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Comment: A simple solution to this merry-go-round (Score 1) 150

by JasonBee (#38639520) Attached to: Facebook Responds to EPIC FTC Timeline Complaint

Give FB users the option of paying 1 dollar per month (okay...99 cents) for the service. Offer premium options.

Lord know they have plenty of well paid staff on board to build the option.

Roll experimental services (that annoy people) out to all non-paying members, explain that they can avoid all such issues by paying the nominal fee. The 12.00 per year will give you some form of SLA and a requirement by FB to conform to some other norm. Paying clients will appreciate the extra voice they have, because they are paying customers.

if FB fails to comply, they've set the paid service bar high enough that other services will start charging, making other options viable.

If you pay for your data, you can also truly "own" it, and likely pay for the option to dump it all and move on.

Oh, and FB could well raise another 100-200 million a year this way, which gives a potential IPO some heft.

I'm paying decent monthly fees to several services now. I prefer to pay for my social networks now that I've experienced the underbelly of free service SLAs.


For Normals, Jobs' "Retina Display" Claim May Be Fair After All 386

Posted by timothy
from the sharp-dealing dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes "AT WWDC, Steve Jobs claimed that the iPhone 4's display has about the same resolution as the human eye — held at one foot away, the iPhone 4's pixels are too small to see. After reading an earlier Slashdot post about an expert disputing Jobs' claim, I decided to run the numbers myself. I found that Jobs is correct for people with normal vision, and the expert was using numbers for theoretically perfect vision. So to most people, the iPhone 4 display will look unpixellated."

Comment: Re:WTF, people. (Score 1) 132

by JasonBee (#30907652) Attached to: Intego's "Year In Mac Security" Report


Yeah that is ancient news my friend. It was patched with OS version 1.1.2. in 2007 if my information is correct.

iPhones and iPods can now run OS version 3.1+

I would say that pretty much anyone going online has patched as version 3 of the OS brought copy/paste functions.

I can't imagine using my iPhone or iPod without copy/paste.

Comment: Re:With great freedom comes great resposibility (Score 1, Flamebait) 132

by JasonBee (#30905750) Attached to: Intego's "Year In Mac Security" Report

I'm not sure what you mean by "basic functionality".

My iPhone isn't broken and I have tethering enabled. Sounds like your problem is with AT&T. I'm in Canada under Fido/Rogers so YMMV.

With "both" companies my tethering is enabled with a quick call. My provider asserts that my data plan must be 1 GB or higher, but this is largely to protect me from ignorantly going over my data plan usage allowances. I go to my settings and turn on tethering. There is no step three ;)

As for "applications that Apple doesn't [sic] like", you must mean malware, trojans, and data theft mechanisms. If you want to run those by all means do so. You could save yourself some trouble and just write your date of birth and credit card numbers on a placard and hang that around your neck when you head to the mall.

But I keed.

Comment: Re:why not directly disconnect every Windows machi (Score 1) 213

by JasonBee (#30895812) Attached to: Australian ISPs To Disconnect Botnet "Zombies"

I think everyone missed my point. The internet as a whole is being attacked by systems loosely guarded by their owners due to onerous and obtuse support requirements and maintenance routines. The fact that there is even an antivirus industry speaks volumes about where we are now.

Windows PC make up the bulk, if not all of all botnets (please cite for me any unix/linus/macos x desktop botnet that's been discovered that isn't just focused on weak LAMP setups)

In the "developing" world we might see corruption that is culturally endemic, such as when a police oficer takes a bribe for processing a complaint, or a train conductor taking a bribe for helping you get to your destination. Yet we pay a stipend to a windows desktop software industry that by all accounts would almost disappear tomorrow if everyone switched en masses to Unix, Linux, or OS X...even temporarily. We pay off an entire sector that by all rights should be working towards its own demise as soon as possible. That it's not working to it's demise, but growing, tells me that we need to inoculate the internet, not just locally treat the infections. I am speaking of general user desktop security
here, not firewalls and banking systems or high stakes e-commerce or government portals.

That's why I think the solution proposed, while draconian, in ways does make sense. That my comment is modded troll, so that we can cite the one-in-a-million windows users who succeed in locking down their setup without A/V tells us again that there is a problem. For expert users windows is as fine as any other OS. I don't suspect that it makes sense anymore to say to people that they are just idiots because they don't know how to run windows update, but then do NOTHING to stop the problem by letting them back online.

Yes there would be widespread unemployment, but we could get back to work as *use* the internet. if we could lose the 90+ % of email traffic devoted to spam derived from botnets what else could we do with those savings?

I dunno...it's a dumb idea, yes, but all the others ain't working.

Comment: Re:why not directly disconnect every Windows machi (Score 0, Troll) 213

by JasonBee (#30890894) Attached to: Australian ISPs To Disconnect Botnet "Zombies"

Oddly enough that's close enough to a decent solution to work.

How about we START with that, and work our way back to allowing pre-vetted workstations back onto the interwebs. I like the idea of running a simple system checking script though a web browser based internet portal the same way you must login to a hotspot to gain access to the internet.

Make that kind of access a precondition for users who were deemed to be hosting malware/bots and go from there. Once confirmed as clean the portal requirement disappears. The portal software will have to be hosted by a non-profit with government oversight for obvious reasons.

Of course I'm OK if that software isn't particularly Mac compatible ;)

Comment: Re:Buy a Mac and Time Capsule (Score 1) 932

by JasonBee (#30087666) Attached to: Easing the Job of Family Tech Support?

Even better idea: NO TimeCapsule.

They are not warrantied if you have to crack the case to service them, and Apple hasn't come up to snuff with data recovery options if a TC fails entirely.

So if, say, files are deleted from the TC that you need back you must take the HD out to access the files natively - poof, your warranty is void. Deleting files from a local volume puts the files in the trash. Deleting them from a networked location deletes them right away. You must be bale to access the Hard Disk from time to time as a matter of course.

I find this combo works best:

1 x Apple Airport extreme
1 x USB powered hub
n x external USB Drive cases + high quality SATA drives (choose how many you need). I have one running for my wife's macBook, and use an internal 1TB drive for my Mac Pro. I can add as many extra USB drives to that Airport Extreme any time I like...2, 3 TB if I like. So form time to time I can take a Time Machine back up offline and toss it on the shelf for the yearly protected backup in case the live backup dies for any reason.


TC does not give you that flexibillity and couple that with Apple's lack of support for failed TC's other than to wholly replace them - what about your data! God forbid your laptop/desktop AND the TC die the same time...I've been through it once with a client and Apple's Genius bar staff did not handle it well in my mind.



Comment: Cool purpose for a national brownfield register (Score 1) 183

by JasonBee (#29730439) Attached to: EPA To Reuse Toxic Sites For Renewable Energy

I remember putting forward a thesis in an old GIS class that was a bit too grand for the time I was able to spend flwshing out the particulars, but it was essentially to start creating a map layer for the North America (yes Canada and Mexico too, cuz pollution travels no?) that we could then query for whole categories of pollutants and land use restrictions. One purpose was to make the data saleable to insurance industry for rate adjustments (yes they screw people over for where they live, but they pay good money for the data too), and have publicly available data to show what kinds of pollution was airborne vs ground-situated...accounting for such things as subsurface hydrogeology etc, etc...lots of fun to be had!

But seriously, these days, with PlaceBase being bought up by Apple, wouldn't it be nice to have a single large repository of data that federal/state/provincial/Municipal agencies could use to scope out where the next location would be for that great Green project that keeps running into NIMBY restraints?

I find that that data is well guarded when it makes no sense to do anything but open it up, let the public know what's in the ground and in the air...and to move on to either fixing it up or using the areas for other projects.

Twould be nice.

Comment: Re:"they should have used ZFS or btrfs" (Score 2, Interesting) 304

by JasonBee (#29710471) Attached to: Server Failure Destroys Sidekick Users' Backup Data




Warez Moving From BitTorrent to Conventional Hosting Services 366

Posted by timothy
from the gradual-process-gets-noticed dept.
ericatcw writes "Driven by increased crackdowns on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, software pirates are fast moving their warez to file-hosting Web sites like RapidShare, reports Computerworld. According to anti-piracy vendor V.I. Labs, 100% of the warez in its survey were available on RapidShare, which, according to Alexa, is already one of the 20 largest sites in the world. V.I. Labs' CEO predicts file-hosting sites such as RapidShare will supplant BitTorrent, as the former appear better protected legally."

Comment: Re:Horribly misleading (Score 1) 814

by JasonBee (#29668155) Attached to: Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa

I find it's the other way around for me. One reason: VM usage. I can trick out my machine with as much RAM as I need in order to run the various Virtual Machine scenarios I am working with...Windows 2008 AD setup tests, Visual Studio compatibility testing etc. I have 8GB of Ram and can go up to 32 GB if I like. We can't even use that much on our test builds of Windows at work unless we go Win Server. Keep in mind I'm trying to stay with desktop OSs

The one machine is so productive for me now, that I've just packed up four windows PCs and a Compaq Server (pre-HP, yes old) with an external drive tower and gave it all away. I have so much shelf space left now that I don't need to keep a lab around. I would have done the same with a windows box doing VM work...but quite frankly there were limitations in performance when using more than four VMs on anything other than a bare bones Windows Server setup. I'm a windows systems admin in a large windows shop by day, so there's no fanboy to yell at.


Comment: Re:I'm sure it didn't help. (Score 1) 1040

by JasonBee (#29627239) Attached to: Did Chicago Lose Olympic Bid Due To US Passport Control?

Unless of course it turns out that many of them actually start lots of large companies that employ lots and lots of people. Nah...I guess that never happens eh?

Here's a nice link that easily explains how immigrants only ever take away jobs.


Debug is human, de-fix divine.