Showing 1 - 7 of 7
Imagining a world without cash
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/05/2024
» How safe are you in a purely digital economy? If you are carrying cash, someone can of course rob you, or you can lose it or give it to someone. You can also have a stash of it at home for emergencies or for buying something from a garage sale. For the most part, you retain control over any cash you manage. Electronic cash can still be stolen and your ability to spend it can be taken by someone else if your details get into the wrong hands. However, it's convenient, just tap and go, or in some cases, just wave your smartphone over a pad. While you have no idea where your money actually is, a small piece of plastic, your watch or a phone can retrieve it for you for a payment. You can even use it to get cash from a wall.
Someone, somewhere still uses IE
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/02/2020
» A Microsoft engineer, Eric Lawrence, who worked on moving the Edge browser to a Google-driven open source base code, has suggested that people need to stop using the more traditional version of Internet Explorer. His plea was a personal one on his own blog but Microsoft cybersecurity chief Chris Jackson expressed the same sentiment a year earlier. IE still has a couple of percent of people using it -- probably those who had it installed on their machines -- that have yet to be upgraded. The technology is old and full of security holes but a number of organisations demand that it still be used.
Do not feed the trolls
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/10/2015
» The internet is full of nice people who just want to make everyone feel good about themselves. Yes, of course, I'm just messing with you. While there are some people and some sites that are indeed supportive there are many others that are full of anonymous cowards who lurk in wait and revel in making personal attacks. The term "trolls" is a common one and some of these are even paid to wait for an organisation, website, blog or specific individuals to post something so that they can instantly slither in for the attack. It doesn't seem to matter if the subject is somewhere from aardvarks to zebras there will be someone out there to take an opposing position like that one guy in the audience who just doesn't like what you are singing in a pub.
Samsung bites into big Apple
Life, James Hein, Published on 05/06/2013
» No prizes for guessing the fastest selling smartphone in South Korea. The Samsung Galaxy S4, of course _ it has sold 10 million units since the April launch. You will remember that the iPhone 5 sold five million units in its opening weekend but the S4 will be seriously attacking Apple's market share over the next month or so.
A return to form
Life, James Hein, Published on 31/07/2012
» It is good to be back on the pages of the Bangkok Post. For those diehards who kept reading my Currents blog during the interim, you can now relax with the expanded Life section and catch up here. The new Currents will be the same as the old Currents but with less technical and programming bits in the shorter format.
The importance of preparing for disaster
Database, James Hein, Published on 02/06/2010
» After the recent events in Bangkok, I suspect many companies will be considering the issue of a disaster recovery plan. Anyone who has received formal training in project management will be familiar with this term, but it has been my experience that many organisations ignore this aspect of project management and that of risk management in general when building up their businesses.
The extermination of all things impure from Apple
Database, James Hein, Published on 24/02/2010
» Is Oracle a trusted form of Open source software? With the recent resignation of Ken Jacobs, the man tipped to look after MySQL, people are starting to wonder. Jacobs was known as the friendly face of Open source in Oracle. When Oracle did not assign MySQL to Jacobs, he quit. Jacobs did say that he believed Oracle would look after MySQL and "make it better".