Originality

There's something slightly depressing in the idea of millions of undergrads desperately attempting to express an original thought on a subject that isn't.

Ask me an original question and I might give you an original answer.

I don't work in corporate IT, so be gentle...

How is this corporate SSO problem any different from private citizens who have mostly one identity (e-mail address) and a bunch of accounts with (hopefully) different passwords?

Browsers/keychains remember the passwords, if that breaks you click the "forgot password" link and re-establish your credentials through e-mailed links etc.

Encrypt the hard drive, enforce strong password on the OS, bob's your uncle, no?

Florian bashing

What's with all the vaguely ad-hominem bashing of Florian Mueller? He puts the disclaimer at the end of his analysis so you can decide for yourself.

I'm far from current, but hasn't he been fighting the good fight against software patents for many years now?

"One thing is loses when sending power over large distances"

It's about 2000km as the crow flies between north Africa and London.

Wikipedia says:

"Depending on voltage level and construction details, [HVDC] losses are quoted as about 3% per 1,000 km"

"The longest HVDC link in the world is currently the Xiangjiaba-Shanghai 2,071 km (1,287 mi) 6400 MW link connecting the Xiangjiaba Dam to Shanghai, in the People's Republic of China.[2] In 2012, the longest HVDC link will be the Rio Madeira link connecting the Amazonas to the São Paulo area where the length of the DC line is over 2,500 km (1,600 mi).[3]"

Weight problems?

Needs a hat for all the electronics and battery. Maybe one with a propeller on top. That would be "hilarious".

"Christian Science Monitor"

Seriously?

The BBC's improbable measurement unit

Shouldn't that be "The BBC's improbable measurement unit unit"?

"GIS system"

Gaaaaaah!

I'm done with Thinkpads

God I love that little red nipple, and I've tried to keep the faith, but after 15 years of happily using and recommending Thinkpads I just can't put up with the quality of the stuff I've received from Lenovo in the last two or three years.

My Macbooks just work, like my Thinkpads used to do. Maybe now that Steve has gone they can give me a nipple. Gowan, you will you will you will....

Why use productive coastal waters?

If the stats are taken at face value (33 barrels of ethanol per day per sq km)...

Arabian Desert is 2.3 million sq km. So that's 75m barrels of ethanol per day. Total middle eastern oil production is less than 25m barrels of oil per day.

Step 1. Flood Arabian Desert with seawater.

...

Step 3. Profit.

I'm sure this fails the "how hard can it be?" test.

Tinfoil hats pointed in the wrong direction

If the NSA is going to stick a backdoor into anything, it'll be something closed source that people DO trust, like iOS, some bit of Android that Google "haven't got around to releasing yet", or the operator versions of Android that are deployed OTA.

Sure there may be exploitable vulnerabilities in the NSA version (whether known to them or not), but that is a tractable problem since the source is open for analysis.

Analytics

Isn't this going to completely screw up page impressions?

I see the problem

His head has rounded corners.

@Daniel Evans

Good spot. The blue sky is darker than the clouds, so when the cloud cover increases it gets brighter.

I foresee productivity reduced at any place that employs pedants.

Damn those corners are ugly.

Glossiness

FWIW, I sit near a big window and I've had zero problems with the glossiness of the display, and I have a deep hatred of glossy screens on laptops (I paid more for the matte one on the MBP).

Experiences

I've had a couple of issues with this display connected to a MBP 15".

Firstly, the USB support is a bit flaky - sometimes after plugging in and waking from sleep a reboot of the laptop is required to get the mouse and keyboard working. There have been a number of firmware updates relating to Thunderbolt, but the issue still occurs about one time in four.

Secondly, there are only 3 USB ports. Printer, mouse, keyboard, headset, micro-USB for Android phone: that makes five. So I end up plugging two of those into the laptop which detracts from the dockiness of it all.

Belkin are apparently bringing out a Thunderbolt hub, but given the expense and amount of space on the back of the display I think the lack of ports is bad design.

A taxi driver in the West Midlands told me....

...that his local hospital is regularly using taxis to deliver surgery cancellation letters to patients.

One wonders whether there might be some sort of high-tech low-latency alternative involving the transmission of voice data over a distance.

Apparently there is also the practice where both patient and patient record are transmitted from one hospital to the other, at the same time, using two different taxis, because the patient is not allowed to carry their own record.

There are good reasons for this apparent nonsense, right?

Hold the front page...

The Register in "techies think recruiters are twats" shocker.

"Creativity"

My six year turns into a complete monster after an hour or two of Lego Universe.

He may be a very creative monster, it's not something I've bothered to test. For the time being I'm resisting demands for a Nintendo DS.

Disturbing decision

I don't see how this is any different from someone getting fired because a "friend" blogs "Bob works for Apple and he told me 'iPads are shit'".

That would be stupid. This is stupid.

Right to be forgotten

"I'm not going to suggest that I'm opposed to it, because I respect the Europeans' wish to have that right. I think realistically, it's very difficult, in this day and age, not impossible."

Really? I think the problem is a lack of will not a lack of ability. For businesses whose market cap is based on registered users there is little incentive to prune data.

There are surely all sorts of quibbles about recovery from backup media or magnetic platters or intercepts passed to the black helicopter people, but at a basic level it really isn't difficult. If data can be inserted, it can be deleted.

Lateral thinking...

Maybe the solution is to design a task which is so unbearably illogical as to be computationally intractable and so deeply frustrating that a human CAPTCHA-beater would go completely insane if forced to complete it more than once. Something a bit like arranging an overdraft over the phone with a high street bank.

Crushed fossils - WTF?

How long before someone offers a iPad folio case made from human skin?

amanfrommars, your time is up.

Retina TVs

If 326 ppi makes sense on a iPhone "Retina" display 10" away, a screen 10ft away would only need 27 ppi for the same experience.

So a "retina" TV at 10ft viewing distance with 7680 horizontal pixels would need to be be 282" (23ft) wide.

Oh, right.

Missing of points

From what I recall of his writings and talks, Stallman doesn't "miss the point" about the importance of utility. He just rates freedom higher than utility, or perhaps sees freedom as an enabler of utility in the long term.

Perhaps it's too early to do any final analysis of RMS's dire warnings about the consequences of ignoring our freedoms, but the current patent wars over smartphone/tablet technology don't bode well.

We now have a situation where it's OK to develop new technologies provided that it doesn't annoy any mega-corporations. Haven't we all done well?

If I was looking for a messiah I'd pick RMS over Jobs any day. He makes me feel guilty just for turning on a PC running non-free software, and that's got to be pretty close to some sort of original-sin-for-atheists.

Simple definition

"It's what you promised but failed to deliver with 3G".

So, for instance, I should be able to have a video call in reasonably high definition and with no lag, or watch a live tennis match and be able to follow the ball, wherever there is coverage for audio calls, and whilst in a moving vehicle.

Thanks.

You can even re-use all the old marketing. Just change the 3 to a 4.

"UK-based HideMyAss"

I have no donkey to hide and therefore nothing to fear.

US Air Force Space Commander William Shelton

Best. Job title. Ever.

@Why do some insist on built-in 3G?

I insist on it, because it's a better solution in my experience.

I've been on call for the last six years. During that time I've used various Thinkpads with and without integrated 3G, Macbook air without, two variants of USB dongle, a mifi type device and an Android smartphone with wifi tethering.

Of these, the Thinkpads with integrated 3G worked far better than any dongle or tethering solution, for two reasons:

1. In a laptop form factor you can arrange the aerials around the screen to get much better reception than in a dongle or phone.

2. 3G sucks battery life, so it makes sense to have the 3G in the thing with the largest battery.

I like Apple devices - I have an iPad 1, a last-gen MBA and several iPhones. With integrated 3G the MBA would be near-perfect. Certainly the mobile usability of the MBA beats the Thinkpad in terms of form factor and standby/resume speed/reliability. It's also faster to perform many tasks than my Windows 7 machine with the same CPU, but the refusal to offer integrated 3G, even as an option, is bewildering, to me.

YMMV, obviously.

Does it have integrated 3G?

If not, it's just another Apple-shaped doorstop.

Software patents

Now that Apple is apparently defending the patenting of a rectangle, maybe people will pay attention.

But probably not. Because patents are "intellectual property", and attacking property is communism, right?

How long...

...is a piece of string?

I hang a conventional folio case (about £20 or so) from a piece of string strung between front seat headrests.

Works a treat. Also, the string is white which any fule know is the most expensive iColour.

@Dr. Ellen

Exactly, it's not about a cynical interpretation of a public spirited act, only that no one in their right mind believes that a government can spend their money better than they can themselves.

In unrelated news...

...shares of guillotine manufacturers are up amongst speculation that Xerox's patents may be invalidated by prior art.

I suspect the underlying reason for this might be that rich Frenchies have lots of paper wealth in French banks that are looking decidedly shaky right now. Saving banks is a politicial action which requires the support of the proles.

Also, anything which makes the government debt pile appear less wobbly (e.g. rich people appearing to offer to pay it off with increased taxes) reduces the risk of a structural failure which would wipe out their wealth.

Browser support

http://www.nucaptcha.com/resources/security-features

"We're often asked how NuCaptcha is displayed. One common assumption is that it is rendered in Adobe Flash. NuCaptcha is displayed as an H.264 MPEG-4 Video Stream that is rendered in your browser in a variety of ways."

It uses Flash in my Firefox 5 and Chrome 12. Presumably that's because I have Flash plugins installed. Didn't Google announce they were ending support for native H.264?

Natural language and/or maths CAPTCHAs work for me.

One-time hashes?

"The file strongly suggests that the training site failed to follow industry best practices by securing the password database with one-time hashes to prevent them from being read by attackers."

What is this "one-time hash" you speak of? Is that where you do the hash then throw the salt over your shoulder for good luck?

Integrated 3G

I didn't see mention of 3G in the review, so I assume it has none, again.

I'm done with Thinkpads

After 15 years of using Thinkpads daily, I've finally had enough.

My 11 month old x201 has suffered from:

- USB port failing and then falling out (the really useful yellow one that stays powered on during standby)

- Keyboard light failing

- Screen going washed out for no apparently reason, then fixing itself, all apparently at random

- Overheating when sitting on desk during high CPU, causing shutdown with no warning and losing my work, so I now have to run it upside down.

I'm sick of the crap build quality which has been derioriating with every new generation.

Lenovo support tell me I have to send it off and wait a couple of weeks to get it back fixed, and that the USB port falling out is my own fault.

And then there's the stupid widescreen display and lack of HDMI.

Much as I hate Sony, a Vaoi Z will be replacing this heap of junk. At least I'll get a decent screen resolution.

Costs

Their costs are half a BILLION a year. That's a lot of coke & hookers.

If I had any money to invest, and I was insane enough to spend it on anything connected to Facebook, I'd want to know how the revenue and costs are coupled.

Hardware buttons

Both Galaxy S and original Galaxy Tab are nice enough devices to use except for the lack of physical buttons for back, home and menu. The ergonomics of the under-glass buttons are awful.

Also, for reasons best known to Samsung, the bundled media streaming app works great on the S but is absolutely godawfully dismal on the Tab, a later device. Third party apps have come along though - uPnPlay and Moboplayer work well at pulling video from my ReadyNAS.

Also, glossy screens must die. Both Galaxy Tab and Xoom are almost unusable anywhere near a window, or (god forbid) outside.

Change is possible

Two subdomains.

cookies.blah.com uses cookie sessions.

nocookies.blah.com uses URL-based sessions.

All search engine traffic goes through cookies.blah.com, so users would generally hit that first. If they have no cookie set, pop up dialog. If they say yes, set cookie. If they say no, redirect the URL to nocookies.blah.com preserving path and querystring.

Might be a problem stopping the nocookies URLs from spreading through inbound links, but maybe you could do something with URL referer, e.g. bounce requests back to the cookies subdomain if the referer is off-site,.

Or you could do the same with a path, e.g. blah.com/nc/xyz (no cookies) and blah.com/yc/xyz (yes cookies).

I think this is relatively straightforward to do in spring framework (for instance), although I wouldn't particularly like to have to retrofit it to a site on a tight budget.

Google Analytics is a going to be painful though.

Anyway, interesting technical challenge but stupid law. People should take responsibility for their own user agents.

"Fairly technical"

The manual fix was only "fairly technical" because most of the instructions involved finding a file that Microsoft doesn't want you to see.

Hidden files, hidden file extensions, hidden folders, variations in user data and app data locations between OS versions. All completely brilliant ideas.

Imagine an operating system where every user could copy/paste something like

rm -f ~/Skype/shared.xml

...or whatever on to a command line. An operating system of such rigorous simplicity is inconceivable.

Captain Hindsight says....

...just look for a massive house with no telephone lines.

Economies of scale

War would be much more cost effective if every country would just agree to buy weapons from Google.

What could possibly go wrong?