Posts by Scoular

LG uses sucky logic to force Dyson admission its vacuums suck badly

LG no longer Less Good

LG has actually lifted its game a lot in recent times, they may be worth another look

Who gets Teslas made and throws Apple shade? It's… MUSK!

Re: Seems that he must view Apple as a threat

In some places there is a legal concept of puffery. A statement which is so evidently not serious to a reasonable man is not grounds for legal action.

Given the perpetual tendency for American overstatement his statements may be regarded as normal business and he did not actually name any individual so probably has grounds for ducking and weaving anyway.

China cuffs hackers at US request to stave off sanctions

Are the Chinese just doing to others as has been done unto them?

No country can really honestly stand tall and claim the moral high ground although a few will try.

Is Windows 10 slurping too much data? No, says Microsoft. Nuh-uh. Nope

Re: Mint does not demand sys admin skills

It comes up and asks if you want to do things yourself of just let it wipe the disk and set up everything for you.

The let the installer take care of it approach produces a workable system with a user interface familiar enough to XP/7 users that you can get right down to playing rather then struggling to set things up.

Also switched to Linux Mint.

Having reached the limit with MS snooping I an writing this on a new ASUS Z170AR under Mint.

Wine happily runs most of the Windows programs I need. A couple of VMs allow me to have environments needed for working with some products I support.

Recommended folks, definitely worth a try. I have been using Unix and Linux on and off since Unix came from AT&T but Mint does not demand sys admin skills. I have a few friends interested in switching too after having had a play with MInt.

NBN cable rules spark electricity network push-back

Re:The cables on poles are mostly fibre

Not around here they are not Richard. life in suburban Brisbane involves a lot of overhead communications to the home.

Australia the idiot in the global village, says Geoff Huston

And when the data store gets hacked - highly likely we will find out where our politicians mistresses can be found amongst other interesting things. Then it may be found to be unnecessary to keep all such personal information on everyone.

The only comfort is that they will have so much data that they will be unlikely to be able to analyse it sensibly.

Australian online shoppers and Netflix to be fully taxed in 2017

Bound to work

I expect that the companies will adopt the same high standards of honesty and ethics as the Australian government.

Australian telcos won't get red tape relief says Brandis

There has never been a question about the honesty of the Australian government.

We all know!

Asian worries for Samsung and Apple as local brands chop up the market

Re: Apple's market is cyclical

Every manufacturer has a cyclical product line ans they and competitors release new product. Nothing new there.

What we are seeing is a product maturity effect as the rate of new and useful features declines the second string manufacturers catch up and compete on price. This is a threat for Apple and Samsung which have been at the high priced end of the market. Apple has the fans who will continue to pay more but Samsung is less secure.

We will benefit by paying less for decent phones as they become just another commodity.

Apple needs to come up with something new and stunning, always very hard to keep doing that.

Fiat Chrysler recall BLUNDERING could lump carmaker with $105m fine – report

Re: Dose of Reality

At the very least give the owner control and the ability to turn any such tracking and monitoring systems off, and properly off, not just hidden.

What ever happened to those constitutional rights?

Optus tells Department of Comms to sit down and shut up

Big business and right wing governments are always in favour of competition and deregulation except when it conflicts with their interests or beliefs.

They they seamlessly switch to being proponents of orderly marketing or some other euphemism for regulation designed to serve their interests. Always in the public interest of course.

World Solar Challenge contender claims new speed record

Re: Tesla S?

Whilst I admire the work done the vehicle is a stripped down test vehicle.

A stripped down Tesla S might go close to matching it. It is a pretty heavy luxury car which the test vehicle certainly is not.

Stop start driving knocks the hell out of fuel consumption or batteries even with some KERS. This is true even if there is little to no sitting at traffic lights etc. Just accelerating or even going up hills takes a lot of energy and a fair bit of that is not recovered. Energy consumption at more or less constant speed on a flat track or road is significantly lower with electric of liquid fuel vehicles.

Australian opposition senators slam TPP treaty process

Simple logic here.

If the 'negotiation' has to be done privately then they are up to no good.

If the expected outcome was in the public interest they would be delighted to tell everybody.

Trans-Pacific Partnership stalled says Australian trade minister

In the public interest?

A treaty affecting the citizens which has to be negotiated in private cannot be in the public interest.

If it was intended to benefit the people then the proposers of the treaty would be happy to have the details made public.

The need for secrecy tells us all we need to know about its intent.

Apple is like HITLER says Chinese billionaire

Could you explain in detail the difference between China and others. Certain well known 'western' countries spy on all their citizens, surely that too is control over its citizens. What other motivation could there be?

Facebook shops for ads tech – snaps up product search engine TheFind

They say - to do even more for consumers

but do they mean

to do even more TO consumers

Is all that help really needed, most of us probably have a fair idea what is out there in the market and are quite able to search ourselves.

Chief Scientist slams handcuffing research funds to uni reforms

Luddite government does not care?

Given the fundamentalist religious tendency of this government they would probably be quite happy to stop funding any science in Australia and are likely to give that a go to see if they can get away with it.

Turnbull says no need to future-proof NBN

Re: Would you Future-proof a PC?

I have to suspect that you have never been involved in building systems which are going to be used for many years. In some cases buying just for the present is justified but for systems the situation is much more complex.

Even at the PC level spending a bit more now and having the computer last five or six years may be quite a reasonable approach.

Turnbull's model e-gov service is HIPSTER SHAMBLES

New politician, same old failure to understand

All this has happened before with a standard non solution being forced on bodies with legitimate quite different requirements.

A common interface is desirable to a degree but not at the expense of functionality. Having a 'look and feel' interface person available to assist in making things more common might be some help but forcing a common solution is not going to work across any large organisation.

PEAK WINDOWS 7 may well be behind us

Win 7 still miles ahead

Considering the length of time what Windows 8/8.1 has been available the fact that Windows 7 still has such dominance tells us how successful Windows 8 has really been.,

Of course total sales of Windows 8.1 go on rising because most buyers of a new computer get no choice.

It will be interesting to see the stats a few months after Windows 10 gets released. Most did not want Win8 at any price if they had a choice but many might take up the 'free' Win 10 offer if it looks good.

Microsoft tells big biz: No free Windows 10 for you, crack wallets open

So "conditions may apply"

Now we get down to Win Home versions only and non commercial users of other versions seem to be excluded. Not quite what the original announcement was assumed to mean by the fans.

The cynics will accept apologies guys. We are not surprised to find a clawback going on.

Telstra: we don't collect the metadata the government wants now

Telstra should not care where you go

Telstra has an obvious need to know who you are for billing purposes but probably has little interest in where you went. The government wants to know everything.

LEAKED: Samsung's iPhone 6 killer... the Samsung Galaxy S6

Mature market syndrome

Every once new and revolutionary product line settles down after a few product generations and we only get evolutionary improvements. The margins tend to drop too.

This is normal. Revolutionary products are rather rare.

As Newton noted progress is made by standing on the shoulders of those who went before.

NO WARRANTS NEEDED for metadata access, argues Oz A-G

Metadata is undefined

Or the Australian government meaning of metadata is so means whatever they want it to mean on the day.

If this goes ahead, which seems certain, they will have complete access to everything all the time without any checks. No scope for abuse there of course.

New York State plots broadband future

Meanwhile Australia skillfully works to go backards

Good government in action looking backwards to a glorious past of dial up speeds for all on an aging copper network which is getting worse all the time.

$500 TEDDY BEAR teaches tots to spit up personal data

Re: Creepy

This product is aimed at the cashed up "Guilty Mums" who are suckers for buying whatever promises to be good for the child. The fact that it is probably going to be no more than a useless toy is irrelevant if it is correctly advertised. Real parents for millennia have managed with just checking the kid out every so often. They are actually pretty tough (been a parent a few times) and seem quite able to make a noise if upset or want attention.

Verizon says 40-hour outage was outage to end all outages

Tell customers the truth how radical

Telling customers the truth is generally actually smart but management is so used to working to prevent customers from knowing the truth that they mostly cannot bring themselves to try it.

Airlines never have delays longer than about 30minutes for example, but often have a lot of them in a row. I recall one case where the official announcement was that we would be boarding in 20 minutes but we could see the plane sitting waiting for an engine to be put back on which had no chance of being done in that time.

T-Mobile US CEO on wearables: 'Apple Watch is the tipping point'

Reg readers not typical?

No doubt all of us have personal preferences but Reg readers are a rather special sub set of the world population and we will not determine the success or failure of the wearables market.

Manufacturer's advertising budgets and marketing plans are directed at a wider demographic which has different interests and possibly more money - trendy Apple buyers.

A few friends have a fit bit or similar but most have a what would I want that for attitude. Non Geeks regard Google's Goggles as just so ugly they would not want to be seen wearing them even if they could be persuaded that they had a use.

In any case the market will decide as usual.

Sacre block! French publishers to sue Adblock maker – report

How much value to users put on web sites

If web sites had to charge for use they, and we, would find out how much consumers really value what they publish. Many of those annoying add pushing sites would surely fail.

Rupert is a bit less than forthcoming about how much his various news sites actually get in subscriptions and news is pretty popular. Others may well fare worse.

Identity thieves slurp Sony Pictures staff info – as CEO sends 'don't sue me, bro' memo

The question is - was Sony following best practice in securing their system.

Certainly any criminal intrusion was criminal but was it not also sort of criminal if Sony failed to follow well known and readily available practice to secure their systems. The shareholders have reason not to be impressed with management.

There seems to be ample evidence that they failed rather badly to take adequate precautions and so increased their risk unnecessarily. The reported storing of passwords in a file named passwords is an absurd failure for starters.

Solar sandwich cooks at 40 per cent efficiency

Re: Professor Green?

Martin has always been Martin Green, since before the Greens in fact.

Dutch lawyers seek to overturn data retention

Evidence based government might be a good start

Governments and their agencies are claiming that total surveillance is necessary in the public interest, to protect against terrorists. However there is a lack of hard evidence to support the case that ever greater spying on the public will actually produce the results they claim to want.

Where I live we are hundreds, if not thousands, of times more likely to me killed by our police than by 'terrorists'.

If they could make a logical case citing real court admissible evidence of their successes the public might be more receptive but the case seems to be largely based on the opinions of those with a personal interest in a high level of surveillance and maintaining vast databases on everyone..

Australia dumbs down: Chief Scientist says research performance lags the world

Could it be that big business knows that science is crap as a matter of political dogma?

If they have that attitude then clearly it would be a waste to spend money on it.

Antarctic ice THICKER than first feared – penguin-bot boffins

Re: Ah...

The article did point out that they have only surveyed one tiny portion of the relevant sea ice.

The results are about as interesting as surveying a village in Kent and drawing conclusions about Scotsmen. They may or may not behave similarly.

Useful research but a lot of data gathering to go before the conclusions become meaningful.

Facebook: We are being slurped 24 per cent more by govt this year

The absolute numbers are interesting but per capita data would be better. The format used makes small countries look good, they may not be.

Google boss: I want Euro biz to be bigger than search

Re: Dear google

Actually Hitler never got more than about 33% of the vote at a reasonably democratic election. After that the effects of a dictatorship became evident. Evil he was but he did not attain power because of a vote by the German people.

Spies, avert eyes! Tim Berners-Lee demands a UK digital bill of rights

Re: @FormerKowloonTonger Lest We Forget.

WWII was genuine war with a genuine enemy. There was no political manipulation and creation of crises for political ends needed, there really was a crisis and everyone knew that even if there was plenty of propaganda.

The present situation is in no way comparable with the Nazis and the government was not spying on everyone, just those with a genuine military significance, those machines were owned by Mr Hitler and associates. As if it matters I have visited Bletchey Park and known about it for decades thanks.

China: You, Microsoft. Office-Windows 'compatibility'. You have 20 days to explain

Re: It's a new fad.

It is also right out of the US songbook

FEAST YOUR EYES: Samsung's Galaxy Alpha has an 'entirely new appearance'

They all look alike

I just got back in from spending some time in a phone store. To anyone not a legal type on a mission they all look pretty much the same. This is hardly surprising given that they all use very similar components to do very much the same thing. Much like cars, refrigerators and a host of other things which differ in only minor ways.

Turnbull says NBN 'most reckless commitment of Commonwealth funds in our history'

Mates rates

Could it be that if you appoint your friends to an inquiry they come to the desired conclusion.

Sir Humphrey knew all about it.

You don't need a HERO, you need a ZERO. From Google

Defence is always more difficult than attack.

The defender has to think of everything but the attacker only has to find one exploit. It has always been thus.

That is not good enough reason for not trying to defend.

Google may actually be on the right side on this one. They gather a lot of personal data but do not seem to have a record of using zero day exploits to do it.

It's a boxless, super-flash, hyper-converged world: But what'll we do for BULK STORAGE?

Oh so secure

And give all your data to a government agency which has better encryption skills than your company and a way bigger budget. It also seems to have a really pressing need to know everything about everyone in the world. Not everyone trusts that agency.

NBN Co is a big turn-off … for copper

When those who stay on copper find out how much they are not getting the Neanderthals who stopped the NBN may find their popularity going down. Around here ADSL goes down just about every time it rains and Telstra is not going to do anything about it. Fibre would have been solved that problem and provided far better performance.

Senate decides patent reform is just too much work, waves white flag

Under achievers in the senate

So the US is intent on consigning itself to the dustbin of history and dragging the rest of us along for the ride.

Something of an abrogation of duty in favour of expedience there?

Telstra asks users to be its next backhaul network

What are they really proposing?

One day we may find out what is really being proposed.

It may make sense if Telstra is going to give individuals the option of allowing others access to their connection when it is under utilised, as most are, and they have a really good security solution in place. However a good deal has to be a good deal for all parties involved.

Telstra history of commercial terms is not encouraging but I will watch with interest.

How exec snatched $6m budget from his infosec team because he couldn't see ROI

Executive responsibility

Only when executives are held personally accountable for their actions or inactions will anything happen. Big companies have a history of deciding that paying fines or compensation years later is cheaper than doing anything. If it all goes wrong and people get their money stolen or even killed the company pays but never the executives so why would anyone expect them to be concerned.

Surprise! Google chairman blasts EU's privacy ruling

Re: What Google are forgetting

US law does not actually apply everywhere.

Other sovereign countries have their own laws as is their right and these may differ from US law.

If the US has the right to enforce its own laws in their own jurisdiction then other countries surely have equal right to enforce their laws in their own countries.

The US and US citizens often act as if they not only should but do control the world. Other countries do not accept that.

Scots team builds SONIC SCREWDRIVER to repair damaged nerves

Re: Now there's a job description for you...

Not familiar with UK academic titles?

GCHQ's 'NOSEY SMURF' spyware snoops dragged into secretive tribunal

The real problem is loss of trust in government

Once upon a time most people in the 'democracies' had a basic level of trust in their governments, although less in their politicians.

That trust has now been destroyed by credible evidence of systematic collection of data on everyone despite the fact that overwhelmingly most of us have never been a threat to good order and discipline.

When the people do not trust their rulers trouble is brewing, the implied contract has been broken.