Posts by Patorian

Apple desperate to prevent nightmare scenario of iPad in Iranian hands

Re: a new low

Not only the USA have export restrictions to a number of countries.

I don't know where you live, but try to ship a computer from there to Iran and see how that goes. Your local authorities will most probably become quite anal about it (literally as well) or have you move up a couple on pages on their watch list for quite some time (hence the Big Brother icon).

Don't forget that most of Iranian nuclear technology came from (illegal) exports from the Netherlands, while a lot of current tech leaders were trained in the USA (before 1979) and France ....

Yahoo! axes! 2,000! workers!

Re:

Well there is a bit more to it than just salary :

* Companies typically pay money on top of the salary (social security, pension funds, taxes, charges etc.)

* 2000 staff will have offices, need facilities, computers, [cell] phones etc. Trust me to say that closing down a bay area office building reduces costs dramatically ...

US shoots down key Rambus patent

@so

noop ... a patent is validate until it is invalidated or expires, so all payments made between the moment a patent was issued and that is was invalidated are completely "legal" or "justified" ...

However, there is no clear jurisprudence on if payments that were due during the patent's validity but have not been paid at the moment a patent was invalidated (and not expired) have to be paid. I'm sure somebody will have an answer to that one ...

Pirate Bay dropping torrents after magnetic attraction

If you want money from people to see your garden, you should build a wall around it and ask an entrance fee for people to come in and look at it. Exactly as the music industry does (but they call it copyright and DRM and such) ...

The "get all stuff there is for free" argument is what is bogus : you didn't take the tools & materials to do your gardening without paying now did you ? So, what is the difference to you then ?

Torvalds dumps Kernel.org for Github after breach

Re:...feeding the troll...

May I conclude from what you are saying, that every OS is only as secure as it's next security update ?

That security is only based upon the fact that constant patching is necessary to keep the hackers/crackers out, since they will inevitably catch up with the code that is written ? In other words yesterday's code which was branded and touted secure is now insecure and hackable at will (by those that have the right skills)

I'm not judging here, just want to make sure that I understood correctly.

Google rolls out offline Gmail (for Chrome only)

Re: Email without internet is like a car without a engine

Some scenarios why you would want offline e-mail handling :

- Waiting in some client's offices for the client to show up 45 minutes late, without public WiFi access

- Taking medium or long haul flights

- Taking the train to go to some other city more than 50 km away

When you are done answering all your mails (if that is even possible, but that is a different question entirely), you just sent them out when you are in a place with an Internet access.

And these are just the most obvious scenarios. If you do not have some need, (a lot of) other people might (well I do in any case, and so do about 30 colleagues with the same travel schedules)

Apple's next iPhone planned for September, says report

iPhone here to stay

I think most of you here forget that most people LIKE the apple eco-system since it is easy to use for almost anybody, provides access to almost all the content the average user wants (except flash-based sites, but there's an app for that in most cases) and more importantely it is omni-present and available.

For example : the car I bought last week has one of these iphone/ipod pictograms in its catalogue (and yes, it came with an iphone/ipod cable, no mini-usb cable in sight), my new music system came with an iPhone app link on the installer disk (no such link to the android market) and I can program my coffee maker using an iPhone app (no android app exists).

I have an iPhone and a Galaxy S and prefer by far the iPhone as a phone, just because it works better for me as a phone user. I will mention my wife, which I've given 2 android phones (the Galaxy S was my last try) and one day she handed it back to me 'cause she had bought herself her own iPhone "I don't like that one" and I must say she really likes it way better than the android ones (up until now 1 "support request" in 6 months vs several requests per week before).

Mac Trojan uses Windows backdoor code

Re: Anything is possible as 'root'.

> OSX and Windows do the escalation thing differently.

> On OSX it asks for a password, on Vista, 2008 and 7 it is a simple Yes or No answer.

If you are running using an administrator account on Windows this is true. But if you run a standard user account, you have to give an administrator account name and password ..... I looks to me that the systems are very much alike ....

Why is Google's new Nexus S like no other smartphone?

re: honestly

so that means that if they nick your phone while out for a beer, you can no longer go home as well ?

Great .. I'll add my centurion card details on there as well then ....

honestly ...

" The use of induction means the tag can be read when the phone's battery is dead "

so how would that work ? You read the tag and then ......

Windows malware dwarfs other viral threats

@Cowboy Bob

These servers should not be on the internet in the first place, but that is a completely different story.

Aah .. and when I think of it, a lot of them are running Windows anyway, so that only comforts my theory .....

Installation vs. Usage

If one takes all the comments and arguments listed above then one can say that well over 90% of mainstream internet usage will take place on Windows-based machines, regardless of smart-PPC-enabled-tablets etc.

The vast and huge majority of users go on the internet at their work place and at home using PCs with Windows installed, so a solid couple of hours per day on average (including weekends) : nothing else can top that.

So the target for all the malware attacks is clearly Windows, especially with loads of legacy-based problems and security flaws that still haven't been correctly resolved, making it an easier target.

All the discussion about Apple toys, Linux rootards or not, the next couple of years the main target will be Windows. All the other internet-connected devices are of way less interest to the "bad guys".