Showing 81 - 90 of 146
No more games
Life, James Hein, Published on 10/06/2015
» Official Windows 10 will be available on July 29, this year. By the time you read this, legal software owners should have received their notification from Microsoft to register for the free upgrade. Yes, there are indeed some nice new features that may or nor be available to you at release but there are what some will consider negatives to the product as well.
Windows into the future
Life, James Hein, Published on 27/05/2015
» According to the latest from Microsoft, if you are running on a genuine copy of Windows 7 or 8.x then you will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. You will also be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for a price if you are running, shall we say, those versions of Windows that originate from dubious OEM sources. These upgrades will, however, be very attractively priced. I suspect they are referring to OEMs in places like China and India that may have been a little lax with their licensing agreements. If you have downloaded your copy from a Bit Torrent site and activated it with a keygen, then I doubt the upgrade offers will be as generous.
At last, it's a new version of Linux
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/03/2015
» Linus Torvalds has decided it is time to release version 4.0 of the Linux kernel. For some this will make sense, but here's some background for the rest you who may have heard the term Linux but may not know what it is all about.
Free stuff, TVs, and hacking
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/02/2015
» If you use email and the internet then you will have been bombarded with offers for free stuff. These offers take various forms, but the most common one is the chance to win something for free, where your chances increase with the more friends you get involved with and then there are the mandatory pages of offers that you need to say "no" to, in order to complete the application.
There's no such thing as free tech
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/01/2015
» Can hackers really ruin your day? Consider the story a friend of mine recently told me. He has been playing the game Stronghold Kingdoms for a couple of years now. Apparently, as a result of hacking, some players gained points and certain advantages and had their accounts spoofed.
Apple is being sued by iFans
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/01/2015
» Apple is being sued, not really news. Apple being sued by fans, however, is news. The issue is the memory claims for the Apple devices being 8GB, 16GB and so on. The problem is that up to around 23% of the memory can be taken up by the operating system restricting how many media files and applications it can support. iOS 8 takes up quite a bit of memory and will not even fit on some older devices. Not sure the claimants will get away with this one but it does make an interesting point and highlight how bad any iDevice is that does not support plug in memory cards.
Asking the right questions
Life, James Hein, Published on 17/12/2014
» As I write this, I am in the US conducting some training for a new software system. While a lot of work went into the specifications, design and expected results, when I was actually presented with the system a number of things became apparent. For those involved in business analysis, systems analysis, design and related fields, the following will not be a surprise, but for those on the other side (the user community) here are some observations.
At the risk of droning on about UAVs
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/11/2014
» A hot topic at the moment is UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles. Not the military drone kind but the one with four or six rotors carrying a camera and flying around the neighbourhood taking photos of video up to 4K resolution. The TV show South Park covered this issue in its own unique way and countries are struggling to cope with the legal ramifications of taking pictures over the backyard fence, through windows, above secluded pools and so on. Even innocent pictures like a real estate agent getting an aerial shot of the property can be an issue as one found out recently when part of the shot had someone sunbathing next door that was missed in the process before the billboard went up.
Buyer's market for smartphones
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/11/2014
» With the Western markets saturated, the pattern for smartphone sales is starting to change. It is a very good time to be the buyer as competition is fierce for those upgrading and for the tiny minority who don't yet have a model from the upper end of the market. Last month, LG was the only major retailer who had a positive number in their earnings statement. By comparison Samsung, HTC and Sony did not do so well. Elsewhere, like in China and India, the markets are expanding and people are starting to update from a regular phone to the smarter variety, but in the lower price range.
Unconcerned China hacks the iCloud
Life, James Hein, Published on 29/10/2014
» Apple was temporarily enthused that their iPhone 6 was going on sale in China since this has been a reasonable marketplace for them in the past. Then it was reported that China state-supported hackers were actively implementing a so-called man-in-the-middle attack against Apple's iCloud which would give them access to people in China trying to connect to the iCloud.com server. This attack replaces the certificate used by the customer and allows monitoring of user names, passwords and activity.