Posts by happygeek

Absolutely not! DaniWeb is free to use, however it does cost money (a lot of money) to keep it going. That's why we ask members who feel they can help with the costs to maybe make a small donation, but it's not in any way compulsory.

Any idea what happened?

When Exponential Interactive, an advertising intelligence provider, analysed the actual behaviour of more than two million Brits viewing Grand Theft Auto content online, the results were rather surprising.

Here are the key conclusions:

The GTA audience are 33% more likely than the average internet user to have children; and 2x more likely to be married (and less likely to be teens or young gamers)

GTA fans are 63% more likely than the average gamer to be interested in running

They're also 5x more likely to be interested in arts and literature than bars and clubs

They're likely to be more interested in adventure and trekking holidays than the usual gamer holiday favourite of gambling

Compared to the video game genre as a whole there is a distinct spike in GTA interest among 55-64 year olds

Films and TV with high correlation among GTA fans are Finding Nemo and The Big Bang Theory

The GTA player is also much more likely to be shopping for suits and briefcases than average gamers

So, do you fit the GTA player profile? Let's see, I have almost completed GTA V (having played every other variation of the game since the very first overhead view version was released way back when) and am just waiting for the final heist to go down. I am, indeed, married with kids. I have no interest in running or taking trekking holidays. I do, however, like arts and literature, but …

Are smartphones becoming thought of as disposable items these days? Research from one UK-based online auction site, BidGrid, would seem to suggest that Brits at least regard their gadgets, including mobile phones, as such. Indeed, BidGrid goes as far as to state that the UK is a throwaway nation with the average lifespan of consumer electronics tumbling as users rush to replace them with newer models. Mobile phones are the gadget most likely to be unceremoniously dumped before their real end-of-life, with customers on rolling phone contracts upgrading regularly in order to keep up with emerging tech and wow factor features. Old items are, BidGrid says, sold, dumped or left in a drawer to rot.

The research revealed that the under 21 age group was most likely to change phone handsets just as soon as a contract allowed, and would take up early upgrade offers when available. For this particular group, the average lifespan of a mobile phone was just 23 months. Compare that to the over 30 years group, and you find that they keep a phone going on average for four years. Interestingly, the 21 to 30 year olds in the middle keep theirs for nearly as long; three years on average.

Things start to get more interesting when you look at where the old phone handsets actually go. Although BidGrid has not released details linked to age group, which would have been really interesting I think, the fact that the majority (33%) just dump the hardware in …

Google Ghost?

Hello, good to have you with us.

I knew COBOL was verbose / tedious, but that's a bit crazy!

Hehehe :)

Mobile-friendly would be very good indeed :)

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/80555/Databinding-in-Silverlight-applications

Took me three seconds on Google to find that...

According to research covering more than 100 universities across the globe from earlier this year, 58% of the academic leaders questioned believed COBOL programming should be on the curriculum. Yet only 27% could confirm that was the case, and only 18% had COBOL as a core part of the course with the rest making it an elective component. This coding support quandary is pushed further into the scratching of heads limelight when you consider that (according to the Aberdeen Group; Giga Information Group; Database & Network Journal; The COBOL Report; SearchEngineWatch.com; Tactical Strategy Group and The Future of COBOL Report):

• COBOL supports 90% of Fortune 500 business systems every day
• 70% of all critical business logic and data is written in COBOL
• COBOL connects 500 million mobile phone users every day
• COBOL applications manage the care of 60 million patients every day
• COBOL powers 85% of all daily business transactions processed
• COBOL applications move 72,000 shipping containers every day and process 85% of port transactions
• 95% of all ATM transactions use COBOL
• COBOL enables 96,000 vacations to be booked every year
• COBOL powers 80% of all point-of-sale transactions
• There are 200 more COBOL transactions per day than Google + You Tube searches worldwide
• $2 trillion worth of mainframe applications in corporations are written in COBOL
• 1.5 million new lines of COBOL code are written every day
• 5 billion lines of new COBOL code are developed every year
• The total investment in COBOL technologies, staff and hardware is estimated at $5 …

And, both have exactly the same IP address. SO, yes, a bait and respond spam scam if you ask me.

I have removed the url to prevent other members being infected

I have upgraded my 4S to a 5s this week and I'm very happy with it. It's much faster in operation than the 4S was running iOS7 (unsurprisingly), bigger screen estate, thinner, lighter, excellent camera, fingerprint scanner works well enough, I'm liking AirDrop, I'm liking the Lightning Connector, I could go on.

Would I have upgraded from a 5? No. But from a 4/4S I think it's something of a no-brainer if you have already invested heavily in the iPhone brand (not just financially either).

Talking of financials, I have sold the 4S already and got enough for that to mean my upgrade cost me nothing and actually made me a small profit. Yes, I'm on contract but I'm happy with that and would have stayed on contract whatever so that whole contract/sim free argument doesn't apply in my case.

PS: Why has Apple gone from upper to lower case 's' for the 5 I wonder?

"Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed Adobe customer IDs and encrypted passwords on our systems. We also believe the attackers removed from our systems certain information relating to 2.9 million Adobe customers, including customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information relating to customer orders. At this time, we do not believe the attackers removed decrypted credit or debit card numbers from our systems." These are the words of Brad Arkin, Chief Security Officer at Adobe as he reveals that one of the biggest names in the software business has fallen victim to what can only be described as a massive security breach: passwords and credit card data for nearly three million customers, source code for Adobe products - folks this looks like it was Xmas come early for the hackers.

Adobe has now confirmed that Adobe Acrobat, ColdFusion and ColdFusion Builder were amongst those hit, and 'other products' were also involved although it has yet to state which for some reason. This in itself is very big news, and very unusual as far as security breaches go. We are far more used to hearing of login and password databases being compromised, credit card data stolen etc. Things with an obvious and quick route turning a profit for the cyber criminals. However, stealing the source code for such high profile and widely-used software is something else. Now, it could be that the hackers just stumbled across the code during a successful breach of …

...but lots of people obviously don't know that or they wouldn't continue to post crap (mainly cut and pasted wholesale from other sites/publications) just in order to have their signatures/links displayed.

no one can ever get any SEO benefit from signatures

I know that, you know that, but... :)

Yo momma is so lame that she suggested starting a yo momma thread on DaniWeb. Oh, hold on a moment...

Agreed, but if someone specifically asks about when they can start using a signature and they have 'seo' in their username then the spam alarm bells do start ringing - if only quietly and in the background :)

As always, the intent of a user is determined by their actions and not their username, of course.

...and having a username with 'seo' in it adds to the uncomfortable factor:)

In my DaniWeb report on the launch of the new iPhone 5s from Apple, I stated that you could "forget the fingerprint scanner built into the new circular home button" but I knew all along that was never going to be the case. In context, I was focusing upon what I think is the most innovative and important feature of the new iPhone; namely the 64bit chip that powers it. Of course the fingerprint scanner is an innovation, in as far as it will now drive other manufacturers to consider implementing biometrics on devices such as smartphones and tablets as a norm rather than an optional exception.

In that same review I also said "even before anyone has tried the Touch ID system the Internet seems to be filling up with people saying it won't work" and implied that the sub-epidermal scanner with a 500 pixel-per-inch resolution was pretty good technology, and along with the locally encrypted fingerprint data (not image) would be a pretty safe additional layer of security for a mobile device such as this. Of course, plenty of people disagree with me and there has been lots of coverage online and in print media regarding cat paw prints unlocking iPhones, toddlers using the finger of a sleeping father and even hacker groups moving into James Bond territory with manufactured fingerprint copies fooling the scanner. Let's dismiss those one by one, starting with the cat: yes it works, if you let your cat register a paw …

Did you spot the winking smiley? I wasn't being 100% serious with the trolling comment (ironically, it was almost a troll itself, albeit unintentionally so).

As for the 'no direct need' comment, well, if everyone always followed that course then we would still be using 8bit architectures (sort of) - innovation is driven by those who push the boundaries. By producing a 64bit smartphone Apple will encourage app developers to innovate, and who knows what they will come up with?

Better still, read this: http://www.daniweb.com/community/rules

You have firmly grasped the wrong end of the stick. This is about the privacy of the data being handled by the organisation...

Nilesh, as the story makes quite clear, the whole 'Ghost' notion is simply that; a notion. Google neither confirm nor deny it. Others continue to speculate that it occured. However, it remains just that - speculation.

See: http://www.daniweb.com/internet-marketing/threads/464093/hummingbird-and-sem#post2020275

Nice one Dani. As AD says, seems to be mostly working already.

(later) OK, so having posted that all I see now are the coming soon messages - typical :)

Exploit-based attacks are on the up (1), the majority of IT security professionals aren't sure if they can detect attackers attempting to breach the network (2), and 65% of companies let the tech support department give security training to staff. I would suggest, in order to make some sense of all of this, that you 'Go Hebrew'.

By which I mean, in case you were wondering, read it from right to left. Starting at the end and working backwards provides a clue as to what is going wrong: lack of properly considered education leads to a lack of confidence in defending network data which leads to an increase in exploits.

The math is, don't you think, pretty damn obvious all of a sudden. OK, time for a bit of disclosure here. As well as being a freelance journalist, an author and occasional broadcaster, I have also been a security consultant for the best part of twenty years so perhaps it is hardly surprising that I would think outsourcing security training to the specialists is a good thing. That said, just because I might be perceived to have a vested interest (and it is a wrong perception as I have never given staff training in my life) doesn't make me wrong.

According to Kaspersky Lab, most companies simply assign their own tech support people to train company employees in matters of IT security, rather than hiring outside IT consultants or security professionals. Yet staff training is a vital link in the …

Three contributions, two spams, one ban. Hmmm. Guess that's a bye-bye then, not a hello after all...

See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/26/google_algo_update/

Though Google declined to discuss the technology underlying the algorithm – a depressing break with the past – it did tell us that Hummingbird "makes results more useful and relevant, especially when you ask Google long, complex questions."

Small groups of what are best described as cyber-mercenaries, willing and able to perform surgically precise hit and run hacking operations, are offering their services for hire out of China, Japan and South Korea. That's the conclusion of security researchers at Kaspersky Lab who have been following the progress of a newly discovered espionage campaign, known as Icefog and targeting the supply chain in South Korea and Japan which feeds companies in the West.

Icefog is an APT, or Advanced Persistent Threat, and in the words of the Kaspersky Lab report a "small yet energetic" one. Although it appears to have started as long ago as 2011, it has only recently hit the radar with an upsurge in size in scope. The 'new' part of the APT equation in this case is the introduction of these cyber-mercenary gangs that are available for hire.

"For the past few years, we’ve seen a number of APTs hitting pretty much all kinds of victims and sectors. In most cases, attackers maintain a foothold in corporate and governmental networks for years, exfiltrating terabytes of sensitive information" says Costin Raiu, Director of Global Research & Analysis at Kaspersky Lab who continues "The hit and run nature of the Icefog attacks demonstrate a new emerging trend: smaller hit-and-run gangs that are going after information with surgical precision. The attack usually lasts for a few days or weeks and after obtaining what they were looking for, the attackers clean up and leave. In …

The links are in the story...

Gartner defines the 'Nexus of Forces' as being "the convergence and mutual reinforcement of social, mobility, cloud and information patterns that drive new business scenarios". The global IT analyst outfit has also just released details of research which suggests that the perceived level of maturity when it comes to the privacy activity of organisations has gone down since 2011, with many admitting their own existing privacy efforts are inadequate. Gartner insists that these companies need to refocus their efforts in order to deal with the impact of the Nexus of Forces.

According to Carsten Casper, research vice president at Gartner, more than a third of organisations still "consider privacy aspects in an ad hoc fashion" and admits surprise at so many saying they are not conducting privacy impact assessments before major projects. "62 per cent do not scan websites and applications, or conduct an organisation-wide privacy audit every year" Casper says "organisations must put these activities on their to-do list for 2014."

According to the research, 43 per cent of organisations have a comprehensive privacy management programme in place, which is good but puts them firmly in the minority. Some seven per cent admitted that they only do "the bare minimum" when it comes to privacy laws.

"Organisations continue to invest more in privacy due to ongoing public attention and a number of new or anticipated legal requirements" Casper admits "they also show that previous investments have not always paid off and that organisations need to refocus their …

OK. Glad it is sorted...

Welcome home, Dude

A survey of more than 700 tablet owners in US, UK and Australia has revealed some interesting insights into how people use their devices. The $195 Gartner 'Consumers Buy Media Tablets Based on Lower Prices and Better Quality, not Brand' report (gotta love that snappy title, huh?) unsurprisingly shows that tablets are being bought for different reasons than they were two years ago. Unsurprising, to me at least, as I would imagine it's pretty obvious that the market has grown so big during this period and the 'late adopters' for want of a better description are likely to have different expectations than early ones. Heck, when my 75 year old technologically indifferent mother-in-law announces that she wants an iPad, you know the market has changed.

So, for example, in the 2011 survey it was brand that mattered most when it came to purchasing a tablet. What you might have called the 'iPad Effect' back then. Fast forward to 2013 and brand has slipped down to number three, behind design and price. What I like to think of as the 'Android Effect'.

When it comes to what people, or at least those who got asked the questions, are doing with their tablets the answers are interesting but, again, not exactly surprising if you consider what your friends and colleagues do with theirs. I was not at all shocked to learn that 50 per cent of 'device screen time' is spent on entertainment. Check people out on the bus, train or plane …

bill.gates@microsoft.com

Have you actually tried Google?

Have you thought that indicating what kind of project reports might be a good idea?

Have you considered doing some of this yourself rather than expecting others to hand you everything on a plate?

Have you entertained the notion that maybe you are not taking the right class and would be better of studying something you have the vaguest interest in?

Just saying...

Can you even buy monitors like that any more? :)

You would rather lug a £1000 PC around with you and use Skype, assuming you can find the WiFi to connect to, instead of a phone? Really? takes all sorts... ;-)

5c = way overpriced for a 'budget' smartphone that doesn't move the iPhone forward (A6 chip for example) and is horribly plastic.

5s = world's first 64-bit smartphone with the A7/M7 combo and some truly exciting tech specs.

No brainer...

With Iphones you're restricted to what you can download, so why have 64bit?

There are currently a tad under 900,000 apps available from the App Store (historically, if you include those no longer available, there have been 1.25 billion) and the Google Android available apps figure is roughly equivalent.

Plenty of choice there, I would say. Sure, if you are talking about the walled garden approach to app distribution by Apple, then there are restrictions. Given the number of malware infected apps for Android compared to those for Apple (through the respective app stores rather than including apps for jailbroken iPhones) then this policy has had a distinct security advantage.

If you are saying a 64-bit chip would not benefit users, immediately and in months to come as apps are rolled out that exploit the A7/M7 combo and that OpenGP ES3 support, then, well, methinks you are only in this thread for the trolling ;-)

You've all been disqualified on a technicality. All games have been rescheduled.

You would probably do better to ask specific questions related to developing your Windows Mobile app, rather than just fishing like this.

Do you have any specific problems/queries?

My wife is very happy indeed with her six year old non-smart clamshell. She is only interested in voice and text.

I, on the other hand, use my iPhone as my satnav, MP3 player, radio, camera, and video recorder to name but a few things. I'd need at least three separate devices to lug around with me, in addition to the phone, if I wanted all of that on the move otherwise.

Smartphones serve a very real need these days. But, horses for courses :)

So here it is, or will be by the end of the month, the world's first smartphone to use a 64-bit chip. Immediately I would suggest that you can forget about most of what was announced yesterday:

Forget the new colours that everyone is drooling over (gold? really? - grey? really?) which really are just window dressing. Forget the uprated camera which is now an 8-megapixel beast with dual LED multicoloured 'True Tone' flash (which apparently will help to grab images which look more natural) and slow-motion video capability.

Forget the fingerprint scanner built into the new circular home button, if the outrage from privacy campaigners and technology nay-sayers will let you. Even before anyone has tried the Touch ID system the Internet seems to be filling up with people saying it won't work. However, the sub-epidermal scanner is there with a 500 pixel-per-inch resolution and can be used (once set up) to unlock your iPhone 5s by simply touching the home button and scanning your (encrypted) fingerprint. Touch ID will also enable iTunes purchases under iOS 7.

You can even forget iOS 7, the all new, all dancing operating system which has the honour of being the first bit of Apple software to be created by Apple hardware designer Jonathan Ive. Better known for his work on such things at the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, Ive has given iOS something of an Android-Windows-alike makeover with brighter colours, flatter layers and a new set …

Apart from the somewhat iffy stab at defining networking, did you actually have a question at all?

Truth be told, many security problems are not new - the appearance of the results of bad practise in the wild is cyclical and it seems that the SuperGlobals are in the spotlight again right now.

In the newly published Imperva 'Hacker Intelligence Initiative Report' the in-the-wild modification and exploitation of PHP SuperGlobal variables has been investigated. This particular external variable modification weakness has been described as being where a PHP application does "not properly protect against the modification of variables from external sources, such as query parameters or cookies". Imperva has seen evidence of SuperGlobal variables being used as a launchpad for remote code execution, remote file inclusion and security filter evasions attacks.

The report itself should be something of a must-read for anyone developing PHP applications who wants to get a grip on how these can be manipulated by those exploiting the SuperGlobal parameters. Not least as it would appear that PHP SuperGlobal parameters are gaining an increased popularity within the hacking community courtesy of being able to incorporate multiple security problems into an advanced threat used to break application logic, compromise servers and ultimately result in data theft. The Imperva research team note that in just one month it saw an average of 144 attacks per application with attack vectors related to these SuperGlobal parameters. They also witnessed attack campaigns which lasted five months or more, with 'request burst floods' as high as 90 hits per minute on a single given application.

Highlights from the report, which can be downloaded for free here, include:

• Key exposures in third-party infrastructure demonstrate need for an “opt out” security model. The report found a vulnerability in the very popular PhpMyAdmin (PMA) utility, used to …

Not a body part per se, but the most attractive to me is the personality above all else. After that, then eyes, mouth and, ernm, yep, bum... Hey, I'm only human ;)

So, you ask a question about cloud hosting - then reply saying cloud hosting is too expensive but you have 'found' a great company with great deals. Shame you try and act as just a customer when, in fact, it's a bit more than that isn't it? Otherwise, why would you have the link in your signature and, even more tellingly, why would you post lenghty adverts for the same company (and written from the perspective of the company, not a customer) in the web hosting deals forum?

Seriosuly, I suggest you read the rules and then cease and desist before you get the one more spam infraction it will take to ban your account for three meonths. This kind of bait and reply thread is not exactly new, you know...