Posts by Refugee from Windows

New voting rules leave innocent Brits at risk of SPAM TSUNAMI

DPA

There should be a box saying " the information provided is for Electoral Administration purposes only " for you to tick. No selling it off, no third parties, no excuses.

Why no one smells a RAT: Trojan uses YAHOO WEBMAIL to pick up instructions

Re: Another reason

The browser choice option should have meant when selecting to use a browser that's not IE, that all the working components of IE are permanently removed from the system.

Microsoft bakes a bigger Pi to cook Windows slabs

Overspecified

It's cos Microsoft haven't grabbed the idea of lightweight and power efficient computing. Hence their near absense of support for ARM based devices, the bus that they have totally missed. The RPi and similar have shown that there is an ecosystem outside Windows that doesn't need bloated hardware to run it. Of course there are other single board computers available - Beaglebone, RiOTboard etc

Microsoft swings axe at 18,000 bods in its largest ever round of layoffs

Opportunity missed

They could have laid off all of the development team for IE, and do a lot of us a favour. After all it doesn't make any money does it?

Rural mobile coverage: Tweeting twits to join chirping tits in UK's national parks

Re: Hooray

As one who was sat on a lonely moorland road with a relay providing a communications link for "large sporting event" recently, where even Mountain Rescue were using a sat phone data uplink, I can say that coverage in the Dales is somewhat "undewearish".

Do you know how much those sat phones cost to actually use? When you've a sudden inrush of spectators then the cells quickly fall over anyway, they're not able to cope. Oh well, but even if every village has full coverage there will still be blank spots in valleys, round the back of hills etc. VHF radio in your National Park vehicle works a lot better than the phone.

I doubt however if the backhaul could cope. A well know national communication company's recent "upgrades" spectactularly underperformed, and the all singing all dancing radio system hired in didn't talk between centres, so the backup deployed was ticking over all day.

Nuff said, I'm off, and that is a VHF handheld radio in the pocket.

FTC: T-Mobile USA took '$100s of millions' in bogus txt charges

No incentive

With the carrier taking a slice of the loot, they're reluctant to deal with it because they'd then lose the dosh they've got for acting like the getaway driver. Just make it difficult, and hope that the amount of money the customer's been robbed isn't enough to want them to escalate the complaint.

LinkedIn ignored SIX WARNINGS about account-hijacking bug

Re: FAO hackers - a simple request

The other working member of the household, because she's on the safety list at one of her places of work, has an email address. For a bit of a laugh I put her profile on LinkedIn. She's had offers of jobs all over the place, some local and one at Network Rail in Milton Keynes. However she'll happily persuade stray sheep to return to pasture and chase rabbits for mere biscuits.

Stray Livestock Control Operative. Hmmm. Skills include herding and livestock management! Upgraded from sheep to cows to boot as well.

She gets better offers than me. It's not fair.

Microsoft to let customers know where Office 365 is going

Data Mining Opportunity

Just think of the potential for three letter agencies and cash starved software companies. Uniquely selected advertising related to the confidential report you're just typing. Details of flights to Cuba perhaps.

I can see it just going SO wrong here.

Internet of Things fridges? Pfft. So how does my milk carton know when it's empty?

Re: Acme Dairy products

Microsourcing. We put the packaging machine straight after the pasteuriser, it prints a 2D barcode which can identify which cow made the milk and when. Not that it would be any much use to anybody really.

It's all possible, but I just can't see the point.

Coat, it's time to go and milk the ladies again.

Sneak peek: Microsoft's next browser (thanks, IE Developer Channel)

Available as part of Office 365 subscription in Windows 9, stripped of Active-X we hope.

Pig 1 you are cleared to taxi.

MIGHTY SOLAR FLARES fail to DESTROY CIVILISATION. Yes!

X flare

A few hours after the rest of the communications networks have been knocked out, F-layer propagation will be excellent. Trouble is, with social networks down, will any of us have anything to talk about?

Curiosity GOUGES AND SCORCHES Mars with drill and laser

Spectrum is green

Hope they're careful not to upset the Mysterons then.

Internet of Stuff: Cleaner washing, more milk ... fewer COW FARTS?

Hello from the real world

Okay, we're already giving measured suppliments to our* cows and automatically recording milk yield in a herd with 200 going through the parlour each day. We don't have an wireless access point in the dairy and I doubt one'd handle the numbers passing through. Good luck getting it all to tie in with the milk recording software, and even more trying to get one of those down the entire herd's throats without being kicked.

*Not mine personally but as I seem to spend a disprortionate time assisting sorting out their tech then they might as well be, they even "borrow" my collie on occasions.

Cortana, remind me to patch Windows, IE, and Adobe gear next Tues

Retiring Acrobat

Sorry Adobe, but if we're having to have patches for what should just be a blooming document rendering program every other month, it's time for me to retire it. There are other products to do the same, and I'll be looking at Flash next. I'll be getting the firewall to relate everything from adobe.com as malware in future.

Britain'll look like rural Albania without fracking – House of Lords report

Energy Policy

You mean they have one? I thought, by the actions over the last 20 years that we didn't.

Vinyl-fetish hipsters might just have a point

Re: Dual track is nothing new

Sorry I mate I scratched your record on the leadout...... doesn't quite make it on other formats.

Windows 8.1, which you probably haven't upgraded to yet, Already obsolete

Can I quietly end it all?

So if I rush off and buy a W8 machine the first thing it'll do after starting (and maybe several hours of chewing through, multiple reboots) is to then download a gi-normous patch, get my broadband to crawl to a halt, and then mess everything else I might have done between starting the new machine and it deciding to update?

Maybe my ex-XP* machine will stay in action until enough of the caps on the mother board have died and then I'll just give up and just use Raspberry Pi's or something on a one machine per task basis. I have a Windows 7 machine, but just how long will it be before they drop this, but then I have tested it booting into Mint and I could live with that.

XP will live on as a VM here for some time here. However if your supplier delivers you a product that requires major changes before you can actually use it, I would say that they've messed up.

Maybe M$ ought to introduce a scaleable product range that doesn't require bleeding edge hardware, but I suspect it's beyond them, they've gone too far.

*I couldn't make my mind up between Mint and Xubuntu so I've got dual boot.

Audio fans, prepare yourself for the Second Coming ... of Blu-ray

Re: Dynamic range

At least analogue doesn't go all bitty at the bottom end of the dynamic range, it just goes into the noise. Note how these are "classic" recordings as I suspect the use of compression in more recent ones destroy the ambiance and dynamic range anyway.

Alphadex fires back at British Gas with overcharging allegation

Maximum Demand Tariff

Commercial services get charged on their maximum demand, chances are they have a peak reading VA meter on the premises, which should be periodically reset. One would suggest that no-one has bothered reading this device.

BT snatches crown: Soars to top of complaints list

Re: BT for me,

I'm like you, have a BT customer number, but they never got round to activating the phone line. After 3 months of being passed from pillar to post I actually got my money back off them. So you can be a customer without getting anything.

NASA: Earth JUST dodged comms-killing SOLAR BLAST in 2012

Solar splat

Wonder if we'd have had F-layer propagation up into the VHF region, would have made reception interesting (and a chance of getting a few new records made on 2m ! )

SkyDrive is dead! All hail Microsoft OneDrive! Happy now, Uncle Rupe?

Murdock sorted, now Mr Shuttleworth

Hmm. I seem to have an Ubuntu One shortcut on my desktop. Oh confusion!

Steelie Neelie 'shocked' that EU tourists turn mobes off when abroad

It's not phone calls, it's data

They really charge silly money for data, and with scare stories of paying hundreds of pounds to update Twitbook or Facer (or something), no wonder it gets switched off. Also if you get one of those "updates" that could also kill your wallet. Hence smartphone stays off.

London calling: Date set for launch of capital's very own domain name

Nicely timed

After the Scots have decided to go their own way, shortly afterwards the rest of England will vote to change London into its own entity similar to Monaco, and put up a border fence round the M25, to allow the rest of the country to get on without interference, we'll be able to avoid those sites based inside there won't we?

So cool it 2.4 gigahertz: BATTERY-FREE comms for international band

Decisions

Barcelona or Nuremberg? No choice here, being dispatched by work, so Nuremberg it is. Might even get to see this if I can unshackle myself from our own stand.

Beer - might be able to get one of those in Germany.

This tool demands access to YOUR ENTIRE DIGITAL LIFE. Is it from GCHQ? No - it's by IKEA

Cheap

Apparantly they'd like my email address, and offer a bribe of 100 tea lights. Come on, I'm not that cheap.

4K-ing hell! Will your shiny new Ultra HD TV actually display HD telly?

Receiving equipment

Alas the meatbag end of the system wouldn't notice any difference at this end. My peepers just about make standard HD not beyond.

However with silly bandwidth required for possible transmissions, we could just go back to having 5 terrestrial channels again.

Time travellers outsmart the NSA

It could be simply

That such as Twitter and Farcebook are but mere blips that vanish in the night like other sites we remember used to be popular and have gone into oblivion.

Mine's the one with the long scarf and keys to the blue box.

Justice Ministry to spaff £70k finding out how prisoners like to use ILLEGAL mobes

Re: Top of the world Ma...

Not that we'd give anyone any ideas.

Femtocell - Capture the IMEI numbers of the phones and the SIM number. Check with networks to see if they are used anywhere else. If not then kill both off from the network.

Ten classic electronic calculators from the 1970s and 1980s

Re: Still working

I did replace the internal rechargeable batteries a while back, but still going strong.

Teary-eyed snappers recall the golden age of film

Excellent

Picked up on why I took up photography, no good at art. Borrowed SLR for school trip to Lakes whilst my 35mm compact was being repaired and never really looked back. Still have an Yashica FR1 at home.

UK.gov declares digital success as PR, food shops redefined as 'tech' businesses

Internet businesses?

I suppose as a lot of takeaway food outlets now let you order through a website or mobile phone app then maybe these will be added in. Just as betting shops and Chondrichthic* loan companies are identified as "financial services"

*Great White, Hammerhead etc, large predatory fish etc.

Swollen Reg reader recounts FALSE WIDOW spider HORROR

Re: Gah! It's turning into the bloody Daily Mail here.

No, the Yorkshire Post is far more effective, one good clout and it's spinning a heavenly web.

Can't wait for 4G? Take heart, 5G is on the way

Quite and easy one really

5G goes where 2G used to be in time. No extra allocations, less messing about and they don't have to even change the antennas. Why we'd expect to see four generations of tech running at the same time is a question I'd like to ask. How about the alternative - keep 2G as fallback and slowly morph the 3G networks to 5G.

Of course OFCOM would like to get lots of moola selling off another bit of spectrum, and neither of the suggestions above would do that.

Salesforce whips out private-public-ish 'iTunes app store' for enterprise IT

Less than impressed

These data cloud things, where all you business's commercially confidential information is held "somewhere". Might it be just a bit too much of a temptation for some (Un-named US Security Agency) to go rifling through it for anything that might help (Unspecified US business) allegedly in security interests?

Can't say what internal business apps we wouldn't want them to have a play with, but there's just that slight danger that someone might just walk off with one to a competitor that's all.

Let police track you through your mobe - it's for your OWN GOOD

Re: As other users have said..

Giving lat/long or even NGR is not a lot of use unless whoever is on the other end of the phone can actually deal with it. We have a record of talking to the operator on the other end of the phone, telling them to click the little down arrow on their screen next to the box marked "postcode" to allow them to stretch to changing the parameter to NGR, then they could do something with it. Un-named ambulance service covering National Park then decided to call out the Air Ambulance, as it must have been half a mile from a drivable road.

Brace yourselves, telcos: Ofcom triples cost of 2G spectrum holdings

2G shutdown

Is this really a plan to release the 2G spectrum for something else? Some super duper mobile internet thingy or mobile TV or...? 4G has started but unless you start to get everybody, including those who just want a mobile phone to make calls and do SMS, up to 3 or 4G then you'll be stuck paying up as much as OFCOM can get away with. All part of the market, and 2G is pretty captive.

NASA Juno probe HOWLS past Earth - and goes into HIBERNATION

You've forgotten to add the 200mS pause between the Auto CQ repeating, thus ensuring your call is never actually answered. It's just used to hold your frequency whilst you have a personal needs break, meal or seemingly a nap?

If you spend that amount of time sending HI then you've no chance to send your callsign.

Ubuntu penguins strain to squeeze out bug backlog by mobe OS deadline

Squeeze out bug backlog

At least they're being honest about it. Unlike others who'd just release the bug ridden system to unsuspecting world and then spend months saying that "nothing is wrong".

Universal Credit CRUNCHED: Dole handouts IT system to be rebuilt

Re: Huge government IT project

They always seem to start with good intentions, but the bloat starts early, noone admits to any shortcomings during the project and changes take too long to implement. Yes, HMG is no good at IT projects but we've known that for a while. Possibly it's not a case of what could go wrong but rather when - data loss, inaccuracies and just plain mistakes which are more due to the entities parked on chairs who are employed there.

£250k fine for dumping council workers' files in Tesco bins, er, binned

Fines

I agree - the fines should be charged to the individuals responsible. If it impacts their own pockets then they might take these matters more seriously.

Hotshots' hotchpotch hotspots: Office Wi-Fi is a great big botch

Ad hoc chaos

In a nice big office, with tech lot (not the IT folk) at one end our scanning of the 2.4GHz ISM band shows it fully occupied although the "office" networks are SSID supressed. We guess the access points are sited simply where they can a) find an unused 13A socket and b) where they can get a length of Cat5e. Our IT lot were supposed to have an open network for visitors, staff devices etc but it seems every time we find it and manage to get a connection they shut it down.

Yep no planning at all, and so much channel reuse even the Raspberry Pi's wireless connection keeps falling over.

Confirmed: Driverless cars to hit actual British roads by end of year

Re: "most likely be configured to perform boring, tricky tasks like parking"

Ah so you've been to the short term parking at Manchester Airport as well. Let the car drive round looking for a parking space - as they don't believe in lighting the "car park full" sign - meet the wifey and stop the car on its next round past looking for a place.

Spending watchdog SAVAGES rural broadband push

Re: Rural is misleading

Exactly what has occurred here. I'm less than half a mile from a fancy new green box, but we can't have it on the edge of town. Something to do with 60 year old cables, not ducted (to save money) that they don't want to replace whilst they still have some good pairs left. Next door has a blistering 1MB on a good stretch! As for the village two miles down the road, it'll stay in the 10% not getting anything, after all the target is just 90% of the population.

New material enables 1,000-meter super-skyscrapers

Boulby Potash Mine

Has a shaft 1,150m deep and some form of lift in it. Wonder what they use?

Flash flaw potentially makes every webcam or laptop a peephole

Wonder how

Does this exploit cope with the piece of black insulating tape stuck over the webcam?

How NSA spooks spaffed my DAD'S DATA ALL OVER THE WEB

In addition to a fee

The copyright owner of the picture should be allowed full unfettered access to the site, to check for any more of his work of course.

Pttow! Ofcom kicks hams out of MoD bands

ISM

These are bands that have "must accept interference from ISM (Industrial Scientific and Medical) users in their notes. Given that these are a collection of, um, unregulated users, they might find them more trouble to move.

Doctor Who? 12th incarnation sought after Matt Smith quits

Re: Martin Freeman?

I'd suggest Lenny Henry for the role, he's done Shakespeare and I would consider him eminently suitable. OooooooooookaaaaaaaaaaY ??

4G LTE: Good for tweets and watching Dr Who. Crap at saving lives

Set to fail completely

IMHO LTE doesn't have a fallback mode. If as has been pointed out, the backhaul fails and the whole thing falls over. TETRA in theory has a peer-peer mode (but never implimented by Airwave) and is due to be replaced by something even more flaky.

Most of the required communication will be between "Control" and "Emergency Service Asset/Personnel" and it's much quicker to talk to them. They don't need to be able to send much data, just get whatever asset to such and such location to assist with some incident.

Some of the Emergency services (think blue lights) regret having lost control over their own communications infrastructure and resiliance. TETRA was supposed to have added interoperability into the system but it never actually did, they exist as seperate subnets on the system. LTE could be an even less useful system offering less than adequate system coverage.

I'm not saying much. Mine is one of those phone no's that won't be turned off - they'd call us out to patch up their loss of comms.

Coat. There's a 2m handheld in the pocket.