Posts by Zippy the Pinhead

Child labour, lost wages uncloaked by Apple factories audit

Its a simple fix.. start applying an import tax to level the playing field. China itself manipulates its currency to stay the actual bargain it is. So if a company is keeping is cost low by farming out labor to 3rd world countries make them pay an import tax.. Besides that robots themselves can do the job with more accuracy and faster than any human could and using robots would drive the cost down and improve overall product quality and keep the price down. China has a huge labor pool so they force the cost down by using a large pool of underpaid overworked people instead of robots.

We don't know if the other companies are addressing it as a report wasn't included in this article from those other companies. Perhaps they are addressing it internally. Perhaps they aren't addressing it at all. However I find it disturbing that even though Apple knows its going on, that they still do business with the same companies.

Churlish HSBC drops atomic-scale accuracy

@Lester

You rounded up didn't you! lol

Virtual sanity: How to get a grip on your home PCs

2 thumbs up!

Two thumbs up to the author for suggesting Classic Shell! A most excellent replacement for the crap that is foisted on us in Windows 7.

Doomsday Clock ticks one minute closer to annihilation

@ Khaptain

"I mean simply a one child per household kind of policy." You mean like the one China has in place? Not voting you down.. but I'm simply asking you to stop and think about what you suggested.

markfiend

Actually the unedited numbers show we have been in a period of global temperature decline for the last 16 years.

Phone maker punts AA-powered blower

this is just about the perfect size and shape for a TV remote for me... I'd love to get one of those.. maybe this company could also make them as well! :-)

Apple legal threat to Steve Jobs doll deemed 'bogus'

@Chris 3

Except Colonel Sanders DID sell his likeness rights when he sold out in 1964 and he was only a figurehead. You probably picked the worst example! lol

Unless he's also done so Apple would be crap out of luck. Jobs can't sign a contract giving Apple legal rights to his name after death.

Symantec downplays source-code trophy theft

How do we know that there is no common code in the older version still being used in newer versions? And how do we also know that no code is being shared between Norton and Corp versions?

It's Norton/Symantec anyhow.. which means you're going to get infected anyhow.. Just it takes a week to get a fix from Symantec instead of a sameday updated virus signature from one of the smaller/more reliable AV apps out there.

Playboy model's complaints against HP chief Hurd laid bare by court

@ AC

He left with a golden parachute after basically breaking the law... He SEXUALLY HARASSED an employee! He should have left with nothing! His 30 million dollar payout almost amounts to the Board of Directors condoning what he did and rewarding him and pretty much opens them up for legal and civil litigation!

hahaha... an internal investigation found no evidence

"After he handed the document to HP's lawyers, the biz launched an internal investigation but did not find any evidence to support the harassment claims"

Seriously? He harassed her for 2 hours at an event. He tried to kiss her and make her his mistress. He tried to impress her by showing her his bank account statement... HP fired him because of this... But there was no evidence!!! That is so laughable.

HP's shareholders needs to sue HP management and Hurd for the 30 million golden parachute!

Apple fined $1.2m for flouting Italian warranty law

why all the down votes

Because people are tired of the holier than thou attitude from the fanbois.. So when people try to apologize for Apple's miss-steps they get downvoted... Apple may be the "Most Loved" tech firm.. But I bet there are almost as many if not more who feel an equal amount of dislike.

So you are happy They replaced something THEY damaged? I would have expected it!

They didn't replace it for free.. you paid for it with the extended coverage! Do the math.. you probably could have replaced the device for less than the cost of the extended coverage.

@ AC

Maybe they should have had one of those 1000's of lawyers they employ inform them of the laws they were breaking.. on wait.. they were to busy looking for patent violations!

and for damages to the people they mis-sold that coverage to.. provide and additional 2 years coverage for free!

@Metavisor

Previous articles have stated the Apple has in fact attempted to worm out of warranty service within Italy because people didn't buy the "extended service"!

@ Chris W

"Build quality just means it's nice and shiny to hold and fondle, it is not a reflection of the quality of the inner workings."

It most certainly does also refer to the quality of its workings to me!

No company can do this... That's the reason why there is a warranty... In other words that there is a reasonable expectation that the product properly maintained should be expected to last at least 2 years. If the device fails then it's fixed or replaced for free. I would expect the same from a Rolex or a Ford or a low end DVD player.

Jobs' 'nuclear war' is not doing Apple any good - analyst

@ Chris 19

"What's happening here is they're trying their patents one at a time. At some point they might get something major to stick that could wipe out android. For now, they've got something more like 'death by a thousand cuts' building up, where android slowly loses useful features. If android phones get steadily worse to use apple will surely win!"

What features has Android lost? None so far! In fact the top end phones from Motorola and Samsung I believe far surpass Apple's newest model.

You seem to be thinking in one direction only.. the other cell phone companies... you know the ones that have been making cellphones for years before Apple even started to think about getting into the cellphone business... have HUGE patent portfolios... Much larger than Apple's! And while Apple may try a 'death by a thousand cuts'... Apple could be killed by a death of a million cuts!

Stop drinking the Jobsonian koolaid about how only Apple innovates and all the other cell phone companies steal their ideas. When in fact pretty much everything about the Apple iPhone and software has been shown to be prior art

@ CheesyTheClown

I downvoted you strictly because of your last paragraph... You despise their business practices yet you continue to buy their products because you feel you are locked in??? Seriously? You're not locked in.. you have a choice, no one is holding a gun to your head saying buy this new iGizmo or we will pull the trigger. You can go with something that is just as high quality, as easy to use and cheaper by switching over to different products. Hell you can buy a whole suite of competitors products for the cost of a couple of Apple laptops.

I make no bones about it.. I don't like the way they do business! I don't like their holier than thou commercials and their false claims of they did everything first. I don't like the way they delete comments off of their forums when people report issues with the products they purchased and are only looking for help. I don't like paying top tier prices for second generation level PC components simply because it has an apple sticker on it.

So for these reasons and more I DON'T buy Apple hardware or software. Why should anyone support any company with their money if they don't like the way they do business?

Facepalm icon because... well it's pretty obvious!

Hidden Dragon: The Chinese cyber menace

"China routinely and angrily denies any involvement in cyber-espionage, arguing that it is frequently victimised by these types of attacks itself, and most recently said that it wanted to help improve cyber-security defences across all nations."

Of course to help improve cyber-security it has to employ hundreds if not thousands of "investigators" to seek out those insecurities in other countries and corporations. Come on.. does anyone really believe the Chinese that they are innocent?

Facebook shoves your face into creepy 'sponsored stories' in 2012

If facebook wants to use my pic in an ad

then I had better get a commission... oh and written permission first... not some mysterious opt out, opt in setting written in legalese.

No winner in Android v iPhone 2011 marathon

@AC

Yeah I wasn't even going to go into the nightmare of iTunes and it's constant needing to be updated.. it's slow and crap interface....

Then how about using something as simple as dragging and dropping your music onto an iDevice through a file manager.

"Most people using iPhone's, iPads, Mac Pro's and Macbook's, couldn't give a flying fig about what Apple does, except make products which just work."

As do all my PCs.. in fact if they didn't work.. as advertized... then I wouldn't have bought them in the first place.

And as a side note mine work faster, with better graphic cards, have higher capacity hard drives, just as much memory if not more, can play and burn Bluray, are more compatible with a wider range of other devices, software and games, look just as nice, and at the same time cost MUCH less! Oh and I've never.. not once in 25 years of using MS products and 32 years of PC experience been infected with a virus or trojan.

@ Charles 9

I've been doing this since the early 90s. Its called email. If I have a document I want to keep.. I store it in my email. It's always there.. its always backed up.. My provider gives me unlimited storage for free and has for about 11 years or so... True cloud services and smart devices are making it easier to access my stuff... But I've never really been limited as long as I could access my email. If my document is to large for me to email then I zip it. If its still to large then I use a tool like winrar to break it into chunks. If it's something like a movie and its huge then I transfer the directly to my cell phone which I always have handy.

@Armando 123

However Apple continues to lose market share with its walled garden approach. This will continue its decline and has probably already helped to its loss as smartphone market leader. The future of the market for smartphones is Android. It's share right now is greater than Apple's at Apple's highest point and its iphone is no longer the highest selling smartphone model.

And while it still holds the tablet leadership this will also probably fall to Android first and probably MS second as newer devices come to market. Android for home use and MS for the corp world.

Past history shows that the company that is first to market with a product is more often than not, not the company that wins the market. (This is Apple's past history as well) Apple is having a shining moment at this time... but I wouldn't be expecting the same financial results in 5 years. The death of marketing genius Steve Jobs will have a larger impact than I believe most people realize. And while I personally found him way to smug and a liar with his misleading ads with products of the same quality as other companies but priced at a premium .. He was highly successful at leading people to believe his company's stuff was better than anyone else's... which I guess is the reason why he was a marketing genius.

Also I think people are just getting tired of hearing about Apple sueing everyone plus their dog! I know I am!!!

Humans, insects set to OBLITERATE frankincense supply

Perhaps Modern science can help

Perhaps cloning or genetic modification to produce seedlings that are able to grow in a more predictable manner?

Lumia sales fail to set world alight

What I found interesting

What I found most interesting is that the Apple iPhone can no longer lay claim to the most widely sold smartphone model as they have attempted to claim in the past!

Apple's Galaxy Tab ban was best advertising ever - Samsung

Cheesy.. I believe your icon is wrong... I think you wanted to Joke Alert or the Troll icon.

Microsoft copies Google with silent browser updates

@auburnman

Opera uses a server to "Accelerate" your surfing... a caching server... in other words they are storing sites you visit on their end.

Mythbusters cannonball ‘myth-fires’

Who was the expert this time?

I have a feeling it was the same retired FBI expert they have who usually oversees their explosion projects when they should have consulted the Army or Marines Artillery who actually study stuff like this.

@sisk

Laws not being broken would not relieve them of the civil liabilities from this accident.

What I love about the show is

The disclaimer... "We're professions", yes they are.. if that means they get paid to play with dangerous stuff. They usually bring in "Experts" to oversee their work when they do the really dangerous things like explode cement trucks.. which btw is still my favorite explosion from their show.

Carrier IQ VP: App on millions of phones not a privacy risk

@wonko

Thanks for the idea about doing a search for Carrier IQ in the Market

Here's something curious.. I am on a Droid Razr.. and on Verizon in fact.. and I've downloaded 2 different Carrier IQ detector utils and neither have have this rootkit. So I can only assume that it was never installed or Verizon trying to head off a shitstorm of protest has turned it off on my device. Either that or the applications I downloaded from the market do not actually work.

Hollywood siren invented key phone tech TRUE

Hedy Lamarr.. Lived in an age when Brains counted as much as beauty... Fortunately she was both!

Judge orders search giants: Delist Chanel rip-off merchants

The easiest way to delist

Would be for all the search sites to put of a notice when someone searches for Chanel stating something like "We have been ordered to delist searches for counterfeit versions of Chanel so ALL searches for Chanel (including legitimate) will be re-directed to this 404 page in order to protect ourselves from litigation since we have no way of knowing if you are trying to search for real or counterfeit products"

What about re-sellers on ebay... Granny died and she had 8 bottles of the smelly stuff so I'm trying to get rid of them to clear her estate.. Oh I'm sure they would go after me... even though I am not selling counterfeit.

James Bond savages the Kardashians

"the highly talented and decorative Kardashian clan"

HAHAHA.. Talent.. seriously... that clan has no talent other than being self-gratifying media whores... That's just my opinion of course!

Ravens' secret sign code probed

I find it astonishing

I find it astonishing that people/scientist can't believe other species can communicate effectively without a spoken language. Actually it's a pretty arrogant assumption. Pack animals communicate in order to survive and feed. Insects give off chemical scents and make movements that inform others in the hive/colony. Lions communicate while hunting. Whales and Dolphins sing and dance and even have sex for pleasure and not just to continue the species.

This shouldn't be a surprise at all... Hell even Marlin Perkins from Wild Kingdom back in the 60's understood this!

To believe that other species cannot communicate effectively just means we don't understand the language they are speaking.. or pure arrogance!

BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps

Is it truly the Carriers or Homeland Security

My question.. is it the Carriers or Homeland Security (through the carriers of course) who have asked for this rootkit to be installed? Seems like they would be the primary benefactor even more so than the carriers... capturing of all data including the content of text messages and the details of whats inside an SSL connection.

FCC slips dagger into AT&T, T-Mobile merger

"Surprising no one, AT&T also used the "j-word" in its response to the FCC move. "It is yet another example of a government agency acting to prevent billions in new investment and the creation of many thousands of new jobs at a time when the US economy desperately needs both," AT&T's top mouthpiece Larry Solomon said in a statement."

Except internal AT&T emails have actually stated just the opposite.. That they could instead slow down 4G network build out while at the same time rid US consumers of the bargain basement National Cellular Carrier.

US stealth bombers finally get nuke-nobbling super bomb

@Xenobyte

Except that all radioactive material carries different "signatures" which can tell you where it was produced.

Samsung demands a quickie in iPhone 4S Oz ban bid

Actually it sounds like Samsung is quite sure of its case!

Apple's cloud music service 'WIPES your iPHONE'

"if you turn off iTunes Match and then sync a few random tracks that aren’t part of your master library, those songs will vanish after you turn iTunes Match back on."

Sounds like deleting to me... It was there.. then it's gone... that's pretty much deleting!

iOS upgrade swells iPhone battery-suckage grief

It's not hard to figure out

Upgrade to the new iOS and use the iPhone exactly the same.. if the battery doesn't last as long then the issue wasn't fixed.

Divorcing couple ordered to share Facebook and dating site logins

@terra

Since when does the law and legal standing actually influence a judges decision? lol

US, Europe throw their very first joint cyber-war party

Makes for nice TV

It's a lot easier to stage an attack like this when you know the attack is coming and basically where its going to head... How about when you have a trojan sitting silently for a few weeks or a month infecting lord knows what and then activates causing all hell to break loose?