Posts by austerusz

Accenture sued over website redesign so bad it Hertz: Car hire biz demands $32m+ for 'defective' cyber-revamp

Re: Wow!

Dunno about the work ethics, but impressive resumes + cheap is the right description.

Thing is, you can bring in all the talent you want, but if you spend their introduction to the company by hammering them into the outsourcing mindset of working fast, cheap and throw away practices out the window, then this is what you get. This is only the higher profile trouble Accenture got itself into.

And they work much like any other outsourcing company. Get some architects develop a plan, hand it over for execution to cheap devs who fail to stand up under pressure and the plan goes out the window. Then throw money and people (cheap, again) at the problem hoping it gets solved. Sometimes it does, often it doesn't.

The sad part is that those are structural problems that smaller companies manage to deal with (to some extent) but bigger outsourcing companies manage to mix in all sorts of failures with entrenched managers and cheap devs that fail to stand up to them,

French court: Google, Microsoft en ami must say 'au revoir' to pirates

" illegally shared content containing their own intellectual property." - this formulation bothers me greatly.

If it's my own IP and I decide to share it ... how can that be illegally shared?

Why Bletchley Park could never happen today

Actually, Bletchley Park *could* happen today.

As long as the spy services target unquestionable aggressors, that is.

However, when targeting terrorism, the reduction of privacy isn't the only problem.

Terrorism - this is a term that has no 100% recognized definition, therefore it is often abused to describe anyone and everyone we disagree with. Things that 100 years ago made someone shrug are today labeled as symptoms of terrorism. Anything goes. How can you fight an enemy which isn't even properly defined in itself (tactics aside) ? They are nameless/faceless simply because we can't agree on how to define them, not because of what they do.

Failure of immigration policies - don't open your door except to people you trust is a rule that applies n everyday life and should apply on country level as well. If you can't trust your allies then why open your door to them? There's little (if any) need to spy on your allies unless you can't trust them, case in which maybe you shouldn't call them allies in the first place.

Spotify strikes back at Radiohead - but artists are still angry

I don't see how this makes Spotify the villain. Spotify (or Pandora) don't pay the artists directly, but they pay a sort of union that then splits the money between artists and rightsholders (aka, labels) at rates imposed by the copyrights watchdogs.

I still hope one day some artists will grow balls and stop selling music rights to labels, you sold your rights, now you have to share the income. Keep the rights and you'll have your income from online services double over night.

Physical media is being sidelined, folks.

Confirmed: Driverless cars to hit actual British roads by end of year

I stopped at "Driverless cars to hit actual British". 'nuff said.

Dear Linus, STOP SHOUTING and play nice - says Linux kernel dev

"So you have to ask yourself, what kind of code do you want in your computer? Wrong stuff made by nice people, or stuff that actually works?

Yes, it would be lovely if everyone was polite and cheesy all the time, but someone has to shout when it's not up to scratch."

he'd be right if he was addressing some repeat offenders or people who simply don't get it.

What exactly does it get him calling people names? A guy made a mistake. Please explain how calling him names makes him a better coder?

From my experience, people react better when someone takes the time to explain what was wrong with what they did and what is the right way.

At the very minimum, skipping through abstract concepts like respect and leadership, ranting like an idiot forces the "victim" to filter the crap in order to pick the helpful information that he can use to make it better.

So considering the guy is already incompetent from your point of view, why exactly would you make his work harder (since he failed already and now you're making him filter crap)? Especially when you're on a deadline, this behavior really doesn't make sense. It's actually at the bottom of the pit, *after* simply getting rid of the guy.

Google study finds users ignore Chrome security warnings

Re: No, your certificate master is an idiot

"all that needs to be done is for them to generate a wildcard certificate, or, if your network is more than a single namespace, then a wildcard certificate per namespace."

- sure, that's the normal approach. But the guys here are cheap. The host administrator's protocol doesn't include using wildcards because as they charge a couple of euros per certificate, generating a wildcard certificate isn't really bringing them any profit.

- internally, wirldcards are used, but the problem is that in order to comply, we would need to use the form "*.TLD" which is not accepted (still generates warning).

To better understand what I mean, internally we use the form <user>.<language subdomain, 12 variations>.<site name, 132 variations>.<domain, 14 variations>.<environment, 6 variations>.

Even the combination *.domain.environment means 6*14 options, but it doesn't work. The lowest that seems to not generate warnings is *.site.domain.environment. It's much less of a headache to ignore the warnings.

Also, one of the environments is actually an external server that has an internal alias. It already has valid SSL for all sites, but as we usually use the internal aliases (because in that case we can force the site to use an internal CDN for static resources) so not even wildcards help in this case.

Let the warnings ignore rain down.

At my company, we ignore those warnings on a daily basis.

Why? Because we do some development and some of our webservers use a basic shared SSL certificates which is proper for just one URL out of 132 people use. So for the rest, people need to ignore those warnings.

Same goes for one of my personal sites which is on a shared hosting account with shared SSL. Every now and then people need to ignore SSL warnings. There are plenty of reasons to ignore SSL certificate warnings unfortunately.

Pirate Bay bod and pals bag $100k to craft NSA-proof mobe yammer app

"safe for whom? Anyone involved in illegal activities?"

Safe from eavesdroppers of all kinds.

Jealous spouses, companies that think my data belongs to them (sorry, I don't like it that Google et al use skimmed information from my communication to further their advertising business) or anyone at all. I don't like the idea that someday I might piss off a former friend that just happens to be in the right position to misuse the powers of internet eavesdropping that come with his job. It's shocking I don't trust govt employees to keep to their declared purposes, no? After all, you know for sure that nobody ever abuses the powers that comes with the job for even small personal gains, right? And suing post facto it's the same as if the damage never happened and everything will be just as before.

PlayStation 4 is FreeBSD inside

Re: FFS - It's a development kit, not a prototype or manufacturing sample

Yes, you're right. It's common practice to make Mac OS desktop app in a Windows environment running inside a VM on a Mac, rather than use the development tools in the native environment.

There's really no developer I've known in my career that prefers to develop apps in an environment as close as possible to the deployment environment. Who in their right mind would want to natively run the development environment instead of the test environment?

Kim Dotcom victim of 'largest data MASSACRE in history'

"so presumably the US DoJ would have an easier time starting its data-deletion campaign there, rather than trying to pressure a company based in a foreign country where it has no jurisdiction?" - actually it's quite the opposite.

A US company can be coerced under US law but at the same time can use US law to defend itself. With the prospective trial ongoing, Carpathia has the incentive to resist (while the FBI doesn't have much cause to push for a judge order for example to delete data).

On the other hand, a foreign company rests in the limbo of international law, various treaties or might simply give in simply to gain some favors with a US organization. I can tell you from experience that in my country if you are a US company or organization, all doors are open. If you have an FBI badge, jurisdiction be damned, people will do anything for you (free lunch included) - as long as they are not the targets of your investigation. I know a company who didn't produce accounting logs for the local police with a warrant, but they made a copy for a lone FBI agent over coffee (not illegal technically - against company policy sure but if it weren't followed by the media, there is little change the board would've found out about the FBI agent).

KEEP CALM and Carry On: PRISM itself is not a big deal

1. The fact that there are planned system that may be more intrusive than PRISM doesn't make PRISM less of an intrustion

2. "his appears to refer to links from NSA central systems to special company servers" - based on what?

3. "They would cost much but deliver little actionable intelligence" - the quantity of "actionable" intelligence is little in any case with respect to the quantity acquired. In fact, there's no guarantees related to quantity regardless.

4. "The average cost of each PRISM derived report in 2012 would be $830" - yeah, pretty cheap. There are many ways to explain reduced costs, but the auther isn't interest in explanation, only in supporting his message. According to all the military intelligence bigshots, the reason they like PRISM is the low cost due to using the infrastructure belonging to private companies that were targeted.

5. "From material published to date, there is no reason to disbelieve this" - indeed, between the outmost honesty of companies like Facebook as well as the transparency of the process, belief should swing the PRISM way.

The bottom line on PRISM is that NSA did gather data indiscriminately even on non-americans without the approval of their respective governments and with the complicity of the companies which those people used.

I'm still curious how the whole violation of US constitution goes.

Sony sucker-punches Xbox on price, specs, DRM-free gaming

Two fails

I'm an Xbox fan and there are many things I love about the console:

- the amazing Kinect

- the ergonomic controllers

- the mediacenter concept

However, the lack of any backward compatibility means I'll have to keep the old console to play my current games, any games I'll buy may be passed to someone else just once, the fact that the console won't work without Kinect attached, the fact that the consoles will be region-locked, the patent the M$ got on DRM by detecting people in the room, as well as the fact that you need a Live! subscription even for online services that aren't (or shouldn't) be connected to Live are powerful no-no's.

It's rather sad that there's so much FAIL regarding the services around the console that for once I'm going to have to say "pass" to the things I like and move on.

However, for me Sony also doesn't have enough incentives (I don't like the Eye, they don't offer enough in terms of mediacenter options, controller ergonomics are poor) so I'll just get a couple of controllers for the PC and stick with a gaming platform that I can actually own.

Windows 8.1 Start button SPOTTED in the wild

Re: This seems rather half-arsed

Probably not without them crying foul, but I doubt the EU would uphold the complaint in this case. The start button is just a button as Microsoft has it, even though they've created an entirely separate application to replicate those functions.

However, seeing that the new button doesn't really do what the public has asked, I doubt they're in any danger whatsoever. At most, they'll have to provide a new icon.

Re: This seems rather half-arsed

Understatement of the century.

I hope at least they'll have the decency to allow a way to make it disappear (as the author said) in the final version.

In the meantime, I'm sticking to Pokki which does the job wonderfully, since I only use Win8 in desktop mode (and it's pretty good in that way too).

So ... yeah ... much ado about nothing, really.

Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat

Re: XBox One vs PS4

"Seems" is the right word.

iPhones have had traditionally lesser hardware than Android phones but still manage to be snappy simply because the software running on them has less overhead and requires less resources.

There's plenty of room for the OS on Xbox One to be snappier than the OS on PS4.

Also, for real tflops values, we should wait for the actual units. So far only Microsoft seems to actually have one and it's a prototype.

Linus Torvalds in NSFW Red Hat rant

I think Linus was way more restrained than his usual self.

Also, I agree with him 101%.

Tesla's Elon Musk v The New York Times, Round 2

What I find apalling is the whole "logic" of the situation.

A car maker sends cars for tests. One tester makes not just a negative review, but launches some fairly wile accusations.

Anybody in the press questions him? No, what he says it's golden, after all he comes from Top Gear, no?

The car maker wants to rebuff the statements made by said tester. Immediately they are labelled as troublemakers, tit-for-tatters. Anybody stops to question the initial article? No, fingers point at Tesla. "They're spying on drivers", "they have no place to argue", etc, etc.

Why not? They have the right to defend the product and it's quite astonishing that the point is not they caught one guy lying outright but the question is how they managed that. Apparently the press got used to being able to just make stuff up and it's a problem when some people got the means to unravel the lies.

Re: Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk arguments are pathetic

You obviously didn't read Musk's article.

According to Musk, the car *didn't fail*

Logs (that are now public) show the car still had charge and there was no failure recording. The "reporter" first said that the car ran our of charge. Then he said that maybe it didn't but it shutdown anyway, despite the recordings.

The guy was instructed to do some things and chose to not do them. I would argue that he was right to test the car outside of parameters because it is interesting to customers to see what a failure margin it has, but he has no right to claim he did everything as told when he obviously didn't.

The car had the supercharge system and the statement was "if you use supercharging, then the range is extended by that much". The guy turned it off and then claimed it didn't reach the extended range. Well ... d'uh! If you turn of the system that helps extend the range, it is common sense it won't reach that range .... but yet the car reported it had charge *despite* that. To me that's a plus for Tesla.

The guy already lied about some things, even if the rest as just an error, he showed at least poor judgement.

Kim Dotcom's locker may be full, but the cupboard is bare

Re: I don't get it - Me neither

I'm pretty sure they mean 8Tb traffic, not bandwidth (or it would be /s)

But in any case, how do 2x2Tb HDDs help you? A locked like Dropbox, Mega or Box helps you by making sure your files are constantly available online.

Let's say you make your own NAS at home and make it available online. You have to put up with your bandwidth for transfer (I have only 2Mb/s for upload from my home network so if I choose to transfer my speed will be low so my download at a remote location will be limited), your router's availability not to mention the fact you need to be savvy enough to juggle the port forwarding necessary for a secure connection.

I'm definitely not going to be carrying x HDD's which I can't really share with others unless I'm physically there.

Swartz prosecutor: We only pushed for 'six months' in the cooler

Re: 'We were big softies all the way' - Yeah, right

@Chris: I think you should read a bit more carefully, all the counts sum up to *over* 30 years. Not maximum, just the average sentence of each count against Aaron. Nobody said 30 is the maximum and exactly because it's not the maximum it's conceivable that Aaron would have spent around 30 years in jail.

The prosecutor might have had good intentions but like she said, in the end, it's up to the judge. The prosecutor could have recommended a lower sentence, sure, but it's highly doubtful a judge would have agreed to that.

Brighton marathon munchers banned from all-you-can-eat diner

Re: Nope - Psyx was right

Exactly, so under your very own condition the restaurant broke the deal.

Sure, a business can refuse service to anyone prior to actually starting the service. But said restaurant owner kicked the customers out as they were there and humiliated them in front of everyone ... for the sole "guilt" of following the restaurant's offer.

The way to act would be that the next time the undesired customer comes in, you greet him and say "sorry, but we reserve the right to choose our clientele and from now on we refuse to serve you". Kicking them out from their table after the fact (and after two years!) is rude and bad for business. A respectable business should have a little more diplomacy even in an adverse situation (or especially in an adverse situation).

Honestly, I can't see a situation where such behavior from the restaurant manager would be acceptable way of doing business.

If there's an undesirable customer - act as described above.

But personally (as a business owner) in the situation described in the article, I would have attempted long before to talk to them and try to help them understand my position and ask them to take it easier on the servings - or ban them calmly beforehand. A regular customer is a sure way of income, having unwritten rules and hinting them to customers is ok, denying service is also ok but the whole behavior issue is not.

RIM: What's all the 'bleeding' fuss about BlackBerry developers?

Stop and think

"Stop and think" that's my message to RIM.

RIM needs to find its focus, the customer type it wants to reach.

Apple has a good clear focus on its controlled environment where the platform is boxed in and users must only focus on what to buy from the App Store. Presentation, interoperability with open (non-Apple) systems is beyond the point.

Android cohorts? Media, media, media & networking. Do everything, with anyone, anywhere. No holds barred on activities.

See what I'm getting at? RIM has a reputation in the business world and it should focus there. If it can get a slice of the social/media market from the rest, ok. But don't try it. RIM has plenty to offer. Phone content encryption? Check. Secure mail aggregation via its own service? Check. Don't alienate your existing market by chasing after many rabbits at once.

Ten... freeware gems for new PCs

Somebody should note that OpenOffice was shelved by Sun, the new "open" is called LibreOffice.

Google Drive Issues on Mac

Didn't have a chance to test it on mac, but on my PC, the desktop app works ok.

It asks you for what folders to sync - just like dropbox (adds your google docs stuff there too). You only need a browser plugin if you want to edit your google docs offline.

Would be nice to allow you to choose a sync format for your google docs (eg, download them in ODF or something and then update your google doc on upload).

Hanging's too good for 'em - so what do you suggest?

Well ...

To put it in the words of the immortal Tyrion Lannister:

cut off their manhood and feed it to the goats.

Or as modern technology knows this: surgical castration.

Simple & clean.

'Don't break the internet': How an idiot's slogan stole your privacy...

Rather poor attempt to link privacy to copyright.

The two are completely separate issues as they refer to two different types of information. In any case, the privacy issue (if there is one) doesn't have to be solved via "information ownership" of the kind that defines copyright. Copyright is a good that can be sold or bought, an inherently flawed system that makes information a privilege of the rich, while privacy refers to information that should remain by definition unknown to any other party.

The second can be defined and protected via rather simple laws simply because it doesn't need to regulate any kind of outside access.

The copyright issue resides in the global oligopoly that has been formed around the matter and no further progress can be made there without a reform from the ground up.

ViewSonic V350 dual Sim Android smartphone

AllDro?

Hello,

Now that you mention dual-sims, I would definitely like to see a RegHardware review of this thing:

Allview P3 AllDro

It's also an Android dual-sim handset on the cheap side, but the specs look slightly better than what I've seen with ViewSonic. The AllView has Android 2.3.5, 4.1 capacitive screen, but I couldn't find much info on memory and processor (except the GPU).

Since you guys here know better, I would love to hear your opinion on this one as well.

Brit pair deported from US for 'destroy America' tweet

Hmpf

Americans don't understand humour, only humor.

Don't forget war. How many long-term wars of aggression since WWII were started by someone else except US and its allies?

ROFL

I didn't really expect that yesterday's joke about #destroyAmerica on tweeter to get that popular. I'm definitely going to apply for a Visa now and see if #destroyAmerica will be mentioned as the reason for denying entry :P

Hello there

I stand by the US agents.

We all know that terrorists use plain text tweets to syncronize their attacks. This is why tweeter is full of tweets about how destroy America. There is even #destroyAmerica created by terrorists to make the work of lazy US FBI agents easier.

So please, if you're bent on truly destroying America, use the #destroyAmerica tag. Anal probing guaranteed in 24h.

Ofcom grills pirates, loses report under fridge for two years

Srsly?

"And digital prices are typically lower than physical prices" - have you looked at amazon recently?

Why are Android anti-virus firms so slow to react on Carrier IQ?

Don't think so ...

It may be malicious, it may not be, that's the whole point of flagging the software as potentially undesirable and not as a rootkit right away.

It is certainly not legitimate since the user is never asked for his accord.

- all mobile apps, even DRM ones, still ask for the user to approve their access

- on Windows, the user is told that logs are being kept or that automatic updates take place and he can choose to enable them or not

And Lookout si wrong: the analogy should be made with Sony. Sony comissioned a third party to do their rootkit. Here, the makers/carriers comission the software from Carrier IQ. It's not Windows update. The "windows update" on Android is the Android Market. And the user still has to opt-in to make updates automatic, not opt-out, while Carrier IQ doesn't offer any "opt"-ing.

Android Market free-for-all blamed for malware avalanche

Far fetched

The comparison to Windows is just a bit far-fetched. Getting malware on your phone happens if and only if you acknowledge and specifically download & install a malicious app. It's not the simple fact that malicious apps get on the Market and it's nothing like going on the same site you've been using for years only to get you system hijacked with the help of an iframe where some malicious JS was injected.

Still, it wouldn't hurt if Google would establish a reviweing process. Whether it involves approving apps or simply testing apps as they are added, it would still help. Or even better, it opens up a market for third-party app auditors.

Salman Rushdie hissy-fit forces Facebook name U-turn

Yeah

Thank you Salman Rushdie, master of the obvious.

Anonymous shuts down hidden child abuse hub

Right

Not only that, but what's really hilarious is the idea that the police are the real IT takedown pro's while pitiful groups like Anonymous or LulzSec, etc, are amateurs.

Maybe the competent police would like to join a hacker convention one day and show off a bit. That would do wonders for press as well as for people's confidence in the police IT force.

Galaxy Tab 7.7 pulled from IFA after new Apple moves

We will prove that it's not who makes the tablet first who counts but who makes it better

Quite ironic to hear that from the Samsung guy.

After all, that's close to what Jobs said before launching the iPad, given that the iPad wasn't teh first tablet, coming a few years after Microsoft's attempt. Feeble as it may have been, it was there and Jobs just made it better (much like the iPod).

Microsoft pounces as Mozilla shuns enterprise

Corporate process?

I can't say I fully agree with Mozilla's stance but it's understandable and moreover the corporatists also have solutions.

First of all, I don't understand the double QA process. On one hand there is Mozilla's QA that OK's the browser for release and on the other there's the corporate deployment team that OK's the browser for the plugins and web apps that the company uses. Why doesn't the company delegate a couple of people to the Mozilla QA process, to ensure a release's compatibility with the corporate procedures, so that when the release is out, it's already OK'ed for corporate use?

And moreover, if a browser release is OK'ed for corporate use, why does it matter if it's supported by the parent company or not? The corporate environment is supposed to be safe and functional, therefore once a browser does what the corporate environment needs, all should be good.

DRM-free music dream haunts Apple's app-store lock-in

Others

Same can be said for today's books. If by any chance you want to switch from paper to Kindle, you need to re-buy your books for Kindle. Even within Kindle, Amazon was rather reluctant to allow sharing books between your own Kindle devices.