Slashdot Mirror


User: akadruid

akadruid's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
365
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 365

  1. Re:Class Action Lawsuit? on Researcher To Release Web-Based Android Attack · · Score: 1

    I don't know why you've selected the G1 - it was one of the better supported phones. It got all the upgrades for the first year, from 1.0 to 1.6.

    Pick something like LG GW620/Eve/InTouch Max/KH5200. Released in 2010, in dozens of countries, running android 1.5, it was never updated and was fully abandoned by manufacturer and carriers in under 6 months. There are hundreds of thousands of them out there on 18 or 24 month contracts which won't expire until 2012.

    It is fully capable of running android 2.2, and fortunately for some, there is an open source project which provides that. But most of the people who bought it will be spending another year or so with a needlessly obsolete and insecure phone.

  2. Re:Android less secure? on Your Smartphone Is Safer Than Your PC — For Now · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Windows is a high value target, which was once crippled by it's backwards compatability with DOS and low skilled userbase. Microsoft, whatever their flaws, have some properly clever people and serious vested interest in addressing this problem, and they've finally put out a release that is fairly secure out of the box and somewhat usable - while still providing fairly timely security patches for a 10 year old release. Which is why the most serious threats are now coming from widely deployed software from less responsible companies (Adobe).

    Android is the exact opposite. Very few smartphone manufacturers care enough to issue regular updates for their phones, especially once you get outside of the US market. Even on the US market, most smartphones have had exactly one update: from 1.5/1.6 to 2.0/2.1 usually. No monthly security updates, and nothing at all for obsolete phones over 12 months old. You'd better hope that nobody else has the time to look at your phone that your carrier has forgotten about.

  3. Re:Bitching about gimp on Microsoft Tech Can Deblur Images Automatically · · Score: 1

    You're doing it wrong. GIMP is not for people who can barely use Photoshop. Picasa and Paint.NET are excellent tools for you, me and 99.9% of the other people who own a digital camera.

  4. Re:Hmmm on X Prize Foundation Wants AI Physician On Every Smartphone · · Score: 1

    In the UK we have NHS Direct which is both 24-7 telephone and online screening and advice, run by the national healthcare system. From personal experience, it's very good.

  5. Re:Send route from computer to phone? on Android 2.0 SDK Released, Google Maps Navigation Announced · · Score: 1

    This already exists in Google Maps. Just plan your route, click the Send To button at the top left, and select GPS. There are half a dozen supported manufacturers.

  6. Re:VAT on Books in Europe Trending Towards 0%-5% on Kindle Finally Ready For Global Distribution · · Score: 1

    they don't want to negotiate with mobile networks in every country. international kindles still have AT&T sim cards, the extra £s are to cover the roaming charges.

    US kindles pay a surcharge to download abroad

  7. Re:Three? on Coverity Report Finds OSS Bug Density Down Since 2006 · · Score: 5, Funny

    and then you get so-called slashdotphiles, who think they can hear artifacts in the lossy story compression.

    let's see how you fare in a double blind test

  8. Re:At least... on Russia's New Official Holiday — Programmer's Day · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I thought we were drumming up support for another try....

  9. Re:Jesus Fucking Christ on UK Plans To Monitor 20,000 Families' Homes Via CCTV · · Score: 1

    Us parents live in terror of cases like the recent one where two children were taken by Social Services, on the basis that one had been violently shaken. Some years later, the state was forced to confirm that the child was in fact suffering from a rare illness and had never been shaken... but the real parents are still unable to even see their children, since the Social Services (SS?) decided the children were now too settled with their foster parents.

    I'd settle for 24 hours surveillance if it meant the state not taking my children over a stupid "guilty-until-proven-innocent" screw up.

  10. Re:Free parking! Just uh.. oh crap. on Hackers Get Free Parking In San Francisco · · Score: 1

    A friend of mine was working in a chain hardware store, inside a large shopping mall, when they discovered someone had stolen a 10 foot ladder on a busy Saturday lunchtime. It's really just about having the balls for it.

  11. Re:Guilty conscience? on Bugatti's Latest Veyron, Most Ridiculous Car on the Planet? · · Score: 2, Informative

    The same company's R&D effort produced the VW 1l

  12. Re:Why? on The Twitter Book · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Young people mostly don't use Twitter - it's just older people desperately trying to be cool. A perfect market for this book.

  13. Re:Greedy corrupt control freak UK government on UK Government Announces Broadband Tax · · Score: 1

    Generally fair? Every thing costs different in different places. Even the really big stuff, rent, food, council tax, etc. It all varies by where you live.

    It costs me £3.5k/year to get a train two stops to work (in London). How about the next time I visit Scotland (or the Isle of Wight, just 50 miles away) a similar journey would be more than 50 times cheaper.

    Petrol costs vary by up to 50% depending where you buy it (800% if you discount the tax).

    A pint of beer costs 4 times as much in some places.

    You try getting a parcel delivered to the Outer Hebrides.

    Broadband is exactly the same. No reason you should pay the same amount to be put on the end of a 10 mile wire to the guy who's got dozens of cables running down his street anyway.

  14. Re:So, basically,... on Sun Kills Rock CPU, Says NYT Report · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's closer to the other way around; ARM is the mostly widely used 32 bit architecture, and accounts for more than 75% of all 32 bit processors sold.

    Really, the entire world has been forced onto the ARM monoculture (except perhaps for a few x86s at the high end).

  15. goggle.com on Buying a Domain From a Cybersquatter · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If you owned goggle.com, this would be a good way to drive some free traffic

  16. Re:Yeah, but what's the point? on Segway, GM Partner On Two-Wheeled Electric Car · · Score: 1

    actually even Honda has a truck too:
    http://automobiles.honda.com/ridgeline/
    (2 tonnes, 15mpg)

  17. Re:Mandated on Student Arrested For Classroom Texting · · Score: 0

    The student was "known to the security officer" as a problem , and had "negative contacts" with the administrators in the past.

    They track our kids with biometrics, cctv, and published (or lost) databases of every sneeze. Every kid in a school is going to be a problem child soon. And you're still going to get kids acting up in class, and stupid, incompetent teachers and other officials. They're giving the hard-working, sane majority a very bad name.

    Everyone's guilty, citizen. All that remains is to determine the nature of your guilt.

  18. Re:You not thinking Milti-Core. on Firefox Faster In Wine Than Native · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Laptops in particular often have slow hard drives. Antivirus slows them further. You're probably waiting for the disk all the time.

    It's often compounded in a business environment by other disk access apps (auditing etc).

    I know on my laptop, lauching firefox involves McAfee scanning Firefox, then Centennial scanning Firefox, then McAfee scanning Centennial, then McAfee scanning Firefox again.

  19. Re:Youtube? on Wikipedia Gears Up For Explosion In Digital Media · · Score: 1

    there is no open source software that can easily view YouTube content

    http://www.getmiro.com/

    works like a dream, on any platform

    (You are right on all the other points)

  20. Re:Urban Terror on Most Popular Free, Arena-Style FPS? · · Score: 1

    Urban Terror is also in my experience one of the games most likely to work 'out of the box' across many platforms. I play on Ubuntu myself, and it seem to be almost a badge of honour these days to add @(distro) to the end of your nick. I regularly see people with nicks ending in @ubuntu, @fedora, @arch - I've even seen @freebsd....

  21. iPlayer on Sunday Evening, the New Web Rush Hour · · Score: 1

    BBC iPlayer was 5% of UK internet traffic back in April. It's got a lot more popular since - I would be surprised if it was not 10% by now.

    Late Sunday afternoon is a good time to be thinking about grabbing something to watch that evening. iPlayer downloads are very fast so you don't need to think about it any earlier than an hour before you want to watch it.

  22. dust in the connectors on Tales From the Support Crypt · · Score: 1

    if you suspect its not plugged in, tell them there might be dust in the connector. take it out, blow on it, put it back. more believable to the semi-computer-literate.

  23. Re:They're doin' it again on Talking Web, Memory Aids, and Solar Phones In 5 Years · · Score: 1

    I agree; these predictions are not worth the pixels. They jump from current trends straight to wish fulfillment.

    The kiosk thing is the closest to happening. These new self service checkouts are the start. The Tescos in Eastcheap put in 3 of them a couple of years back; within a few months they'd ripped out half the manned checkouts to get another 12 or so in. People prefer to have a computer serve them, to the point where they will accept doing a little more work themselves; and the stores on to a winner with less salaries to pay and faster throughput. These kiosks they've described don't require any more investment, maintainance, training etc than the self service checkouts did; it remains to be seen whether they will popular in the same way.

  24. Re:They're doin' it again on Talking Web, Memory Aids, and Solar Phones In 5 Years · · Score: 3, Interesting

    5 years? Takeup of these things is accelerating.

    The very first MP3 player (Eiger Labs MPMan F10) didn't go on sale until June 98, and 3rd Generation iPod was out by April 03. Admittedly it was a couple more years until they reached the 10s of millions of sales per quarter, depends on your definition of 'widely adopted'.

    DVD players didn't go on sale until 96, and they were pretty dominant by about '01

    Wireless networking was pretty much non-existent before 802.11b in October 99, but extremely popular 5 years later.

    5 years is a long time these days.

    Online TV-catchup (iplayer, hulu etc) was essentially non-existent 2 years ago - want to bet it will be 3 more years before it's widely adopted? iPlayer's already a sizeable % of all internet traffic in the UK.

  25. Re:Small Monthly Fees on Vital Parts of Games As DLC? · · Score: 1

    What they don't understand is that there's only *one* microsoft, *one* world of warcraft.

    Course, once upon a time, there was only *one* everquest