Showing 31 - 40 of 70
Your life ain't over till FB says it is
Life, James Hein, Published on 23/11/2016
» There's a well-known line in the movie Monty Python And The Holy Grail: "I'm not dead." If you received a Facebook death notice recently, you were not alone. Facebook made an error by flagging a large number of people's profile pages as belonging to the deceased, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This was of course a mistake, and they fixed it fairly quickly, as people started sending complaints and others were shocked by a death notice they couldn't easily verify other than via Facebook. When large organisations mess up, they tend to do it in a big way.
Microsoft ditches Windows Pro 7, 8.1
Life, James Hein, Published on 09/11/2016
» Microsoft no longer provides the Windows Pro 7 or Windows 8.1 operating systems. This is no surprise as Microsoft flagged the end of October as the time that would happen, meaning every new PC will only have Windows 10. This is all part of the Redmond master plan to move everyone to an operating system as a service platform in the near future. This would mean that you won't own any of the MS software on your PC but simply renting it.
iPhone fans may need to temper expectations
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/09/2016
» So the iPhone 7 is announced and is basically as expected. Still the small 4.7-inch screen, a 12MP camera, tiny 2GB of RAM average pixel density, reasonable CPU and 4K video recording. All yawn-worthy by comparison to other brands. The model will be somewhat waterproof with the IP67 rating but still no removable battery or microSD support. The 7MP selfie camera is a little bit of an upgrade. While I'm sure the Apple lovers will be over the moon with the new phone, taking a more rational approach there is certainly no wow factor in any of the specs. So apart from the usual upgrades, what is the real attraction with this new model? I do not expect there to be a huge number of sales outside of the usual purchasers for this version.
The WiGig revolution slowly gains traction
Life, James Hein, Published on 24/02/2016
» Some time back I wrote that we would soon be seeing 100Gbps on our wireless data connections. The Japanese have claimed this speed using a new transmitter operating in the 275-305GHz range. This is close to standard fibre speeds using Wi-Fi and uses a multichannel technology to achieve it. Current Wi-Fi technology operates around the 5GHz band and at 60GHz for the so-called WiGig system. The higher the operating frequency the faster the data transmission and the expectation here is for terabits per second, or to put it another way, very fast. To do this they will need to extend the technology to an even higher frequency range.
There are two sides to malware
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/01/2016
» Why do people write malware? Some people do it for fun and these people typically do so only on their own computers to see how this kind of thing works. I admit that when I was younger I tried the same thing but never let anything loose into the wild. Since then the software has become far more sophisticated. Others are just nasty and want to cause as much mayhem and damage as possible. Some do it for a cause or to highlight a perceived injustice. The group Anonymous for example are considered to be in this category. In another category are those groups paid by a Nation State to spy on other counties or disrupt a specific activity, as was revealed by the Stuxnet malware.
When help is really a hindrance
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/12/2015
» Computer help has progressed to the point where it has become annoying. Microsoft is the master of trying to help and at least in my case, not getting it right. Users of Yahoo Mail will also know what I mean. You will be in the middle of doing something and Yahoo will refresh the inbox bumping you out of a move, a delete or some other half-completed action. Note to Yahoo, this is not helping. I can understand that Yahoo wants to get the latest emails to you as quickly as possible but I wonder how those who get lots of emails every day cope with continually being interrupted by the never-ending refresh. I can understand a drive to continually improve things but there is a point where too much help can be less than helpful, and what some consider help is a hindrance to another.
The three version rule for Windows
Life, James Hein, Published on 18/11/2015
» I was helping someone out with their scanner driver for Windows 10, easy enough, but when it was installed the default program worked fine and the graphics program they were using worked great in preview but then did not work at all for the actual scan. The problem appeared to be the age of the application. Many computer users get very used to a particular version of a particular application. It could be an old version of Word, or in this case, Picture Publisher.
When free Wi-Fi isn't really free
Life, James Hein, Published on 15/07/2015
» I've been doing some travelling recently and I've been taking some notice of the availability of Wi-Fi in international airports. Arriving in Singapore for example I was expecting free Wi-Fi at the airport but while it claimed to be it wasn't. To gain access you have to login, enter your mobile phone number and feed in the returning information from the SMS. Depending on your mobile roaming charges, and if you have roaming turned on at all, this can be somewhat costly for allegedly free Wi-Fi. Arriving at Jakarta airport the free Wi-Fi was both free and did not require any of these hoops to be navigated before accessing. Bottom line: Wi-Fi in Jakarta was much easier to use than in Singapore, which might sound counter-intuitive but based on my experience at least is true. In the age of voice over the internet the whole concept of huge phone and data charges is just plain wrong anyway. On the positive side for Singapore, buying an inexpensive voice and data plan for a couple of weeks was very reasonably priced. Also on the return journey I found that you can get a password in Singapore using a computer terminal, so access if you're not in a hurry.
A hacking big payday
Life, James Hein, Published on 01/04/2015
» The annual Pwn2Own hacking contest in Vancouver, where contestants try to hack into the latest Windows PCs with the latest software versions of browsers, was held earlier this month.
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.