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* Posts by Robert Carnegie

1482 posts • joined Wednesday 30th September 2009 14:50 GMT

Robert Carnegie

What about impersonation?

Someone pretends to be somebody who is a friend of yours, but they're actually someone else. An enemy.

Maybe you don't think that normal people have enemies? But cases have been mentioned already, e.g. ex-wife.

And because you thought it was a friend, you've friended them.

Whatever that means to you young people. It sounds dirty.

Robert Carnegie

Re: A fairly obvious observation

Indeed, it sounds as though they've claimed to do something like breaking the second law of thermodynamics, or recruiting Maxwell's demon.

However, a wind turbine merely extracts useable energy from the ambient environment, so why not.

However, if it's science, then the same thing should happen when someone else does the experiment, and apparently it hasn't.

Robert Carnegie

Did they raise it with Facebook before telling the rest of the world about it? (Obvious or not)

If it's not obvious then they cou ld patent it...

Robert Carnegie

It has been a while since Slammer

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/27/sql_worm_slams_the_net/

January 2003: a RAM-resident worm attacking a patched vulnerability in Microsoft SQL Server. If you hadn't patched it, that is. Oh, and performing denial-of-service by drowning your network in infection attempts.

.

Robert Carnegie

Re: Throttling VOIP

Many of the mobile phone contracts you see advertised are "no VoIP" and/or "no tethering" in the not-very-small print. This may or may not be fair; it allows the service provider to charge separately - charge extra - for those options, or, to look at it another way, to provide cheap Internet data access just to use on your phone. Anyway, these conditions are there in print when you sign up.

So, I have a 2G PAYG phone - original Samsung Galaxy Tab - and Three's neat little 3G internet wi-fi hub at a pretty good monthly price, but usage capped at 15 GB per month - more than contracts on sale now, I think, ha ha! VoIP allowed, too! AFAIK. I haven't used it.

"Fair use" and capping on "unlimited" service is cheating.

Robert Carnegie

I agree, objectively all of the children's artwork is going to be a bit rubbish, really. And probably didn't take long to do either.

Robert Carnegie

So if you want to use wireless network in the pub...

...does CyberHobo still charge for data, as well?

Robert Carnegie

The Sunday papers are tabloids, all of them, regardless of physical size.

Otherwise I was assuming this was from The Sun. But I'm not surprised that it's the Sunday Times.

Robert Carnegie

Re: TV Adverts in UK

In the ads it looks to me as though Siri has an extremely limited successful vocabulary. It recognises "Mom", "weather", "brother" - and possibly gets the last two confused sometimes. So maybe it was "rain" the key word, I don't remember. So you say "Did Mom send me that recipe?" and Siri maybe hears "bzzz mom bzzz bzzz bzzz bzzzzzzz" and finds the most recent logged event that involves your mother, which happens to be the recipe being sent. We'll be able to test this around "Mother's Day".

Robert Carnegie

The last time I tried typing while somewhat drunk, it felt as though the keys weren't getting hit when I wanted them to be. It came out all right, though. (What I was writing may have been less than ideal, however.)

I'm now using a desktop touchscreen, and if I stroke a stylus across the screen, the on-screen pointer follows about 2 cm behind. If I stop, it catches up. There is a lag, and it makes using the screen a less natural act - like being drunk - but I can live with it.

Robert Carnegie

My money

would be on the homeless person taking -your- 4G portable electronics, rich boy. If it really was 4G, which it probably really isn't.

I think I'll just not buy -any- second-hand wireless-capable hardware, for a while. Just in case.

Robert Carnegie

The details are unimportant,

I assume that Microsoft Outlook supports HTML 5 in e-mails? Job done?

Robert Carnegie

This sounds like

an exciting new way to use a neighbour's Internet connection without their permission or their provider's. I mean, this HTML 5 stuff also works on PCs?

Robert Carnegie

Re: Big Brother isn't the only example.

The Big Brother show, the facility to participate in it as a voting viewer, and the app that facilitates you doing so, are the "product" - if you see it that way. And then you have these problems with Android Market terms.

Robert Carnegie

I'm going to write "9G" on my Huawei dongle tonight.

Well, maybe. Maybe. Anyway, 9 is the highest you can get, right?

Robert Carnegie

Big Brother isn't the only example.

Suppose you could vote by SMS for your favourite science documentary programme.

It's a sticky question, though. "All fees received by Developers for Products distributed via the Market must be processed by the Market's Payment Processor." If the Developer is - say - the Big Brother programme maker, and receives fees when the app is used to vote by SMS, then that seems to be in breach of the terms. If the Developer is only an enthusiast for some or all of the contestants, then it isn't in breach. But the official Big Brother voting app had better be charging for votes through Google Geld, and at the same cost to users as SMS.

Then again, if premium SMS becomes an acceptable alternative, Google could just say so - but then probably everyone would do it, which isn't what they want. On the other hand, it would be reasonable to exclude fees not only to the developer, but to third parties - except that that then indeed implies that if your mobile provider gets paid as a result of you using an app, then Google wants a cut - and that isn't fair when it's just the fee for providing your Internet connection, and for usage.

Robert Carnegie

"if you get a word wrong"

Don't you mean, if Siri gets a word wrong? Are you on our side or on Apple's?

Owner of a Scottish accent, but rhyming "a" with "toupee" and "the" with "Dundee" for speech recognition purposes.

Robert Carnegie

Doesn't mention Perth

Perth is converting to drink sea water. Good luck with that.

Robert Carnegie

Re: Oh, well, that's okay then.

From time to time I see newspaper or web site articles that someone has copied into Usenet - I see this on the Google Groups service, although they may have not come from there. I think that a DMCA takedown notice would be appropriate in those cases. Google has a posture of disliking limitations on content, including intellectual property limitations, but also of complying with the law in these cases.

I regret that opposition to eternal draconian copyright enforcement seems to consist mainly of people who want to rip off everything.

Robert Carnegie

"My apps"

I use "My apps" to control application updates. Maybe "many people" prefer to allow auto-update of their apps. I hope that that includes "don't auto-update if the permissions are changed".

If the new "Android Market" is "browser-based" inside Android's web browser, then probably you can bookmark straight into "My apps". I'll need to look at that.

Robert Carnegie

"Moot" means many things.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot

It means different things as adjective, verb, or noun. Such as, "a ring gauge for checking the diameters of treenails." A treenail is "a wooden pin that swells when moist, used for fastening together timbers, as those of ships."

So, what did this fellow mean?

Robert Carnegie

I had a plan to collect CO2 from Europe in oil tankers and vent it into the atmosphere just off the Pacific coast of the U.S., where I hear it legally doesn't count as pollution. Although major cities trying to breathe the stuff neat would disagree, briefly. I don't actually have any oil tankers or money to get them and I'm not exactly sure how to get the CO2 into them, so I leave the idea on the table. Well, I suppose you could take oil, and burn it. But that would rather miss the point. And would be expensive.

Robert Carnegie

"Proper" Tablet PCs since XP do use the Wacom technology

...most of them (there are other stylus sceeen systems). Currently the proper stylus PC ones such as HP TouchSmart TM2-1010 are typically touchscreens as -well-. But you may not get the pressure sensitivity, the point of which, for art, I think, is... it's enough. It's plenty.

Mind you, there's David Hockney pootling around on an iPad and having the results exhibited in the National Gallery of Ginormous Print-Outs, so it just goes to show.

Robert Carnegie

Free if you buy Windows

"IIS (MTA / FTP server) has an express version which can be used free of charge (even for commercial usage). SQL Server 8 also knows a free express version."

I haven't checked recently, but I assume that you have to buy or legally acquire a Microsoft Windows operating system to run these products on. It probably says so in the licence terms. So they're free like Microsoft Internet Explorer is free. (If you ignore the Apple Mac edition of Internet Explorer.) Or Windows Media Player.

Robert Carnegie

What kind of deal was that?

“Last year, Nokia sold patents to Mosaid. We paid for a license to those patents. As part of that transaction, we also received a passive financial interest in future revenue generated by Mosaid from the licensing of those patents to others,” a Microsoft spokesperson told El Reg.®

That's a strange-sounding deal, to me. They buy milk from Mosaid... and when anyone else buys milk from Mosaid, Microsoft gets its share of the money. Cows don't usually work like that.

It sounds kind of like a Ponzi scheme instead, but I assume that it isn't.

Robert Carnegie

Re: How many of us want that app?

It crossed my mind when an alleged Labour MP allegedly was allegedly suspended after allegedly punching a Tory allegedly - Who wouldn't? We're all human. And they've done worse to us.

I would not punch a female or decrepit Tory MP. I would find a female or decrepit friend, tap them on the shoulder, point, and wink.

Robert Carnegie

Is Barry Cryer still claiming,

he once saw a cigarette advert of a woman smoking blissfully and the slogan "Only A Camel Can Satisfy Me"?

Aond is BBC Radio 4 Extra still regularly repeating episodes of The Goon Show, or possibly just one, where each character introduced is offered, "Have a Gorilla."

(No thanks, they hurt my throat...)

Robert Carnegie

Might it be that "the foil backed paper lining" causes the Pi to burst into flames? I mean, a computer wants to be cooled, not wrapped up.

Robert Carnegie

My commiseration to you and your placemat.

The selection of "related stories" is interesting - "how to slay a cellphone", "killer SMS". Like so many computer systems, if it was actually intelligent it'd be -really- frightening. Or if we can thank a human sub-editor, then the same applies.

Robert Carnegie

"All your base unit are belong to us, round-eye."

(Apparently, non-Asians don't actually get called "round-eye". Except by each other, as here.)

Robert Carnegie

"call friends to go play football”

But will they get out of the changing rooms?

Robert Carnegie

A name to distrust

And it's good to be sceptical in this field. So, I like it. If they could get the word "rape" in there somewhere it would be even more suitably scary, but offputting I suppose. But "Pay" and "Plus" already are quite scary, in the context.

I just read about a guy who got drunk on a visit to Poland and had his phone not stolen. Unfuortunately. Stolen would have been so much better for him, read here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/17188133

Robert Carnegie

Of cnourse the Pirate Party objects to creative workers being ripped off by middlemen publishers. They should be ripped off by consumers, Pirate Party customers viewing, reading, hearing and playing everything that they want free of charge. Not by middlemen!

Robert Carnegie

I assume he was baptised into the Mormon church, by remote control, shortly after being found. If they still do that.

Robert Carnegie

Now look

Most people in the world today are "lactose intolerant". It is Westerners who are exceptional, mainly. Adults who drink mammal infant nutrition fluid are, by reasonable standards, perverse. Logically, adults who drink mammal infant nutrition fluid of a different mammal species are even more perverse. Personally I drink simulated other-species mammal infant nutrition fluid made from soya beans, which may be more perverse still: but the cow juice gives me a stomach-ache these days.

As for Oetzi, his genes may have not equipped him to digest cow milk or to handle a diet rich in red meat and saturated fat, but that doesn't particularly matter if his diet didn't include those things. Although his hardened arteries suggest that maybe it did. Modern human evolution may include gradual elimination of Oetzi's problem genes from amongst us, although it probably would be better to eat more fruit instead.

Robert Carnegie

Smell my ginger

You say Babel Rising features "a ginger that squashes the unrighteous". Well... the graphic looks more like a finger.

Appropriately, I'm going to Hell.

Robert Carnegie

Own?

Media publishers usually make a point of saying that you don't "own" the material that you've paid to use; that it isn't the same thing.

Not that I worry about that when I'm setting the video for the weather forecast...

Robert Carnegie

I'm not an expert but I believe that already works.

For instance, I think Google Maps recently added an "NFC" permission - or something else did. As far as I remember, it was conspicuously highlighted. I don't have NFC hardware so I wasn't worried. But Google Maps uses a -lot- of permissions.

I generally don't allow any app to update automatically. If I did, then I assume that an added permission would stop that from happening. But to take that as an argument to install originally with permissions that your app -might- want to use some day is moronic, IMO.

Another option, I think, is to publish your app in different versions, with different permissions fOr each. But I don't know if you can replace one with another. Paid and free (ad-supported) product versions are an example: the "free" ediition needs to go to the Internet to download advertisements to show you, the paid product maybe doesn't require Internet permission.

Robert Carnegie

Shower users...

Is that 8 per cent of all cell phone users? Or is it 8 per cent of all people who have killed a cell phone through water exposure, this is how they did it? It's a very, very different question.

Robert Carnegie

A hybrid isn't a mutant. Although,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_%28Marvel_Comics%29

Do reflect on what this says about your readership.

Actually, everybody's mutating a ltttle, all the time.

Robert Carnegie

So will the next innovation in spam be...

...to hack PCs in respectable offices and use them to send spam with the stamp of respectability? And traceability, sure. But if you told our head techy guy that a PC in our network was sending spam, I donn't know when he'd get arround to dealing with it. Or even finding it.

Something important broke today, when it's Friday can we blame Anonymous now?

Robert Carnegie

How many different OS installs do you want to support?

And things that don't work because it depends on another component program, which is missing?

You can play that game with Linux for free, so who needs an app store?

But I think (may be wrong) that in any normal Windows 7 version, all of the operating system software is there, a full distro - but some of it only fully works if you bought the right licence. Which you can do inside Windows Control Panel.

Robert Carnegie

Yeah, use a spelling check sometime

It's GUESStimate, for heaven's sake!

Robert Carnegie

"Why does this article read like women in a marriage have no real importance?"

That's your bias, not the Reg's, if the facts are as given. And also the bias, or rather the design, of the law. Eric Schmidt spent the last ten years building Google. Wendy Schmidt "has largely spent her time on charity work". But in California law, specifically, she kind of gets half of Google if she and Eric divorce. I suppose it's assumed that she enjoys the benefit of half of her husband's stake in Google while they're married, and that she should not be deprived of that in the course of a rumoured divorce. Do I think that's wrong? I haven't thought about it really. On the other hand, wouldn't these people have a pre-nup? But of course that might say just what the law says.

Robert Carnegie

Is SCADA particularly difficult?

Serious hackers are rather good at studying a computer system and figuring out how it operates and how to interfere with it. I wouldn't put confidence in security through obscurity.

So, anyway, could somebody make all of our traffic lights give the wrong instructions? And if we switch the lights off, then how much chaos is permanently wreaked on our cities? By which I mean, cities anywhere in the world.

Robert Carnegie

Real "production" web sites don't have expired certificates then?

Funny, I do see them from time to time. Briefly (no thanks).

Robert Carnegie

Re: Re: My maths isn't the best...

It's quite insulting to say that people's private correspondence isn't worth reading.

Trade unionists and homosexuals are probable targets.

That aside, the FBI are so hard up for domestic terrorists that they are recruiting their own.

Robert Carnegie

Re: Re: I don't think there's any "inciting and inducing" involved

Taking at face value statements attributed to The Pirate Bay and its apologists, they seem to sincerely believe that copyright isn't a moral or enforceable exclusive right in the modern world. At all. I think they are mistaken.

You ever read a story called "A Logic Named Joe"? Written before personal computers, a "logic" is a sort of networked home computer, and Joe has a bug, of sorts: it lets anyone on the network access anything. Fortunately, disaster is mostly averted.

Robert Carnegie

Domains may be de-registered for other reasons.

And you don't want EVERY deleted-domain access attempt notified to the FBI, SOCA, RIAA, etc.

Some of the malware sites are legitimate sites that have been hacked and compromised. I glance at some of the addresses in recent "Please to upstate your password on bankning web site" e-mails and they look like a legitimate site for a different purpose. Well, initially, they look like the actual address of the bankning web site, you know how it goes. So I presume that somebody innocent has been hacked at that end, not that I care either way.

Robert Carnegie

Don't think about "The Event".

And, remain indoors.

(c) Mitchell and Webb, Event Minus 1.5 Years, Remain Indoors

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