Posts by heyrick

Does Father Christmas expect a happy ending with Clara in Doctor Who?

Here's betting...

...that in an attempt to create a workable episode of Dr. Who, Moffat and Co. will destroy Santa for millions of children.

"Santa, which everybody knows is an anagram of Satan, is really a Dalek encased in a Cyberman body, with glue-on facial hair and oversized red clothing. Etc. Etc. The huggy-feely-cryy Doctor is rendered useless by its very presence. Well, then, it's lucky we have Strax, who doesn't give a toss about fairy tales but would rather just blow something up. BANG! Bits of red cloth fall through the sky (and, look, it isn't Total Eclipse Of The Heart), it is SatanSanta, now very dead. Merry Christmas you little bastards, now do what your parents tell you and shut it."

Doctor Who trashing the TARDIS, Clara alone, useless UNIT – Death in Heaven

Re: Clara as The Doctor...

"If you don't like it, don't watch it then." - I watch in the hope that it will surprise me and come up with some stories akin to the Dr Who of my childhood instead of this touchy-feely-timey-wimey rubbish. There are some good moments, enough to keep me from entirely walking away, but ... for goodness sake, just pick an angle for the Doctor and go with it, don't keep yoyoing around. Here's a hint. Watch him-with-the-boggle-eyes-and-the-scarf or him-with-the-poncey-cricket-outfit. The stories were kinda cheesy, the effects hammy, and a certain charming innocence (Romana in Paris, anyone?) but above all the stories were (usually) watchable. They made sense. They could exist with a zany half-sci-fi and half comedy blend but didn't depend upon big friendly reset buttons or retconning entire swathes of backstory for this week's plot development...

Clara as The Doctor...

I was like "OH HELL YES!", but - oh - what a let-down. Oh well.

As for the episode, bizarre. The best character (Osgood) is cruelly slaughtered, the plot is about as insane as Missy, and there are some Big Speeches and Special Moments shoehorned in, as if this is supposed to be some sort of emotional rollercoaster, but... I'm wondering if the payoff was really there. I mean, the ending. As said, Clara is broken, the Doctor is broken, Danny is dead, and Earthlings have to recover from the dead rising in cyberman form. It's no surprise that the Tardis can vanish from a city centre and nobody notices. All of humanity is broken. Great going, Moffat.

If you're suing the UK govt, Brit spies will snoop on your briefs

Re: It is not despicable - it is Soviet Standard

" From there on the only right we the plebs have remaining is the right to shut up. "

I thought they took that one away from us too.

Hide your Macs, iPhones and iPads: WireLurker nasty 'heralds new era'

Re: Ah but......

" Its one reason they are happy with the walled garden, its totally safe from the worlds nasties....." - if you read the article, it isn't an iOS virus. It is a Trojan in apps for OSX (a big Mac) that then compromises the big computer to look for tablets and such being connected, and they in turn are compromised by abusing, I presume, the update protocols. Clever stuff, but totally bypasses iOS, the walled garden, everything.

Not even 60,000 of you want an ethically-sourced smartphone

It might be created ethically, but it still runs Android

So doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose?

Taylor Swift dumps Spotify: It’s not me, it’s you

Ethical business?

Look for some more obscure stuff, you'll quickly find that Amazon has a different selection of MP3s in each country's store. Oh, but wait, this isn't like buying a CD. This stuff is "licenced", so places where you aren't? They don't wanna know.

Take my goddamn money and give me my goddamn MP3. Until that can happen without "country" or "region" crap, talk of ethics is worthless. I get to pick what supermarket I buy things from, why should this be any different?

France kicks UK into third place for public Wi-Fi hotspots

WiFi in France

From my experience - if you want open and useful public WiFi, find a McDonald's or a Buffalo Grill. The ones I have visited offer open WiFi that will let you connect simply by clicking the "I accept the terms" button and they'll (usually, not always) permit VPN.

Avoid KFC. Any attempt to access an https site will throw weird certificates at you. I'm sure there's a canned excuse there, but basically it is a MITM that utterly compromises any semblance of security. VPN is blocked, as is, well, pretty much everything.

More or less ALL Liveboxes of the v2 or later have the ability to act as a hotspot. The basis of how this works is that in order to have the right to connect to hotspots, you must provide a hotspot yourself. As a subscriber, you can sign in (provided you, yourself, provide a hotspot). Other networks? I think the hassles with the credits and such are so that if you email whitehouse.gov with a death threat to Obama, the telco can say "yeah, it was him wot did it", although given his approval ratings, maybe the Democrats would actually want somebody to conveniently deal with the issue. ;-) From some brief tests, the public AP provides a completely different IP address. It appears to be segregated from the home AP traffic (though, both use the same frequency). I have not conducted any tests on speed and quality of service. Orange assure me that public AP use won't impact my internet use, which I find hard to believe given that it is a 2mbit line, so anything over maybe 20-30K/sec when I'm downloading will be noticed. I have no problem with providing a public AP. I can barely receive WiFi in the next room because of the metre-plus-wide (!) stone walls, and the neighbours are, like, a mile away. The road is private and comes here only. So, hey, it's an access point for the bunnies and owls.

That said, my Livebox runs at 2mbit down, about 700kbit up. If I walk outside and stand in the middle of a muddy field and wait for my phone to sync to 3G+, the result on SpeedTest is approx. 2.5mbit both ways. Well, maybe only one way at a time, but it can outpace the wired network however you look at it. EDGE, on the other hand, is supposed to run at an exciting 17K/sec (ish), but I don't know if my phone is crappy or if Orange is crappy, because when my phone reverts to EDGE, it frequently can't handle any sort of transmission unless I can practically see the mobile tower (and by then it will have kicked up to 3G+). Go figure.

Anyway, this "you must be a public AP to have the right to use public APs" coupled with slipping this into a firmware update a year or two back and switching it on by default....this might explain why there are so many access points. I've seen Free and Neuf boxes offering logins to their subscribers upon connecting to them, so perhaps those companies do the same sort of thing?

Just looked at the login page for my public AP - you can buy a WiFi pass if you are a non-subscriber, and this might be useful to some - BT Openzone customers can now use French Orange public APs - you need your Openzone username and password (same as in the UK). I've dropped a screenshot here (imgur).

Virgin Galactic vows to continue space program after 'serious anomaly'

Alternative propulsion?

Ever since we have been going "up", we have done so by attaching a craft of some sort to a bloody great rocket. What rockets are and what they do mean that they are significantly less reliable than, say, aircraft engines. Just the other day (after the other rocket failure), people there were trying to downplay the problem by suggesting that a one in twenty failure rate was not unexpected. As we have seen in both cases this week, when they fail they fail dramatically.

This makes me wonder - are there any up and coming forms of propulsion that are likely to be powerful enough to defeat gravity, that don't depend upon an atmosphere, and aren't an attempt to control an explosion?

Samaritans 'suicide Twitter-sniffer' BACKFIRES over privacy concerns

Re: Twitter Joke

What Cynic_999 said.

If you read a post by somebody, it is up to you to decide whether or not that person is expected to be taken seriously. For example, not so long ago somebody made a threat to blow up an airport. They were angry, it was hyperbole, you could follow the sequence of events and determine that for yourself. Likewise, when I mess up, I put my hand to my head as if it was a gun to blow my brains out. This, again, is sarcasm and not a serious desire to off myself.

The problem, and the possibility to create serious harm, arises when you have a piece of software instructed to pick up on specific "phrases" with no understanding of context. To take these isolated nuggets of information and generate a report to provide to somebody else. That's swinging firmly into creepy-territory, and one wonders if it isn't a form of libel - after all, if I read some of your posts (you, dear reader, you) and decided that you had a probability of being a paedo, and then told other people about it...well, there are laws being broken...

From personal experience, I knew a person who was always going on about how their life sucked and the easy way out was a more and more attractive idea. This person then went and married and started a family. Meanwhile the smiley girl that was always happy and bouncy and talked to everybody about everything...hung herself. It seems to me that the people who say the least about their problems are the ones that need the most attention.

BIGGEST THREAT to Europe’s cybersecurity? Hint: not hackers

But will this be of much use?

It is all very well testing your defences when you know there is a test and everybody is on board. It's likely to be a very different scenario if the real thing should come to pass.

To give you an example from a place I used to work, we had fire drills every so often. They were not announced to the workers but you could get a clue if you spot management standing by the doors with clipboards in hand just beforehand. And the sirens would sound and we'd all trot out. Ho hum.

One time the fire brigade got involved and a "repairman" (actually a fireman out of uniform) did something to make a bang and some smoke. The result? Chaos. It turns out that people behave differently when they think the building is about to blow up. Whoodathunkit?

PEAK APPLE: iOS 8 is least popular Cupertino mobile OS in all of HUMAN HISTORY

Re: Regrets

What is it with Apple? "Wipe it" to make iOS8 work again. Delete and reinstall apps to free up lots of megabytes of "zombie" space. Deleting old sent emails and the bloody mailbox keeps getting larger anyway... (and there's no way to offload any of it onto the PC using iTunes).

This isn't 1995 guys. Must try harder.

Microsoft has Windows Server running on ARM: report

Re: Real Windows 9 and servers on a phone?

Funny, I can write stuff using Google Docs on the iPad and sync it via my mobile acting as a hotspot, then pick it up and continue working on the document at home on the PC.

A sync solution and compatible software is what is needed. The underlying OS/tech is less important.

Reg hacks see the woods or the trees In the Forest of the Night

Re: I think the American broadcast was edited...

"You do know that humans have cameras, like fucking everywhere, yeah?" - images of anything we don't understand or believe is explained easily. PhotoShop.

"I sure made a lot of crazy Twitter posts with #overnight-forest-WTF?!' and we'll all just push delete and go about our business?" - insane Tweets? That's hardly a rarity.

"Or ignore the fact that some kid didn't mass-call every phone on the planet? 'Say, did you get a weird phone call from some British kid about not hurting trees?" - clever Greenpeace social advertising.

"Or will people just think it was some crazy Arbor day stunt?" - no idea what Arbor Day is.

"And furthermore, wouldn't extra oxygen just make *everything* burn worse?" - I asked this above.

"Shouldn't it have been the reverse, pumping as much CO2 into the sky as we can?" - we either burn or we suffocate. Nice choices. I'd opt for the fireball. More dramatic.

"because teaching your children to fear something that is actively trying to kill them is entirely appropriate." - interesting you raise this point. You call bull on the idea that we'd simply be unable to forget a global forest, yet we're quite capable of slaughtering each other in the name of ancient mythology. In God's name (other deities applicable) we teach our children to fear anything that is different.

Tree oxygen blanket

So lots of oxygen is supposed to protect us from a massive solar fart? Wouldn't the end result be that depicted by the icon?

CATACLYSMIC Sun BELCH causes hour-long RADIO BLACKOUT in SPAAACE

Ooh eck!

That's a pretty big tear on the surface of the sun, and it somewhat resembles the "cracks in the universe" from the previous series of Dr. Who - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_arcs_in_Doctor_Who#Cracks_in_the_universe

France to draft blacklist banning alleged piracy websites – what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Re: Theft/Piracy

"lost their jobs because of piracy" - who would that be? Because piracy works by ripping off the final product, once everybody's work is complete and people have been paid. It may mean fewer royalties for the big name actors and the funding studio, but most of the names scrolling up the screen get paid and that's it for them. You could perhaps argue that piracy may make studios less likely to invest in new projects, though with the price of DVDs these days I wonder if the real losses (and not the inflated "we'll sue for beeeelions" bull) isn't already factored into the pricing. Certainly the main studios are still producing movies, and once in a while (but all too rarely), there is even something worth watching.

Competencies of Hadopi?

Remind me again, what have you managed to actually achieve with that budget? Remind me again why I am paying taxes to fund a government agency to do the copyright holder's enforcement for them? Remind me why spending this sort of money hassling "pirates" is better than, say, providing more textbooks for schools, or libraries with actual books in them (instead of throwing the books away and replacing them with rows of computers)? Remind me why schools are closing out here in the countryside, and it is ever harder to find a doctor or dentist.... oh, I know, lack of money and incentive.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting copyright piracy. Instead I'm pointing out that in the current and woeful economic situation, there are many better things that could be done with that money than this shit.

Oh, and Fleur? Your boss? He's like the most disliked President ever in the history of France. If he keeps this up, we might end up with bloody Sarko back again...

Revealed: The amazing magical innovation in the iPad Mini 3 – a lick of paint

Re: Thinness.

"Newsflash - keyboard breaks on my laptop and it's not as easy to service as my desktop."

My netbook's keyboard - three spring loaded clips at the back. Lever it up, rotate keyboard on front edge until vertical, there is a ribbon cable at the back/underneath clipped into an edge connector via a small slot in the netbook's body. Nudge the connector crimp and the ribbon just falls out. Keyboard is now disconnected. Reverse the process to install.

Okay, it is a little harder than swapping a USB plug, but it is not exactly a challenge.

FTDI yanks chip-bricking driver from Windows Update, vows to fight on

"The FTDI drivers are only licensed for use on genuine FTDI products."

There is a world of difference between legitimately refusing to work with clone parts (something FTDI has a history of) and intentionally destroying said clone parts.

I put "destroying" in bold above because it is worth asking yourself how many average Windows users are going to even understand what EPROM VID reprogramming means, never mind how to fix it.

Oh, and for industrial process control stuff, the maintenance guys where I work are not geeks. They know how to fix machines, they know how to use software. Anything in between the two is a rip-out-and-replace job. None of them know what JTAG is (yes, I asked), as that level of interaction is not a part of their job. Hence, for them too, if they were using Windows with clone chips, that recent update would have "bricked" their hardware. [thankfully they don't use Windows, it is all PLC devices; otherwise the fallout of losing all of the device comms would cost serious amounts of money per day plus make utter havoc with the production scheduling and order completion]

Chipmaker FTDI bricking counterfeit kit

Re: Pretty nasty

"It's an EEPROM setting that is totally reversible."

I rather suspect that the Windows users that can understand that sentence is likely to be a rather small subset, and the Windows users that can understand it and do something about it, smaller still.

Therefore, while technically reversible, the original statement still holds true. The driver is intentionally bricking people's hardware.

Google opens Inbox – email for people too thick to handle email

Re: Invitation-only, for now...

Priority inbox? How does this differ from a mailer that highlights messages from people in your address book, coupled with a function that people you reply to are added automatically to your address book? Mail software has been doing that sort of thing for decades.

One of the things that bugs me with GMail is that they have taken the basic email interface, removed half the functionality, and renamed what was left. Instead of mailboxes or folders or something, we have "labels". It's the same thing, only with a confusingly different name.

Why, when I send a message, does my sent message not appear in the thread until some (random?) later time? That bugs me too.

Bloody hell!

36 megabytes for an "inbox"? Entire functional operating systems run to less than that.

Microsoft EU warns: If you have ties to the US, Feds can get your data

Isn't using a US based cloud provider as your backend already a direct contravention of EU data protection rules because of this and the Patriot Act?

Computer misuse: Brits could face LIFE IN PRISON for serious hacking offences

Re: Needed

"Govt figures put the cost to the UK economy at £27bn per year." - and proof of that is where? Remember the "cost" supposedly incurred by the actions of the Scottish bloke (whose name I don't remember).

"That's people's pensions and savings." - the current government is wanting to remove the Winter Fuel Allowance from pensioners living overseas (and some places are colder) saving something in the region of 5m. How much was pissed away on the latest failed IT contract?

"Are those things only worth a metaphorical slap on the wrist?" - when I could find one of these hard done by pensioners and bludgeon them to death with a frozen salmon, and only get a few years with a possibility of early release if I'm "good", then the logical answer can only be Yes.

Mars needs women, claims NASA pseudo 'naut: They eat less

"but they can’t know what they don’t know"

I don't think gender, size, sexuality, or any other thing really addresses that. If you don't know something, you don't know something. As an individual or as a group.

Unless, perhaps, you are called Donald Rumsfeld.

Apple flings iOS 8.1 at world+dog: Our AMAZEBALLS 9-step installation guide

Meh.

Slightly better than 8.0 in that it is only asking for 4.9GB instead of 5.3GB. But that's many many times more than iOS7 required and, frankly, not do-able without throwing off a lot of stuff to make space. Space for what? A photo app that can do panoramas (like Android has managed for ages?), a keyboard that can support external keyboard handlers to provide something akin to Swype (ditto Android->ages)? Desirable, yes. Must-haves? Not really. I'm kind of struggling to see much "OMFG-WOW!" benefit to most of the other new features in iOS8. Health kit? <shrugs>

I'll stick with iOS7 for now, thanks.

Whisper tracks its users. So we tracked down its LA office. This is what happened next

That's how to do it

Maybe round up a couple of friends to be outside their door on shifts. Then they'll never be able to come out.

Sysadmin with EBOLA? Gartner's issued advice to debug your biz

Sixty per cent? If there's even a hint of Ebola here at Vulture South, we're all OUTTA HERE!

Maybe what is not being directly mentioned is that your 60% workers are the ones still alive.

The other 40%? They became zombies, thanks to the magical zombie flu that turns people into zombies.

Doctor Who's Flatline: Cool monsters, yes, but utterly limp subplots

A joy and a fear

This episode was a joy. Clara finally being able to go back to ass-kicking goodness instead of that slushy love puppy crap. I also enjoy the Reg reviews - a billion year old regenerating time lord in a sixties style police box, no problems. Weird 2D/3D aliens? Nah, we're not buying that...

The thing is, I have a great fear that the underlying storyline with Missy is going to turn out to be a great big misfire. If this is ultimately Clara's goodbye, then we really need to have Clannad-style feels going on, instead it will be some hokey rushed alien-induced soap opera like Rory/Amy and the Angels. A brief "wah!" and it is all but forgotten. Clara deserves better.

On the whole, obvious plot rubbish aside, this was one of the better episodes because Capaldi wasn't being gloomy and pushing the plot in the wrong way, and also because it didn't try to be anything it wasn't. [oh the epicness of a train in space that is really a lab to try to .... mummified soldier? seriously? omfg what a wasted opportunity]

French 'terror law' declares WAR on the INTERNET itself, say digi-rights folks

Definitions needed

Who or what defines "terrorism"? Depending on who you ask, Israeli and American sites should be blocked and their citizens watched. If you're going instead to define terrorism as the Western enemy du jour, that's a somewhat blinkered view (dig around, there are implications that a certain country helped train both Taliban and ISIS).

So, I repeat again, who or what defines terrorism?

The Apple launch AS IT HAPPENED: Totally SERIOUS coverage, not for haters

Re: Speaking as a fanboi

"Time to don the latex Stephen Fry mask and make like happy."

Oh my. That can be so misinterpreted.

Re: Sad thing is...

Wow. That was... actually bloody brilliant. I don't think I could stand to watch it twice, it's charm was in the first viewing, like all of the worst bits of Eurovision crammed into a mere seven minutes.

Thanks. I was depressed that it isn't the weekend yet. This cheered me up.

Sad thing is...

Having found U2's album (need to go to settings and Music -> "Show all music" if nothing shows up), I think I'd rather listen to Nickelback. Hell, give me Katy Perry or that dark-haired girl that sang the world's most ridiculed song or... Wheatus... or classical played by primary school children... or... anything. I'd even listen to The Corrs attempting to cover Eminem tracks (actually, that could be amusing).

[PS: Dear Bono - in the 80s you rocked. WTF happened?]

Bad news, fandroids: He who controls the IPC tool, controls the DROID

Check Point advocates multi-layered security as a defence against Binder-based exploits.

They might advocate that.

Me? I'd advocate a complete rethink of the Android infrastructure to understand that it is an operating system and as such requires updates and patches just like all the other operating systems. This to happen as and when necessary. Without the need for carrier intervention because we know sure as hell that such a thing just won't happen. My phone is running Android 2.3.something. That was "old" when I bought the phone new (but Sony took its merry time making ICS available and Orange France totally ignored that). They still seem to be stuck in the mindset of the feature phone where what is shipped is what you get. Couple this with an insistence on having locked bootloaders and an updater that can't handle running on anything under 2GHz (what, to push some data down a USB link?) and only works on Windows anyway, you have so many fail points it isn't even funny.

Since rooting the phone and flashing something third-party is outside of the skill set of most users, Android needs to be capable of self-patching.

Don't bother telling people if you lose their data, say Euro bods

FOAD, please. Thank you..

A person whole data has been pilfered should be informed. No exceptions. The encryption angle can be used to explain why this isn't a crisis.

I can only imagine companies have lobbied hard for the "it isn't our fault we have shit security" defence.

I notice the actual form of encryption is unspecified. Let's talk about...WEP. How about WPS? Or maybe we should consider unsalted hashes. Or, the best argument last, you'd have thought a big spook organisation like the NSA would keep all their secrets with the best protection money can buy. Look how well that turned out.

EE TV brings French broadband price war to the UK

Re: Atrocious copy

"Orange's DSL boxes are also woeful."

The Livebox (2, square one with cut off corner) is underpowered. I bought a spare one with the original firmware, it makes a reasonable DNLA streamer (so I can watch stuff on the tablet). It was intended to be a spare in case the rented Livebox had problems, but I'm too scared to connect it to the phone line as it will upgrade to the current firmware. You want woeful? Talk to me about a box that can no longer quite handle streaming 480P at high bitrate, or 720P at any bitrate (it used to). Talk to me about a box with a fancy web front end that isn't capable of correctly telling me what is connected. Orange tell me that resetting the configuration will cure this but I have not done this as I have several devices on a DHCP with fixed IP addresses, and guess what, that part of the settings doesn't work either.

Thanks Orange, but I didn't sign up to be an unpaid beta tester. I really wish there was a "notify, don't install" option on firmware updates.

Price war in France?

Standard Orange internet+tel+mobile (unbundled) is €60/month for what I have. I guess when you have prices like that, it is easy to have a price war. Might be time to investigate Sosh (which is Orange's cheaper incarnation).

Zippy one-liners, broken promises: Doctor Who on the Orient Express

And this got downvotes? Maybe we should just dress Clara in a pinafore and blow up stuff while the Doctor makes random pronouncements that turn out to be correct? <sigh>

[need a "Huh?" icon]

Re: Assistants

"A Donna-like character would have had a field day arguing with the Doctor over them." - but are the current scriptwriters capable of writing that sort of dialogue? Remember, this series began with what might be the most cringeworthy phone call in recent TV history.

...

I'm wondering, are the stories bad or is Capaldi just not suited to the role? He does a great job of "sarcastic slightly-bonkers irritated bloke", but... look back at previous Doctors. Isn't this going, well, wrong?

As for Clara. Oh my God. She was so great as The Impossible Girl. But now, she's just so....<searches for adjective; can't find one: Abort, Retry, Ignore?>

Greedy datagrabs, crap security will KILL the Internet of Thingies

Sorry, no.

I'm not enticed by fridges that can tell me if I'm getting fat; I'm not enticed by devices that devices that connect to some external service for rating my greenness or dietary status; I'm not enticed by devices that exchange credits and coupons with external devices; and I'm not enticed by the ability to control the heating, shutters, and lights from my phone.

Here's what I see: a fridge that will nag and probably won't have the firmware capable of coping with multiple people with different tastes and/or dietary restrictions/allergies, meaning ultimately you will be expected to conform to the fridge, not the logical other way around; make it sound as awesome as you like, the truth is that such sites would not exist if devices didn't regurgitate large amounts of data to them, it's none of their damn business if I make a hot chocolate at 3am; more data spewage built into the design; and the last one - yes, great idea, the closest a domestic house would get the "mission critical" able to accept commands from the outside world, what could possibly go wrong?

It might be nice to tweak the heating from my chair, get the TV to switch itself on when a programme I want to see begins, programme the washer to do its thing at midnight from a browser interface, and see if the lasagne is cooked yet by pinging the microwave. But this is all from my desk to other parts of the house. Anything outside of that scope is not a risk worth taking.

Kmart apologizes to customers after month-long security breach

state customers do not have liability for unauthorised charges

Ah, but there in the warm promise is the ugly truth. Define "unauthorised". If a transaction was made using your credentials, then that was surely you unless you have a cast iron defence, like not being able to access cash machines on two continents five minutes apart...

I've got a new Linux box, how does it work... WOAH, only asking :-/

Re: It's gotten better.

"So it fixed itself, then? Excellent!"

Too far beyond the realms of possibility that I have more than one computer?

Re: It's gotten better.

"Same type of problem in Windows (Yes Windows goes tits up too) means a reinstall. You can repair Linux problems far easier then you can the equivalent Windows problem."

Nope. Seen that problem on numerous XP boxes in years gone by. Pop Hirren's BootCD into the caddy, start the computer on that. Load up the DOS-with-NTFS and run chkdsk (it's all on the CD distro). Problem is sorted in about five minutes. Dunno why the hell Windows couldn't do that for itself instead of blue-screening. Maybe later versions can?

I gave Ubuntu 9 (10? the brown/orange one) a whirl a few years ago, but it steadfastly refused to acknowledge my printer/scanner existed. I found a document on the web explaining how to resolve this. It ran to nearly twelve pages (printed from the browser) and half of that was command-line gibberish that made no sense to me (so yay for the chance to mistype something). I went back to Windows... I'm not really bothered what OS I use, so long as it does what I want it to do without starting an argument first.

Take CTRL! Shallow minds ponder the DEEP spectre of DARK CACHE

If in doubt, right-click.

In a certain operating system that grew up with the knowledge of three mouse buttons, you will find the context menus hanging off the middle mouse button as the right button does useful actions related to the left button (so you don't need to bugger around with the keyboard to do simple actions like "unselect several of a selected group").

Just sayin'.

Be Your Own Big Brother: Peeking at pussy

I hope the automatic feeder has a slow lid

We had a little IR beam feeder that detected the presence of the cat. Whoosh, up went the lid. Cat wasn't amused but saw the food. The fail was the cat, parked to eat, was not a moving object so the feeder tried to close the lid. Whoosh, smack. Slammed down with cat head in the way. Cat wasn't hurt, but never went near the feeder again.

Jony Ive: Flattered by rivals' designs? Nah, its 'theft'

Copying or improving?

I wonder which came first - the god-awful plain white-is-good layout of YouTube, or iOS7's white-is-good plainness?

Isn't the function partially dictated by the available technology? For example, while feature phones from way back could run Java applets, a true smartphone needed sufficient processing and memory available to make it functional, plus a touch based interface so we aren't saddled with trying to do stuff using a phone keypad (remember "T9" predictive text?). Plus, of course, displays with resolutions akin to early laptops (and better) because 128x128 is about suitable for WAP and not much else.

Please, for the love of God, Apple, copy Android and make your keyboard display lower case when not in caps. Or, as this might be too shocking for iFans, make it an option.

Actually, iOS is really crying out for a skinnable interface (OMFG - user options! nooo!). Bright light hurts my eyes so I prefer to work in a low-light environment. I would like the keyboard to be black/grey like it is when you go to search, but most of the time everything is WHITE. Thankfully there is, at least, a workaround, you can set a treble-press of the home button to invert the display.

Thing is, very few things are complete innovations. Most things are improvements on what has come before. Now Ives might see Samsung as ripping off iThingies, but maybe they see it as improving upon them? What is Apple going to do to raise the bar? And the bar needs to be raised, as resting on laurels has killed companies in the past. You're the market leader only until somebody builds a better mousetrap, then it is up to you to one-up that. That's how it works.

Software gurus: Only developers can defeat mass surveillance

Money talks and....

User privacy vs embedded adverts. We know which will win.

Safe for children vs in-app purchases. We know which will win.

Hey, non-US websites – FBI don't have to show you any stinkin' warrant

Re: So the FBI's position is that it is legal for governments to hack US servers?

"generally apply to those under US jurisdiction - citizens anywhere and legal US residents in the US."

Are you sure about that? While consular protections can be offered to Americans in other countries, for the duration of the stay those people must abide by the laws of the host country, not America.

Example? The right to bear arms. One wouldn't get far walking around carrying a gun.