Posts by TheFifth

Mac OS X at 20: A rocky start, but it got the fundamentals right for a macOS future

Re: Its still a bit marmitey though

I use this all the time (although I use a right-click - same thing). I also have the path bar breadcrumbs on too.

Another really useful thing is that the icon in the title bar is actually a proxy for the document (you have to hover over the title on Big Sur for it to show - why Apple?!!). So you can drag that icon to a different folder and it behaves exactly as if you were dragging the actual file. I find it incredibly useful if I have a file open in Preview (or any other app that uses the Apple APIs) and I want to copy or move it into a different folder. I don't have to navigate to the source folder in Finder, I can just drag the icon from the title bar of the Preview window and it's the same as dragging the file. A well thought out feature that I'm not sure many people know about.

From Maidenhead to Morocco: In a change to the scheduled programming, we bring you The On Call of Dreams

It's similar in Mother Russia

Not IT related, but I had a similar experience in Russia around 2008. We were visiting the in-laws and I was leaving early. My Wife was staying on for a couple more weeks, so I was going through the airport alone. I was flying from a small(ish - at the time anyway) airport in the south.

I was hauled out of the security queue and taken to a back room where I was shown an X-ray of my bags. They contained a couple of bottles of the Mother-in-law's home made wine. I didn't want to take it with me, but she insisted I did as a gift to my parents from her. Non-sealed alcohol was very much not allowed and there was much gesticulation and threats of Police involvement. With my best pigeon Russian I told them I would call my Wife who could talk to them properly. They spoke to her and told her to come back to the airport. I was sent on my way to the gate as my Wife headed back across the city.

She told me that the customs officials kept saying to her "We SHOULD call the Police", so she feigned ignorance and said "OK, we know what you SHOULD do, but what ARE you going to do?". The conversation carried on like this for about half an hour, with them hinting in stronger and stronger ways that they wanted some cash. My Wife just kept feigning ignorance. She wasn't going to give them anything unless they specifically asked for it. Eventually they gave up and she left with them muttering about what an 'idiot' she must be to not understand what they wanted.

I got back to Blighty and the wine was still in the bag, so not sure who the idiot was in this situation (apart from me for allowing the Mother-in-law to force me to take it!).

Incidentally, as I was transiting through Moscow, the customs guys there took a great interest in my wallet. They were very disappointed when it only contained a £5 note. They kept asking "You don't have any more money on you? No Roubles?".

I'm a lot more experience at travelling through Russia now, so I don't think I'd be as fazed any more.

European Commission redacts AstraZeneca vaccine contract – but forgets to wipe the bookmarks tab

Re: confidentiality clause

I know exactly where the 0.1% figure came from. It was one of Toby Young's stream of false claims (along with 'having the common cold can give you immunity to Covid 19' and 'there won't be a second wave, Covid will fade away'). It seems he's deleted most of his 2020 tweets. Obviously doesn't want the evidence of him being wrong time and time again hanging around.

Latest estimates put the total number of people who have had the infection in the UK at around 1 in 5 (this includes adjusting for asymptomatic / untested cases). So given the current death figures, it looks likes we're at around 0.8-1%, so the mortality studies look about right. The new strain is thought to be 1.3-1.4%.

Re: confidentiality clause

If only 0.1% of Covid infections lead to death, how come 0.15% of the UK population have already died from it?

Leave.EU takes back control – and shifts its domain name to be inside the European Union

Can he keep it?

If this domain is now registered to Sean Power, could he legally take control and repoint it?

Glastonbury hippy shop Hemp in Avalon rapped for spouting 'plandemic' pseudoscience

Re: This forum Sums up the current state of things...

In medicine "synergistic" has a very specific definition. It describes the interaction of two or more factors, that when combined, have an effect greater than the sum of the effect of each individually. So it is the correct term to use here and is what was used in some of the research. Sorry you find the use of the correct medical term so upsetting, but I think my credibility is intact.

To answer which research and by whom, just follow the link. All references are supplied at the bottom of that page. There's 45 of them. As I said in my first post, the CDC article is a 'summary' of recent research. Given what is happening in the US, perhaps it would be better if people did listen to them?

I'm sure you've done your own research though... Here's a little help getting started:

https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/synergism

Re: This forum Sums up the current state of things...

The latest research seems to suggest that wearing a mask does actually afford the wearer a reasonable level of protection and that the relationship between spread control from those with Covid and protection for those without is likely complementary and could even be synergistic.

From what I've read, previous research wasn't testing the protection afforded during a pandemic, when there is a massive amount of the virus circulating. Previous research looked at the additional protection given during a normal flu year, where the difference is tiny because the probability of getting the flu in the first place is far lower. So the 'masks don't protect the wearer' line is incorrect when there's a pandemic going on (that's my understanding of what I've read anyway).

The CDC has a summary of the latest thinking here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html

Ed Snowden doesn’t need to worry about being turfed out of Russia any more

Agreed. My in-laws houses are too hot in winter when it's -20°C outside. The good thing though is that they are also air conditioned during summer when it's +35°C.

The Russian know how to deal with the extremes of temperature well and they dress appropriately. Unlike us Brits who wear shorts and t-shirts all winter!

No surprise: Britain ditches central database model for virus contact-tracing apps in favour of Apple-Google API

Re: This is all complete cack

My wife is Russian. Speaking to her family and friends who are still in Russia, they all say that in February they had a really bad flu that had all the symptoms of Covid. Her mother was ill for weeks and lost her sense of taste and smell for longer. Russia didn't admit any real level of infection until late-March. From the people we've spoken to, it looks like the virus had already spread through a fair bit of the population before it was ever reported and was just counted as a normal, seasonal flu. Given their close trade and political ties with China, I wouldn't be surprised if they had an early spread.

No one still thinks iOS is invulnerable to malware, right? Well, knock it off

Re: The notion that iOS devices are immune to malicious code

I may be wrong, but I only recall one Safari vulnerability that allowed a jailbreak / installing malicious code simple by clicking a browser link (JailbreakMe). This was around 2011 I believe.

All other non-computer jailbreaks or web based malware attacks I've seen since have involved downloading and installing an enterprise certificate and then installing an app from a third party. This is a 6-8 step process with lots of popups and warnings about installing non-App Store apps and trusting enterprise certificates. Not the sort of thing you can accidentally do (social engineering aside).

There's a pretty good list here (https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Malware_for_iOS) and it seems 99% of the 'in the wild' stuff are malicious 'tweaks' from the Cydia store, only applicable to Jailbroken devices or installed via enterprise certificates. Certainly not 'numerous Safari browser based vulnerabilities'.

BT blames 'faulty router' for mega outage. Did they try turning it off and on again?

Re: Come on people

From my observation it was 5.5 hours at least (I gave up waiting and went to the pub at this point). The difference in recovery time around the UK possibly points to there being something other wrong than a single router dying?

Re: Don't believe it

You were one of the lucky ones. Mine was off (in Plymouth) until at least 19:40. Not sure exactly what time it was back up as that's the time I gave up trying to work and went to the pub.

It did briefly crawl back to life around 16:00, albeit very slow, but after 10 minutes or so it was gone again. Also, when it was back up I could only view certain websites (BBC, The Register), but others like GitHub were still not reachable.

So the BT PR statement saying everyone was back up within 2 hours is a big fat lie. I agree that there seems to be more here than meets the eye.

Bruce Willis didn't Buy Hard: His girls can't inherit his iTunes

@piro

Let's not let the facts get in the way of a good bit of Apple hating hey? iTunes have actually been offering DRM free music since May 2007 (initially with EMI content). The Amazon MP3 store wasn't even in beta until September 2007 and didn't open fully until 2008.

I'm no Apple fan boy, but the fact is that Apple were fighting for DRM free music for a long time and it was the record companies that resisted. Most of these restrictive license agreements on music in the iTunes store are not put there by Apple, but by the record companies, and any online store you purchase from will have very similar agreements.

iTunes music is DRM free, it's one of the only stores to allow you to redownload your purchased content to any of your devices, so if you're on holiday and really want a song on your iPod that you left at home, you can redownload it. You can't do this with Amazon or any other store I've used. Also, with services like iTunes Match, that allows you to sync all of your music to the cloud and download anywhere (even tracks you haven't purchased from iTunes, or have ripped yourself), it strikes me that Apple are trying harder than anyone to negotiate fairer music licensing with the 'stuck in their ways' record industry.

Apple's HTML5 bet against Android extermination

Re: Apple will never support HTML5

Obvious Troll is obvious...

http://mobilehtml5.org/ It's close between Chrome on Ice Cream Sandwich and Safari on iOS, with Chrome just having the edge, but no one can suggest that Apple isn't right behind HTML5 on the mobile platform.

UK Home Secretary approves TVShack's O'Dwyer extradition

Re: Lots of freetards about then...

From what I understand what he did is NOT illegal in the UK, and if it was it would be a civil matter at most, not a criminal one.

There is even legal precedent set by the Oink and FileSoup trials (where prosecutions over linking to torrent files were dropped) that shows that his actions are not illegal in the UK. The CPS investigated him and didn't press charges.

So our governmental prosecution service (CPS) think he has no case to answer within UK law, we have legal precedent saying he has no case to answer within UK law, and he only operated within the UK. Why exactly is he being extradited again? Oh I remember, US law is enforceable worldwide and our Government is happy to sell its people down the line.

I'm sure we all do something everyday that is illegal somewhere in the world. Should we all start worrying?

NHS Direct

Re: Re: I didn't read the article

Affectionately known as "NHS re-direct" in many a hospital A+E department.

UK student faces extradition to US after piracy case ruling

@Sean Baggaley 1

You seem to be so positive that this guy has committed an offence under UK law, so please tell me exactly what laws he has broken?

In the UK we have something called the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service). In their own words, "The role of the Service is to prosecute cases firmly, fairly and effectively when there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and when it is in the public interest to do so."

The CPS investigated this case and decided that there was no case to answer to (or there was not a realistic prospect of a conviction under UK law). So if our Governmental prosecution service don't believe that he has broken a UK law (or believe there is no chance of conviction), why in hell is he being extradited?

The alleged crime took place in the UK, the content was not hosted in the US (or even on his site!) and if the CPS findings are anything to go by, he has not broken any UK laws. If the MPAA, RIAA etc. want to prosecute they should bring a civil action in a UK court, not bend a treaty designed to counter terrorism to protect their profits.

Believe it or not, it is not illegal to make money and not be an American.

Apple posts 'battery fix' iOS update

How big were the five app updates and did you download over WiFi? If they were large it's probably what has drained your power so quickly. WiFi seems to eat through battery power.

Notified on iPhone 4

My iPhone 4 popped up a notification alert. I said yes to installing and less than ten minutes later it was updated. iPad 2 was the same. All worked very smoothly indeed. I guess iTunes downloads the entire update so it's available should you wish to do a full restore. Would be better if iTunes had the option of just downloading the smaller patch though.

World+Dog goes bonkers for iPhone 4S

@AC "Er, hang-on a minute. You appear to be crediting Apple with being the first company to release a telephone with a working voice control function. Just for clarity, is that what you are doing? Seriously??"

No, I don't think that's what he's saying at all and I think you know that.

Apple may not invent many things, but you have to give them credit for being a company that takes existing technology and steps it up a gear and integrates it better than the competition.

I have used many phones with 'working' voice control systems before and to be honest I try it once or twice and then give up because they are always limited in function and usefulness. What I haven't ever used is a phone where the voice recognition is so deeply embedded that I can schedule meetings, set reminders, dictate emails, ask random questions, move meetings around, play a certain genre of music, etc. all using natural speech. One where I don't have to follow an exact script of only a few phrases. So although Apple didn't invent it, they were the first to embed it so deeply and seamlessly into a handset. I agree that Apple does deserve some credit for pushing existing technology further than their competitors and often making it actually useful.

Having used smartphones for many years, and having had PDAs before that, I have to say the iPhone UI was a complete revelation. And if Apple hadn't created it, we would still be stuck with fiddly, cramped Windows PocketPC, using styluses and tapping on tiny menus. I for one am glad Apple produced the iPhone because of how it shook up the 'set in its ways' phone industry. We now have many competing smartphones to choose from, with far better UIs than they would have had without the kick up the arse that the iPhone gave them. Hopefully Siri will be the kick that the industry needs to make speech recognition a truly useful technology and not just a gimmick no one uses.

Kabam! Facebook gamers fume after script deletes fake stuff

I expect that's what they did...

Deleting items added in the last xx hours is not the correct way to do this. What if someone has legitimately purchased an item within that xx hour period? I expect this is exactly what they did and that's why they are in so much trouble.

The only way I can see to sort the issue is to marry up purchase records from their payment provider with items purchased on the site. Any item that does not have a valid payment record should be removed, those that do should be left.

Now this will obviously depend on how well their DB is designed and if they are storing the payment provider's invoice ID with the purchased items. If they aren't, then they are going to have a hell of a job working out who paid for what legitimately.

Coder cracks iPad 2 jailbreak block

There is one essential

Well I guess the only essential is PDF Patcher 2, which protects you from the exploit they used to jailbreak in the first place. I've jailbroken my iPhone for that alone.

SBSettings is another useful one as it gives you quick access to Wifi, BT and 3G toggles etc.

Other than that I agree, there is little point in jailbreaking.

Fukushima: Situation improving all the time

I've noticed this too

I agree with you here. I've noticed that most of the coverage on the BBC news website seems to lead with a big scary 'Nuclear Disaster' headline, but when you read the article it has one line about the plant and then just talks about the numbers of dead. it doesn't even qualify that the dead are not from the nuclear issues. Scaremongering at its worst.

Conviction overturned for abuse images bought from bookshop

@AC 11:37

I think you just summed up the reasons why people's names should be kept from the press unless they are proven guilty.

You say: "So, while I accept he's an innocent man and the basis of his charge was stupid, you don't get into this kinda situation without reason."

Just wow. So actually you don't accept he's an innocent man at all. You actually think he's a pedophile who got lucky this time, but his mad kiddie fiddling ways will get him into trouble soon.

I can think of a myriad ways he could have come to the attention of the police without any wrong doing. Maybe someone with your mindset was in his house and saw a photography book with a picture of a young naked girl on the cover? I'm sure your moral outrage would take you straight to the nearest police station. Maybe he had an argument with a friend who decided to take things to another level, knowing that the current wave of pedageddon sweeping the UK would guarantee him some jail time?

When I was young my Grandfather was a keen amateur photographer. He had a whole bookcase of photography books. I remember looking through them and spotting a section on portraits that included naked pictures of what obviously was a young, teenaged girl. Now that's a few pictures, on one page of a 200 page book, on a bookcase of maybe 40 photography books. Can you please tell me, by your massive moral compass, was my Grandfather a pedophile? And if he wasn't, why is this guy different? Where exactly do we draw the line?

You sir (or madam) are an idiot.

Apple 'greed' tax spreads beyond music, movies, magazines

Supermarkets are a BAD analogy

First let me say I think Apple's 30% ask is WAY too high, so I'm in no way supporting them.

However, please stop using Tesco as an analogy for a company that does not make demands on its suppliers.

You say: "I do have a BIG problem with how Apple has started to dictate the economic policies of it's software suppliers. Note to DavCav and the like - this is what Tesco and other retailers generally don't do."

Tesco (and most other supermarkets) do exactly this. They have been investigated and fined for maintaing their profit margins whilst squeezing suppliers' prices down in order to create a price war with other supermarkets (particularly Asda). Ask any farmer who supplies Tesco.

Tesco know that if you're a small farmer and they are your main customer, they can basically pay you what they like, generally way below market value.

http://www.tescopoly.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=176

So yes, Apple are being greedy, but please stop holding Tesco up as a shining example of fair play. They've done more to damage the UK high street than any other retailer.

FTC and DoJ toss-up on Apple subs plan 'probe'

Nope

Unfortunately they can't refuse to offer in app purchases.

Apple has added a clause that if your app uses content on a subscription basis you MUST offer the ability to purchase that subscription through the app, so forcing you to give 30% to Apple.

Yes, people can still subscribe outside of the app (so giving the dev 100% take), but if a customer is using an iOS app you can pretty much guarantee they will also purchase the subscription through that app too. It's just easier for them.

I'm divided on this matter. I can see Apple's point that if they are hosting a free app, and undertaking all the bandwidth/marketing costs associated with that, and the developer is making money by selling subscriptions for the data in that app you can see how they've side-stepped paying anything to Apple. That does seem a little unfair. However, I also think that 30% is way too big a take.

I guess if you run a magazine then 30% would be roughly what the newsagent would get for selling your publication, so you're used to this. Factor in the lack of printing and distribution costs and publishers are pretty happy with Apple taking 30%. In music streaming though the margins are far tighter and I can see why 30% would simply be unworkable for them.

Is this Apple cleaning the app store of competition before rolling out the much rumoured iTunes streaming service?

Mozilla: 'Internet Explorer 9 is not a modern browser'

Face meet palm

"...all of which are rarely used because of compatibility issues"

Point meet solarian, solarian meet point. I believe you missed each other earlier.

All I will say is "why do you think there are so many compatibility issues?"

Grand jury meets to decide fate of WikiLeaks founder

@Dear European and Australian readers

Just wow…. I don't know where to begin. Someone's been watching way too much Fox News.

Other people seem to cover a lot of your points well, but I thought I'd just chip in on the "coughing up billions in relief, whenever the seasonal plague, draught, earthquake or other mass tragedy comes breezing through" comment.

In actual fact, as of 2009 the USA is 5th from bottom for foreign aid as a percentage of GNI (gross national income) at a mere 0.2% . You may give a large amount in raw dollars, but to actually see how generous that is it needs to be compared to the amount of money your county actually has. The only countries who gave less than the US last year were Greece (understandably), Japan, Italy and Korea.

The UK gives over 2.5 times the amount of aid that the USA gives as a percentage of GNI with Sweden topping the league at over 5 times that of the US.

So if you think the amount of foreign aid your country gives is hurting you, spare a thought for just about every other country in the world, because they're taking a harder hit than you. And please, spare me the self-righteous 'We police the World' crap. Open your eyes, turn off Fox and learn about the World outside your borders.

Facts and figures here:

http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance#ForeignAidNumbersinChartsandGraphs

Yahoo! goes head-to-head with FaceTime!

No Mac Support

Video doesn't work between iPhone and a Mac desktop client, although it does seem to work with a Windows PC. A massive oversight in my opinion. Messenger for Mac is under supported and hasn't had an update in an age, and the last few updates have been tiny bug fixes. Nothing new added since Beta 2 in 2007!

Messenger 3 was a rewrite by Tristan O'Tierney (from the Colloquy project) who was brought in to bring the Mac client up to scratch. He was only given one other dev to help him. He left in 2007 and when people complained on his blog about the lack of updates to Messenger he replied, "Feel free to direct your complaints to people at yahoo - I’m no longer with the company. Part of my frustration was with the stagnation of the project.".

I need iPhone to Mac video calls, but I'm not holding my breath for video between iPhone and Mac ever to work. Messenger for Mac is a dead project as far as Yahoo is concerned.

Penguin in the picture: top video editors for Linux fans

Agree

I have to agree that in their current state these can be nothing more than consumer editors and can't operate in a professional environment. Having been a TV editor for more than 12 years I can say that none of these can hold a candle to Avid (or Final Cut, but my preference is Avid).

Until they support device control of professional decks, batch digitising, auto conforming, EDL exports, AAF, multiple resolutions on one timeline, etc. they are of no use to me or in most professional environments. I could go on listing the kind of functions that are vital and used everyday in a pro suite that are not even on the roadmaps for these apps.

Great for home, student and YouTube movies, but in a professional environment, not yet. And yes, I am a Linux user, just not in the edit suite.

French operator pooh-poohs iOS4

3G oui, 3GS non

I have several friends with the 3G and iOS4 is a bit of a nightmare, but I have to say on my 3GS it's perfectly fine. Nice and fast and works great. From the reading I've done I was led to believe it was a 3G only problem.