Posts by Mike

Apple squeaks over revenue estimates, misses earnings target

I've got bad news for you regarding Windows 8...

Steve Jobs bans all apps from iPhone (or thereabouts)

Journalism fail?

Has anyone actually bothered to go and ask the Apple legal department what the clause actually means? Anyone?

Snow Leopard data-munching bug predates Snow Leopard

Why are so many using the Guest account?

Nobody seems to be asking these people what they're doing in their guest account - you have to wonder. I'm not saying that mitigates this horrendous bug in any way... just wondering.

Did they not know Safari has had a "Private Browsing" mode for a couple of versions now?

Paris for obvious "just popping off to the bathroom with my Guest account" reasons.

Channel 4 to go 3D

SKy = New TV

I love the fact that the Sky 3D solution only requires you to replace every TV in the house you want to watch 3D-TV on with an as-yet-commercially-unavailable 3D version. Great economic climate to launch that particular solution in, Murdoch. Yep, can't see any problems with that.

Bye bye Sky, you bunch of muppets.

Safari 4: Apple's crash-happy shipper

It's Hacks and Flash

As mentioned already here, I am also of the opinion that 99.9% of these frequent crashes are due to 3rd party Safari hacks getting in through the Input Manager route (adblockers, Saft, etc.), or Flash.

Flash on any platform that does start with a "W" is an utter shitestorm. The number of sites that are now plastered with video-enabled craptacular ads is off the scale. Uncheck "plugins", uncheck "java" and enjoy the web again with the best-of-breed browser.

Adobe PSD pushes programmer too far

Adobe: Serial code abusers

This site speaks volumes about Adobe's development team: http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/

BBC botnet investigation turns hacks into hackers

I agree with the screensaver change

Hopefully the shouty lawyer types will see this as a form of "ethical hacking" rather than a black & white Computer Misuse issue. Consider if the BBC had gone down the ISP info route:

1 - spend time tracking down names and contact details for each and every ISP involved

2 - ISPs then have to look-up who was using the IP at the time

3 - Letters get written (maybe) along the lines of "Dear Mr Smith. This is your friendly ISP warning you that you need to update your Windows XP security settings.... etc."

4 - I susect Mr Smith will get as far as "ISP" before adding the letter to the other 21,999 in the paper recycling bins around the UK.

5 - 22,000 compromisable PCs will remain compromisable.

6 - Just maybe a small percentage of people will take the letter to their PC and follow the instructions.

At least this way the BBC threw a bloody great bitmap in front of the users. with a URL containing instructions on how to fix the problem. How many are going to ignore that after a few days?

Gadget Show competition spews text spam

@tony32

It's called "reverse billing" and is currently the most prolific mobile payment scheme, made infamous by Crazy Frog / Jamster. There have been attempts to replace it with a wap-based system called payforit, but it's overly complex and hence nowhere near as popular. Besides, all the mobile grot is deeply ingrained in the SMS method and we all know what really drives technology these days.

There are *supposed* to be all sorts of audit trails around your original payment request and the subsequent reverse-billed messages, and the telcos are quick to slap yellow and red cards on repeat offenders. However, unitl recently, this didn't stop fly-by-night outfits spamming out thousands of reverse-billed messages and reaping the rewards. Ofcom introduced a 30-day payment delay to try and prevent this situation.

Cliff notes:

A (reputable) company can send you messages that you'll be billed for, but not unless they can prove you asked them to.

Apple condemns FileVaulters to seventh circle of Safari hell

People still use Opera?

There are people actually using Opera as their default browser? Really? That's the most surprising information in this article.

Opera actually ranks lower than IE6 on our development "make it work" timeline. Do yourself a favour and grab the WebKit nightly.

Watchdog bares teeth at mobile premium rate scams

@Dean Burrows

Report O2 to OFCOM. It's "illegal" (i.e. against OFCOM rules) to charge for STOP messages.

Mention the possibility of having their service "Red Carded" and O2 willl bend over pretty quick.

BAA boots Vulture from T5 frequent flyer club

@Laurent_Z

Just do what one of my old CTO's did when faced with jobsworth check-in staff and the "one bag only" rule - find the nearest bathroom and change into ALL your clothes. Pop laptop bag into - now empty - clothes bag. Reverse the process once past the ticket-nazis.

Apple unleashes monster patch batch on Mac faithful

ssh and gmail problems

The ssh problems have been identified as being caused by a hack installed by Rogue Amoeba's Instant Hijack plug-in (part of Audio Hijack and other tools). Quite how the hell they managed to break OpenSSH by installing an audio proxy is anyone's guess, but "good work boys!"

The gmail bug is caused by a workaround for Safari originally coded in the Gmail v1.0 interface. A workaround (until Google fix, or rather un-fix, it) is to run with Gmail v2.0 - you may have to swap to English (US) to do this however.

Hey, HP laptop owners: click here to get hijacked

See if you've got the control

Launch regedit and see if there's anything under this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{62DDEB79-15B2-41E3-8834-D3B80493887A}

Gamer takes Microsoft to court over Halo 3 'errors'

Retry/Ignore/Abort

That screen could only be more annoying if it had a blue-coloured background.

There's nothing quite so frustrating at being 90% through a level only to be presented with that message and no "wipe the disk and try again" option - no, it's back to the last save point after a reboot. Which is nice.

Quite why Microsoft didn't code-in a "tap X to retry" option here is astounding. The only reason I can think of is that it could potentially be used as a "backup game" hack (similar to the disk-swap technique on the PS2).

Nokia unleashes N82 smartphone multimedia computer

Sony Ericsson K850i?

Looks like SE and Nokia have been reading from the same requirements document!

Interesting that SE hasn't caught on to GPS yet though, which does give the Nokia the edge here.

Xbox 360 outsells PS3 in Japan

How the hell...?

How the hell does some saddo called "webster Phreaky" turn an Xbox/PS3 article into some tripe about OS X upgrade problems? Presumably you're so busy trying to recover from the smouldering heap of melted slag that the Win 3.11->Win 95->Win 98>Win ME->Win XP->Vista upgrade path has created that you havent' had time to engage brain before activating keyboard?

US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly

US closing itself to tourism for good?

I suspect I'm not going to be the only commenter to point this out, but here goes anyway...

Currently, the value of the US dollar makes the country an extremely attractive holiday destination - there's plenty to see and do, the main language is English and the general populace are a likeable bunch.

However, the government and it's various agencies seem Hell-bent on doing all they can to completely kill-off the industry. Have they completely forgotten that it was *internal* flights that were hijacked on 9/11?

Myself, family and friends are all reasonably well-off people who normally would jump at the chance of taking the kiddies for two weeks of theme park-based entertainment; but no longer.

Bye bye USA. It was nice knowing you until you became a complete arse.

Japanese to patent transparent frog

Pedant Alert

It's *TRANSLUCENT* you muppets, not transparent.

"Transparent" would imply a bunch of organs and eyes leaping about the place which, although much, much cooler, isn't what's being punted here.

Halo 3 UK launch fails to fire

UK vs US

Gamers in the UK just aren't as "fanboyish" towards the Xbox as their American counterparts. It's something I'm surprised Sony hasn't tried to capitalize on more with aggressive PS3 pricing and marketing.

Phishers bait hook with Verified by Visa scam

re: ts & cs

They already do this with Chip & PIN. I was scammed abroad and got stonewalled by every single fraud department with "the chip proves the card was there, the pin proves you were there".

Sony poo-poos £299 PS3 claims

Agreed about the £300 price point

£300 is the "sweet spot" where suddently the PS3 becomes an impulse buy.

Frankly I'm ashtonished Sony hasn't realised this and taken the hit in order to push Blu-Ray as the definitive HD format to own. Especially whilst Microsoft are still playing around with an external HD-DVD add-on to their Xbox. Bring the PS3 down below £300, push Blu-Ray for Christmas when people are splashing out on HDTV and suddenly you've captured the market, shirley?

Welcome indeed to the billionaire toyshop

Billionaire software makers

I wonder if the likes of Paul Allen, Larry Ellison and Mr Billy Gates himself still wonder why sites like PirateBay exist as they're sipping Pan Galactic Gargle-blasters from the comfort of their $multi-million yacht/home/orbiting apartment?

Worn out your vibrator? Relief is at hand

Forgiven!

I admit I was one of the Lester-knockers with the increasing amount of utterly non-IT related articles being published.

However, in one fell swoop you have redeemed yourself and can be considered completely forgiven - excellent Friday fodder!

Besides, no man is complete without a loyal set of knockers....

Porn company Perfect 10 sues Microsoft

*Losing* $4M per month?!

I can understand some business being lost to image piracy, but $4 million per month?!

Either I'm in the wrong (part of the) business or this is yet another example of creative accounting as made famous by the MPAA and RIAA in recent years.

UK.gov websites cost £208m per year

sliming?

If they're "sliming" things down, does that make them easier to slip in and out of, or harder?

;-)

Outrage over 'sponsor a boob job' website

Outrage!

This just in:

- National Organisation Representing Keyhole Surgeons also outraged.

Nokia N73 3G smart phone

But it's so sloooooow

I was looking forward to the N73 when it was first announced. However, having used one at work for a few weeks now since it was first released, I am sorely disappointed with it's lack of performance.

Try receiving an MMS or browsing a WAP site and the lack of grunt is painfully clear.

Obvious comparisons have to be made with the SE K800i - same screen, same 3.2MP camera, 3G, etc. but the Sony wipes the floor with the Nokia for day-to-day use. Menus are snappier, the camera starts up much quicker, the image browser is faster and the list goes on.

The K800i sits happily on my desk - the N73 has been very close to finding itself in the car park via the nearest window.