Showing 1 - 10 of 11
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.
Privacy an artefact of times past
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/07/2018
» If you have learned nothing else from my many years of writing, it should be that unless extraordinary steps are taken, personal data privacy doesn't exist, except perhaps in the deluded minds of government officials. The only thing privacy laws do these days is stop you from returning someone's lost phone. In just one day in the news, I read reports about Huawei infiltrating Facebook, another Spectre CPU problem, political data harvesting in the UK, insecure military servers in the UK, Chinese hackers interested in Cambodia (and the rest of the world) along with other items about lost or hacked data. Yahoo and Google collect far more than the whole of the US spy agencies combined, though at least the latter doesn't deliberately spread it around or sell it to marketers.
Recognising the limits of recognition protection
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/12/2017
» So how good is biometric protection really? In a recent TV series, I watched as the good guys artificially massaged the bad guy's heart to activate the biometric-fingerprint system on his phone. Many modern biometric systems require some evidence of life to work, so the old system of just severing a finger is no longer reliable.
Money trumps morals in the online world
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/12/2016
» In a world where making everything smaller and lighter is the trend, a half-tonne CPU is certainly an anomaly. The 42,300 transistors, 10,548 LED CPU machine was built by hand from regular components and can be seen at the Centre for Computing History in Haverhill, England. The builder is James Newman, who wanted to learn about transistors and then got busy. The result is a CPU that shows how it is working in real time by following the flashing LEDS. At 15m² it roughly equates to the old 33m² Intel 8086. OK not quite that powerful as it only has 256 bytes of ROM and RAM and runs at an estimated 20kHz. I'm putting this in for the people with way too much time on their hands category. You can find out more here megaprocessor.com/programming.html.
Window to tomorrow's technology
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/01/2015
» Windows 10 will be the best version ever. Yes we have heard it all before and all you need to respond to such a statement is Vista, Windows 8 and Windows Bob. Does anyone even remember that last one? These three versions and a couple of others were hardly the "best version ever" as Windows XP and Windows 7 has proven to all in more recent times.
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.
Don't bank on security of websites
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/01/2014
» In more hacking news this week, the names, home and email addresses, phone numbers and other personal information of around 70 million Target shoppers were grabbed in yet another a database raid that included 40 million credit card details. One of the reasons I use PayPal is because I only have to give my credit card details to one provider. I try to minimise who gets access to my credit card and banking details and PayPal is one way to do that.
Goodies galore unveiled at Nevada show
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/01/2014
» As I write this, CES _ the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas _ is under way with its displays of awesome gadgets. Nvidia announced a 192-core mobile processor that comes in 32-bit ARM format, or a 64-bit version. Yes, you read that correctly: 192-core. There's lots more from all the usual suspects, but so far the release of the Galaxy S5 hasn't been announced. That's expected next month.
Get intellectual about your property rights
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/01/2013
» Some businesses still think they can dominate their customers. A good case in point is the recent Instagram initiative to change the terms of use on the Facebook-owned social network so it could use member's photos and sell them for profit, without any compensation. The response from members was instant, and not a very nice one. Facebook made a fairly quick about face on the issue but they never should have tried it in the first place.