Posts by Daniel B.

Scalia happened.

a 2011 SCOTUS decision, backed by that infamous Scalia guy, allowing companies to force customers into opting for arbitration instead of class-action. Probably the closest thing to a Dredd Scott ruling in the 21st century...

Harsh!

"Stealing" and calling this guy a thief is a bit harsh on the guy. A lot of this kit is usually decomissioned and thrown away to the bin (or to recycling centers) despite being in perfect working order. This bloke saw an opportunity and nicked the equipment to get a profit. While it is dishonest to nick/profit on company stuff, it isn't quite like stealing brand-new equipment. Most of the stuff had been already written off as a loss or as having chump change value, which even the judge pointed out.

Company garbage products is a lot more common than you might think of. We once built an entire server out of scrap parts in the office "junkyard"!

@Matthew 17

"Doesn't explain how it'' be propelled though."

Easy, slap a couple of VASIMRs on the nacelles! No warp drive, but at least we could get impulse power!

The fun thing on the nuke-powered Enterprise is that the design can actually harbor a nuclear reactor safely. Put it where the "warp core" would usually be; if it threatens to melt down, just do the separation thingy done in Star Trek Generations. Ta-da!

Mutation

I suppose it is easier to encode an 1/0 value that survives random mutations than trying to do more complex data on that. Every time a cell reproduces, there's a probability that mutation will happen. These boffins were able to make said value survive these mutations. That's a pretty good achievement for them...

Re: I like how in China...

Asian countries actually value good grades instead of rooting for the dumb sports dudes. Check out Jackie Chan's comments on bullying; in a stunning reversal of what happens in the average US school, you only get bullied around if you are a good-for-nothing kid. That is, the average US bully would actually find himself being bullied by *the rest of the school* if he were in a country like China.

I know they suck on other stuff like censorship, but at least their educational values seem to be right on.

Lots of reasons to love and hate Sony.

As Captain Underpants said, Bad Sony has been on the rise and the general public has noticed it. 12 years ago, my parents' home was a 100% Sony shop: Sony Stereo, Sony CD Player, Sony TV, Sony VCR, Playstation, my (still working) Walkman. Currently my home has 2 PS3s (which I'll explain later), the aforementioned stereo which I rescued from my mom's attic, a Walkman, and my probably still functional SE W300i I used back in 2007.

Sony lost the hardware edge, and then went on being dicks on the whole PS3 OtherOS issue. I was bitten by their OtherOS axing; I refused to dole out money for a new PS3 so I remained offline until I found a compromise option: buying a phat PS3 with the BC support and updating *that* one to the OtherOS-killing Firmware. They turned from the freedom-fighting Sony that fought the MAFIAA on fair use rights for VCRs to the one installing rootkits on PCs and going after people trying to re-enable OtherOS instead of simply switching OtherOS back on. Probably the only good thing to come in recent years besides the PS3 would be the BD standard, which has been superior to HDDVD since forever, and unencumbered by MS crappy tech.

Maybe Sony should get rid of its Music branch and get back to treating well their customers and doing awesome consumer products. It seems the Media stuff is the root of all Sony's evil...

Re: Storing IPs

I present to you, the 'inet' datatype in PostgreSQL. Fully IPv6 compatible.

Nice to find out that my age-old log analytics software I developed waaay back in 2006 will still work after we're all using IPv6.

Andrew Ryan's dream lives on

Heading straight down, more likely.

Elop's decision to act as MS mole and ram WP7 on Nokia seems to have turned a slow profit descent into a nosedive. If shareholders were smart, they would be voting for Elop to get sacked and put up someone who can either ressurrect Symbian (with Belle) or push out an Android stopgap while they get their shit together.

Switching to WinMo killed Palm, it seems that the same is happening to Nokia so they should get rid of it while they still can pull themselves out of that mess.

Smells like Steve Jobs

Given that Jobs hated Java's guts during his last years, this smells like Apple's version of Pearl Harbor. Delay the fix, then get OSX infected, then push out the fix and say that Java will be disabled "for your protection" in a very Norsefire way. Hm...

Screen Size

I guess that the true problem is all this widescreen craze that has infested the recent batch of laptops. Now you got wide-ass screens that are too short to read stuff. Somehow laptop mfgs think everyone uses laptops to watch 16:9 movies instead of actually working. This is worse on netbooks, where some stuff won't even show up thanks to the height restriction.

Also, there's something weird with Vista and win7, I swear that I can't make the letters small enough anymore. I've seen XP on the same screens and it's noticeable, so much that win7 looks like a Fischer Price "my first PC" baby UI compared even to XP's candy theme.

Re: What is Apple (supposedly) guilty of?

"If Apple had acted to control the prices Amazon charges then the DoJ would have case."

They did, by colluding with publishers and by their "most favoured nation" clause.

Bad if they are.

A device using a 4-digit PIN to "secure" any kind of crypto key? Not unless there's something else protecting stuff. Androids have got FIPS 140-2 according to this article, I'd think that those handsets are closer to certification.

I wouldn't bet on an iPhone as a secure device. If I were the US Government, I'd use the Sectera Edge instead; they developed a truly secure smartphone. This already came to light when Obama got elected.