Showing 1-10 of 15 results
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How technology could prove crucial in the Australian election
Database, James Hein, Published on 01/09/2010
» I have been following the election process down in Australia. The big ticket IT item for one of the major parties is the National Broadband Network. The stated plan is to connect 95 percent of homes there using a fibre optic connection to provide 100MBPS connectivity and even 1GBPS to each home user. The party concerned uses Singapore, South Korea and Japan as examples of how this is possible. The media in Australia tends to be somewhat one-sided and this extends all the way down to the PC and computer magazines.
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Uploading pics? Strip out hidden data
Life, James Hein, Published on 12/06/2013
» So there you are at the park near your home. You take a few snaps of your children and post them on Facebook or another social media site. A few days later there's a show at the kids' school, so you take a few more snaps and also post them online. If you're using a modern camera or a smartphone then the photos will contain a lot of information. Time, location, camera type and other bits and pieces will be coded into the snaps. Anyone could grab the pictures and start building a profile of where you live, where your children go to school and where they go to play. You can change what info is captured. Depending on the model of your iPhone you will find the settings under General/Location Services on the older iPhones or Settings/Privacy/Location Services in the newer ones. For Android devices, open Camera and change the GEO tagging setting under Menu. If you want to keep your location private, then you need to turn Geocoding off. Another option is a free product like Pixel Guard that you can find at pixelgarde.com. You can use this to strip all that hidden information from your photos before you post them.
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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.
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The perils of an electronic voting system
Life, James Hein, Published on 13/07/2016
» I was talking to some friends in Australia about the recent election and by the time you read this, a week-and-a-half later, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has declared victory for his conservative coalition. The reason it has taken so long besides it being very close is that the process is still a manual one. People put numbers in boxes with a pencil and other people then count all of the numbers entered on the ballots to eventually work out how many people voted for which people in what order. To make it more complicated Australia has a preferential voting system that can see someone with 0.5% of the vote get a Senate seat due to redistribution rules. The discussion was around how difficult it would be to set up an electronic voting system.
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Samsung fires up new chips
Life, James Hein, Published on 26/10/2016
» The jokes just keep coming at Samsung's expense with labels like "pocket explosive maker" and "next year's exploding phones". To be fair other manufacturers have had similar problems, although not quite to the same extent and usually due to third party batteries. Ignoring all of this for the moment, Samsung has announced that they have started mass production of the world's first 10nm FinFET (Fin-Shaped Field Effect Transistor) system on a chip.
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Virus free and quids in after upgrade
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/11/2016
» After some years, I moved from Vipre anti-virus across to BitDefender. Part of the reason was base pricing and the rest was that Vipre still charges a premium for Android device protection, something included in the BitDefender family plan. Changing was as simple as uninstalling one and installing the other. The new product has already flagged a number of infection attempts and also a port scanning incident. Around the same time I started having problems with web browsing. Some sites would be fine and others would not appear for a long time or error out. I changed the SSL validation setting in BitDefender which fixed one issue but the remainder stayed. Doing some research, I found the product NetBalancer which when installed immediately cleared up the problem by taking control over what processes could access the network at specific priorities. I still don't know what was causing the initial problem but if you are having similar problems try NetBalancer, there is a free version for basic functionality.
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Microsoft and the Europeans
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/12/2016
» For those upset by Brexit and the election of Trump, Microsoft has an answer -- LinkedIn. In a statement to the EU after the recent acquisition, Microsoft indicated as much after the EU expressed concern that Microsoft would do its usual trick of integrating LinkedIn into Office and combine the databases. There were also concerns that only MS CRM users would have access but, given the take-up of the MS CRM system, that was soon dismissed as a concern. Microsoft has agreed to a number of EU conditions, including third-party access to Office, keeping Office customisable, allowing for separate installation of LinkedIn, and allowing it to be uninstalled. The EU has always been tough on organisations like Microsoft that try to set up any kind of monopoly, but this time it might be a bit of a storm in a teacup.
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A very taxing problem for all
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/03/2017
» Every government wants taxes. It is, after all, how the salaries get paid, and how funds are raised for re-election and looking after the country, often in that order. Consider the UK as an example. Starting in April, there will be a new set of tax regulations based on the IR35 guidelines. With the uncertainty surrounding this change there has been a rush of IT contractors leaving government positions, in many cases over half, halting a wide range of projects. This has been happening for over a year now with, as an example, the Ministry of Defence losing 30 out of 32 contractors last year. When the process of government is stopped because of taxes imposed, you're probably doing something wrong.
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VPNs outlawed in Russia
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/11/2017
» By the time you read this a new law in Russia will have banned the use or provision of virtual private networks (VPNs). ISPs will be required to block websites that offer VPNs and similar proxy services, currently used by millions of Russians to bypass state-imposed internet censorship. President Putin justified this draconian step as a measure to prevent the spread of extremism online. Its real purpose is to restrict the population to information approved by Russian regulator Roskomnadzor, being the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, or more simply censorship.
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Apple sours as rivals rise
Life, James Hein, Published on 04/12/2019
» Apple can't seem to win a trick these days. Overall phone sales in Europe picked up during the last quarter but iPhone sales did not follow the upswing and ended up 4% down on the same quarter last year. The problem is that the latest models are not giving many users a reason to upgrade. Their battery replacement programme and bad sales in China have not helped either. Overall market share worldwide has dropped from 20.8% to 18.6%. By comparison, Samsung has increased their share to over 35% in the same market. Huawei, in second place, sits about the same on 22.2%. Xiaomi is still in fourth place but well behind the others at 10.5%. The biggest impacts predicted going forward are 5G and Brexit though in reality I don't think the latter will have any real impact other than short term. The most popular Samsung models were the Galaxy A10, A20e, A40 and A50.
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