* Posts by Chris Sake

70 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2011

Page:

Drunk on Friday night? Then YOU probably DIDN'T spot Facebook's privacy tweak

Chris Sake
Megaphone

Timely

http://saintsal.com/facebook/

"Get your loved ones off Facebook", dated 25 January.

What do UK and Iran have in common? Both want to outlaw encrypted apps

Chris Sake

Back to using classified advertisements or the radio then

Andromaque se parfume à la lavande.

FBI boss: Apple's iPhone, iPad encryption puts people 'ABOVE THE LAW'

Chris Sake

Never assume

Can I assume from this that the FBI never caught a criminal or terrorist before people had smartphones?

Backup software for HDD and Cloud

Chris Sake

tarsnap

Another option is tarsnap: https://www.tarsnap.com/

Tarsnap is a secure online backup service for BSD, Linux, OS X, Minix, OpenIndiana, Cygwin, and probably many other UNIX-like operating systems. The Tarsnap client code provides a flexible and powerful command-line interface which can be used directly or via shell scripts.

At the present time, Tarsnap does not support Windows (except via Cygwin) and does not have a graphical user interface.

It has an interesting, yet low-cost, pricing model.

Brit spymasters: Cheers, Snowden. Terrorists are overhauling their comms

Chris Sake
FAIL

Sir Iain

Security by obscurity is NOT security.

Kiwi jetpack gets all-clear for manned tests

Chris Sake

Naysayers

Yes, it is a prototype and pre-production...

But:

- shark spotting at beaches

- fire locating in forests

- herd location in outback stations or farms

- traffic/crowd observation

come to mind, with a quicker response time and at a lower cost than an aircraft or a helicopter. Though a paramotor could be utilised instead for some of these.

Don't forget that the Martin Jetpack comes from a country that reputedly can fix anything with a fence post and a length of number 8 wire. Also, 31 March 1903 anyone?

Indian military pondered attack on Venus and Jupiter

Chris Sake

Re: Tactics.

"Beware the hun from the sun."

Study: US iPhone owners tend to be rich, educated, white

Chris Sake
Trollface

Rather common, like one's polo shirt

According to Rob Walker [http://muckrack.com/notrobwalker] writing in Yahoo! [http://news.yahoo.com/the-iphone-as-polo-shirt-142256534.html]:

"...it’s made it easier for me to recognize that the iPhone is, in fact, a totally bourgeois device: The iPhone has become, in its six short years, the technological equivalent of a Polo shirt.

"Toting a non-Apple device around the world, for the first time in ages, has made me see the Apple-toters with new eyes. If you’ll allow me to be totally and arbitrarily judgmental for a moment: It struck me just how common the iPhone has become. And I mean that in the sense of “not distinguished; not of superior excellence; ordinary,” per definition 4 in my Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary: Deluxe Second Edition. (I’ll stop short of citing definition 7: “not refined; low; coarse.”)

"Before everyone gets upset, I would actually draw a distinction between Apple in general and the iPhone in particular. The latter has become a brand unto itself, one that has long since crossed over from “cool” (meaning something embraced by a minority that thinks of itself as having elite taste) to “acceptable,” meaning it’s a sort of cultural default, like a Polo shirt or Nike sneakers — or, for that matter, Windows (in its heyday at least).

"It’s the brand for people who don’t want to think all that hard about what brand they are buying, and just want whatever everybody else will accept without question. It’s bourgeois."

Google Translate for Android adds offline translation option

Chris Sake
Paris Hilton

Re: Hmmmm .... might need a bit more work!

周公吐哺: The Duke of Zhou spits out his breast-milk.

I don't know the context for saying this.

Provenance: http://pin-yin.org/ChengYu/Zhou-Gong-Tu-Bu.html

[Paris for obvious connotations]

Don't buy a Google car: They might stop it while you're driving

Chris Sake
Megaphone

Re: Google are tightening the screws

NewsFox is an alternative for those with Firefox as their browser.

"NewsFox is an efficient 3-pane(email) style Atom/RSS feed reader."

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/newsfox/

Never subscribed to the Reader idea as leery of giving Google more information about my viewing habits, sod the convenience of synchronising with multiple devices.

Google sends Street View car into Fukushima dead zone

Chris Sake
Coat

Who took the photo?

It must have been the street cleaner.

Sweep the winter dust

Giri for google camera

Radiation smile

Mega launches with mega FAIL

Chris Sake
Trollface

Hello Kim

Welcome to The Register.

Bradley Manning to speak in public for first time in two years

Chris Sake
FAIL

Re: Waterboarding? Suicide missions?

@AC 16:16. Does the US Government shoot spies for 'the other side' that have been captured?

I think not. So why the ire for Manning?

Recently, in the United States, from public records:

2010: Dongfan Chung. Sentenced to 15 years for passing secrets to China.

2010: Anna Chapman and 9 friends. Arrested, then deported in a swap with Russia for 4 US agents.

2010: Kendall Myers, and wife. Sentenced to life in prison for spying for Cuba.

2010: Noshir Gowadia. Spying for China.

2010: Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, and wife. Spying for Venezuela.

2010: Glenn Shriver. Spying for China. 4 years imprisonment.

2010: Minkyu Martin.

2011: Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid. Spying for Syria. Sentenced in 2012 to 18 months.

2011: Kexue Huang. Passing on information about pesticides to China, so probably does not count.

2012: Alexander Fishenko. Indicted along with 11 others, as an agent for the Russian military.

None of the above have been shot.

Samsung turns screws on Apple, hikes A6 processor price 20%

Chris Sake

Re: I wonder..

Elsewhere, it is reported that Samsung would be pleased to regain for themselves some of the production capacity currently used for Apple. Whether that is a rumour or not remains to be seen, but it does make sense given the volume of sales Sammy is experiencing with their own products.

And no, there are not plenty of competitors for fab production.

Did hackers uncover Petraeus' saucy affair webmails before FBI?

Chris Sake
Joke

Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam

I think we might have to go back to having Jesuits as spymasters.

Apple must apologise for its surly apology on its website on Saturday

Chris Sake
FAIL

Re: Statement is below the fold... whatever size the window

The previous post shows - for posterity - the code that Apple have on the apple.co.uk site.

The code resizes the iPad Mini image so that the user has to scroll to the bottom in order to see the apology - that is of course if one knows it is there and is interested. The normal punters will never see this.

Image: http://i.imgur.com/h63nO.jpg

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/12kce9/apple_resizes_website_so_that_the_samsung_apology/

In other words, Apple continues to blatantly give the UK court the finger.

FAIL logo for Apple.

Chris Sake

Re: Statement is below the fold... whatever size the window

var HeroResize=AC.Class({initialize:function(b){this._height=null;this._hero=$(b);

AC.Object.synthesize(this);this.__boundResizeHero=this.resizeHero.bindAsEventListener(this);

if(typeof window.ontouchstart==="undefined"){this.resizeHero();Event.observe(window,"resize",this.__boundResizeHero)

}},setHeight:function(b){this._height=(b<0)?0:b;return this._height},resizeHero:function(){this.setHeight(parseInt(window.innerHeight||(window.document.documentElement.clientHeight||window.document.body.clientHeight),10)-310);

this.hero().style.height=this.height()+"px"}});Event.onDOMReady(function(){var b=new HeroResize("billboard")

});

Google scoffs down Chinese domain name takeaway

Chris Sake
Joke

Not so simple?

I hope they remember to register domains with .中國 as well.

Google data center spies on ITSELF: 'Like a boring version of Doom'

Chris Sake

Patent war(ines)s

Are the boomerangs in the photos right-angled to avoid a patent infringement with a certain fruity corporation?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Samsung fights to stay on US shelves as Apple calls for ban

Chris Sake

Patent troll

The jury foreman has his own patent: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7352953.html - "Method and apparatus for recording and storing video information". Filed in 2002, after TiVo was released in 1999.

In his own words: "When I got in this case and I started looking at these patents I considered: ‘If this was my patent and I was accused, could I defend it?’” Hogan explained. On the night of Aug. 22, after closing arguments, “a light bulb went on in my head,” he said. “I thought, I need to do this for all of them.”

For posterity, here are two other quotes - one from the foreman, and the second from another juror:

"We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."

"After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art, that there wasn't something out there before Apple. ... In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2012082510525390

Cloud support brings WikiLeaks back online

Chris Sake
Trollface

Error rate

"I am in the process of finding the actual IP address of WikiLeaks web server. I have a couple of leads and believe I will be able to do it, however it will take some time."

That's one of the problems of water-boarding: it takes time, and the 'confessions' have to be verified.

Video shows armed assault on Kim Dotcom family home

Chris Sake

Ewe, not bitch.

Doubt that NZ is a bitch to Israel. New Zealand was seen as a soft spot to obtain passports fraudulently, until Israel got caught. Bit of a fracas, really.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jul/16/israel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel%E2%80%93New_Zealand_passport_scandal

Chris Sake
Black Helicopters

Re: Suggestions...

In the video, Dotcom claimed in court that he could not delete anything on the servers even if he wanted to as the FBI had already disconnected them BEFORE the raid.

Facebook: 83 million IMPOSTERS stalk our network

Chris Sake

But is Facebook advertising a scam?

According to this (unverified as original post removed from FB) article, 80% of clicks the site in question was paying Facebook for advertising were from bots:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/is-facebooks-ad-model-a-scam.html

Booth babes banned by Chinese gaming expo

Chris Sake
Thumb Down

@AC 12.23

Tosser

Cops shutter net cafes to save Beijing's youth

Chris Sake
Coat

No Zil lanes in China

There was no need to do so for the Beijing Olympics, even though they had them.

Primus, bulldoze houses and other buildings to create new or wider roads.

Secundus, implement a plan banning private vehicles with even-numbered licence plates on alternate days to those with odd-numbered licence plates. This reduced the traffic in Beijing by over 1.6 million cars a day (as well as carbon dioxide emissions).

Tertius, invoke civic pride in the citizens who voluntarily reduced their car journeys, and heroically crammed into buses and the Subway trains.

Result, profit. Clear roads, and blue skies.

Oddly, private vehicles with even-numbered licence plates were banned on days with odd numbers in the calendar; and vice versa for those with odd-numbered plates.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, USA, estimated that this reduction in traffic had a corresponding reduction of carbon dioxide emissions of between 24,000 and 96,000 tonnes.

London, of course, will be different; it will just engage in false flag operations, I would imagine. Oh, wait - it already has had a hoisting problem...

* Icon as I am looking for my 红领巾 red scarf.

BIG BOOBS banished from Linux kernel

Chris Sake

Won't someone think of the booby birds?

Bloody gannets.

Apple Store staircase flagged as Peeping Tom black spot

Chris Sake
Trollface

Re: "he was upskirting through the glass floor some 342 metres up"

This act is a noble sight which embiggens even the smallest man.

US federal boffins insist that mermaids DON'T exist

Chris Sake

It's a conspiracy

based on the image that led to this scholarly article:

http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/vza1s/thats_enough_internet_for_today/

(It probably would be of benefit to understand the reddit tagging scheme.)

Blighty laid bare as historic aerial snaps archive goes online

Chris Sake
Black Helicopters

Shades of the London Olympics

I was enamoured by the caption of the photograph of Wembley Stadium by the Daily Fail:

<blockquote please>Wembley Stadium hosts the 1935 FA Cup final, which Sheffield Wednesday won by beating West Bromwich Albion 4-2. The Cierva autogyro in the foreground was flown by Scotland Yard, experimenting with air observation to monitor crowds.</blockquote please>

In 1935!

Chinese 'nauts couple successfully without help of machines

Chris Sake
Thumb Up

Well done

Liu Yang is the first female astronaut from the PRC.

Turing Machine brought to life with Lego

Chris Sake
Thumb Up

Re: Not really a LEGO Turing Machine!

Joefish, thank you for that link. The article's video was like watching a goldfish swim around in its bowl and calling it a Turing Machine. The French one was amazing. Now let's see that be part of the curriculum in an ICT course!

FunnyJunk lawyer doubles down on Oatmeal Operation Bear Love

Chris Sake

The smell of Stapelia

From Popehat's saga on Oatmeal v. FunnyJunk, part 3 [1], he quotes Carreon from an interview:

He may have a very difficult time proving that Inman “instigated attacks,” as he said on his website, but he’s certain he can find some legal recourse for what’s going on right now – “California code is just so long, but there’s something in there about this,” he says.

To this, Popehat writes:

Oh, Mr. Carreon, indeed there is. There's California's magnificent anti-SLAPP statute, under which you'll be paying the attorney fees of anyone you sue. There's California's judgment debtor exam law, under which you can be interrogated about your income and assets in preparation for garnishing your income and, if necessary, seeking liquidation of your assets to satisfy a judgment for attorney fees against you. There's California's sanctions statute, under which you can be sanctioned for bringing suit to harass or without adequate legal or factual basis.

He concludes with some free legal advice:

Read them carefully. And think. Think hard. Step back from the precipice. This can get better, by you letting it go. Or it can get worse. Much, much worse.

Links to the laws are included with his article.

[1] http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/15/the-oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-iii-charles-carreons-lifetime-movie-style-dysfunctional-relationship-with-the-internet/

PS. El Reg, please provide <blockquote> tags, as well as writing articles not geared towards your advertisers. Thank you.

Cameron: A nod's not as good as a wink to a Murdoch blind bat

Chris Sake
Joke

Churchill was a journalist

This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.

iPhone denies existence of Gibraltar, other bits of British empire

Chris Sake
Headmaster

Bring back the Classics

Prior to it being called Tariq's Mount, it was one of the Pillars of Hercules, being called Mons Calpe by the Romans. No doubt, Hercules (Heracles), being Greek, would have called it something else.

It's not surprising that Gibraltor is not included in the iPhone map as the helpful prejudicial map, labelled "Europe according to Americans", at [1] does not show it either.

[1] http://www.topdesignmag.com/mapping-stereotypes-the-geography-of-prejudice/

Another investor pulls out of Habbo Hotel after grooming claims

Chris Sake
FAIL

Ban lovely leafy rural areas

We are told that, “...There isn’t a town, village or hamlet in which children are not being sexually exploited.”

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9327534/Child-abuse-taking-place-in-every-town-village-and-hamlet-in-England.html]

This is not responded to at all by the authorities, except to tell us that the new "internet super-snoop law" will save us.

Is not it curious that news about Habbo is released at the same time as a plethora of articles appear in the press on the topic of paedophiles? At the same time as this new law is being promulgated, no less!

Will investors pull out of Facebook as well, given that children have been groomed - or worse - via that site?

<rant> It is the responsibility of parents to safeguard their children from unwanted attention, whether it is on the Internet, at the local kebab shop, or within our "lovely leafy rural areas." The nanny state has arisen and prospered, in part, due to the failure of many parents in accepting this responsibility. </rant>

White AMERICANS will have become MEKON brain-men by 3000AD

Chris Sake
Joke

Evolution at its finest

A larger skull structure is needed to hold that oh so manly square jaw.

GPS rival Beidou will cover Asia Pac by end of the year

Chris Sake
Joke

Re: You say Beidou, I say Baidu

In the same manner as to how 'Beijing' is pronounced as 'Peking'.

<pedantry alert>

Beidou-1 has been in service since 2000 with 3 satellites, though it is classified as experimental.

Beidou-2, or Compass [BeiDou (Compass) Navigation Satellite System], is a new system, launched in 2011. This has 11 satellites in orbit now, with reported plans to extend this number to more than 70 to provide global coverage.

</pedantry alert>

China steps up crack down on hi-tech exam cheats

Chris Sake

... and has been so throughout the ages

The qualification is the goal, not the knowledge.

Ye Shi in the Song dynasty wrote, "A healthy society cannot come about when people study not for the purpose of gaining wisdom and knowledge but for the purpose of becoming government officials."

Cheating occurred in the Imperial Examinations in China, although bribery was probably more effective, or having a better scholar than oneself take the exams instead.

Methods included writing notes in miniature books, and on items like clothing and fans. Here is a photo of underwear used by such a cheat:

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc284/sebastian1222/05.jpg

A jacket follows:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-11/17/content_11565310.htm

The Daily Telegraph describes some books used for cheating, though I do think sometimes that modern journalists must have been educated in the same subjects as the ancient Chinese; to wit, without any mathematics or logic (the article mentions one book with 32 million characters on 32 pages):

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5834418/Ancient-Chinese-cheat-sheets-discovered.html

Investors queue for chance to glance at Zuck's FACE

Chris Sake

Headline misdirection

I thought given that the headline made use of "glance" and "Zuck's face" that the article would be about either or both of:

1. Zuck's purchase of yet another non-revenue generating company: Glancee

2. Zuck's use of copious quantities of makeup.

But this was not the case.

Not knowing what Glancee is, I looked on the App[le] Store's (cached as now dead) page for this product, and discover that it is "serendipity supercharged". Now I know, thank <god>.

I discovered also that it has more than 10,000 active users, so probably does not warrant a USD1b purchase price.

[1]. http://www.glancee.com

[2]. http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/zuckerberg-ridiculed-odd-white-eye-082633301.html

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

Chris Sake

Need more emoticons,

apparently.

Well, at least according to Chad: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2012/04/22/how-to-build-an-app-empire-can-you-create-the-next-instagram/

This is real proselyting language:

Appreneurs earn money while creating lifestyles of great freedom. Two of my appreneur friends spend several months of the year doing nonprofit work in Vietnam, while their businesses are generating seven-figure incomes.

Interesting that he promotes blatant copying:

To make the design process easier, I look at certain apps in the App Store and reference them to show my programmers what I’m looking for. For example, I’ll say, “Download the XYZ app. I want the ABC functionality to work like theirs. Take a look at the screenshots from this other app, and change this.” I take certain components of apps that I’d like to emulate, and give them to the programmer so that we are as clear as possible.

I agree with JDX; far better to sell to the business market. 99c 'apps' work for Apple in the same way that arbitrage works for banks, but not for an individual investor / developer.

Woman cuffed for smuggling iPhones in beer bottles

Chris Sake
Pint

Amateur

She mustn't have been very bright:

1. 'Good' Chinese girls don't drink beer;

2. No-one takes glass over the border from HK to the PRC for re-cycling. That is the task of the super-efficient wizened crones who extract everything that is possibly recyclable from the rubbish collection points in order to make ends meet;

3. In order to smuggle anything across the border, all one has to do is go to a 'shipping' company - the best ones do not have a sign out front. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Megaupload case near collapse: report

Chris Sake
WTF?

Re: Can that prosecutor please explain . . .

I don't know about punishment for downloading movies, but death-by-drone seems to be the punishment in Pakistan for using a camera:

http://reprieve.org.uk/investigations/drones/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/07/cia-unaccountable-drone-war

Berners-Lee: Net snoop law tosses human rights into the shredder

Chris Sake

Re: government control

Most of the Gestapo were not torturers, but bureaucrats. So it is not a specific agency, historical or otherwise, that would have cried more havoc. Any bureaucratic organisation that has lax accountability provisions is ripe for this type of behaviour. Town councils, we are looking at you.

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Singapore most 'liveable' Asian city for ex-pat IT pros

Chris Sake

Re: Cough...

Partly, yes, I would agree with that definition. But I forgot I am in Hong Kong, where job title inflation is par for the course!

So an IT Director here may not belong to an institute such as the Hong Kong Institute of Directors, may not hold a board position, and may not even know about trivialities such as corporate governance.

Mind you, neither do accredited directors, on occasion. One can only look at a pair of brothers from a certain real-estate company who have been portrayed recently in the local news.

Chris Sake

Cough...

It's a mixed bag in Hong Kong.

It is easier, arguably, for an English-speaking person to adapt to than in Japan. The crime rate is low - almost non-existant for an expat. Long weekends and holidays, of which there are an abundance, are opportunities to travel around the region.

The air quality is not good, but improvements are being made, such as banning smoking in the bars in Wanchai. Actually, the pollution is variable, and one can live a reasonably healthy lifestyle here.

The worst issue is the attitude of many of the local employers towards their employees, especially those below director level. i.e. unnecessary over-time without remuneration, being required to be seen to be 'working', not being able to make decisions without the boss' approval. This can be uncomfortable for a Western expat, used to a different style of management. It can be resolved with a mixture of resolve and tact.

On the other hand, a recent 'study' by a HR company [1] finds that employers consider 37% of hires as 'average', and 9% as 'bad'.

[1] http://hudson.cn/Portals/CN/documents/Hudson%20Report/2012/Hudson_Report_Q2_2012-Hong_Kong_English.pdf

MI5 stinks up website with dead SSL certificate

Chris Sake
Joke

Yes, it is a hanging preposition.

Android Trojan distracts Japanese with anime and porn

Chris Sake

Re: Double take

Good point. The author is active on xda, but most users of Play Store, or whatever it is called this week, would have to rely on that old quis...custodes thing.

Chris Sake

Edit

Trojan, not tojan.

Chris Sake
WTF?

Double take

I read the headline as meaning that tojans are now required in bukkake film.

LBE Privacy Guard is a useful tool to tame use of over-eager permissions in Android applications. Rooting is required.

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