Posts by Dave Stevens

The ultimate full English breakfast – have your SAY

Re: Proper Full English

On this side of the pond, Tetley comes in green tea, black tea, English blend, orange pekoe, Earl Grey, premium bland, original, you name it. I might find PG Tips at an import shop, like a Scottish store.

English Breakfast Tea is a black tea blend, which I like. The default tea here, including Tetley is an orange pekoe blend which I can't stand.

What I regret not trying when I was in London/Maidenhead is the white and black puddings. Everything else is easy enough to find anywhere.

The life and times of Surface, Microsoft's odds-defying fondleslab

Re: Still no.

Well, sure. When given a choice between 2 things, most people go for the most expensive.

The hated Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal will soon be dead. Yay?

Re: Canada and TTIP

It was truly a rotten deal for Canada.

To get Japan in, Canada had to promise to dismantle a third of its car parts plant.

To get New Zealand int, Canada had to give away something like 10% of its dairies to the US, to make up for the US accepting New Zealand powder milk.

Nobody was going to make any concessions for Canadian industries, whatever ones are left.

It's just that Canada was afraid to be left standing on the side so caved in on everything.

Hardened Linux stalwarts Grsecurity pull the pin after legal fight

Re: "in response to an expensive and lengthy court case"

I don't know that Intel is really interested in spending money on Windriver court cases.

Intel bought them to help sell chips in the embedded market, not to syphon money to layers.

If anything the converse is true, there's no money to be made by a Giant into suing a small company. They don't compete with Intel, so even pushing them into bankruptcy would be moot and Intel customers need to know that GPS licenses are safe before they buy Linux derivatives anyway.

Re: Windows for Warships

It's called Carrier Grade because they started supplying the OS for telecom companies.

Nortel gave them lots of patches as part of a support deal a decade or so ago.

Re: Ahem - Linux kernel code is GPL Code

That's not how it works. They are required to give the source when they distribute the kernel. If someone asks them for the source, they should say "Get it from the same place you got the binary from."

When a consumer buys an embedded device, they don't usually get the source either. I certainly didn't get any source with that Samsung phone.

Adulterers antsy as 'entire' Ashley Madison databases leak online

Re:5 - 10% of female users are *extremely* busy

My understanding of a "Sugar Daddy Site" is that it's just another form of an escort service. The male users pay for sex.

Assange™ is 'upset' that he WON'T be prosecuted for rape, giggles lawyer

Tell all book incoming

Easy way to clear his name an make a buck on the side.

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for they have defined the smidge

Drop

Technically, there's 60 drops in a teaspoon.

That seems a lot too me. I don't think I can actually fit 60 drops of anything in a single teaspoon.

Crazy Chrysler security hole: USB stick fix incoming for 1.4 million cars

CPU?

So what's in a Dodge? PowerPC?

Why is that idiot Osbo continuing with austerity when we know it doesn't work?

Can you repeat the question?

Cutting spending is bad for the "economy". That's crystal clear. The "economy" is usually boiled down to a single number and public spending is right there in the equation.

However, you can only spend money you don't have for so long until you have to cut spending anyway. Go see how they're doing in Greece.

You can play the yo-yo game and borrow during recessions and pay it back during growth, but if you reach the stage where it's too painful to repay even when there is moderate growth, your debt is already too high.

You can always increase taxes instead. That's so popular.

Sony tells hacked gamer to pay for crooks' abuse of PlayStation account

Credit car company

It does appear that the Credit Card company have accepted his claim that he didn't authorise the transaction and hence they have refunded the charge and pulled the money back from Sony.

That doesn't work like that. When you contest the charge the retailer must prove that you did in fact make the purchase. In an online transaction there is no way to prove anything since there is no signature or two factor authentication so the retailer usually has to pay back or lose standing with the credit card company. In that case it's understandable that the retailer would want nothing more to do with that particular customer if it comes to that. Amazon does a good job of refunding me when things go wrong, but that's part of their business cost. I'd rather not have to pay more for games/online access to cover the costs of would be fraudsters.

At a brick and mortar store, I cannot pay with credit card info. I need the actual credit card and the PIN number that completes the 2 factor authentication. It's another bad analogy.

Car analogies

Gaming software is not at all like transportation hardware.

The article is so incomplete that it doesn't even specify which game was bought and downloaded.

Let's assume it's something for EA, Activision or Ubi. As soon as the software is purchased, Sony credits one of the above company for the amount of the purchase minus a commission. So, realistically, one of the above company should be the one refunding the money because they are the one with the money. Let's go asks those companies what they think. It should be worth a laugh.

Also the value of the games on the account are probably inflated. Games lose value quickly and anything on disc is unaffected. Downloaded games have little value since they are not transferable. Go bankrupt, you'll find out it's worth nothing. Most people format their hard drive before they sell their consoles.

Ben Smyth's details

"If the reported unauthorised transactions were made on a console other than the one owned by the account holder, the person responsible must have had details of the account sign-in ID and password," he added.

That's not admitting the transaction was fraudulent.

On PSN, you have an id that's visible to other players, but you don't use that to log in. You use an email address.

It's pretty unlikely someone would get Ben Smyth's email address and PSN password and then use that to log in on a PS(3? 4? Vita?), purchase one game, and download it just so he can play it, but only while he's logged in as Ben Smyth. What do you get out of that? A free rental just to piss somebody up?

It's not uncommon for PSN users to trade ids and passwords so each one can play games that were bought by the others. Users who do that break the licensing agreement and take obvious risks, although they are usually smart enough to remove the credit card info from their account. The odds favors this outcome.

French Google fund to pay for 1 million print run of Charlie Hebdo next week

Re: Do you know what i have noticed?

It depends on whom you consider the Muslim leaders. It's all on the media to get the quotes from the right ones.

What I notice is the fear of a backlash and I think the Muslims leaders are the last ones who should be talking about that. Call for restraint must come from somewhere else or it's just a parody.

Curious to see how the march on Sunday will turn out. It would be a good time to put an end to the yearly burning of cars in the Paris suburbs or they might very well be yearly reprisals as well. That is what the French Muslim leaders should focus on.

re: Salman Rushdie

I'm tempted to buy his book. However, I read half of it 25 years ago and, truth be told, I was bored out of my mind. It's a difficult decision.

Re: I don't for a second believe the 'Charlie' murderers were acting as Muslims.

Has Al-Quaeda been quicked out of Islam? Boko-Haram? IS? Anyone? If so I missed the memo.

We call these guys Fundamentalists. It's intended to mean that they are too Muslim. They focus so much on the Koran that they forget everything else. They don't know they're not acting like human beings anymore.

Re:most media sidestep the nasty incidents commited by Christian terrorists.

You're confusing current news and history.

There was a lot of bad things done by Christians over 2 thousands years. Not so much currently.

Sony grovels, offers freebies after PlayStation network spent Xmas TITSUP

Re: 5 days for 1 actual day plus 10% is OK with me

Microsoft used to give 20 cents in Xbox money to people on their birthdays and they gave prizes to gamers to celebrate the anniversary of the One launch... Things like ugly printable posters and free DLC for unowned games.

Google unveils Windows 8.1 zero-day vuln – complete with exploit code

In software support, 90 days is an eternity.

The exploit code can be used to check if your system is vulnerable. That's very useful.

Also, I'm assuming Microsoft received that code in September which made it easy to reproduce the issue and develop a fix.

Either Microsoft's release management doesn't care or they have higher priorities. Adding a couple a support staff would have a negligible effect on their profit margin. I find it weird that they have no legal requirements to fix things in a determined time. Surely the US government has critical data on MS servers.

Sony-blasting Lizard Squad suspects quizzed by UK and Finnish cops

Re: I always find it horrifying

I don't get the fake outrage. Prisons are not secure places. You're locked up there with psychotic, violent jerks. It's the last place you want to be if you're a geek.

The good news is that if you don't do anything stupid, you're unlikely to end up there.

So, let's stop pretending to be horrified by the justice system and look at prison rape as part of the deterrence.

Norks: FBI's Sony Pictures' hacking allegations are 'groundless slander'

Not even insurance driven

The theater chains figure that many Americans will stay away from the theaters if the movie is shown.

They're probably right. Never mind the fact the real danger is probably dying on the road on the way there. Americans would say "Why take the chance?" and they take those kind of odds routinely when they buy lottery tickets.

For Youtube, Neflix and the like, the risk of being hacked is real.

If Obama is guilty of anything, it's spending all those billions on spying rather than securing the internet.

Discloser: I work for a company that makes routers and firewalls. Most posters here will have gone through our equipment several times leaving a comment. AFAIK, our work site is just as vulnerable as Sony's. Get to Exchange and you have all our emails. Convenience of use has won over security a long time ago. That and single sourced infrastructure.

Sony employees face 'weeks of pen and paper' after crippling network hack

Not even close

Sony, the parent corporation, is best known for installing rootkits on people's PCs, back in the mid-2000s.

If Sony is known for anything, that's the Walkman.

Of course, Sony Music, or yet better Sony BMG is mostly known for the CD copy protection rootkit scandal of 2005–2007.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment was a 50/50 venture between Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group, some low ethics German outfit. Headquartered in NY with a CEO named Rolf Schmidt-Holtz.

The rootkit was in fact a commercial product, MediaMax CD-3, developed by SunnComm. I seem to remember that SunnComm was a British outfit, but their current website is in Chinese. That seems right.

Love XKCD? Love science? You'll love a book about science from Randall Munroe

There's no believing in science

Here in Canada, we have anti-hate laws so you can be charged for things you say.

Some US political figures are kindly reminded before they come here to give paid speeches.

That's about the only time I hear about Free Speech.

Lawsuit claims SpaceX laid off hundreds without proper notice, pay

Firing the underperformers is the same as laying off.

Every layoff exercise has either a monetary reduction or head count target.

The particular strategy can vary: letting go of those on a specific project, those that want to work from home, those that finished low on the latest review, those that make too much or--all too common yet completely illegal--those that are too old.

Those are all layoffs.

Firing a single individual over a specific incident or a history of under-performance is a different matter. Employees are hired and fired one at a time. They are laid off in groups.

Nintend-OH NO! Sorry, Mario – your profits are in another castle

They're into a niche market now.

I bought a couple gamecubes for the kids back then. And 4 or 5 gameboys.

My grand daughter still plays her DS, but she barely played with the Wii. I think I have 3 games she hasn't opened yet because the thing isn't hooked to her tv. I put a playstation 2 there instead. Why do those nunchuks things need batteries? It's like being back to the dark ages of the original gameboy advance.

I don't consider the 3DS to be an upgrade, so I bought her a tablet instead.

Nintendo used to make products that you could buy blindly for your kids. Now it's just some gimmick based alternate platform for those who are still hooked on Nintendo's franchises.

For kids, you might as buy a PS3 or a 360. It's cheaper and all they want to play is Minecraft.

Listen: WORST EVER customer service call – Comcast is 'very embarrassed'

same here

I had a similar experience trying to cancel my service with Rogers. The first rep transferred me to a phone that no one was answering. The second rep almost immediately hang up on me. I was on the line 20 minutes waiting for the supervisor who did not listen to me, as she seemed already in possession of all the needed information. I just lost it.

The next day I re-assigned my phone number to another provider, effectively terminating my contract which could no be terminated. When my last bill came in the mail, they were threatening to send me to collection even though all the previous bills had been paid on time and I only owned them for 2 weeks of service which hadn't been billed yet.

Wolfenstein: The New Order ... BLAM-BLAM! That guard did Nazi that coming

Re: Mouse and Keyboard

You do realize Mouse and Keyboard makes the game substantially easier?

China to become world's No 1 economy. And we still can't see why

Chinese labs

Here's one thing that's missing to the story.

Because we wanted a share of that pie, we all opened some R&D shops in China.

In our case, we never saw those sales and the yearly employee turn around was over 40%.

Basically we were just training Huawei employees.

Eventually we closed the joint, but the damage was done.

PC makers! You, between Microsoft and the tablet market! Get DOWN!

#3rd time's the charm

Well, that didn't work for Xbox either.

Nintendo says sorry, but there will be NO gay marriage in Tomodachi Life ... EVER

Missing the boat.

If I was Nintendo, I'd roll that up as paying DLC. (Does Nintendo even support that?)

It would be interesting to see how many people would pay the $2 or whatever to get this.

Re: How about if it didn't allow interracial marriages?

That's not a real thing.

Consider. Why would there be races in this game? Can't I just create a Mii with dark skin, slanted eyes and long straight blond hair?

Amazon granted patent for taking photos against a white background – seriously

Something's off here

They're not suppose to be paid by the number of patents issued.

They should be paid for each patent application. So, if somebody keep submitting the same bad patents. that's pure recurring revenue.

Cold War spy aircraft CRASHED Los Angeles' air traffic control

Re: Vintage planes

The U2s are being used for things like spotting IEDs along roads in Afghanistan.

Re: never really a 'stealth' plane

Back in the 50s the USSR has better radars than the USA. The U2 was designed under the assumption that it would escape detection by flying at 60 000 feet. They realized the error when they saw all the pictures taken were full of MIGs following the U2.

They tried to increase the altitude, but quickly gave up.

Comcast and EA said to be planning streaming games service

Mule and Goat

Mules are known to be infertile, except on rare instances of a female mule breeding with a horse or a donkey, mules having and odd number of chromosomes.

Of course when you consider the odds of mating with a goat...

A mule breeding was considered a particularly bad omen in ancient Greece, so there's always that.

eBay cops $3bn tax bill after moving its profits back onshore

Re: Explains a lot.

Can't blame people who want to return stuff that they don't like.

All retail outlet allow that.

Will Apple's $130bn cash infusion keep investors onboard?

Re: Conflicting information

It's 88% but when you consider that it's deferred until the tax rate goes down, basically forever.

Vladimir Putin says internet is a 'CIA project'

Re: Doesn't matter who "invented" it

Of course it does.

Would be a totally different beast if it had originated from another country.

Just look at how those IPV4 addresses are allocated.

Reminds me of when Microsoft bought 666K addresses for $7.5 million.

So, just how do you say 'the mutt's nuts' in French?

Re: Quebecois

Cul de chat? Never heard anything of the sort. Must be some regionalism. Lac St-Jean, maybe?

I googled it and I really wished I hadn't.

Re: Canadians

Les gosses du chien ou plutot la poche du chien.

Meaning the scrotum rather than the balls, but that's how it goes...

Edward Snowden on his Putin TV appearance: 'Why all the criticism?'

Re: Playing with the fire

I'm inclined to think Snowden asked the question and Putin chose to answer it publicly.

I don't see why Snowden would need incentives to ask this. Or that Putin would feel threatened by a question when he controls the Media.

Maybe Putin spies on Russian speakers, but frankly, there's probably no need. Someone holds a sign on the street that say "give peace a chance" and the cops have to rescue him from the mob.

Mounties always get their man: Heartbleed 'hacker', 19, CUFFED

Can't wait

To hear what that guy actually did.

Lifting 900 social security numbers over a 6 hour window through an untraceable bug and being found out shortly after through "leads" and "interviews" does not compute at all.

Hello Moto: Lenovo grabs Motorola biz for $3bn. But Google's KEEPING the patents

Re: cobbling together their own os?

And start fresh with no apps? That worked really well for Blackberry.

Report: Prez Obama kicks Healthcare.gov contractor to curb for web disaster

Re: The problem?

I'm guessing subcontracting most of the work oversea.

Bad project management for sure. Probably bad testing.

A lawsuit might shed some light.

Bill Gates is once again the richest man on Earth

Re: can't give his money away

Reminds me of his recent Public Santa on Reddit.

He made a tiny donation to Heifer on behalf of the woman whose name he drew--and included a picture of himself along with a plushie. Huge amount of publicity for basically nothing.

I picture Scrooge holding that stuffed cow on the picture.

Here's what YOU WON'T be able to do with your PlayStation 4

So much ignorance

It looks like 90% of the comments are from people who have never owned a console.

On the bright side, the article didn't try to explain why 720p is better than 1080p.

No MP3 or DNLA but it's probably coming up later in a patch.

The PS4 is significantly more powerful than the Xbox One and sells for $100 less, at a loss.

It does not have a drive capable of reading a CD. (I've use the original Playstation to play music a handful of times in the late 90s... I can't remember why. I've never put a CD in the PS2 or the the PS3. )

Very few consoles support previous peripherals--that adds to the bill of materials. The PS4 has USB 3.0 ports and a vastly improved controller. Pretty standard fare. The Xbox One uses proprietary connectors and good luck replacing the hard drive.

Wanna be Zuckerberg's neighbor? Tough luck, he bought the block for $30m

So, what's he gonna put in those houses?

Hookers, perhaps?

AT&T helping US drug cops in 'vast, troubling' phone snoop scheme

Re: So forget about presumption of innocence

Anyone can be a criminal... all it takes is a few changes to existing laws.

Give us a break: Next Android version to be called 'KitKat'

kitkat.com

At any rate, I was impressed by the the website. Specifications? Features? Accessories? etc..

Runs very slowly on my old laptop though...