* Posts by Colin Millar

1241 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

Microsoft hikes volume prices by more than a third

Colin Millar
Coat

Re: When meeting MS people...

That won't work - it will just convince them that you really must have masses of money to piss away.

Terrorists 'build secure VoIP over GPRS network'

Colin Millar

Re: S2BDS

Yeah - it's even worse than that. Cos you now have the S2BDS(EE) variant whereby you have to follow like a herd of sheep* what EveryoneElse is doing thus making for a 1 size fits all security hole.

* actually sheep probably have a lot more independent thought than corpsec typse.

Now on Freeview HD: Olympic arts channel that's tough to watch

Colin Millar
Happy

Re: Wonderful

Still - surely this must mean that the recession is over and everything is rose-tinted again on make-believe street.

Textgram

Colin Millar
Pirate

Re: Simply....

Given that most of the devices on which "apps" appear to be essential have many times the amount of processing power available even five years ago it does seem that people are willing to pay to be boxed in by apps which do next to nothing and suffer from a complete lack of imagination - most of them are just poor copies of stuff that has been around for years.

The amount of stupid in the world just keeps on growing.

That global copyright crackdown: Three emails ... and carry on

Colin Millar

Some promising stuff there

Once you get path the frothing of the extremists it shows that some people in government are actually thinking about the dynamics of this problem rather than just soundbiting the hell out of the other side.

I like some of the Spanish initiatives - particularly a challenge to the attitude that you can just throw accusations around and hope that some of them stick.

By and large the ISPs are going to have to be involved in any succesful system. Dealing with it only at the individual user level is going to end up with something that either seriously impacts on our shrinking civil liberties or is completely ineffective (and probably both).

Hadopi is obsolete before it has really come into play and although it's not the most oppressive piece of legislation ever passed by a supposedly enlightened liberal state it is poorly focussed and fails to understand the environment it seeks to modify - the comments by Marais about Wifi go to show both her own ignorance of what the problem is and the stupidity of introducing a law aimed at the general public which the she herself admits they cannot comply with because they cannot understand it.

The ISPs should really be looking at this now - I know they don't want to (largely down to cost rather than protecting their customers liberties) but the danger for us all is that if the industry and those who know it don't acknowledge this issue and address it we will continue to suffer from poor laws written by bureacratically inclined civil servants or Media Industry sponsored politicians.

Ofcom probes Sky News over Canoe man email hacks

Colin Millar
Stop

It ain't a black and white world

Journo's (good ones anyway) have to make judgement calls just like the rest of us and they also have to recognise that there can be a downside to getting it wrong. Journalists have often broken the law in order to reveal more serious criminal acts. Defiance of courts to name sources, publishing material known to be leaked from government departments etc.

Most courts would accept that it is in the public interest to breach an individual's privacy in order to detect and punish a more serious crime - in fact controlled invasion of privacy is a key part of the whole criminal justice system. Murdoch has probably done more damage to proper journalism than anyone else with his arbitrary extension of "public interest" to mean anything he wants to print - it is selfish actions like his that end us up with tyrannical absolute liability laws replacing proper consideration of actions, intent and outcome.

What kind of LOSER sits in front of a PC...

Colin Millar
Thumb Up

Re: from Geek God community correctional department

he doesn't qualify - "tower" implies that he keeps his components inside an actual case

Getting rich off iPhone apps is b*llocks, say UK devs

Colin Millar
Pirate

Re: Proper engineers?

Don't worry about it - half of the committee would be asleep and the other half too busy twitting what they had for lunch to actually listen to anyone. As any fule kno - to an MP the only voice worth listening to is their own.

Public sector IT buyers 'hogtied by mess of red tape'

Colin Millar
Big Brother

Govt purchasing power

What a larf - someone owes the country a fuck of a lot of money for mentioning the phrase "economies of scale" to some dickwad pol who interpreted it as "big = good".

Anyone who knows anything about selling into the public sector would tell you that big just means an even faster extraction of taxpayers moolah to the middlemen.

Until real cost reduction is incentivised procurement bureaucracies in the public sector will continue to swill cash down the drain lining up their pencils and making their spreadsheets neat.

Oracle v Google could clear way for copyright on languages, APIs

Colin Millar

Re: The great land grab of the 21st century

Well - to be fair to Bakunin it never really got tested anywhere - except maybe some bits of Barcelona - and it's failure there wasn't really down to systemic failure of the theory. On the realistic hand - it was complete bonkers.

It seems to me that the idea of copyrighting a language or any of its derivatives is also bonkers - what is the point of a language where the use of expressive techniques is controlled? And APIs and libraries cannot surely be considered as anything more than expresive techniques - not processes in their own right? I can see that patenting a language might be a valid route in the current legal frameworks but I doubt that anyone would ever use it.

Student's Linux daemon 0-day triggers InfoSec Institute outcry

Colin Millar

Of course the real problem here is

"failure to sanitise user inputs"

Which makes the whole system suspect because it makes you think - what other basic stuff has been missed,

Apple slapped with second Siri senility lawsuit

Colin Millar
Trollface

Re: Encroaching Senility

Let me correct your reverse logic

"Since the majority of 'Siri users' are astoundingly, mindbogglingly stupid"

(Yes - I am going for a personal best)

Capita poises axe over 1,000 staff - jobs headed to India

Colin Millar

Yep - you get what you pay for. With everyone seeing short term cost (aka price) as the only business imperative it's no wonder supply companies get the message and act accordingly. If people didn't demand cheap shit then cheap shit wouldn't exist - it's not like anyone would ever believe the sales blurb and think that they were getting anything other than a price within their budget line.

Cameron's attempt to cram a robot arm wearing a Rolex into his pristine bottom

Colin Millar
Coat

Well - yeah but

The phrases "recreational diver" and "testosterone soaked poseur" are pretty much interchangeable - in my brief time as a club diver my need for shiny reached quite ridiculous levels.

Sitting down all day is killing you

Colin Millar

Re: Cycling

You may not be doomed but you are probably destined for a painful old age. And because you will have such a strong CV system it will probably be a long painful old age.

Earth once had hazy methane atmosphere like ice-moon Titan

Colin Millar
Gimp

This is why iApps are a good thing

Farting for real will probably be illegal soon and without the iFart App an important and endangered part of our culture would simply disappear.

Pope Benedict in .XXX pro-Islam cybersquat drama

Colin Millar
Paris Hilton

Taking his life in his hands?

Can't help thinking that putting pictures of the koran on a porn domain might make him a few serious enemies.

Kim Dotcom seizures 'null and void'

Colin Millar
Mushroom

Re: Close but no cigar

".....denied Dotcom a chance to mount a defense, the judge said"

So - denying an individual their basic rights under any judicial system worth the name is now "a procedural error"? Perhaps they thought that NZ had adopted the Saudi justice system for a while - maybe the bloke should think himself lucky he hasn't had any bits chopped off.

Met plod will use 1980s software to police Olympics

Colin Millar
IT Angle

> the inability to monitor key incidents

> slow communication with commanders on the ground

> the lack of capability to hand over command to the oncoming team

> the inability to log key decisions and rationales for future review

Where's the IT angle - monitoring of key incidents and effective communication (NB not necessarily fast communication) is a matter of good organisation and delegation on the ground and senior managers avoiding overmanaging.

The last two complaints suggest a lack of understanding of their own functions by command officers.

Shiny stuff is not a substitute for proper management and delegation

Colin Millar
Devil

Re: British Drivers

Just the ones who can only steer to the left

Alterations may be needed to make SaaS fit

Colin Millar
Thumb Down

Duct tape and bubble gum?

20 year old (and older systems) often won't be changed for a very simple business principle

They just work and there is 20 plus years of empirical evidence to support that.

No duct tape and bubble gum - these things are much more likely to be belt and braces systems than a lot of the crap being pumped out by modern software houses where "responsive to business needs" means "we'll be wanting some more money from you next year to fix this pile of steaming shite that we just sold you".

Lawyers of Mordor retreat from The Hobbit

Colin Millar
Coat

@ TRT

SZT thought they had the ring? No wonder they sent the black riders after them.

Just like a real computer: Android gets Android IDE

Colin Millar
Thumb Down

Ah - a fanboi

I think android is amateur crap therfore I must be an iTard.

I suppose I should stop being surprised at the complete inability of some commentards to avoid false logic.

Colin Millar

Re: Just what we need

If you think anyone will "innovate" writing android apps you definitely havn't see the app store.

Colin Millar
Mushroom

Just what we need

Loads of bug ridden crap written by amateurs.

Oh well - it will all look right at home in the android app store.

Future car tech

Colin Millar
Thumb Up

Re: The Real Future Of Car Tech

Nah - these days they stop cos they are 3 years old and the turbo went titsup.

Progress - it's got a lot to answer for.

Colin Millar
Megaphone

Re: Adaptive lighting

Fog lights - grrrrrrrrrrrr

People who use fog lights in not fog should be clarksoned.

Colin Millar

Re: SATRE - step backwards

The biggest problem with trains is capacity.

You couldn't shift a half of one percent of road traffic to rail without swamping the system. On the most popular routes/times they are already used to capacity. For typical UK distances it would probably never be worthwhile putting cars on trains - the capacity would be far better used for other purposes.

New Yorker sues Apple: 'Misleading and deceptive' Siri ads

Colin Millar

Re: How can anybody expect...

I'd have some sympathy if we were talking about some fly-by-night one-horse wonder - you take a chance on the quality of what you might end up with.

But Apple have deliberately cultivated their image of "it just works". They sell themselves at the top of the market as being a quality company providing quality products that add cool to their users. That strategy is undermined when "it just fails".

Of course another part of the strategy works really well - that of getting their users so invested in the image of being cool, hip and right that every time we see a problem like this the fanbase feels the need to come out and defend their ludicrous decisions to buy expensive shiny things that may keep them on the cutting edge of cool but keeps them well behind the curve in actual technological advances. Apple's biggest success comes not from being technically competent but from a thorough understanding that Edward Bernays was spot on.

Thousands of Brits bombarded in caller spoofing riddle

Colin Millar

Re: YES you CAN buy a phone like that!!!

Yep - it is quite good but you have to add each number to the book in order to assign it to the category that gets dropped so you get a phonebook full of numbers you never want to call.

Suitably-endowed punters lured into bonking for Vaseline loving

Colin Millar
Thumb Up

Re: Skinner's pigeons

But the real point comes when you extend that to the next stage.

Do the action/reward thing enough times and the subjects continue with the action long after the reward has stopped being provided.

A bit of conditioned response plus some Bernay's PR sauce and what do you get?

PROFIT!!!!

BBC iPlayer boss: smart TVs not sufficiently simple

Colin Millar
Boffin

On then, on now, on later

Who cares?

If the network has it available for people to watch why don't they just let them watch it from when it becomes available up to whenever.

Until they lose the schedules mentality SmartTV will remain as dumb as a bag of spanners

Colin Millar
Unhappy

Broken forums

Dear Elreg please fix it - your minimised comments are not hiding - not on the comments page and not even in this post your own message page

Resellers could lose out in £4bn gov framework – vendors

Colin Millar
FAIL

Legalised cartel

Once again government shows its complete ignorance of how markets work.

Do they really think that the way to keep prices down is to guarantee all the business to a big 5?

Asteroid could SMASH INTO EARTH in 2040

Colin Millar

Confused

Can't we just fill the keyhole with superglue?

New tool turns any marketing wonk into a mobile app whiz

Colin Millar

Re: Enterprise Apps are not newsletters

Enterprise apps are not new either.

Parcel tracking and leave management? Really? You think there is a company out there that doesn't already have these things? Thye just probably don't call them "apps" - maybe "interactivity" or "tools"

Apps is just a new bit of shiny - it is an interface - not functionality. The real focus needs to be on properly developing the functionality in management tools for mobile devices. Sure, wrap it up in an "app" but develop it properly in the first place.

Microsoft drops 'risky' Windows 8 preview on World

Colin Millar
Thumb Up

Re: @Obviously

Don't beat around the bush - tell him(her) what you really think

Apple issues invitations to March 7 iPad roll-out

Colin Millar
Coat

Re: No-one ever got fired for buying IBM

Apart from that Strategic Missile Defence guy

Younger generation taking 'sledgehammer' to security

Colin Millar

Re: What bollox

It should have said - "Doesn't accept information from a single source unless it confirms the conclusion they already jumped to - otherwise will check with their self-affirming clique before coming to the conclusion they first thought of"

Storage players pitch DRM tech for downloads

Colin Millar
Headmaster

Re: Hats off to J.G.Thirlwell, who could spell!

But hats firmly on for Jan 0

diphthong

Ofcom needs you ... to help spend £180m on purifying telly

Colin Millar

Don't they ever learn

"Should the £180m prove insufficient to the task then the government will top it up, by as much as is needed "

They really need to stop doing stuff like this - when companies see a blank check they tend to milk it for all that they can - is it only Whitehall types that fail to recognise this simplest of all business facts.

Risk assessment with a proper commercial transfer of rights and risks - "could cost a bit to do the mitigation maybe we better assess the mitigation as accurately as possible and price this properly"

Risk assessmennt under Ofcoms plan - "woohoo! We have absolute knowledge of the maximum amount this can cost us no matter what the real size of the problem - full steam ahead and never mind the seahorses - government pays if it all goes bad - now think of a big number and then double it"

Male dinosaurs failing on social privacy

Colin Millar

Re: @Asgard

You need to read it again - it was a survey of social networking and twitter users so your conclusion should be that 93% of SNS/Twitter users used FB.

Latest estimates for US penetration for FB is still around 40-50% of population.

And the actual report (which needs to be read cos the article is not a good summary) indicates that people are becoming more aware of the issues and taking more steps to control their information.

Ford intros tech'd-up B-Max mini-MPV

Colin Millar

Re: Eh?

Yeah - but

It's a Ford so not going to be cheap and people may expect some 3 year resale value. 3 years of family MPV use is probably going to pretty much kill such a tiny engine.

Still - it seems to be the modern way to build cars that will be dead in five years max. I guess there isn't a scarcity of resources or money as we keep getting told.

Court rejects Tesla’s latest libel spat with Top Gear

Colin Millar

Re: Re: Oh yes, that's the car for me!

Modern cars are much more forgiving of running dry - high end sports cars may be a bit touchy but that's what you pay the extra for. I don't know where all this "bubble in the fuel line" stuff comes from but it certainly wouldn't put a car in the garage. The problem you appear to be describing is the ECU reset cost - there is no reason why the ECU cannot be reset - its just that the manufacturers like to build in that extra cost for no good reason. The not run dry scare appears to hark back to the old days of silt in the bottom of the tank.

As for Renault - they are famous for inventing "take me back to the dealer" scenarios - like headlight bulbs that need a ramp for changing.

Report: Most council workers granted access to Facebook, Twitter

Colin Millar
Mushroom

Re: Re: Re: Says an awful lot about the type of people who work for councils, then.

Yes - the reason is obvious - you want to be able to post snide remarks without a shred of supporting argument or evidence. Behaviour which you know to be chavvy but you can indulge your weakness so long as no one can identify you.

Pretty much you are just like the vast majority of internet commentards - you want to shout but you don't want to think too hard.

Researchers propose ‘overclock’ scheme for mobiles

Colin Millar
Boffin

So where's the overclocking?

This ain't overclocking. It's just carrying spare capacity.

SaaS brings software to the masses

Colin Millar
IT Angle

This is nothing to do with how to do things better (or even different) - it's about how to sell the same old crap with new added shiny. Two resellers quoted at vast length? Where's the IT angle? Or did I miss the bit where it said "advertising feature".

I have been listening to/reading about redefinings of saas, paas and cloud for a decade or more and I still read the same thing between the lines - about the same absolute amount of useful as ever within an ever growing sea of poorly designed, pointless, tits-up tomorrow crap.

Run your business according to your business needs and not because it looks like the one you have at home.

British Medical Association calls for long, slow rollout of NHS 111

Colin Millar
FAIL

Substance free solutions

Looks to me like this is a solution to a problem that they haven't yet decided on.

It sure looks like its got FA to do with making people healthier and everything to do with keeping accountants in jobs.

Satnav blunders blamed for £200m damages

Colin Millar
Megaphone

Do they have a list

I'd like to see every one of them off the road

These people shouldn't be allowed out without supervision. Anyone who crashes and blames their satnav should be charged with driving without due care or dangerous driving

Microsoft code not the security sieve sysadmins should be worried about

Colin Millar
Thumb Up

Re: if only

I applaud you on your ability to miss the point so utterly and completely - well done.