sxa's Technical Musings

[Short link to this article if you need it - http://goo.gl/ixqxJy - or retweet me ] Another old article - drafted nearly a year ago now but it's time to post it! There is a separate companion article about problems with the device, but this one is about the OS. DISCLAIMER 1: This is written from a perspective of someone who's bought their first Android device. DISCLAIMER 2: I bought the tablet because I don't have a laptop, so some of these are issues in using it as an alternative to a laptop to highlight the limitations of doing so. Now that I've got both of those things out of the way, I'll continue. I bought a Nexus10 because I not longer have a laptop in the house. I figured the stuff I'd do on a laptop would be more practically served by a tablet. For me the disadvantage of any sensibly priced laptop on the market has always been the screen resolution - it's all very well saying you have a 15" screen, but why do  they headlines never list t...

[ Short link to this article if you need it - http://goo.gl/ykgDqG or retweet me ] This is an article that's been in draft form well over a year now (it was written as the final entry following my previous two articles about Facebook - one on the frequent appearance of unsourced "scandal" posts and social engineering and another on technical issues with the site  - and I initially intended to post it shortly after the others near the end of 2012!) It wook a while because it's a tricky one to balance the article correctly and frankly, it was hard at the time to come by non-anecdotal statistics to back it up effectively. But I now need to get it out of the way so I can post some more blogs :-) Unfortunately I may have missed the boat slightly by delaying it since there are a few similar articles that were posted during 2013 by others! I have a concern that social media potentially triggers more cases of depression than is necessarily appreciated. This is, of cour...

[Short link to this article if you need it - http://goo.gl/DQfz3 - or retweet me] My previous post on Facebook may have seemed too harsh on some of it's users. To rebalance that I'm going to go into a bit more about what's REALLY wrong with the site to give those people some real things to complain about. Facebook has got a lot of stick over privacy concerns and other such things over time. In my opinion they've almost always responded and improved their security model to the point where I happen to believe it's now pretty good - they've got many things right, and that's why it's the only social site where I'm comfortable with not posting things publicly. The exception list for posts is something that isn't on any of the other major networks (e.g. share with "All friends except my children list") But it's far from perfect, and recently it's finally started to irate me to the point where I have to wonder whether it really is...

[Short link to this article if you need it -  http://goo.gl/bbvPi  - or retweet me] This may become a multi-part post about facebook and social media as I've got quite a lot to write. This part is about setting the record straight on some of the fact-free nonsense that's regularly seen on the site and what you can do to avoid spreading what is little more than spam on the site. I'd like to think that everyone on facebook could read this and think twice when they see anything like this in the future. In various forums I've already commented about how many people don't seem to understand about online security and privacy generally. And I've also mentioned how many people are willing to spread misinformation based on apparently not bothering to check and fully understand the facts. Or "crying wolf" by spreading false information risks, which has the negative effect of desensitising people to the real issues, which can only make it harder to explain r...

[Short link to this article if you need it - http://goo.gl/YAUV4 - or retweet me ] An introduction for those not familiar with the Pi ... Yesterday Eben Upton (the guy behind the Raspberry Pi foundation) took time out of his very busy schedule to give a talk in Hursley. For those who are not familiar with it, the Raspberry Pi ( here is the FAQ ) is basically a small credit-card sized computer circuit board with a Broadcom BCM2835 chipset and a 700MHz ARM CPU powered via a microUSB socket, HDMI+composite video output, stereo audio output, ethernet port, 2 USB ports, an SD slot used for booting the device, and another proprietary expansion port, and a high performance graphics subsystem that can decode video at full HD resolution with h.264 ( MPEG-2 available at extra cost ) hardware playback support in XBMC/OpenElec - all for $35 for the "model B" version. They were initially built in China, but much of the manufacturing is now in the UK and is therefore supporting the U...

[Short link to this article if you need it:  http://goo.gl/Hx4bA  - or retweet me ] It's been just over a year since I wrote my initial article with my first thoughts on Google+. So how have things changed in that year, how does it stack up to the competition, and where do I see the social network positioned? I realised it was about time to write this post after a couple of discussion threads such as this one that I was recently posting to. This blog is split into my top 10, and then some more comments. I'll start with a summary of my major original gripes and their status: Sadly, post to "Circle A excluding Circle B" still hasn't been implemented as an option. For this reason, the privacy model is still not as it should be. Given Google+'s approach of "Circles by default" this is a silly omission, and something that Facebook manages to do properly, so despite a focus on Circles in the UI, the control not as advanced as the competition. The lac...

[Short link to this article if you need it:    http://goo.gl/rJYd6  or retweet me ] Recently (actually in the last 24 hours it seems) quite a few people have suddenly started spotting Facebook's "Social Ad" feature and are recommending people turn it off. If you haven't seen it, facebook's adverts at the right of the screen can show, alongside the advert, which of your friends have "liked" a particular product. The issue is that it's seen as an endorsement, but let's take a rational step back for a second and look at why do people "like" facebook pages in the first place? I think it's down to one of these reasons: To follow what the page/brand has to say To share a witty phrase or saying (seems to be dieing out now) with their friends To express approval of something/someone and tell their friends about it. In cases 2 and 3 the purpose is very much "to tell others" and it appears on your friends' stream whe...