Posts by JDC 95 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Sep 2010
Yes. Samsung have their own wallet, although I use Google. My bank also offers a wallet app. As does the Lidl supermarket app, and the Repsol (petrol station) app, etc etc. Advantages to me as a consumer: if I use the wallet in their app I get discounts etc., obviously at the expense of sharing more information with them, having their app installed (and potentially sending me notifications), etc.
While clearly "blasphemy" is a victimless crime, and I'm pretty sure this is more to do with Pakistan's leaders using censorship to hold on to power rather than any more noble aim, I am at the same time slightly sympathetic to their approach. If a website is showing illegal* information, trying to hide behind "we don't write it, it's our users" is not IME a valid position. I wouldn't have any sympathy for YouTube trying to use the same reasoning as an excuse not to remove, say, child porn - so why should anyone accept it from Wikipedia?
*for some value of "illegal"
> In the world of computing, a company cannot lock down a server for a full forensic examination, it needs to continue making money and it didn't foresee the expenses for a second server with the same configuration to pick up where the hacked one fell off.
In the world of aviation when a plane crashes they can ground the entire fleet (basically worldwide) of that model, and tough luck for the airlines affected. Having to shut down a server and not being able to make money? Why not?
The Spanish chocolate drink "Colacao" (readily available in all Spanish supermarkets to this day) doesn't dissolve completely in cold milk and forms lumps, perhaps this would be an acceptable substitute?
(Spanish childhood can be divided into two groups: those who drink Colacao with its "grumitos", and those who prefered the lumpless Nesquik).
Digital signatures, at least here in Spain, usually include a timestamp (generated using a GPS based time). This timestamp could be used in court to demonstrate that you signed X before time Y, which clearly opens up all sorts of legal problems if the timestamp is not correct.
Much as I enjoy Peter Hamilton, I find it hard to think of him as a "Great" - they're huge space operas, but beach reading rather than classics. And they could mostly do with a more assertive editor.
Iain M. Banks is perhaps the only recent SF author that I know of who could be rightly considered Great. Be happy to hear more suggestions, though!
> Turn the oven on? Great, so you've already taken the chicken out of the freezer last night, mixed a nice marinad, soaked it for a couple of hours, choped the veg, laid it on a tray and placed it in the oven?
And all the while avoided food poisoning by having that raw chicken sitting in the oven all day while you're at work...
... it came "free" with a phone upgrade, not something I bought separately. So after a month, my impressions.
First, the good bits: It's quite a nice watch, certainly more stylish than the 15€ Decathlon digital thingy I usually wear. It doesn't look too cheap, and it's comfortable. As an IT worker it's got a certain geeky charm. It needs charging every 3 days or so, which isn't too onerous. (It's also worth pointing out that discovering the charge is running low isn't anything like as irritating as discovering your phone is about to die). It's waterproof. The vibrate notifications are quite handy if, like me, you prefer not to irritate your coworkers with endless beeping whatsapp notifications - it's always 100% something's happened, which isn't always the case with a phone set to vibrate and sitting in a pocket or bag. It makes a reasonable remote for your (phone) music player.
The not-sure bits. It's got a GPS and you can use it for navigation. Obviously not much use when you're driving, but could be good when walking. I haven't tried it, though. Not sure about battery life with the GPS activated, either.
The bad bits. Except they aren't really bad, more just a reflection of the pointlessness and limitations of the watch. Reading messages is a trip down memory lane: it's just like trying to read stuff on a Nokia candybar phone. It has a certain nostalgic charm, but it's still crap. You can apparently talk to your watch and get it to do things, but you look like a twat. You can open apps on your phone from your watch - but why would you when you still have to use the phone to actually do anything with the app? 3 day battery life is OK for a smartwatch, pretty crap for any other of watch. The UI is confusing, sometimes you swipe down, sometimes you tap it, sometimes swipe to the side.
TL;DR: it's quite nice, but ultimately pointless. It was free, so I use it. I wouldn't spend 200€ on one, though.
Only if face recognition is the only lead they have - in most cases they'll also have an address, a reason the person's in the database (even if innocent, said person was presumably arrested on suspicion of a particular crime), etc. Even if 100 false positives turn up the police should be able to narrow that down considerably.
Still not a justification for holding innocent people's data, but it does show that it's not such a problem.
Not to mention cocido requiring "mollycoddling"... Eh? It's a piece of piss to cook, even if you do decide to start skimming off the scum - it's something you do every half hour or so, hardly an effort.
And I always add salt to the water used to soak the chickpeas, and they turn out fine.
Not really: this possible sanction is to cover people maliciously setting out to recover identities from supposedly anonymous data: I imagine that as long as you publicly state the intent is test the anonymisation process you could be granted an exception. An ethical researcher would also inform the data owner if they discover flaws.
Except it's not always immediately evident that your kid has the ability to pay.
I had to renew my daughter's Whatsapp account (all 0.89€ of it), which of course meant entering my credit card details. There was no message telling me that my credit card was registered for reuse, and could be used by my kid to buy whatever she fancied, including of course in-app payments. Worse: to deregister it I had to login to Google Wallet (using her password), find the credit card, and eliminate it. There was no option on the phone (that I could see) to achieve this.
I did consider leaving the credit card on the phone, and setting up a PIN - but Orange Spain in its infinite wisdom seems to have removed this option.
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