Posts by PeterI

A stranger's TV went on spending spree with my Amazon account – and web giant did nothing about it for months

Hmm my Samsung smart telly shows up on my amazon account under the prime video tag, it doesn't show on the kindle page.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/settings/your-devices/ref=atv_set_your-devices

along with the iPad & phone.

At Microsoft 'unlimited cloud storage' really means one terabyte

Re: Bait and switch

Three let old one plan users keep the unlimited tethering. For new users it's unlimited data for a phone, but 2GB for a tethered connection. From memory old users also didn't get things like free 0800 calls (and possibly some of the overseas data options).

I was seriously tempted to stick with it (I used work on site a lot but with current job I don't) but in the end I swapped to a SIM only contract and bought a cheapo lumia 640 when the Nexus died as I didn't fancy a landfill android.

If you read anything today about ICANN taking over the internet, make sure it's this

Re: ROOT n branch

From memory it's because JANET email addressing already had uk in the email address (usually of the form uk.ac.institution) and at one point most bang path uucp email came in via the University of Kent and Canterbury (seem to recall them charging pennies per K of message) which would then translate to JANET email addresses.

When DNS based email came in meant gateways could be constructed by reversing the dotted JANET address which meant we stuck with .uk at the domain level.

Since I was a student at this time (mid 80s) this could all be a load of cr*p but that's how I remember it.

Annus HORRIBILIS for TLS! ALL the bigguns now officially pwned in 2014

Supposed to be internal testing.

This page http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2014/11/11/assessing-risk-for-the-november-2014-security-updates.aspx reckons that it was "Internally found during a proactive security assessment."

I'm guessing it was found when someone went checking the code after the heartbleed stuff.

Vinyl-fetish hipsters might just have a point

Speakers...

Well for true studio sound you need some Yamaha NS10s as your speakers (yes they're slightly crap but that's what most pop stuff was mixed with)

Microsoft: Hey, small biz devs – Windows Store apps are for you, too

Re: Am I reading this right?

Sounds more like it's a hundred quid for me as a developer to install on unlimited machines. i.e. I'm paying not the end user.

It's always been one of the things missing as a smaller ISV and at least it's less than a VeriSign certificate for code signing purposes.

123-reg shrugs off customer complaints over stealth domain transfer charges

Okay so the question is where to move to? Never had a problem with them in the past BUT this is just the sort of thing that means I'll move now before I get stuck with them.

Apple: That 'white screen of death' nightmare? We'll fix it... AT SOME POINT

Not sure where the bug lives (apple or router) but the office DrayTek Vigor needed a firmware update before the iDevices would talk to it happily.

Why Microsoft absolutely DOESN'T need its own Steve Jobs

TIKFAM

Discussed this the other week in the pub. Biggest problem is that they never did a back port of TIFKAM to earlier versions of windows (7 at least, Vista maybe?)

Microsoft tried with WPF to make it Vista or higher. Like many other developers I moaned at Microsoft DPEs about this and eventually the decision to do a back port to XP was taken. They have made the same mistake this time and didn't correct themselves.

As a developer my choices are HTML/CSS/JS in a web browser where OS versions don't matter, WPF / Winforms / MFC for a desktop application which will work on everything from XP upwards and finally TIFKAM which will only works on Windows 8. If it's a corporate application it's likely the desktop will be Windows 7 (the new XP)

If Microsoft back ported to Windows 7 a version of TIFKAM then I'd think about developing for it but until then I'm ignoring it as a waste of my time.

After buying a new laptop for home use (Lenovo Yoga) recently when it's in tablet mode the TIFKAM does actually make a reasonable experience (and the existing windows desktop was never going to provide that), the shame is when I'm in "laptop" mode it feels "clunky" as I find the switch from desktop to menu jarring. I'm going to keep trying until after Christmas particularly as this time I have a touchscreen but I suspect I'll probably give in and install a start menu replacement.

Slideshow: A History of the Smartphone in 20 Handsets

Needs one of the HTC range of windows mobile phones the Tytn was good in its day (I think I got it to tether as a wifi hotspot) and I still rather liked the Nike with it's slide out phone keyboard.

In pure functionality terms my current android phone isn't much better (maps is the only biggy) than a tytn would be with a bigger screen (and seems to need to be rebooted more often than the Tytn) we don't seem to have moved on much.

Amazon prices up Kindle Paperwhite for Blighty

Have a read of Scott Hanselmans blog review of the Paperwhite. As an existing kindle owner he's not a big fan.

Three punters' data use doubles

Re: Not a surprise

Beg to differ. On a good day I've gotten 6-7Mbps down and 2Mbps up downloaded Portal 2 that way when I was onsite using a Nexus S in tethering mode

Microsoft will fiddle with prices as euro burns, UK biz fears

Re: Quote in Euros

VAT has to be paid in sterling and use published rates, you can't use a forward rate. Charging folks in the UK in Euros can be a somewhat "fun" experience if you're not careful. An ex-customer of mine ran up a £40K bill by using forward bought currencies see section 7.7 of VAT guide 700.

Samsung outs Ivy Bridge notebooks

Bring back 1680x1050

Apple seem to be the only folks who still offer it (15" Macbook pro) and I'm not spending that much just so I can have a nice vertical resolution. Does anyone else still offer that as a screen format?

Barclaycard pay-by-bonk fraud risk exposes Amazon's security

Re: Amazon have never wanted CVV / CVV2

Amazon have a race condition on Kindle purchases, when my card expired I downloaded from the store sucessfully but then got an email asking me to register a new card.

Journo register gaffe a boon for media overlords

Typical politician

Ivan got caught sending a female aide text messages (well according to the daily mail anyway)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/mailonsunday/article-1053147/Minister-Im-sorry-sending-suggestive-texts-girl-aide-24.html

So I can see why he would be interested in curbing press freedom. As a boss of mine once said, if you think it would be embarassing to see on the front page of the sun, sent to your wife / parents / kids don't say or do it and definitely don't send an email about it.

End of the tether: Google plays nice with carriers

Get a Nexus S

My nexus S on the one plan from three seems to have a truly unlimited data plan and most of the time seems to give somewhere between 3 and 6Mbps when tethered over wifi.

Last month I downloaded the whole of Portal 2 (took around 4 hours) as I was on site and last months bill shows the download with a charge next to it of 0p. Not sure what would happen if I did that every month but thats an unusual data month for me.

Cable vendor slapped for unproven claims

Directional audio

As an ex-coworker of mine doug self says:

"Cables are directional, and pass audio better in one direction than the other.

Audio signals are AC. Cables cannot be directional any more than 2 + 2 can equal 5. Anyone prepared to believe this nonsense won't be capable of designing amplifiers, so there seems no point in further comment"

For a proper debunking of audio myths see his web article here:

http://www.douglas-self.com/ampins/pseudo/subjectv.htm

Bear in mind he's a pro-audio designer rather than just a random bloke off the street.

Microsoft releases FixIt for critical flaw in 100 apps

Well it's now an admin problem.

This is about as much as Microsoft can do for the moment. If you install the fix and tell it to disallow running from the current working directory in all circumstances then it breaks Google Chrome (at least the per-user install I had).

For Microsoft the problem is that this is a tricky one to get right. Disabling the run from WebDav / file share approach might break 0.05% of apps out there but thats a lot of upset customers, I've gone for the more nuclear disable running from the current working directory approach (which I'd guess could break 2-3% of apps depending on how they're installed)

For now if I was an admin I'd push this out in disable webdav mode, see what breaks and add the registry entries to unpatch the apps that break while I waited for the app developers to generate fixes.

All in all a nasty problem which has exploded and there are no easy fixes.

Microsoft confirms code-execution bug in Windows apps

Installed the patch and broke chrome

I installed the patch MS have provided (KB 2264107 and set the registry) so far everything is working fine with one exception:

Google chrome (installed in per-user mode)

I can't see any use for loading a dll from the current working directory anyway.

Thomas and Maude stage open info Commons love-in

Coulsons pay already available

Coulsons pay has already been published see this article

http://order-order.com/2010/06/10/coulson-and-the-spad-pay/