Well, I've noticed that CSS is a curious time sink. Back when a colleague and I were building web reporting pages, we did the layout properly using CSS. He's the expert, and I dabbled, but we both experienced the effect whereby any attempt to modify the CSS automatically consumed an entire afternoon minimum. Irrespective of the apparent triviality of the change required.
And indeed - it is entirely possible that parents just don't know how to use all of the features of these devices. Remember - it's an iPhone, it "just works". Most ordinary folks just read enough of the manual to get going, then just actually use the devices.
All this "follow the maze of twisty menus, all alike" stuff is just TL;DR to most people.
So, I'm with the parent - shiny-shiny free app that looks like it is suitable for a kid (and 30 seconds over-the-shoulder doesn't reveal anything that a parent normally looks for - unmoderated chat, sweary stuff, unsuitable images, etc) you let them enjoy. The in-app purchase stuff is quite clearly a booby-trap.
In 2006-2007, TomTom shipped a load of satnavs with an Autorun virus on the flash, that could infect your PC if it had Autorun enabled.
The one I had didn't have a virus on it, but I had to get it fixed under guarantee - and it came back with a virus!. Evidently the PCs in their repair centre were all infected.
Or does this also apply to the "Natural Person"s that are large corporations? That will neatly dispose of all of the review pages and the (big company)sucks.com sites!
Non-chinese Linux firmware available from here OpenWrt
I suspect there's only a small amount of effort required to bring out the GPIOs to do the interfacing required. And that has a wireless adaptor in it too!
Nah, this is Element14/RS's cock up. Since they are supposed ot be doing the contract manufacturing, its them who forgot to mention (way back when the contract was set up) that this would be needed.
Well, it's cuz you can't watch a DVD without black bars at the top and bottom, innit?
For "content creators" i.e., workers, any of the current widescreen formats are an embuggerance, but I can only guess that enough non-16:9 screened devices have been returned by The Great Unwashed that no manufacturer wants to be burned by it.
I have never had a screen as useful as the 1600x1200 one on my lovely T42p (now sadly RIP). And that includes the 1920x1080 one I'm using now.
of tracker providers tweaking the methods to evade the active tracker-blockers.
However, as others have found, many sites are coded to only work with JavaScript enabled, and the scripts that reveal content or follow links actually invoke the tracking/ad-punting functions and check for successful invocation to ensure that you have to be tracked. I'm pretty sure that this is no accident.
Case in point - if you try to view the Disqus comments on the Daily Telegraph site, you can only do it with skimlinks enabled. Even providing a script surrogate for the "skimlinks()" function doesn't help.
No, they reason that the people who are pissed off are those that post on-line, not people who actually pay them money.
Remember - the really big bucks don't come from you or me - we are not the target market. The big retail buyers, the PCWorld customers, they probably like the ribbon on Office, as it is /no more/ confusing that the existing toolbar. They are used to being slightly confused by their computer, so these new interfaces are just more of the same.
When the techy whingers have shut up in a year or so, there will be a massive population of ordinary people, who will see the new Nokia-Microsoft phones in Carphone Warehouse and go "that looks just like the screen on my Packard Bell laptop at home! I'll buy that!".
I've (briefly) contemplated managing a Hyper-V Core installation using the command prompt. Having looked that examples of the shoddy, inconsistent mysteriousness of the CLI to the OS, I quickly abandoned ship and persuaded our one Windows 2008 Server instance to manage it remotely. A task so complex, that somebody was obliged to write a script to semi-automate it (hvremote.wsf).
Even if the CLI could be set to adhere to a sensible design convention, the unholy mess that is the registry, and the multifarious internal dependencies that you can't follow without a process tracer, means that fixing and managing the machine configuration is needlessly hard.
The CLI is simply a thin wrapper over the interfaces that the GUI uses. Yuk.
Can you connect a camera or card reader? If you could, this would be a great addition to the pro shooter's backpack, allowing you to preview your shots on a large screen.
Re: How will US poor demand affect a European launch?
Er, Toyota were forced to start using spares to make the last few, as demand was so strong. There are still a few running, in the hands of keen DIY'ers.
The EV-1 was only ever leased. The leasers had the cars forcibly removed and crushed.
Ford Ranger EV - 1500 made, Ford crushed as many as they could. Some owners managed to grab theirs when the leasing dealers had been sloppy with the agreement.
Honda EV Plus - lease only, all cars eventually crushed.
These electric cars have only ever been made in sample quantities, so the statement "Nobody wanted it" is incorrect. Many users had daily journeys that suited the electric car way, so they wanted to keep them.
It looks more likely that GM are looking for an excuse to can the whole thing. The plan was supposed to be to launch it in countries where fuel is cheap, watch it fail, then exit the electric car market without raising suspicion. If they canned it when it was selling well (as it may well do in the UK, and especially France, where the 'leccy is cheap and l'essence is pricey) we might rumble that the Big Bad Oil men had got their way as usual.
Google:
Toyota Rav-4 EV
GM EV1
Ford Ranger EV
Honda EV Plus
Note how all these promising cars are hastily crushed as soon as possible.
And then read "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries" and weep.....
"The council refused to provide the requested information stating that the information was being withheld under the ‘prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs’ exemption"
In other words, they had not actually done any kind of review at all, as they did not consider that anything was wrong.
This is predicated on the idea that the "information security" policies the council has are purely for "compliance" purposes, and nobody can be expected to follow them.
But.... I thought that we wanted people to use Desktop Linux in the home. Which means, that they should be able to do XP-Home-y things like connect to a friend's wireless, or print on a printer.
Since Linux has supposedly got the security thing right, it should be possible to use your laptop for useful stuff and yet not leave it open to being pwned.
So Mr Torvalds is right. The designers of the UI experience in OpenSuse haven't got out of their dorm-rooms and offices and thought about real consumer use of personal computers.
1) The Radius Pivot when connected to a computer (Mac or PC) enabled the user to switch from portrait to landscape. The desktop would re-arrange itself . iRotate (previously SoftSpin) has been around since 2004.
2) "The input device can display dynamic graphic content in an input area which is distinct from a display screen of the electronic device". Did nobody look at a Nintendo DS?
I claim prior Art on that one. At Eden Group in the late 90's, we worked on resistive touchscreen devices that used a separate low-power microcontroller to scan the touchscreen while the main processor was asleep. We were also shown a processor from a major Japanese manufacturer that contained a low-power state machine, included expressedly for checking the touchscreen while the core was suspended.
They actually look pretty good to me. They do have a somewhat filmic quality - skin blemishes hinted at rather than noise-reduced-away, and blurred regions revealing a grainy texture, instead of colour errors and blotches.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Meanwhile, back in Blighty...
Nope - you'd still stand trial. If you could *prove* that the drive was given to you recently, you would be acquitted. Best of luck with that.
Also, remember. They Police seize your drives on a (erroneous/malicious) tipoff. You give them the keys (as you have to). They find no child pornography.
They do find:
* Your MP3 collection
* A ripped DVD or two, plus perhaps a copy of DVDRipper/DVDShrink.
* A few "choice" videos and images in your brower cache
* Some software you maybe installed from work with no license
* Your Windows OS is a key-hacked one, as you lost the key to your OEM install or change too much hardware or something.
* You're an "Occupy" activist, and you were arranging a protest.
... and so on.
All this stuff will get passed to the appropriate authorities. You *will* get nicked for something.
Is what is needed. The problem with the current crop of proponents is that they will ensure that a closed, patented DRM mechanism is mandated.
Now, if the DRM scheme is patent-free for both origination and consumption, that would potentially allow anybody to generate and publish content without the freetards nicking it. Think struggling bands, local TV, that sort of thing. It might actually make the provision of on-line content viable and democratic.
The inability to disconnect the battery seems like a major fail. Obviously if a switch would be impossible due to high currents, what about a hatch in the floor with a big bolt that you undo to remove the connection (just like an ordinary car battery, only much meatier?
What horrified me was the idea that the battery might also go flat if the charger is plugged into too long an extension lead! That implies that the car consumes more than 1-2kW!
So, leaving your car plugged in for, say, a month would cost you in the region of £150.
I sat and read http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm . What about the allegation that measurements of surface temperature are either badly controlled or have been subject to mysterious upward correction factors?
The problem with us ordinary types trying to verify the claims of the Climate scientists is that we begin to wonder if we can trust the published data. This is why people are sceptical of the "established view", because those of us who know what science is suspect that the stuff in the papers (and children's text books, grr) is not actually science, but advocacy.
I read that too, and went "oh 'Eck!". Because when organisations like "National Center for Science Education" get run out of town for their Warmist agenda, they will lose the ability to promote the really important things, like evolution, and even the basics of Rational education. Places like America (and indeed the UK) are already teetering on the edge of a descent into ignorance and superstition - we need scientific lobby groups to keep the woo-peddlers away from education!
Outsource bait. They publish the ad with a low salary, get no takers, declare a "skills shortage" then hire a nice cheap bunch of Indians (over there or shipped over here) to do the work.
It's how our broken import controls and employment law has distorted the labour market, by setting market salary levels at those you find in other countries.
Only 2 non-public entities have been fined in the last 18 months. One of those was ACS:Law, which they really could not ignore. The other was some poor solicitor who got his laptop burgled from his house.
Paying out evil oil-soaked dollars to buy influence, or faking data analysis and borking the peer-review process to hide it? The first is kind of normal, the second is on a deep moral level, unforgivable.
Re: "Those who tried to make Linux run will be in chokey."
Oh, yes! Because if you crack the bootloader you can therefore run unsigned code. This will be assumed to be code that allows the DRM of internet media services to be broken, and so will be in contravention of the DMCA or local equivalents. Just ask Sony about that. So, yes, Microsoft will use this as an excuse to legally hammer anyone who replaces their firmware.
HTC somehow ensure that some rooted devices can't access DRM content, which seems to be an excellent compromise - if you leave the walled garden, you can't have the benefits, but we won't stop you.
If both MPIAA and the banks insist the code on your handset is secure, reprogramming the phone will soon be illegal - or at least, the manufacturers won't be able to sell a root-able device.
I have an old Smart-UPS 1000, that draws about 25W under no-load conditions (110W sounds like a lot! - check your batteries. You should get more than 30 minutes supplying 200W).
APC UPS boxes are terribly old-fashioned crates, with a vast transformer in them that both steps-up when running on battery, and provides brown-out protection when running on-line. That transformer sits there getting warm, and contributes to the power wastage. Businesses buy APC 'cos they are simple, rugged and reliable.
If you want to save power, and still have a UPS facility, buy a modern smart off-line one. This will draw negligible power once the batteries are charged, and provide basic line filtering with simple passive filters. The small notch in the power you will get when going on to battery power shouldn't affect modern computers, as the PSU has a good few milliseconds of power storage in it anyway.
Just tried a signup with an obviously non-real name, and it seemed to work. However, now you have to verify your account by providing a phone number! In the UK, it seems that land-lines aren't supported, either.
They *claim* the number is only used for verification.......
The problem with any harvesting process is that it usually consumes energy. This is what knackers most biofuel processes - the diesel used by the harvesting machinery emits so much carbon that the net saving to the planet is zilch.
The only way that a water-bourne biomass reactor process could work is if the plant matter can be persuaded to "flow" into the processing and reactor machinery. It would also be advantageous if the plant matter would not need much mechanical intervention before being brewed.
This kind of flow-through process means that there's a high chance that the waste would simply out-flow... into the sea. Better make sure the eColi will be thoroughly dead before opening the sluice-gates!
Apple engineers aren't telecoms engineers. So this kind of basic end-to-end integrity stuff (which mobile networks have done for years) simply isn't implemented.
which will ask if you want cookies. If you say no, the web site won't work properly. The evil advertiser will ensure that the site navigation cookies, the basket, and what have you are commingled with the tracking information, so separating the two is a easy as uninstalling IE6.
We already have sites where the JavaScript to make the site work is so peppered with ad-tracking calls, that without knowledge of how to write script surrogates one is obliged to enable scripts from all sorts of undesirables.
The retailers got too many back from punters who thought that the inability to run any software they had, use any scanner/printers/cameras they had and failure to work on many corporate websites meant that the machines were "broken".
Unfortunately, to J Public, a "computer" means a Windows PC.
Presumably all of the entry points were named BBX_DoSomething(), and the constants look like BBX_MAGIC_NUMBER and the enums look like BBX_THINGTYPE. So, much work with search/replace, fix up the API document, update the examples, training materials. Big job - especially the testing afterwards!
"Although the department is doing much to make sure it has the skills it requires, it needs a more systematic approach, where spending on skills is linked explicitly to the organisation's overall business objectives and a vision of how it should look in the future."
Means, many staff take courses because they get dinged at reviews if they don't, or...
staff take courses that are useful CV material.
Doesn't matter - it's only taxpayers' money, after all.
What's important is the kind of data being collected.
Current location, calls made, call received. Your mobile operator already knows these things - just not as conveniently. You could not sue about this collection, as it is nothing new above the information that your carrier already has (and could be produced for law enforcement).
However, key-presses, messages, app usage. That's spooky stuff.
Unfortunately, it looks like Lewis didn't read the article
... ok, I can only read the abstract. But that says:
"...and demonstrate that Antarctic and subantarctic data overestimate atmospheric CO2 levels, biasing long-term trends. Our results show that CO2 declined before and during Antarctic glaciation and support a substantial CO2 decrease as the primary agent forcing Antarctic glaciation, consistent with model-derived CO2 thresholds. "
Register
432 posts • joined Monday 24th April 2006 21:03 GMT
Page:
It's fake
Look at the image at 2:30. The while silkscreen looks blurred, like someone did a bad smudge with photoshop.
No flip-phones!
Nobody makes a nice flip phone any more! The last Nokia one was years ago.
Keylocks just don't work in handbags.
Re: Still stupidly pricey...
Have you tried that in France?
I gave up after standing in an SFR shop for 15 minutes. They really don't want to sell you a SIM!
Re: What's with all the HTML/CSS loathing?
Well, I've noticed that CSS is a curious time sink. Back when a colleague and I were building web reporting pages, we did the layout properly using CSS. He's the expert, and I dabbled, but we both experienced the effect whereby any attempt to modify the CSS automatically consumed an entire afternoon minimum. Irrespective of the apparent triviality of the change required.
Odd.
All of these are useless for data you care about
Because there is no encryption, so your data is accessible by hackers and law enforcement.
Anybody tried Wuala? Or even boxcryptor.com?
Re: Stop with the "try parenting" comments
And indeed - it is entirely possible that parents just don't know how to use all of the features of these devices. Remember - it's an iPhone, it "just works". Most ordinary folks just read enough of the manual to get going, then just actually use the devices.
All this "follow the maze of twisty menus, all alike" stuff is just TL;DR to most people.
So, I'm with the parent - shiny-shiny free app that looks like it is suitable for a kid (and 30 seconds over-the-shoulder doesn't reveal anything that a parent normally looks for - unmoderated chat, sweary stuff, unsuitable images, etc) you let them enjoy. The in-app purchase stuff is quite clearly a booby-trap.
Remember the TomTom virus debacle?
In 2006-2007, TomTom shipped a load of satnavs with an Autorun virus on the flash, that could infect your PC if it had Autorun enabled.
The one I had didn't have a virus on it, but I had to get it fixed under guarantee - and it came back with a virus!. Evidently the PCs in their repair centre were all infected.
It also came with beta firmware on it. Sigh.
Does the insultee have to be an actual human?
Or does this also apply to the "Natural Person"s that are large corporations? That will neatly dispose of all of the review pages and the (big company)sucks.com sites!
Re: YouTube?
Try VLC.
Plays QT movies without all that QT rubbish.
For another example of revenue protection,
Google "Pixid Whiteboard photo".
Originally sold by Pixid for about $50. Pixid was bought by a printing whiteboard company (PolyVision), and the price immediately increased to $250.
Hardware is too expensive
You need something based on this:
TP-Link WR703N
Non-chinese Linux firmware available from here OpenWrt
I suspect there's only a small amount of effort required to bring out the GPIOs to do the interfacing required. And that has a wireless adaptor in it too!
This post has been deleted by its author
Re: Starry-eyed academics vs. the Real World
Nah, this is Element14/RS's cock up. Since they are supposed ot be doing the contract manufacturing, its them who forgot to mention (way back when the contract was set up) that this would be needed.
Re: Don't believe it....1900x1200
Well, it's cuz you can't watch a DVD without black bars at the top and bottom, innit?
For "content creators" i.e., workers, any of the current widescreen formats are an embuggerance, but I can only guess that enough non-16:9 screened devices have been returned by The Great Unwashed that no manufacturer wants to be burned by it.
I have never had a screen as useful as the 1600x1200 one on my lovely T42p (now sadly RIP). And that includes the 1920x1080 one I'm using now.
Cue arms race
of tracker providers tweaking the methods to evade the active tracker-blockers.
However, as others have found, many sites are coded to only work with JavaScript enabled, and the scripts that reveal content or follow links actually invoke the tracking/ad-punting functions and check for successful invocation to ensure that you have to be tracked. I'm pretty sure that this is no accident.
Case in point - if you try to view the Disqus comments on the Daily Telegraph site, you can only do it with skimlinks enabled. Even providing a script surrogate for the "skimlinks()" function doesn't help.
Re: What?
No, they reason that the people who are pissed off are those that post on-line, not people who actually pay them money.
Remember - the really big bucks don't come from you or me - we are not the target market. The big retail buyers, the PCWorld customers, they probably like the ribbon on Office, as it is /no more/ confusing that the existing toolbar. They are used to being slightly confused by their computer, so these new interfaces are just more of the same.
When the techy whingers have shut up in a year or so, there will be a massive population of ordinary people, who will see the new Nokia-Microsoft phones in Carphone Warehouse and go "that looks just like the screen on my Packard Bell laptop at home! I'll buy that!".
That's the plan.
Re: PowerShell - managing servers with a shell.
I've (briefly) contemplated managing a Hyper-V Core installation using the command prompt. Having looked that examples of the shoddy, inconsistent mysteriousness of the CLI to the OS, I quickly abandoned ship and persuaded our one Windows 2008 Server instance to manage it remotely. A task so complex, that somebody was obliged to write a script to semi-automate it (hvremote.wsf).
Even if the CLI could be set to adhere to a sensible design convention, the unholy mess that is the registry, and the multifarious internal dependencies that you can't follow without a process tracer, means that fixing and managing the machine configuration is needlessly hard.
The CLI is simply a thin wrapper over the interfaces that the GUI uses. Yuk.
Connectivity
Can you connect a camera or card reader? If you could, this would be a great addition to the pro shooter's backpack, allowing you to preview your shots on a large screen.
Re: How will US poor demand affect a European launch?
Er, Toyota were forced to start using spares to make the last few, as demand was so strong. There are still a few running, in the hands of keen DIY'ers.
The EV-1 was only ever leased. The leasers had the cars forcibly removed and crushed.
Ford Ranger EV - 1500 made, Ford crushed as many as they could. Some owners managed to grab theirs when the leasing dealers had been sloppy with the agreement.
Honda EV Plus - lease only, all cars eventually crushed.
These electric cars have only ever been made in sample quantities, so the statement "Nobody wanted it" is incorrect. Many users had daily journeys that suited the electric car way, so they wanted to keep them.
Check your facts.
How will US poor demand affect a European launch?
It looks more likely that GM are looking for an excuse to can the whole thing. The plan was supposed to be to launch it in countries where fuel is cheap, watch it fail, then exit the electric car market without raising suspicion. If they canned it when it was selling well (as it may well do in the UK, and especially France, where the 'leccy is cheap and l'essence is pricey) we might rumble that the Big Bad Oil men had got their way as usual.
Google:
Toyota Rav-4 EV
GM EV1
Ford Ranger EV
Honda EV Plus
Note how all these promising cars are hastily crushed as soon as possible.
And then read "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries" and weep.....
Internal review? What review?
"The council refused to provide the requested information stating that the information was being withheld under the ‘prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs’ exemption"
In other words, they had not actually done any kind of review at all, as they did not consider that anything was wrong.
This is predicated on the idea that the "information security" policies the council has are purely for "compliance" purposes, and nobody can be expected to follow them.
Re: Wireless and XP Home
But.... I thought that we wanted people to use Desktop Linux in the home. Which means, that they should be able to do XP-Home-y things like connect to a friend's wireless, or print on a printer.
Since Linux has supposedly got the security thing right, it should be possible to use your laptop for useful stuff and yet not leave it open to being pwned.
So Mr Torvalds is right. The designers of the UI experience in OpenSuse haven't got out of their dorm-rooms and offices and thought about real consumer use of personal computers.
8,125,461 (Dynamic input graphic display )
1) The Radius Pivot when connected to a computer (Mac or PC) enabled the user to switch from portrait to landscape. The desktop would re-arrange itself . iRotate (previously SoftSpin) has been around since 2004.
2) "The input device can display dynamic graphic content in an input area which is distinct from a display screen of the electronic device". Did nobody look at a Nintendo DS?
8,125,456
I claim prior Art on that one. At Eden Group in the late 90's, we worked on resistive touchscreen devices that used a separate low-power microcontroller to scan the touchscreen while the main processor was asleep. We were also shown a processor from a major Japanese manufacturer that contained a low-power state machine, included expressedly for checking the touchscreen while the core was suspended.
Re: The pictures look OK
They actually look pretty good to me. They do have a somewhat filmic quality - skin blemishes hinted at rather than noise-reduced-away, and blurred regions revealing a grainy texture, instead of colour errors and blotches.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Meanwhile, back in Blighty...
Nope - you'd still stand trial. If you could *prove* that the drive was given to you recently, you would be acquitted. Best of luck with that.
Also, remember. They Police seize your drives on a (erroneous/malicious) tipoff. You give them the keys (as you have to). They find no child pornography.
They do find:
* Your MP3 collection
* A ripped DVD or two, plus perhaps a copy of DVDRipper/DVDShrink.
* A few "choice" videos and images in your brower cache
* Some software you maybe installed from work with no license
* Your Windows OS is a key-hacked one, as you lost the key to your OEM install or change too much hardware or something.
* You're an "Occupy" activist, and you were arranging a protest.
... and so on.
All this stuff will get passed to the appropriate authorities. You *will* get nicked for something.
IMAP IDLE
..is that really patented by Motorola?
Open DRM
Is what is needed. The problem with the current crop of proponents is that they will ensure that a closed, patented DRM mechanism is mandated.
Now, if the DRM scheme is patent-free for both origination and consumption, that would potentially allow anybody to generate and publish content without the freetards nicking it. Think struggling bands, local TV, that sort of thing. It might actually make the provision of on-line content viable and democratic.
Non-eco eco car
The inability to disconnect the battery seems like a major fail. Obviously if a switch would be impossible due to high currents, what about a hatch in the floor with a big bolt that you undo to remove the connection (just like an ordinary car battery, only much meatier?
What horrified me was the idea that the battery might also go flat if the charger is plugged into too long an extension lead! That implies that the car consumes more than 1-2kW!
So, leaving your car plugged in for, say, a month would cost you in the region of £150.
Ouch.
So what about Burt Rutan?
I sat and read http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm . What about the allegation that measurements of surface temperature are either badly controlled or have been subject to mysterious upward correction factors?
The problem with us ordinary types trying to verify the claims of the Climate scientists is that we begin to wonder if we can trust the published data. This is why people are sceptical of the "established view", because those of us who know what science is suspect that the stuff in the papers (and children's text books, grr) is not actually science, but advocacy.
Re: Pah!
I read that too, and went "oh 'Eck!". Because when organisations like "National Center for Science Education" get run out of town for their Warmist agenda, they will lose the ability to promote the really important things, like evolution, and even the basics of Rational education. Places like America (and indeed the UK) are already teetering on the edge of a descent into ignorance and superstition - we need scientific lobby groups to keep the woo-peddlers away from education!
Re: What silliness...
The difference here being, that Kodak is a technology company that actually invents stuff.
Re: Money, money, money
Outsource bait. They publish the ad with a low salary, get no takers, declare a "skills shortage" then hire a nice cheap bunch of Indians (over there or shipped over here) to do the work.
It's how our broken import controls and employment law has distorted the labour market, by setting market salary levels at those you find in other countries.
Private companies are rarely fined
Either it's mostly public bodies that leak data, or private companies are only fined when we are looking.
Take a look at:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/taking_action/dp_pecr.aspx#monetarypenalties
Only 2 non-public entities have been fined in the last 18 months. One of those was ACS:Law, which they really could not ignore. The other was some poor solicitor who got his laptop burgled from his house.
Then look at:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/taking_action/dp_pecr.aspx#undertakings
Oh look, lots of companies have to sign the meaningless bits of paper. I suspect that:
DSG: Credit card details in a skip.
Yorkshire Building Society: Stolen laptop
Healthcare Locums Plc: Laptop sold without being wiped
Rainforest Alliance Ltd: Theft of laptop
- -would have merited fines had they been councils.
Are brown envelopes involved, old school ties, or funny handshakes?
Which is worse
Paying out evil oil-soaked dollars to buy influence, or faking data analysis and borking the peer-review process to hide it? The first is kind of normal, the second is on a deep moral level, unforgivable.
Re: "Those who tried to make Linux run will be in chokey."
Oh, yes! Because if you crack the bootloader you can therefore run unsigned code. This will be assumed to be code that allows the DRM of internet media services to be broken, and so will be in contravention of the DMCA or local equivalents. Just ask Sony about that. So, yes, Microsoft will use this as an excuse to legally hammer anyone who replaces their firmware.
HTC somehow ensure that some rooted devices can't access DRM content, which seems to be an excellent compromise - if you leave the walled garden, you can't have the benefits, but we won't stop you.
Wave bye-bye to rooting and Romming
If both MPIAA and the banks insist the code on your handset is secure, reprogramming the phone will soon be illegal - or at least, the manufacturers won't be able to sell a root-able device.
Need a smaller UPS
.... and probably a newer one.
I have an old Smart-UPS 1000, that draws about 25W under no-load conditions (110W sounds like a lot! - check your batteries. You should get more than 30 minutes supplying 200W).
APC UPS boxes are terribly old-fashioned crates, with a vast transformer in them that both steps-up when running on battery, and provides brown-out protection when running on-line. That transformer sits there getting warm, and contributes to the power wastage. Businesses buy APC 'cos they are simple, rugged and reliable.
If you want to save power, and still have a UPS facility, buy a modern smart off-line one. This will draw negligible power once the batteries are charged, and provide basic line filtering with simple passive filters. The small notch in the power you will get when going on to battery power shouldn't affect modern computers, as the PSU has a good few milliseconds of power storage in it anyway.
No real name rule yet
Just tried a signup with an obviously non-real name, and it seemed to work. However, now you have to verify your account by providing a phone number! In the UK, it seems that land-lines aren't supported, either.
They *claim* the number is only used for verification.......
"Technical Engineer"
What other kind is there?
Harvesting is expensive
The problem with any harvesting process is that it usually consumes energy. This is what knackers most biofuel processes - the diesel used by the harvesting machinery emits so much carbon that the net saving to the planet is zilch.
The only way that a water-bourne biomass reactor process could work is if the plant matter can be persuaded to "flow" into the processing and reactor machinery. It would also be advantageous if the plant matter would not need much mechanical intervention before being brewed.
This kind of flow-through process means that there's a high chance that the waste would simply out-flow... into the sea. Better make sure the eColi will be thoroughly dead before opening the sluice-gates!
You need to upgrade to the Nokia 1200
It has a massively useful feature. A built-in torch! (white LED mounted on the top)
Typical app-writer design
Apple engineers aren't telecoms engineers. So this kind of basic end-to-end integrity stuff (which mobile networks have done for years) simply isn't implemented.
Poor.
Expect s single question on the way in
which will ask if you want cookies. If you say no, the web site won't work properly. The evil advertiser will ensure that the site navigation cookies, the basket, and what have you are commingled with the tracking information, so separating the two is a easy as uninstalling IE6.
We already have sites where the JavaScript to make the site work is so peppered with ad-tracking calls, that without knowledge of how to write script surrogates one is obliged to enable scripts from all sorts of undesirables.
Linux netbooks "didn't work"
The retailers got too many back from punters who thought that the inability to run any software they had, use any scanner/printers/cameras they had and failure to work on many corporate websites meant that the machines were "broken".
Unfortunately, to J Public, a "computer" means a Windows PC.
API horror
Presumably all of the entry points were named BBX_DoSomething(), and the constants look like BBX_MAGIC_NUMBER and the enums look like BBX_THINGTYPE. So, much work with search/replace, fix up the API document, update the examples, training materials. Big job - especially the testing afterwards!
4 BEEELLION Dollars!
They're prepared to waste $4Bn on an adventure like this? Truly the shareholders have no control at all.
Ha! Let's decode the weasel words.....
"Although the department is doing much to make sure it has the skills it requires, it needs a more systematic approach, where spending on skills is linked explicitly to the organisation's overall business objectives and a vision of how it should look in the future."
Means, many staff take courses because they get dinged at reviews if they don't, or...
staff take courses that are useful CV material.
Doesn't matter - it's only taxpayers' money, after all.
What's important is the kind of data being collected.
Current location, calls made, call received. Your mobile operator already knows these things - just not as conveniently. You could not sue about this collection, as it is nothing new above the information that your carrier already has (and could be produced for law enforcement).
However, key-presses, messages, app usage. That's spooky stuff.
Unfortunately, it looks like Lewis didn't read the article
... ok, I can only read the abstract. But that says:
"...and demonstrate that Antarctic and subantarctic data overestimate atmospheric CO2 levels, biasing long-term trends. Our results show that CO2 declined before and during Antarctic glaciation and support a substantial CO2 decrease as the primary agent forcing Antarctic glaciation, consistent with model-derived CO2 thresholds. "
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