacts list"? Why does the app have the right to "access files and data on SD card"? Why is there no sandbox like /sdcard/app/<appname> ? Maybe in a few years when people stop going "oh wow" and start thinking what they really want and need we'll see basic security and privacy issues tightened up. [and no, "rooting" the device is out of the question, these topics should be addressed "out of the box"]

I completely understand why Google, as an advertising playground, failed to address these points. But to provide a system with such a lack of thought for the end-users wishes and desires is, frankly, a bit shit. No, I do *not* want Facebook to track everywhere I go thanks to the "Like" button. No, I don't want any number of arbitrary scripts to be fetched and run (especially when out in the sticks, the net runs at around 10Kb/sec).

However, the title of this post, sums up my general opinion of Android so far. It is way too eager to share an awful lot of things with an awful lot of entities I don't know. I turned off the GPS because it was a bit disconcerting when a weather app started to ask me for a post code and after a moment of contemplation, told me where I was. Under my breath I told it where it could go... ;-)

So here we have yet another story of loaded links doing evil things. I guess it is a welcome change that it isn't Windows, but on the other hand you do wonder when Android will stop being feature bloat and start being core functionality. The fact that my (new) phone runs 2.1 and might some day run 2.2 while the devs are busy with 2.3 (and by then probably 2.5) shows part of the problems with the system. Perhaps half of my pet quirks are already fixed? And I'll see this when? When Motorola get around to it? Is that a "when" or is that an "if"?

Google 'Do Not Track' extension preempts feds, Mozilla

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Dickhead advertisers

I guess they work on the same sort of principle as the "pick-up artist". They'll send out a few hundred thousand spams, if ten people think "oooh, I'll score my diazepam from these guys" then they will have made those additional sales. "Conversion rate" probably matters a lot if you are a double glazing rep going from house to house to punt your wares. Conversion rate probably doesn't matter if you can click a few on-screen buttons and let a million people know about your product. It's damn-near free and there are no troublesome ethics committees to oversee the advertising to make sure it is legal and acceptable etc. That's why it is so attractive to dickhead companies (or maybe "hustlers" might be a better word?).

As to your fundamental principle - I absolutely agree. There is no way in hell I'd buy meds on-line. There is also no way in hell I'm going to watch a DFS sale advert and suddenly decide I need a new sofa. Like you, if I need something I will look it up. In several places. And see who offers the best price and after-sales, and how both the product and company rank in user reviews (and I actually read the reviews, not look at stars, so I can mentally filter suspected shills). I guess we're an advertiser's worst nightmare. ;-) Still, throwing more and more crap at us is not going to make us cave, quite the opposite, I say!

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Root my phone...?

I need a 30 hour day. There's PC code here, ARM code there, I'm trying to get to grips with the insides of my (MPEG4) video recorder... and katakana... and I think the squiggly glyphs might prove to be a simpler proposition!

In short, I decided when I got my phone that it is to be a *tool*. No rooting it, no downloading the SDK, no taking it apart. No matter how much my inner moppet might want to do all of that. I just don't have the time or resources to take on something like that.

And yes, this is the first tech gadget I've ever owned that didn't have its warranty voided before it was out of its box. ;-)

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When will this be available for Android?

I am writing this on an Android phone and the level of advertising is quite annoying. While you can raise all sorts of "this website/app is funded by adverts", keep in mind that when I'm away from the home WiFi, every advert is costing me, and possibly more than the revenue offered "per view".

I especially take offence at the constant barrage of flirt adverts. Anybody would think I was a lonely bored male thirty-something... oh, wait...

W3C apologizes for HTML5 brand confusion

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Does this even matter?

I remember days long ago when W3C took so long to make basic revisions to the spec that browsers just went ahead and implemented their own ideas. That isn't to say this is a good thing, but I think the standardisation of HTML may be down more to market forces driving a need for a unified, consistent dialect of HTML, though even today there are differences, and on older browsers, CSS&XHTML looks worse than HTML 2!

For a branding, will the world pay much attention to this?

Gates, Woz, and the last 2,000 years of computing

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London science museum gets it right

They have an Acorn proudly displayed. Not only innovative (certainly the Beeb's capabilities), but for the early '80s, one of the best versions of BASIC around, certainly showed up the competition, plus built in assembler so none of this peek/poke rubbish.

I am writing this on an ARM powered mobile phone, as an ARM powered video recorder is doing it's thing. There's an ARM in my printer... All Acorn heritage. Any tech museum that omits this vital part of computer history is sadly lacking.

Google gins search formula to favor its own services

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Mmm...

I think the big issue here is with Google not just saying "yeah, and?". After all, it is their search engine, they ought to be free to promote their own products. Before anybody down votes me for saying this, consider Amazon promoting it's Kindle, perhaps a little too often for my liking, but not only makes no mention of other ebook readers, but is necessarily incompatible with them. There are many more examples, such as you wouldn't expect Asda to promote Tesco products and services, if anything it would be a "look how much cheaper WE are". I can understand that if you're offering a paid service that is being undermined by one of Google's offerings you might be a little unhappy, but that is life, evolve and adapt, don't wave the legal stick. An example of failure to adapt could be the British car industry. The Germans, Japs, French... built better cars. Hell, what nationality is Gene Hunt's baby?

But the thing that is going to hurt Google is their not just coming straight out with the truth - something of a pattern in recent times...