Posts by Nanomousey

Android malware victims offered free WinPhones by MS

Android Malware?

I found Android sucked due to the restrictions of the handset and service provider's modifications to the supplied phone. I don't think Android itself has much in the way of issues. I stopped all the background stuff that the service providers run by rooting the phone and running a custom ROM (Cyanogen mod) and I haven't had a problem with any odd behaviour, malware or anything. I would say my phone has been more stable over the last year than any desktop operating system I have used.

I think it's more that the service providers interference with Android which tends to throw a spanner in the works for a small group of Android users. Friends and colleagues with iPhones have switched to Android and they think it's an improvement. As for WP8, they just will not switch to it based on their experience of desktop Windows. Maybe that is a bit prejudiced towards Windows, but that is down to the user experience of people not wanting endless updates every 12 hours.

Just to note, many Android users (including me with the phone as supplied and tweaked by my service provider) do not receive updates because service providers turn off the OTA (over the air) update service for many and exercise their own controls. It is in their interest to try and make you upgrade handset and get locked in to a new contract for 18 months to 2 years. It is this that prevents patches being available to many Droid users, not so much anything else.

Having a rooted phone on Cyanogen gives access to nightly builds and regular patches, which I have to say are not really required. I just move between major revisions when they are officially released and that's more than enough.

Gone in a Flash: Adobe's long march to HTML5

~mico and Brennan Young are right

~mico is quite right. Brennan Young's comments are also good.

Different browsers have always interpreted the HTML standards in their own way. There is no reason to celebrate and think it will be different in HTML5.

Nothing to thank Steve Jobs for.... Adobe take decisions independently of him. He voiced his opinion - which does not mean he is resposible as the person for (quoting from above) "THANK YOU, Steve Jobs for giving Flash the boot.". To think that is to think that somehow Jobs had a mind control device actively controlling Adobe leaders to nod to him - something I think people who seem to have found a 'god' in Jobs tend to do with anything Jobs ever said. Or at least that somehow the media turned to all things Jobsian to assert him as right and send Flash down the pan - that isn't right either.

Flash was coming to a natural point of adapt-or-die within its lifecycle. It is now quite long in the tooth. Adobe are acting on this.

As somebody has previously said in another Reg article on HTML5 and Flash: HTML5 is an extension to HTML that brings some new features, but a proper programming language it is not. It is not object-oriented or capable of building applications with the same OOP logic as you could with Flash. OOP exists for robustness, code re-use and instancing. HTML5 does not offer these things. There is a wealth of things that are better accomplished in the old stalwart than would be the case in HTML5.

Anybody who thinks HTML5 or Steve Jobs has killed Flash off is misleading themselves. Adobe appear to be adapting Flash to encompass HTML5 where warranted in order to produce something new (by name and brand) but is actually just a natural product evolution. We will see how Flash-like the result is. I suspect that this 'Flash replacement' from Adobe will see nearly as much use and HTML5 will remain a HyperText scripting tool and never develop to a full language.

I am not an advocate of Flash. I personally think it has its problems. Likewise HTML5 is not a 'magic bullet' for web development.

And if you don't believe me... read this article for starters:

http://www.uza.lt/2010/04/29/my-take-html5-vs-flash/

Assange: 'iPhone, BlackBerry, Gmail users - you're all screwed'

EM EYE FUNF address revealed on Spooks?

@Allan George Dyer

Sorry but Spooks shows the wrong building as HQ of the 'domestic' service. Spooks shows a law office and grand masonic lodge. Just like half the buildings in the last series where Harry meets somebody in a quiet London location, which turns out to be Greenwich University Campus - the old RN Maritime buildings.

Try navigating by street view near Millbank looking for a road with a prickly name. Look out for the fast-rise/fall bollards by the car entrance and the armed guard. That's where it actually is!

Gov removes 'general appeal' rights for accused freetards

Interesting...

I wasn't aware rights to appeal could be withdrawn by government dictat. Isn't that the definition of totalitarianism - what the state says, goes, and you have no rights to question or seek justice!?

As far as I can see, this 'appeal' to OFCOM is more a complaints procedure and review by them, not a court. I suspect you would still have a legal right to claim that your character may be defamed by such a policy that does not give you a right to redress and penalises you (by blacklists) without a due legal process to establish veracity of the allegation by the ISP.

Possibly the government could find themselves with too many court cases to handle on this one - the ISP claim is not open to scrutiny of the accused, so administrative errors or false positives where somebody has legally acquired rights-managed copyrighted material correctly from some online service the ISP is unaware of when using heuristics to automatically flag copyrighted material. Many could be incorrectly accused. I doubt ISPs are going to track a world database of sites offering legally downloadable copyrighted material as some service - so heurustic analysis (which has been tested and can identify copyrighted multimedia) would be used.

Things never seem to be well thought out around IT - always a knee-jerk reaction with intelligent debate stifled by overzealous non-IT bureaucrats looking out for the corporation and not the rights of the civilians.

(Of course, those freetarders DLing all and sundry copyrighted material are just asking for trouble and it's understandable in such cases that they get caught and dealt with. However, most of them are probably kids doinf it after school when the parents aren't home yet.)

Judge may order Page and Ellison into mediation

I thought it said "meditation" too....

...So that would have been Leisure [Law]Suit Larrys then...

... I know, getting me coat.

We didn't leak names of US agents, insists WikiLeaks

@david_wilson

RE: "And you don't think that for people looking to discredit Wikileaks, having Assange in charge is a bit of a bonus?"

The hypothesis of your question is that Assange himself discredits Wikeleaks. I don't know the guy and I don't necessarily believe what's in the press. Even based on what I have seen of what Assange has said in interviews is somewhat misrepresentative of the guy - he's been asked questions by the media, so they drive the topic and question things a particular way to drive a particular angle that could well be considered 'leading the witness'. I certainly have seen them deliberately take some answers he's given out of context to do so. So there is no way to have an educated view on the matter. (unless I knew him or WL persons, or had inside gov/intel, which I do not)

I think the same would happen whoever acted as a spokesman for Wikileaks. I think best not have a spokesman! You could, if you desire, interpret that as falling on the side of agreeing with your hpothesis - but it's still your interpretation. I'm already passed caring about the matter.

I only hope there are people of good standing who would seek to bring greater transparency and accountability to government. There are caveats to that which, depending on scenario, could fill a book. So discussing them here is a little pointless. Whether WL does this is deabteable - as I posted earlier, the water is too muddy to see clearly. Are WL corrupt in how they operate? Have they brought important truths to public awareness where the pros outweight the cons and thus done a good thing? All highly debateable and without being able to definitively establish the truth, this is just the domain of personal opinion and not one of clear-cut factual objectivity.

WTF???

Normally Reg member postings are well thought out. It seems that on the Wikileaks/Assange topics and everything related, we're now focusing on media articles we have read. All of which are likely to be pro-Government of wherever they are, or at least pro-blowing their own horn and just as liable to make stuff up as much of the British press. I'm not saying Wikileaks is immune/innocent to that either, but I certainly cannot prove they do, while there are established court cases regarding much of the media.

With that in mind, I'm not sure how any opinion above can really be taken as anything more than a glib comment from gut feelings about what is truly transpiring.

Personally I think the likelihood is: Wikileaks have some dirt on lots of organisations and governments. The organisations and governments don't like it, so, as much mud slinging and distortion is thrown about in the media until nobody cares anymore. When that happens, Wikileaks will get few web hits as nobody will care what they are publishing. Thus, by making the whole thing as frustrating and conspiracy-theory embroiled as possible causes the masses not to care and for Wikileaks to lose the ability to whistleblow.

Then some organisations and governments can get back to the dirt they were doing before, safe in the knowledge that it won't matter if Wikileaks get hold of it.

Where you cannot take an organisation down, just cause apathy surrounding them that turns peoples attention away and job done. Simples!