Posts by janimal

Microsoft blasts PC makers: It's YOUR fault Windows 8 crash landed

Re: Form over substance

Wish I could multiple up-vote!

+10

Sheffield ISP: You don't need a whole IPv4 address to yourself, right?

re:illegal downloading

"Pretty stuffed now if half a tower block in Yorkshire are using the same ip to download pirate material."

...except they won't be able to accept incoming connections for p2p

Is this possibly the worst broadband in the world?

Re: Try looking at Plusnet www.plus.net

"Try looking at Plusnet www.plus.net"

Plus.net are owned by BT I believe.

O2 refuses to deny plans to offload home broadband product

I just cancelled my Be service yesterday

also due to the lack of FTTC offering. It has been available on our street for a long time now. With ADSL2 I only get around 5mb / 1mb the line estimate for FTTC is ~40bm / 20mb

The cost is only a couple of quid extra.

I have had great service and support from Be since they started locally. However recently the service has been a bit more variable and the above numbers were just too much temptation.

Windows 8: At least it's better than ‘not very good’

re; Sean Timarco etc....

"Why on earth anyone who considers themselves any kind of expert or advanced user still drags their mouse pointer all the way down to the bottom-right corner in this day and age escapes me"

Not all shortcuts are easy with one hand, and I like to hold my cock in the other.

Mines the one with the pack of tissues in the pocket.

Sinofsky OFFSKI: Is Windows 9 now codenamed 'Defenestrate'?

Re: Ribbon confused users!

"Do you honestly have no f'ing clue about product development that you think they havent been working on Win9 for the last year."

Is that why they didn't finish W8 then?

Industry in 'denial' as demand for pricey PCs plunges

Build Quality

Another problem is the modern phenomenon of utter crap build quality. Most consumer items are not made to last more than a couple of years, so it certainly isn't worth buying a pre-built performance machine at a premium price if your the sort of person who replaces the whole thing when something goes wrong.

My machines morph over the years gradually evolving by having various bits upgraded when necessary. Only once in the last 12 years have I constructed an almost totally new machine & obviously I bought all the bits separately. Even then I I never by the latest model of CPU or GPU as they are usually several hundred quid more than the model they replace adn I know I will eventually upgrade to something faster for less than the just released premium price.

Although I do a fair bit of graphics processing, 3d modelling and software development as well as some gaming I'm not a slave to having the very latest, fastest components.

Virgin Media vid misery blamed on unnamed peering network

could be more than virgin

I am on BE (subsidiary of O2) and various video streaming services (iplayer -particularly bad, 4od and Dave also poor performance) have been dire lately. I know they have had problems in the past with a peering provider.

Watching these services through a london based vpn server was a great improvement.

Quarter of Brits don't believe that cell towers improve phone reception

Also...

I tend to have rather more exciting things to be getting on with when gadding about than interacting with government websites.

Top IT bods bail out of new Universal Credit online dole system

Really?

>'A DWP spokesman told us that "the first part of the project is done" and added that, as with the private sector, different people are needed at different stages of an IT programme.'

On anything I've ever worked on it has always turned out to be critical to have someone who knows the design & implementation inside & out long after the project is deployed. You can't consider the project completed until the system has been actually operational for months.

That attitude goes some way to explaining why most gov IT projects are text book examples of how not to do it. I suppose it's nice that they provide so many negative examples for students in the field to study.

Microsoft to biz: Just so you get off XP, we don't mind if you go Win 7

Re: Metro in business? Why?

I think the idea MS are aiming for is that you use a seperate win 8 machine running metro for each app.

Say one lappy with vis studio open, another with spec docs open for reference, another with your UML graphing app open, another for your e-mail. You might need a bigger desk though.

Google's UK grip slips a bit, brutal dominance basically unshaken

Re: Google's search results have gone downhill

I agree. Google are just as bad as the rest now. They seem to have defaulted to an OR search on multiple keywords instead of an AND

I don't thikn Google really care that much about search anymore. They when they have ad-words, analytics, personal and corporate gmail, drive, maps,calendar etc... to mine data from the drones?

I think in part though, the web is begining to suffer from ubiquitous use and commercialisation. There is so much noise out there that general searches are much less effective.

Once upon a time the web was a majority of porn, academia and geeks which suited me just fine. Now it is shopping, propaganda, scams, every possible flavour of opinion, ghastly celebrity tossers covering contentless rumour sites (I'm looking at you Dail Mail!). At least there's still porn, although even that is homogenous and unimaginative crap.

Things were different when I was a lad

Classic game 'Elite' returns … on Kickstarter

Re: im guessing you are far younger than my 39 years...

The problem with Eve is the point & click flight interface and the rock - paper - scissors combat system.

I started playing Eve in 2003 purely because I thought it might give me that Elite hit I was after - it didn't, even after playing for years. CCP are now more corporate & less focused than they used to be and Eve is suffering. I am no longer subbed

The other problem with Eve is once you have a large player base with long established assets you can't make any radical changes without upsetting pretty much everyone, no matter how necessary it is.

I would love to play a modern version of Elite, but I wouldn't be interested in an MMO aspect. Although I wouldn't mind being able to invite a few friends to my universe for a bit of co-op or head to head play.

Mozilla: Windows 7 browser bungle cost us nine MILLION downloads

Upgrade cycle

I blame Mozilla's ridiculous 6 week update cycle. I do not want my gui & functionality changing every 6 weeks especially on the sly. The ESR version is better if you can find it.

But even then, as others have stated FF is getting slow & bloated and has been a memory hog for ages.

N00bs vs Windows 8: We lock six people in a room with new OS

Re: Oh and Linux has similar available too.

I should have added...

User configurability is the key.

If I could by Win 8, but skin the gui to look and behave like any of the following (whether that ability was supplied by MS or purchasable from a 3rd party supplier)

win2k

XP

Win7

TIFKAM (I can't think of it as any other name!)

Some other GUI or paradigm.

I wouldn't hesitate to purchase one or even two copies.

But i'll stick to the various perfectly functional existing OSs used in our house

(2xMints, 1xXP Pro, 1xXP64, 1xWin7, 1xUbuntu[non-unity])

Oh and Linux has similar available too.

"Apple are the good design gods - they have hot corners too. Oh and Linux has similar available too."

I don't know about apple but the key word in your linux statement is "available", you could add as an option to make the point abundantly clear.

This is what pisses me off as a developer. MS could have easily achieved their 'touch first' design goal, their new minimalistic style goals in many no-brainer methods which don't fly in the face of 30 years of HCI research.

You could write an eassay on the obvious and logical ways in which MS could have done this. As such it makes it obvious that the whole design has been skewed to a high degree by a bullying business and marketing philosophy.

They don't seem to understand that it is also possible to attract and retain customers through pure exellence rather than using restrictions and bullying which is only possible because of their dominant pre-installed OS monopoly.

They really should start considering changing their name to the Syrius Cybernetics Corporation.

Windows 8: An awful lot of change for a single release

Re: General Computing Device

er... I was talking about GUIs not the technology they are built with. It wouldn't matter to me if they used win32 libraries, C, C++, winforms -whatever as long as it is fast and doesn't get in the way of what I am actually using the computer for

Except when using not-metro there are times wen the desktop suddenly needs to appear and vice-versa - which is why I called it unfinished.

General Computing Device

I think win 8 is a big mistake although none of us can be sure until we see take up (and discard) numbers. It does seem as if Microsoft are trying to emulate apple by creating an eco-system rather than an operating system. In doing so however I feel that they are in danger of discarding their USP.

The very reason I use both linux and windows at home is because of their versatility. Because they enable your computer to be a truly general computing device not a media consumption device. I do of course use my machine to surf the web, communicate with family. play music, watch movies and play games of course. I also use it for programming, database design, db server, webserver, graphics design, 3d modelling, as a recording studio etc... etc...

Sometimes I even do some of these things at the same time.

It is precisely because the hardware & OS are so customisable that I choose these over apple. However if I did actually want a more locked in eco-system then I wouldn't choose windows 8 because apple already does it better - they have been doing it for ages.

The main problem with win 8 is that it is unfinished. If they had got to the point where you could spend all your time in the desktop or all your time in Metro and effectively never ever encounter the other unless you specifically choose to I don't think it would have been a problem.

I can't understand why they don't architect the OS to allow the user to choose a GUI paradigm which suits their workflow. Windows would be undisputed king if the user could choose from multiple GUIs to suit their style in linux fashion.

Business would be happy, power-users would be happy, consumers would be happy. Apple would be sad.

Microsoft have never really got their heads around the concept of enticing customers with excellence rather than forcing customers to accept mediocrity.

Windows 8: Never mind Office, it's for GAMING

er.. hasn't microsoft always owned the PC gaming market? For me & all my friends my age it is what drove us into the PC market from the 486's onwards. I certainly don't remember anyone buying a mac to play F1GP, or Doom or Duke Nukem 3d, or Quake etc... etc.... etc...

At least from where I am sitting, the early PC gaming domain was the main driver for consumer ownership of PCs. Before ubiquitous internet connections it was pretty much the only reason a PC ever made it into the home.

Maybe I have missed the point though?

Disclaimer: I am very hungry but don't want to do the dishes before making lunch :(

You'll be on a list 3 hrs after you start downloading from pirates - study

Not illegal

It's not illegal because they are not monitoring YOUR connection. They are merely connecting to a swarm. If you log all the ip addresses your torrent client connects to is that illegal? Nope.

Microsoft, Adobe throw fire blanket over blaze of security flaws

Phantom update

After applying the update 3 times flash player still says it is version 11.3.300.270 instead of 11.3.300.271

Maybe thye need to patch the patch?

O2, Be Broadband axe Pirate Bay access

Re: janimal

Surely the same place as the court drew it?

The fact is that Telefonica has blocked www.thepiratebay.se as they were ordered to. I believe there are still plenty of smaller ISPs who have not been legally obliged to block access to this URL. So changing your ISP is a perfectly valid, if long and tedious and potentially 'workaround'

However it is no different semantically from the other ways in which you can easily circumvent this block so surely you are put in the same legal position?

As far as I know know one has said it is illegal to discuss alternative methods of arriving at TPB, if they have please share?

I would have thought that The fact that the cleanfeed block can be circumvented instantly without any use of proxies or VPN would be newsworthy in itself?

Perhaps you should be writing a scathing article on the uselessness of even using DPI to block the site due to the fact that certain essential internet technologies exist to prevent DPI? This is supposed to be a technology site after all right?

Instead you increase the level of censorship on the internet in the UK when you are too scared to publish opinions and perfectly legal discussion on the subject.

It makes a mockery of your stance on the Great Firewall of China and other censorship issues.

Have you spoken to a lawyer about the legality of publishing readers methods of reaching TPB? Perhaps you could at least publish an article on that, or ask outlaw.com? You seem to get the rest of your legal news from them

Re: Just

So apparently this perfectly legal 'workaround' is let past by the moderators, but the other perfectly legal 'workaround' that I posted isn't?

You should at least be consistent in your moderation. Already this thread contains methods x,y and z but apparently method y is censored?

Just

use an ISP that isn't named on the court order

Re: I'm not saying you should google this but

No need I just got back from the Bay and saw no sign of a blockade. I thought they were implementing it at 0100 this morning.

Re: Still accessible for me

Well today is yesterday's tomorrow & it is still working this morning. Maybe they did just go for DNS poisoning (I use alternative DNS servers), or they failed to successfully implement their block.

Re: Usenet

There's no need to do the torrent through a VPN or TOR. It is only TPB which is blocked. So once you have downloaded the magnet hash quit the VPN & carry on as normal.

Re: The reason I can see it....

They are implementing it tonight not last night.

opendns won't work for you tomorrow I am pretty sure.

Re: tell you tomorrow

they could do if they wanted, they don't host any content. The entire contents of the TPB would fit at least 4 times over on my shared hosting.

The point is the possibility exists for companies to get sued for blocking access to non-censored site.

Hyperbole

I'm pretty sure the banks and online retailers would fight that, although maybe they will introduce a system of authorised only encryption tunnels anything else gets you 10 years in jail in case you're a kiddy fiddler or piwate.

Re: Agreed....

It is obviously a clever scheme to increase the technical knowledge of the average UK internet user, including all the paedophiles who can now almost legitimately ask in forums how to evade a Cleanfeed block without being identifiable as a kiddy fiddler.

They obviously didn't think of the children when they ordered this.

tell you tomorrow

I am on Be - they will be implementing the block overnight tonight.

Blocking the IP would also block any other sites hosted on the same server and spoofing the DNS is trivial to circumvent & against the RFC.

Apparently VM used Cleanfeed to filter the url, not sure how this works maybe DPI to filter the URL?

Ah overnight - Tonight!

So it will be blocked tomorrow, I see.

Fail icon for me!

Still accessible for me

I am on Be and can still access PB at the moment.

I just checked I am actually using OpenDNS so maybe Be simply modified their DNS rather than using a cleanfeed style solution?

China to extend real name registration rules

So it's wrong for China

..but Ok for El Reg?

I'm thinking of the O2 pirate bay thread here.

Windows 8: We kick the tyres on Redmond's new tablet wheels

Re: Windows 8

"....it has ALWAYS been felt that the desktop itself is a rather clunky way of providing content to the end user, which is - after all - the purpose of computing devices, be they traditional desktops, laptops, phones, or even set-top boxes."

This ridiculous statement is the reason for the Metro problem. Delivering content is only one small use of a computer, albeit one that makes a lot of people a lot of money. I don't see content delivery as the primary function of an operating system though.

Many people want to continue to use their computers as general purpose, programmable tools for problem solving, content creation, data organisation and analysis etc...

The vast number of ways in which people can make use of computers can't ever be encompassed by a single non configurable UI paradigm. A highly configurable environment must surely be better for general purpose computing?

However there is another problem here. If a large OS making corporation were able to make the perfect OS interface, what would they do next? The primary focus is not to create the best OS in the world it is only to make money. Sadly for them and us making money relies on people consuming, and SW companies have to find ways to make us consume more frequently to keep the money machine turning over.

For MS as long as the OEM's pay to pre-install the OS on boxes, they have made their money.

I moved my aging parents to linux a couple of years ago and have had a much quieter life since - although I had to switch them from Ubuntu to Mint when the unity nightmare automatically installed on their machines. They need the discoverability of a menu / window driven interface. They are not inclined to try swiping the mouse in various parts of the screen experimenting to see if it makes the computer do anything.

Even someone with no qualificattions or experience in UI design can see that there are many situations and users for whom Metro is utterly unsuitable.

How is it for accessibility BTW?

I need to multitask, but Windows 8's Metro won't let me

As an avid F1 fan

On GP days I find myself using i browser window for the driver tracker, a second for the in-car view a third for the pit-camera and a fourth for the live timing screen, all across my dual screens, whilst watching the TV coverage on er...the telly.

Can someone from microsoft tell me how I will achieve this under metro?

Will UK.gov crack down on itself for missing Cookie Law deadline?

It doesn't just relate to cookies. Calling it the cookie law is deceptive because it applies to any data placed on the client's machine by a website for the purposes of identification or tracking. Someone could create a different implementation and call it 'crumbs' but if it stores anything client side for identification or tracking the PECR still apply.

As far as I know Google have been utterly silent on this and since our government is one of only a couple of countries dumb enough to write this into law they may well just ignore it until the whole thing implodes and is forgotten.

Re: Is this legal?

It has not spoken to me since...

Re: Is this legal?

Sorry about the typos. I introduced my desktop to 250ml of sparkling water last Friday and 20 years of touch typing doesn't really prepare you for a little x61 keyboard. :/

Re: Is this legal?

The law isn't actually reall about cookies. It is the storing of any sort of data client-side (I believe ) that allows the tracking of the user.

It sounds like your code is..

1) an essential part of the service being provided to the user

2) not storing tracking data on the users machine.

So you sound fine to be.

The best thing to do is go to the ICO, read the reams of vague non-technical advice. Read how they may or may not prosecute you on a whim and then come away probably knowing no more than you do now.

Re: Granularity

Even better try clicking the continue button without ticking the accept cookie box.

This just demonstrates what a complete pile of dogshite the whole thing is. It would be funny if it wasn't real life.

Granularity

I notice the ICO asks for permission for cookies as a whole both those essential for operation of the site AND for those that could possibly be considered highly intrusive (ie GA cookies)

http://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/privacy_statement.aspx

Surely this isn't actually compliant in the spirit of the law. What if I want to allow the essential cookies but not the analytic cookies?

I will be complaining to them on the 26th May I think.

Re: Session Cookies?

It depends on what they are being used for, if it is to hold contents of a shopping cart or provide access to a users personal information these can be considered to be essential to provide a service the user has requested and will be fine.

However if they just store user preferences, then technically you are supposed to get permission to store the cookie, however these are low priority and PROBABLY won't be penalised.

The ICO has also said they will only be investigating a site's use of cookies if they receive a complaint. They are not going to be employing an army of individuals to go around randomly checking every site's use of cookies.

Re: So Google Analytics now ok?

That's the brilliant thing about this legislation. no one can say for sure.

The spirit of the law is about tracking and intrusiveness, So if cookies can be used to track you across multiple websites then they are highly intrusive and supposed to be the target of all this fuckwittery.

However Ed Vaizey and now the ICO said "er well we didn't really mean analytics cookies" "so we [i]probably[/i] won't fine you £500,000 for these"

Obviously they fail to realise that a big element of analytics is to see what site a visitor came from necessarily requiring an individual to be tracked across different sites.

It is all a huge fucking mess that if someone in a paid job who was actually accountable for their actions introduced something as vague and fucked up as this they would be sacked and never get a reference.

That's politics for you, you have to stretch incompetency to truly epic proportions to be held accountable for anything.

Cameron hardens stance on UK web filth block

Re: Post-election dog-whistle

"It's just Cameron guff. He's a spineless, unprincipled PR man who would much rather tell people about the things he's going to do than to put in the effort to deliver them. The ISPs will come up with some little gesture (like sending out a leaflet about parental filtering) and that'll be the end of it."

Actually looking at the new Euro age-based authentication system announced by the BBC this afternoon http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17952259

It looks a lot more like a concerted effort by multiple governments to seize control of the net from the proles, the only obvious angle is the save the children one, however a europe-wide onlline age verification ID system is what is being proposed to keep the kiddies safe.

It is now sounding a lot less like a simple resurgence of the age old "this new fangled medium is too much fun for everybody to be tolerated" and more like a "hmmm how do we ensure that we can monitor every persons every action on the internet so that we can enforce the laws that the massie corporations want us to enforce"

Claire Perry said "We regulate this on the Television, so why can't we do it for the internet". The obvious response is that the internet is not run by oligarchs feeding the masses only what they want us to see. It looks like there is some big money that intends to change that.

Time for some immediate and decisive discussion right Brian?

Re: I find...

"If you do not know how to protect/care for your child, why the hell should I pay (through a loss of freedom) for your ignorance?"

Through your wallet too, how do you think the ISPs will cover the extra costs of an opt-in administration and filtering system and of course a dedicated legal team playing whack-a-mole

Re: If you fancy a laugh have aread of Claire Perry MP's site

This is what I wrote to her a few days ago - much less beligerent since I assumed she would be getting many adversarial e-mails already. I tried to make it sound like I was sort of on her side (at least at first)

Dear Mrs Perry,

Whilst I applaud your desire to protect children from harm on the internet I believe your opt-in filter will actually have the opposite effect. I agree that pornography may have the potential to psychologically damage children and that they should be protected from such images. However there are other dangers on the internet which have already resulted in children suffering real physical harm, including rape, murder and suicide.

If your campaign to implement an opt-in filter for pornography succeeds parents could feel that it is OK to allow their children access to the internet unsupervised. Unfortunately this is unlikely to ever be safe.

The internet is not like television in any way. It is built on an entirely different paradigm. Just because we can now stream mainstream media content over the internet you shouldn't assume it is in anyway similar because that ability is not limited to oligarchs and large corporations.

I could set up a website url which anyone could access showing the live stream from my webcam in just a few minutes for example. In addition that website url (and even the underlying IP address) could be changed to a new one within a few seconds if someone decided to try & block the content.

Even then, any blocking put in place is trivial to circumvent in a number of ways; proxy servers, https protocols and virtual private networks for example. All of these technologies are vital to e-commerce and international business and so can not really be regulated against without severely impacting the economy and usefulness of the internet as a whole.

In addition the internet is much more than the web (http /https protocols) there are peer to peer networks, ad-hoc networks, ftp, smtp, ssh, and hundreds of other protocols for communication.

If I can give you an example - Virgin Media have already implemented the recent court order to block The Pirate Bay. Websites, forums and chat rooms are already full of trivial 2 minute work-arounds that enable virgin media customers to access the site instantly. This is despite Virgin Media using BT's Cleanfeed system which is used by the IWF to block child pornography. I think you can see this has another detrimental effect, which is that now hundreds of thousands of people are learning methods to circumvent the Cleanfeed system potentially exposing thousands more to Child Pornography.

The Real Danger

The real danger to children is simply the ability to communicate with billions of strangers from all over the world, not just by text (e-mail,forums,social networks, instant messaging, IRC servers) but also voice over IP and webcams. Allowing a child unsupervised access to the internet is like allowing them to wander through the backstreets of any major city in the world.

In real life we tell our children not to talk to strangers, but by allowing unsupervised access to the internet parents are encouraging their children to do just the opposite. How many reports are there of teenagers (and in fact adults) being harmed by going to meet strangers online? Or being blackmailed to perform on webcams? Or being groomed by paedophiles in chat rooms? These are not the result of being able to access pornography but simply the same social manipulation that humans have used on each other since we developed language.

The only real way to keep children safe on-line is to control their access to the internet as a whole. Obviously there is no effective means of doing this, however by introducing legislation which bans children under a certain age group from using the internet unsupervised you would at least be sending the right message which is that the internet is an adult environment not suited to unsupervised children in an way.

If I can summarise my points

Opt-in pornography filter

huge cost to ISPs - and eventually consumers

ineffective and trivial to circumvent

gives parents a false sense of security

while learning to circumvent this filter, they also learn to circumvent child pornography blocks

children pass information in other ways, it only takes one to bypass the filter & then everyone can.

Law banning under 18's from unsupervised access to the internet

probably impossible to enforce.

sends a message that the internet is not safe for children.

I find it almost impossible to believe that no experts haven't already pointed out these issues to you, but I haven't seen, heard or read this points discussed in any media coverage and would like to know how you intend to deal with the social manipulation aspects of freely allowing your child to communicate with billions of stranger without supervision?

Your faithfully, etc...

Although my blog is less understanding of her viewpoint...

http://www.janimania.com/2012/05/01/internet-censorship-porn/

Planned behind closed doors

I just noticed this at the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17952259

It sounds like age verification has been discussed behind closed doors for a while, with a joined up plan for the EU as a whole <sigh>

bye bye internet...it was fun while it lasted.