Posts by alain williams

Ever had to register to buy online - and been PELTED with SPAM?

Paypal - grrrr

I made what was effectively a charitable donation; they used paypal. I ticked the box saying that I did not want to create a paypal account (I read their nightmareish T&Cs years ago). The next thing that I knew I received email from Paypal telling me how to update my account settings. I phoned them, they lied to me; gave me an email address to complain to that did not work.

They are an unscrupulous bunch of crooks who have no intention of operating in a truthful manner. I will now never have anything to do with any organisation that only accepts payment via that bunch of bandits.

AFACT wants ushers to confront pirates

Re: Movies are to theatres

When I used to take my kids I would bring in my own sweets - rather than pay the stupid prices in the cinema.

North Korea's satellite a dud, say US astroboffins

It is a technological triumph

even if we are being pursuaded to think that it is a joke. They have had to get many things right to put it up there; even if not everything appears to have worked properly.

Heaping derision is the way that our politicians try to keep us thinking negative thoughts about NK. It is all politics. I am not saying that NK is the best of nations or that it could find better ways of spending money; but the black & white view is simplistic.

But to say that the only purpose is to bomb the USA (so we should be afraid) while the USA has its own ICBMs is complete hypocrisy, such technology has multiple uses. In a similar way we are told that the only reason that Iran has a nuclear programme is to make bombs - ignoring other purposes.

Sniff.. Phew! WORLD'S OLDEST CHEESE discovered in Poland

8,000 years - yummy!

So the cheese should now be nice & ripe!

Oi, Apple, stick to phones, forget about TV - Time Warner CEO

Re: Just trying to protect their balliwick

The prices of movies and shows and books are virtually identical from one service to another due to contracts that prevent content from being sold cheaper on another service than it is on the one the contract covers.

Clauses like that should be made illegal, a company that insists on (and gets) such a clause has become too big - Amazon is such a company.

The Lord of the Rings saga lies hidden deep in your Mac

Re: Hobbit Schmobbit!

If you do use IPv6 it says that it is the same and that the difference is in the visitors. I know, I just tried both.

Amazon's secret UK sales figures revealed by Parliamentary probe

Sod which Amazon entity provided it ...

all that they need to ask for is how much was delivered to addresses in Blighty.

Where Amazon is operating as a fulfillment center, then the 'sale' value is how much the charged the e-shop/whatever to pick, pack & post the item.

It is sometimes a mistake to look at the nitty gritty.

Man facing rare refusal-to-unlock-encryption charge: Court date set

He could offer to decrypt individual files ...

My reading of S49(2)(d):

that it is not reasonably practicable for the person with the appropriate permission to obtain possession of the protected information in an intelligible form without the giving of a notice under this section,

So: he offer to decrypt files on demand - one at a time. When PC Plod refuses and demands the key he says ''see you in court'' - I suspect that a jury may side with him, he did offer.

See: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/49

IBM warns mainframe shops of 2013 price hike

Meaningful comparison metrics anyone ?

MIPs is not objective, it depends on the instruction set. Something like the SPEC benchmark is what we want, but somehow IBM does not seem to publish the results for mainframes:

http://www.spec.org/cgi-bin/osgresults

Will someone with one of these beasts run the benchmark and let us know, please.

Microsoft dragging its feet on Linux Secure Boot fix

Re: They know exactly what they are doing

Time for a good kicking and another very large fine by the EU competition commission.

Maybe the fine could pay for the cut in the EU budget that David Cameron is trying to get.

Samsung brews half-asleep OCTO CORE phone brain MONSTER

Re: Innefficient

According to the specs of a few months ago it can switch between A7 & A15 in some 20 ms, it can also run both at the same time. It seems to brilliant way of getting low power & high performance out of the same kit.

I wonder how long before Intel comes out with a big.Little equivalent - if it can tread around the patents that ARM presumably has.

Google to devs: Fragmenting Android is AGAINST THE RULES

Not updating

I have an HTC Desire Z - it runs Android 2.3.3, that was out of date when I bought the phone a year ago. I am annoyed that HTC seems to have little interest in providing updates. Unless they do I will be reluctant to buy HTC next time.

I am slowly adding to my DoNotBuy list, eg Brother: who won't provide drivers for new versions of operating systems once they no longer sell the printer.

EU approves push to get the unknown security in ARM chips into use

Who's security are we talking about ?

Is it the security of: the user; the smartphone manufacturer; the telco; the government or the record labels ?

The only valid one of the above is: the user.

I somehow doubt that this is the intention.

HP warns consumers: Don't downgrade Win8 PCs to Win7

Why downgrade from Win 8 ? Upgrade from Win 8!

Install Linux - that way you avoid crapware as well as getting something better.

Revealed! Prime Minister's iPad 'dashboard' for controlling Britain

So the govt of USA sees all that he does

If it is on his iPad then it is controllable by Apple and so all manner of settings & data flow to Cupertino. Under the patrior act the govt of USA will want to see all of that. I don't like the idea of what my prime minister does being seen by the CIA.

Dry martini, shaken not stirred: Cracking the physics of Bond's martini

Much discussed over the last year

on the back pages of New Scientist magasine - the last word

ICO fines council £120,000 for crypto email fail

Hallelujah!

It is about time that people learn how to use encrypted email, it is not exactly hard - I have been using PGP for years.

I don't use it for everything, but some things.

'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES

Re: Let's make everyone happy

``I have a new policy of not mocking people for curious and strange beliefs, as I feel that someday I will be an angry old man moaning about the wifi-leakage from the blasted tablets.''

Yes, but as long as they are harmless. What would you think if you were the poor girl next door who just wanted to use her iPhone and had the anguish of several years of litigation hanging over her ? He has harassed others round him for his baseless beliefs. We should be able to insult others who harm others.

McKinnon will not be extradited to the US, says Home Secretary

His real crime

was showing the US military as incapable of even basic security - like changing default passwords. The USA claim that he caused them to spend millions of work fixing up after he 'broke' in. This is work that the idiots should have done in the first place. They should be thanking him, not castigating him.

McKinnon himself: he should not have done what he did, that is beyond doubt. But the penalty was too high; the USA would not have played fair.

Punnishing people because they have embarrased you is wrong.

ARM cranks up cache and memory designs for servers

cbf123 is correct

There are 2 different processor cores, one powerful but energy hungry; the other slow but energy light. To the applications the processors look the same, the operating system can switch between them in 20 microseconds. The OS can also run both at the same time putting appropriate tasks on each one. You can also vary the frequency of the cores as needed.

See big.LITTLE Processing with the Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 Processors page 5 has a nice graph.

Brilliant!

Oracle Linux honcho 'personally hurt' by Red Hat clone claims

Re: stability problems

Replacing Xen with KVM was wise - a great improvement. Xen had lots of promise but never quite lives up to it. Not really stable and crappy documentation ... it was hard to do some things that should have been easy.

Is Oracle squeezing the MySQL lemon too hard?

Re: @LDS

THe funny thing is because MySQL is GPL, MariaDB has to make available everything it adds, and Oracle can incorporate if if it likes. And because Oracle is the MySQL owner, it can use its dual license and release outside GPL (and only the owner can do this...)

Not quite. Oracle is NOT the owner of any GPL code that is submitted into MariaDB. So it can use/release the MariaDB code in the GPL version of MySQL but not in the proprietary version. So Oracle cannot get it all its own way.

I suspect that, long term, Oracle wants to get rid of the ''free'' competition that MySQL presented and so doing what it is doing makes sense -- except that people will slowly jump ship. I teach Perl & PHP courses (amongst other things) and am now adding in PostgreSQL into equal coverage/prominence to MySQL (MSSQL & Oracle already there in a small way).

I hazard a guess that people are converting. If you google 'convert mysql to postgresql database' it finds 24,100,000 results. If you look for 'convert postgresql to mysql database' it finds 6,870,000.

Hmmmm

Freeview kit to require retune tomorrow

I still haven't retuned after the last time

that they changed things. But the Dr Who season had finished, I have been watching the new series on iplayer, so still have no motivation to switch the TV back on.

Google defends drowning Acer's newborn Alibaba Linux mobe

cyanogenmod

Just install an open source version of android:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod

Final Office 2013 for ARM may not ship until January

Use OpenOffice

It has been running on ARM since 2004.

UK govt to KILL OFF Directgov within weeks

Another set of broken links ...

I am getting annoyed how links that I have to govt web sites all seem to break every couple of years, so I seem that I am, again, going to have to spend hours tracking down where the various pages have moved to. What a waste of time :-(

Prof casts doubt on Stuxnet's accidental 'great escape' theory

This is ignoring the real question

The USA and Israel have engaged in an act of hostility on another country. They have caused real damage and show no contrition at all. I doubt that the are going to even think about bringing those responsible for this outrage to book - in spite of their indignant expostulations when they think that someone has attacked them -- think Gary McKinnon.

This is highly hypocritical of the likes of Hilary Clinton. They have, in effect, started an undeclared war.

What is their justification ? Iran might make bombs and that Iran might start a war. If you look at the history of the USA in the last 50 years you will rapidly realise that this is the pot calling the kettle black.

AMD CTO spills 'Steamroller' core specs

What does ''emergency schedule handling'' mean

As in ''The integer scheduler will sport better emergency schedule handling'' ???

Judge begs Apple, Samsung to get a room, or trial will end in tears

Apple doesn't want to stop court cases

The whole point of this is Apple showing the world that it has bigger, more expensive lawyers than the rest of them - so keep off what it claims to be its lawn even if others have a valid right to be there - otherwise Apple will cost them more in legal fees than it is worth it. Apple does not really mind if it looses as long as the Samsung legal bill is high.

It is not about who is right, but who is richest.

Nokia CEO: No shift from Windows Phone

Re: Put Android on the Lumia 900

No reason why they should not try the same hardware with 2 different operating systems... other than pissing off Steve Ballmer. If the Android one does not sell - then Ballmer was right. Chances are that they will sell some of each, but which sells more would be interesting to find out.

Give them different names to avoid confusing the public, but that is about it.

Airline leaves customer on hold for 15 hours

Re: Premium rate numbers

http://www.saynoto0870.com/ is your friend - look up corresponding 01/02 numbers

Anonymous declares war after French firm trademarks its logo

This is what they have done to themselves

http://tinyurl.com/cc8eq27

Big biz 'struggling' to dump Windows XP

If I tried to migrate them to Linux

and it was not 99% pain free then I would get howls of anguish telling me that they had made a crap choice and how Linux was incompatible with everything, why did they listen to me, no I cannot have any budget for redoing a few things .... - why could they not stay with MS Windows ?

But when it comes to upgrading from one version of MS Windows to another - they just accept the pain!

UK Border Agency to create 'national allegations database'

Low Yeild

''it is still interested in the "low yield" of actionable intelligence that results from these tip-offs''. Ever heard of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) - if this is just rumours from curtain twitchers, what do you expect ?

I am not saying that they should not be looked into, but don't expect a ''high yeild''.

Yesterday I was amazed at Keir Starmer saying that the conviction rate for rape was too low. Maybe this is because the judge/jury looking at the evidence in the trials decided that they could not convict. Just because a woman makes an allegation does not make the man a rapist. You can't twist the evidence to suit your prejudices!

Gov must act on 'innocent' web-browsing copyright timebomb

If you don't want me to see it - protect it

It is not hard to stop visitors seeing all, or part, of your web site until they have paid a fee. The Times does that (which is why after 30 years I switched newspaper - to The Guardian).

I get the feeling that someone is angling for a way of demanding retrospective fee -- you visited our web site yesterday: so cough up.

What next ? I pick up a newspaper left on a train and have to pay to read it ?

CEO of fallen flash sweetheart STEC charged with insider trading

Just the tip of the iceberg

These are just the ones that we get to know about. How many more where they don't make a mistake and rake in the loot ?

Religious wars brewing in ICANN gTLD expansion

I would be much happier ...

to find my kids getting off to something in a .xxx domain than something in a .catholic (or similar) domain. If they spent too long in one of the latter I would have concerns about their rationality and their inclinations to be nice to others and treat people on their own merits rather than the colour of their skin or mythological beliefs.

Can neighbours grab your sensitive package, asks Post Office

Compensation if it is nicked ?

I am lucky - I don't think that my neighbours would steal something that they took in for me. Many cannot trust their neighbours. so what happens when the parcel becomes ''lost'' ? The standard compensation rates for lost packages is not enough, quite apart from the hassle of having to buy another whatever, if it is indeed replaceable.

Making someone put a sticker on their door saying ''My neigbours are thieves'' is not acceptable.

Boffins pull off room-temp quantum computing with home-grown gems

Wow! What is next ?

If they can get room temperature superconductors - we will all be happy!

CERN catches a glimpse of Higgs-like boson

Re: They found the Higgs Boson?

Are you saying that I should check down the back of my sofa - see if some of the critters are hiding there ?

Facebook phone app attempts to seize ALL YOUR MAIL

Computer misuse

Does this not fall under the computer misuse act -- aka hacking ?

If this happens to phones in the UK does this mean that we get the chance to extradite Zuckerberg from the USA to stand trial ?

AMD and Intel mainstream desktop CPUs

Useless benchmarks

What is the point of using only single threaded benchmarks on a chip with multiple execution units ? I really want to know how they compare with a desktop running multiple simultaneous applications/processes and some virtual machines.

Please can we have benchmarks that show how this millenium's chips perform.

Vint Cerf: 'COMMUNISTS want to seize the INTERNET'

Neither the USA nor the UN should control the Internet

The USA has shown that it cannot be trusted to administer the Internet in an impartial manner - look at how it has blocked countries with which it is currently waging war; and how it has grabbed domains that are legal elsewhere but upset some commercial USA interest.

The UN is far too political an organisation. It will be pulled to decisions decided on who short term expidiency. For one recent wacky example I see that it has made that butcher Robert Mugabe the UN leader for tourism!! See:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/29/robert-mugabe-un-international-envoy-tourism

The ITU is too sluggish and backward looking an organisation. Look at the dire mess of the ISO protocols that it was pushing for a few years - thankfully now a distant memory.

So who then ? The Unix greybeards who developed it in the first place ? Maybe a good idea, but they will be subject to pressure ... so choose those who ignore pressure and say what they think is right. But would we want the likes of Stallman to be in charge of the Internet ?

LOHAN sucks 27 inches

I read the bit about sucking inches

and thought that you were talking about Paris again ... but then remembered that that was a previous project.

Dole Office staff snooped into private data 992 times in 10 months

992 times

What is it ?

a) 992 times that they know about ?

b) 992 times that they are willing to admit ?

c) 992 times with no possibility of any more ?

I strongly suspect (a) with a bit of (b).

Only global poverty can save the planet, insists WWF - and the ESA!

There are too many of us

Like it or not we have problems living on what the planet can supply us with. So we either reduce our population or take less per head of what is sustainable. The arithmetic is quite simple. Unfortunately many people stick their heads in the sand and think that we can have both, it is rather like the Greeks thinking that they can continue to avoid austerity while also not paying taxes and staying in the Euro.

Spend 5 minutes here:

http://populationmatters.org/

ISP kills off country-ban dodge after just 48 hours

Globalisation

Remember boys and girls that globalisation is for the big companies to take advantage of, not for the rest of us. It is, apparently, OK for the big boys to buy where things are cheap and then sell at different prices according to what the market can bear and so maximise their profits. They don't like it one little bit if we buy where it is cheap.

The use of GEOIP is much the same.

Kelvin MacKenzie blasts 'footie rights warehouse' BSkyB

Competition on sports broadcasting

It is claimed that there is competition in broadcasting of things like football matches as no one company can have all of them -- but you still end up where one company will have the exclusive rights to an individual match. That is not competition -- if you want to watch the match you have to go to whoever has the rights and they can charge what they want.

Competition will only happen if the rights to every match must be available** to at least two broadcasters; then the football fan will be able to choose and presumably go for the cheaper. This will result in real competition and downward price pressure.

Until we have that: sports broadcasting competition will be a sham.

**available does not mean that the rights have to be taken up. There will be competition for the interesting matches, not all are 'interesting'.

Britain prepares for government by iPad

Security - can we trust them ?

Given that some MPs see *very* sensitive stuff we have to assume that this will end up on the ipads. Apple knows who the owner of these ipads are and thus the USA government also does. Since Apple seems to have total control over these things we have to assume that the USA government is not going to be able to resist the temptation to see what is on these machines and, perhaps, even 'borrow' the odd document or few.

Question: would the NSA let Obama have one of these unless it had a special build that had been crawled over by their top security people ?

I had not realised that spying had become so easy!

London Olympics 'not immune' to cyber attack

New Olympic Sport ?

Maybe that ought to be a new event: Who can crack the web site and get themselves a free ticket to the upcoming sports days.