I agree.

But I have to say that "can be broken with enough... time" is entirely the point of encryption. The time required is often recommended to be longer than the heat-death of the universe at a given rate for the expected adversary (i.e. lone hacker, or nation state).

There's a reason the spying agencies hate encryption and try to subvert it by other methods (software flaws, stealing keys, downgrading encryption levels, etc.) instead.

I have to agree.

I'd rather have a bigger / better screen than a slightly faster processor.
I'd rather have more battery life than a slightly faster processor.
I'd rather have more storage than a slightly faster processor.
I'd rather have more RAM than a slightly faster processor.
I'd rather have two slower processors than one fast one.

I don't even look at processor speed any more. I buy hundreds of machines every year and it doesn't even factor any more. Who cares? They all meet what would be my minimum spec anyway, even for the cheapest, and other specs are much more important.

I used to be the geek that people asked what to buy because I was the only one they knew who could understand it.

For the last five years, my recommendation has instead been "Go to a store, pick it up and play with it, check the holes on it (USB, HDMI, etc.), screen size, keyboard type, etc. are what you want, take the model number, buy it online, bring it to me and I'll wipe out the crap antivirus etc. for you and put a proper one on." The specs to an average user just don't matter any more. They barely matter to a business (I specify a minimum RAM and that's about it nowadays). Power user obviously still compare everything but, you know what, my laptop is several years old and eats things like GTA V for breakfast. I can't see that specs on a tablet would matter at all any more. Of course you don't want a 10MHz chip in there, but anything commercially available is just fine.

My G27 has...

Improved bearings and gears.
Steel shift paddles.
Leather-covered wheel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Again.... what's new here apart from the incredibly ugly and crappy joypad-like controller shoved into the middle? (G27 has D-pad on the wheel on the shifter etc. there too but never mind).

"U.S. officials privately said China was behind it."

Which officials, and why won't they speak on-record? Because they know that, stupidly, they've said that cyber-attacks could be seen as an act of war. And none of them are stupid enough to directly declare war on China on the basis of fuck-all evidence beyond "we got hacked, looked like the last hop had a whois somewhere in China".

This isn't enough to put in the papers, this isn't enough to act upon, but fuck if the US won't let *that* stand in their way.

You have NO WAY of knowing whether China are doing this, officially or not. When you do, you can make news stories and bring it up in international committees. Until then, it's some Chinese kid who's found a good source of credit card data to buy some Steam games for all the fuck you know.

Dickheads like these "officials" are either a) trying to put so much implication into people's heads that people just assume you ARE at war with China or b) have fuck-all to go on and speak carelessly and dangerously.

I'm not American, nor Chinese. But, fuck, this is a slippery slope if every time some hacker in Beijing touches your systems you're going to cry wolf and accuse China of officially stealing sensitive data.

What's the matter? Been too long since you had a decent enemy who could shoot back?

So, not being funny - what the hell does this do that you'd want in a steering wheel? Because it looks like nothing more than the same stuff with a cheap controller slapped on. Trust me, if you can afford one of those - even second-hand - you can buy your own damn controller that'll be better than that junk.

Seriously, the G27 has all that - anti-backlash, helical gearing, etc. and, as pointed out, comes with the six speed shifter as standard too.

Honestly, Logitech, what the fuck do you think you're selling here?

I do the IT for schools.

The largest, most complex heating system I've ever seen is a bunch of thermostats, pumps, temperature sensors and boiler start-up times in a piece of crappy HTML running on a boiler control system which costs 1% of what the heating system cost (and most of that shit is software licensing and support, not programming).

Seriously, it gives a nice diagram with all the in and out temperatures for multiple boilers, spread over the entire site, with temperature reading for other places (including external), and a "program" (really just a table of values) for when to start up in the morning depending on what the outside temperature is and/or whether the system's water temperature is ramping up as normal in that area.

Honestly, the control part is fucking simple. It's not so simple to have something controlling 30-year-old systems that still running on a 30-year-old system, but the actual job it's doing is pretty minimal.

A modern system might run proper cabling to / wireless sensors that don't interfere but would basically be the same thing. More likely, the system is just being replaced completely, including the majority of the HVAC equipment (or at least the centralised units if not the ducts / outlets / radiators / whatever).

In all the schools I've ever worked there are rooms full of boilers all over that cost millions. Usually they are run from a control panel with a tiny microprocessor and - if you're lucky - some kind of serial or Ethernet controller somewhere.

The hard part is not the software, or the schedules, or the algorithms involved, it's keeping the system running and integrating the parts you want to work with the system you want. Boiler manufacturers on that scale tend to want you to buy their controllers, and won't play well with anything else without a huge premium on the hardware.

Dabs.com used to run all their systems from a DEC Alpha with software that the owner created.

When it was time to replace it, they cocked up the site royally for months even with masses of hardware.

http://www.channelregister.co....

They can't legally do so.

What you agree to in a contract has to be reasonable, and a court of law decides that, not Paypal or whatever you agreed to.

Automatic inclusion of any and all future clauses is unreasonable.

In the EU, and it appears the US, robocalls are illegal without prior and explicit consent.

Just because a piece of paper, signed by you, with your knowledge, says something does not trump your rights. Statutory rights. Sound familiar?

It's a dirty move, but it's also a stupid - and unenforceable - one. As I said at the time - try it, Paypal - just go for it. See what happen with the backing of EU law, no matter what I agreed to, where you are based or anything else.

Companies do not make the law. The law makes companies.

Google don't need to provide any more than Apple have done. The *capability* to do so.

In fact, they already do that, it's just not made a huge fuss about because - why would you unless you DIDN'T have it? Google don't make their own ad-blocker the same as Apple don't make their own ad-blocker, but now they are just providing the function to allow such things.

This just allows ad-blocking plugins on iOS, basically. Chrome's had plugins on iOS for ages: Safari's had plugins too. But neither were able to have ad-blocking plugins because Apple didn't approve / design for them.

http://lifehacker.com/chrome-f...

The problem is, in the Apple mono-culture, you have to wait for Apple to add the functionality before you can use it. Try finding an MDM product that can actually do things on managed iPads / iPhones that Apple don't provide an MDM API for. You won't. The MDM API is supplied by Apple and no matter what you use, that's all you can use to modify Apple MDM functions, settings, etc. There is no MDM app that can push an app over-the-air without the user having to sign in to iTunes App Store to authorise it as well. Because Apple just don't provide that functionality, even on "supervised" devices.

As usual, this is an "Apple adds features that everyone else has had for decades" story that somehow turns it into something earth-shattering when, actually, Apple are playing catch-up after years of denial for such features.

Isn't this general of all things in life?

When you can get your hands on it, it's worth researching if you want to buy it, not before.

When you research it, you need to find someone who's used it under a similar benchmark to your intended use (and, here, I do NOT mean benchmarks themselves - you need to test under similar usage, e.g. a particular game with certain settings, etc.).

When you go to buy it, you need to test it before your right to return it runs out.

Believing anything on a spec-sheet, on a review, advert, promotion, hype, rumour or anything else is just silly until you have it in your hands doing what you want.

There is a line here.

If you do not draw the line, people will pull their kids out of school entirely and never educate them.

However, there is ALWAYS a choice of being able to send your kids elsewhere, to a school that supports your ideals. That place, however, is not the free state-provided schools that are legally required to teach any and all that come along without payment.

In that place, you are taught a curriculum compliant with the nation's interests. If you want to pull your kids out and home-educate them, you can. If you want to send your kids to a religious school, you can. It may cost, it may not. But you're asking "the state" to teach your kids AND ALL THE OTHERS IN THE CLASS something which most of them do not believe, and which the vast global consensus of science does not believe, forcibly, in a lesson about science.

It's not fair on anyone to be without choice. But in the same way that literal freedom can only equate with anarchy ("I'm free to nick all your stuff for my purposes"), literal choice means no curriculum.

However, we live in the real world (most of us anyway). In that world you have to proscribe a curriculum for compulsory education. Having that curriculum teach creationism IN SCIENCE LESSONS is like having someone teach pro-Nazism in your Maths lessons. It has no place there. Teach it in RS, because it's a religion. Nobody says you CAN'T teach it, we're saying teach it where it is suitable to be taught.

The state already decided centuries ago that you don't get complete freedom of choice - that's why you can't NOT send your children to school. However, you should be able to NOT send your children to a school that teaches creationism in a science lesson.

In my country (and continent), it's ILLEGAL to do what the creationist schools are doing. Specifically. Completely. Absolutely. There is a legal opt-out of any and all religious things that you do not want your children taught - whether mainstream religions or lack-of-religion. You have to mark it on school databases of pupil information. You have to ensure that they don't suffer by not having it (i.e. make up the time doing something else worthwhile with them). You have to ensure they aren't exposed to it unwittingly (e.g. singing hymns in an assembly). You have to ask about it and record it and keep religion strictly in RS lessons.

Because it has no place outside a RS lesson in the same way the political affiliation of the school's principal has no place in a Latin lesson.

When freedoms impinge on one another, you get a choice. I have the freedom to not have my daughter exposed to that shit by others without my knowledge, and others have the right to not have their children lectured by me about their religious affiliations. What creationists want is EVERYONE to be taught creationism no matter what, under the state education system. Without opt-out or alternative. That's a freedom being removed. That's illegal in many countries.

Valuing personal choice is important. However it does not supercede the rights of others. It's your CHOICE to educate YOUR child how you like, and to believe what you want. It does not supercede MY choice to not do so. And when a state school has to deal with both children, that means compartmentalising the curriculum and providing opt-out. Both of which, it's the ABSENCE of that anti-creationists are angry about.

Teach your child about the magical dinosaur bones that popped out of nowhere. But don't instruct teachers who have degrees in subjects like archaeology that they have to teach that, and certainly not to my child who will only hear about that in the context of "Yes, darling, some stupid people believe that..."

There's a way to distinguish between forcing a personal view and allowing a personal view to be arrived at.

NOBODY is running into schools and telling kids there is no God and they must be taught that, and they must write that down in their books, and they must read only textbooks that say there is no God. Nobody. Not even in the science lessons.

But creationists are doing exactly that for their belief, and far outside the scope of religious studies (science is science, maths is maths, geography is geography, religious studies is where you study religions).

Atheists probably value personal choice more than ANY other group of people. Nobody says "You cannot teach that religion" except other religions. Atheists say "You can teach all religions - including atheism and agnosticism and pastafarianism - fairly, inside a religious studies class".

It's like saying that pacifists aren't choosing a side in the war and promoting their countries military. Of course they're not. But neither are FORCING you / your kids to be pacifists too.

Yes.

Depending on which report you read, oil, coal, gas etc. may have at least 100 years left. It depends on fracking and shale gas and all kinds of things that we aren't using at the moment but about 100 years isn't seen as a major obstacle - it'll be harder and go up in price and then no doubt it will be the end of it not long after, but it'll still be around until then.

We've found an awful lot of deposits that weren't viable 50 years ago to be viable now, based on the cost of the oil they'll give, and the technology now available to reach it.

However, that said, fossil fuels will be the first major category of fuels to disappear, beyond all certainty. Uranium etc., however, is destined to give us several hundred years more (if not nearer 1000 years) if we use that in current-day processes. Fact is, we're running scared of it because it's not politically-compatible, not because it's not viable.

The bigger problem is not use as fuel, but as a resource. Plastics, etc. are going to suffer before we can't burn the stuff. There are synthetic alternatives but they aren't used en-masse (or require a lot of energy, other precious resources like crops, etc.). If you can't get the plastics and the oils and the various things we use to keep machines operational, then it's a struggle to maintain hardware with in-specification materials. That's the real big problem, and one not solved by the wind-farm / solar crowd.

Energy is one part. Use of the oil itself is much more important. We'll lose a lot of materials that make up our modern world due to rising costs before we can't afford a tank of petrol.

And though we can find energy in other ways, and in abundance it has to be said, we can't find materials that can replace everything we currently use.

Strange. I've used NiCD and NiMH for years.

The only problems I ever see are that they don't hold charge as well so they are useless for clocks and similar low-draw, long-duration items. I've yet to see a product refuse to work with them.

And, I mean, seriously - hundreds of devices, everything from electronics kits as a youngster (where I discovered that NiCD short-circuit quite beautifully to become tiny heaters), every toy for my daughter, every gadget I own (Wii remotes, TV remotes, obscure handheld consoles, etc.).

Yet to find something that doesn't like a rechargeable. No, you don't get the same longevity out of them necessarily, but they work. I mean, honestly, I always laugh at the "do not use rechargeable batteries" warnings on some devices that I see. Have yet to see it make any difference.

Shall we have an argument about what makes art or not now?

Faffing about over the context of a word (which all evolve anyway) which millions of people use to refer to recorded music in the same way as live music is really just pontificating.

Music is the thing. Whether you saw it live or recorded it, it was music. It's pretentious to pretend that you can change a definition of a word based on digging up a quote to suit your personal use of it.

And to suggest there's something otherwise undetectable or irreproducible in the air to distinguish between live music and a sufficiently good recording of that music played back to you, it's gold-plated oxygen-free cable territory.

Sure, you probably enjoy the live one more. It's the difference between going to a theatre to see a play or watching it on TV. There's nothing quite like people coughing throughout, treading on your toes, rustling their pockets behind your ear, clapping too early or too vigorously or trying to join in from the seat next to you.

But to suggest that ONLY live music can be music is... just silly in this day and age.