Posts by Daniel B. 3134 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2007
They avoid any instances for the number 4 as it sounds like "death". Ironically, one of the "best luck" numbers is 666 ;)
There are some articles on the 'net and/or Wikipedia that talk about this particular custom.
As a former Palm and HP Jornada PocketPC user, I don't think of using a "finger-based" handwrite recognition system in the near future ... stylus-based was bad enough!
I'd think that if Mrs. Roberts' son "Bobby Tables" were to be added to the SO list, it would result in the destruction of the SO registry. ;) Damn, oh did I choose a bad week to stop reading the Daily WTF.
I had never thought about anyone doing something as stupid as this, except for some weird Web 2.0 loonies that think its a great idea to build SQL sentences, then send 'em over with AJAX. Ok, I haven't seen that yet, but its something just waiting to happen!
Xbox360 survived because of the same reason the Xbox did: Halo. It was all that hype on Halo 3 that brought on the "FPS d00dz" just wanting to play the überFPS of da centoory! Of course that after that, the Xbox360 sales won't fly as high 'coz there's no "Halo 4" to buy one; by now everyone who wanted to play it has a 360. Or has a very dead RROD'd 360.
Newcomers ain't so keen in buying it, because of the RROD. Its funny how the Xbox managed to *not* BSOD with games, as it was widely expected back when it was released; that's a big feat for Microsoft, given the shoddy quality of its products.
Truth is, only the "gringos" are buying Xboxen en masse, Japanese dudes are going for the Wii or the PS3; and even my close friends are either Wii owners, PS3 owners, or (like me) saving $$$ to buy a PS3. Fortunately, I can take an $80/roundtrip flight to the US border and get one of those $500 MGS4-packed consoles as soon as they come out this July.
Which, given the strength of said title, makes me think that this pack would do to the PS3 what Halo did to the Xbox.
As for online content, well... the Wii has it, the PS3 has it, and the 360 ... ummm what??? You have to PAY for that?!?! I thought paying for online play was as dead as the "TEN Network" 12 years ago, thanks to Quake's "everyone can set up a Quake server" methodology.
I doubt MS would even dare do a "720", they've lost loads with this one, and if the "720" comes out with as many issues as this one, there will not be a "Halo X" to save the console sales... it might end up being the new N-64. Oh wait, the N64 actually worked as advertised, it was the games that sucked...
I wonder how would this couple with my own 1Gb "bubblegum" Kingmax Flash drive. That is, one I have that is so small it seems like one of those Trident gum sticks! You just "stick" it in the USB cable socket, with the copper-connector end facing inside.
That used to freak out some dudes back when I first bought it one year ago, as they thought I was sticking a Memory Stick into the USB connector!!!
"Insert a USB drive into your Linux box. Where is it in the file system? You and I both know it's buried under /mnt somewhere. But what about a normal end-user? They'd have no clue. None. At least Windows pops up a little window and tells you where the hell it mounted the device!"
Um ... it basically "pops-up" in my desktop, or even does a "What do you want to do..." very much like windows, of course I use KDE, this is with Fedora 6. It even has a nice "Safely Remove" option in the right-click menu, so I never have to worry about arcane things like "unmount" (which is also there, by the way.)
Hey, its even able to recognize my Blackberry SD interface with no more effort than enabling "mass storage support" on my BB... which I have to do on Windows anyways. This is one of the main reasons my BB 8300 has practically substituted my USB pendrives as my "mobile file mover" of choice. Oh, and the w300 also was able to do this ;)
Even the nVidia drivers, which used to be a pain to install, are no longer that bad (though it *does* require having the kernel-source packages installed!) and I got to use my geForce 7600GT without problems. Videogaming would not be a problem if the other FPS/game devels had followed id software's example of using OpenGL; id remains up to this day the only one capable of releasing games for Windows, Mac, *and* Linux without much hassle. Hey, even the "Linux version" of some games are actually the sole binaries, and you only have to drop-in the .pak files (Quake2, Quake3) so buying the Win version enables me to use the Linux one too! =)
Really, the gaming industry is the one that has least worries about what frickin' UI the OS uses; they are usually fullscreen and have their own UI, so they look good by themselves. Only when the UI can't be fully reproduced do ports fail to sell, but this is something more common in consoles, where competing platforms have unique advantages and disadvantages making it impossible to transfer all details/features to rivalling consoles. PC's are the same hardware, and by now most OSen support the same stuff.
My only gripe with Linux would be the near-impossibillity of using most WiFi adapters, winmodems, and "fakeraids" without doing some heavy duty console work / kernel recompilings. I sure felt let down when my SiI "raid" didn't work at all under Linux, and most info on this talks about poor support for this. =(
So basically they're saying that some advanced backup options and other storage engines will be pay-up-front? I thought this was standard practice with a lot of products. Even some open-sourced ones have "extra" functionality which is payware.
Anyway, lets see if this sends devs flocking to PostgreSQL ... which has been robust enough for years. Still, this move doesn't seem much of a bad move.
Geeze, its like saying your old Model T with 2 people weighing 50 kilos just doesn't run as fast as your spanking-new Ferrari with 2 people weighing 200 kilos each ... even if the Ferrari's running heavier, the engine more than compensates for the overload!
Ok, bad analogy, I wouldn't tag *any* Intel x86 box as a Ferrari. Maybe more like a Ford Pinto: big, heavy, low fuel efficiency and it might randomly explode ;)
No one does Ferraris now that Cray's dead. :(
<coat>Mine's the one with the supercooled XMP processor.
While most of the comments here complain on 17.5% VAT on the other side of the pond, you don't have to look so far away from the US. Mexico's got 15% VAT, "New Car" Tax (when you purchase a new car), Income Tax ranging around 35%, and a boatload of other taxes around. 8% is peanuts.
At least the medical care bill is higher for patrons, but cheaper for workers; and it is actually good (unlike HMO's) and *doesn't* discriminate based on wealth. While low-end services are generally bad, third-level hospitals are on par with their private-owned counterparts.
As for "tax-free" e-commerce, that will eventually end, I'm pretty sure our government will also do something to tax us that also. (Even if its only VAT.)
I didn't think someone would come up with a worse-sized idea of a phone than the iPhone.
Now they didn't just do that, but they slapped on Vista inside. Yes, Vista, instead of (at least) Windows Mobile, which is for ... you know... MOBILE phones.
I already think of my Blackberry Curve of being too large for a mobile standards, but it seems small in comparison to this thing. Bad idea, I think even the "PSP as a phone" idea would look better than this.
And at 1275 USD I might be buying an acutal LAPTOP. One that doesn't have Vista installed, preferably ;)
Hm... the Ts & Cs specifically say "cannot use undocumented APIs"? The only difference was that MS didn't document some APIs, then used them, but it dodn't prohibit others from using them. MS just withheld *how* they worked.
Apple took it a step further, not only will you be unable to know how these work, but "legally" prohibited to use them at all! Then add up the "no background apps" and such, and it looks more like Trusted Computing gone wrong.
Even if Symbian and RIM have their signing schemes, they are there basically for protection against virii, not to cripple what devs can or can't do. The main reason I moved from Mac to PC (DOS, Windows) was the developer edge I didn't have in Mac, where the most tinkering I ever did was monkeying around with ResEdit.
@Binary turd - its called a "coredump" anyway, isn't it? It takes a dump ;)
@Dave, using ZZ - I didn't know that shortcut until I started working with some old school UNIXers. Much quicker than :x (my previous usage)
@BSDers, general - What the hell is wrong with you guys? One of the main reasons I don't even try BSD is *because* of BSDites throwing crap against Linux, Linux users, whatever. One of the reasons FOSS solutions are sometimes not considered is because some businesses think FOSS is all about bragging "my wang is larger than your wang" or "my BSD totally 0wns j00r Linux for faggots" talk. IIRC, BSD's have strayed away from the Unix98 PTYs, instead using the ugly /dev/ttyXX convention; and consider some POSIX stuff a mistake (google for POSIX_MISTAKE flags.)
Zealots are also the main reason I have not re-embraced the Macintosh. Think about it.
I am sick and tired of this stupid x86 trend that seems to have killed non-Intel innovation. Google ain't helping too, with the cloud computing concept being interpreted as "I can build a supercomputer with crap hardware".
Its time for real big irons to come back to the server market, maybe if they succeed well enough they might push non-Intel desktop machines or workstations!
At last someone in the higher money spheres realizes that. Food crops for biofuels means less crops for actual food. There are plenty of schemes that don't require using the edible part, or even plants altogether, like that "cow crap" natural gas scheme in California.
Contrary to what the previous AC suggests, what will really happen is that farmers will ditch actual food crops and substitute them with biofuel crops, thus *reducing* the food supply. Coffee and tobacco plantations have already done their fair share of reducing food crops, as well as cannabis/coke plantations; farmers see these as more profitable options than actual food crops.
Get me a biowaste biofuel processor and that would definitely be a good option. Make one that can process human sewage and we'll get an added plus of cutting down on pollution as well!!!
Damn, you already beat me to the Second Variety reference! Which incidentally, was the first thing that popped into my mind after reading that a "SWORDS" bot turned against its masters. Did it have a "Type 2" tag?
I don't remember much about the original short story, but in Screamers the model was specifically called "Autonomous Mobile Sword" and it was fairly faithful to the short story (except for some changes in the ending and the historical background.)
<coat>Mine's the one with the Teddy Bear ... wait, is it moving? Nooooooo!!!!
"In Japan they have market stalls, which tend to be open late and you can just pick up parts from them"
Here in Mexico City its similar; the "Technology Plaza" is basically a bazaar with about 300 stalls or so selling "spare parts" for everything, at basically wholesale price. You're even able to bargain some prices and pay even less!! Online buying over here isn't so hot as many people are weary on paperless transactions, so these bazaars are the main source for all tech.
Office Depot, Steren and RadioShack are more for upper-class yuppies that don't like to be surrounded by people. Ok, that's one disadvantage: on weekends the Tech Plaza is overflowing with people, so even moving is an epic feat.
Maybe. The last company I remember having its HQ there was going down as well. Ow.
My last Motorola handset was the StarTac, ok it was an AMPS/NAMPS phone but it performed very well. The last time I did want one was the (something)300 (V300, i think?) which was one of the first with integrated camera, videocamera and all sorts of nifty stuff that are now standard for most handsets. Maybe the fact that the newer models did not perform as good as the older ones also made me re-think my options; by the time I had the money to buy a good handset, my expectations were fulfilled by the SonyEriccson W300.
I think the Sony Walkman brand may have been the "Motorola killer", because before the W series I was still thinking on getting a Moto.
" It gets a response back saying www.bar.com -> 192.168.10.1. Wait a minute! A DNS resolve coming in from the WAN and it points to private address space?!"
You just described the "smart" solution that a classmate devised to solve the "non routeable IP" problem. His ISP gives 10.0.0.0/8 range private IPs, so when he distributed his IP for everyone to listen his "internet radio station", nobody except those using the same ISP could tune in. So he set up one of those sytes.net domains ... to point to his 10.x.x.x IP.
I got to laugh very, VERY hard at the double whammy: not only this guy was too stupid not to understand why this was *still* not going to work, but having a public DNS to allow private IPs in their registries.
I can't remember which hosting service did this, but there is someone out there that has public DNS pointers to non-routeable IP address spaces. Oops!
While I was reading about this crap coffee, I remembered about equally nasty food. Thanks for reminding me about special dishes in Mexico:
- Bull's balls. I think they call them "criadillas" or something misleading over here. Always ask!
- Cow stomach. You'll find them as "pancita" (belly).
- Intestines, usually in taco form. You'll know that as "tripa".
- Grasshoppers (Chapulines). Served fried, like french fries. I do not like to eat insects.
But paying more to eat cat shit coffee seems even more revolting than any of the things I just mentioned. Then again, yoghurt is actually "bacteria shit", as well as all fermentation by-products!
I for one would not fall for this, as none of the banks I do business with have implemented SecureCode. In fact, this article is the first time I even hear about such a scheme.
Anyway, it seems it requires a Maestro card, tough; one bank tried implementing that about 10 years ago over here and the backlash was such that they just rolled back the entire scheme. So no Maestro cards here.
Some banks use "Chip & PIN", minus the PIN ;) so basically we're still stuck in magstripe stone age. Oh well, at least online banking uses compulsory tokens since last year.
Looks like my previous handset, the W300i. Except that one had video capability, which I find my BB8300 lacking. Besides that, nothing really new, though it might be able to support larger capacity M2 sticks.
Had I not been bought over by the Blackberry's unlimited data plan, I might have replaced my PAYG W300i with ... a contract W300i. Really, it has all I want for a handset, and stands in as an excellent MP3 player, having the added plus that it doesn't look too shiny and thus not a target for muggers.
Similar to the motto that got Clinton to beat Bush.
It isn't that the games need enforced ratings, its that parents are *buying* these games even if the rating suggests otherwise. Remember the granny who bought the "Hot Coffee-hackable" GTA and then complained about the game being unsuitable for a minor?? At least my dad knew what kind of games he was buying me when I was 14-ish. Even when I was 4, so I really got into "violent games" somewhere during my teen years, instead of age 4.
Point is, even if you enforce ratings on videogames, the parents are the ones buying the games. Parents who don't check on their kids will buy whatever the kid asks without checking, unless the title's blatantly obvious, say, "Peter the Pimp and the Crack-Whore Orgy" or something like that; and even then some parents will buy even that.
Same parents must also think all cartoons are for children, and let them watch "Happy Tree Friends"...
In some organizations, "disgruntled technicians" might very well describe the entire workforce, given work conditions. I think these organizations should start caring about them and treating them better, therefore diminishing this risk.
Of course, security issues should also be taken into account, I know as a fact that given some security blunders, I could have caused great havoc on some former jobs if I had no ethical standards...
The vulture had a close encounter with the overworked IT staff and was mistaken for the Boss...
Clearly, it would be even better to have the name change the exclamation mark to a question mark?
Even if I do see Google as the "stealthy evil" company, I'd rather have Yahoo in bed with them than 0wned by Micro$oft.
@jon: There was plenty of warnings for Yahoo! Photos shutdown. I never used the service, however my Yahoo email acct got warnings since at least 3 months in advance. Even my ex-girlfriend got them, and promptly downloaded back all her photo albums in advance. You should really check your Yahoo email every once in a while...
At least this has more sense than "e-mail emergency warnings" like the ones sent in Virginia Tech last year. Then again, including Amber Alerts would probably put an unnecesary load on something that seems to be aimed for actual life-threatening issues.
That said, I just can't wait to read the following:
"Gigantic 30-foot wave detected, will hit the New York area in 5 minutes. To all of you about to drown, WE SALUTE YOU!!!"
For those of us that aren't in the big countries, Paypal is our only payment option. Like it or not, its the only service that works for international payments without the hassle of setting up a merchant account (and paying even MORE extortionate fees for credit card processing.) The nearest option I've seen was a Mexican service called "DineroMail", which was a blatant ripoff on Paypal... except they took out 8% for receiving payments there.
People don't realize that the "extortionate fees" of 1.1%-2.4% are basically the credit card processing fees; in fact these fees only apply for payments with credit cards. If you have a positive balance in your Paypal acct, they don't charge you any fees. Try to get your own CC processing system, and you'll find yourself paying a boatload just for the "privilege", plus initial 3.3%+ processing fees, as they only go down for those who have a high volume of sales.
That said, Paypal being part of Ebay isn't exactly good either, and forcing sellers to use only Paypal is bad PR for them.
Funny, lots of comments here and no one has stated the obvious: Water *isn't* conductive. Its the salts that are mixed in with water that do the conducting, so pure distilled water might do the trick.
Yet there are other liquids out there that can manage even better than water (liquid N2?) but more expensive.
I'm all for water cooling, its greener and more efficient than air cooling. Anyone who's been near an HVAC would agree; as well as watching a ProLiant server sound like an F1 engine when firing up!
"I need now is a Gundam one an I'll have geek bingo!"
We're still far from building colonies in the Lagrange points, so the first Gundams might take a while ;) BTW, you forgot to mention the Evangelion reference ;)
I'm still waiting for my jack-in interface to the 'net, which allows me to hack systems, check traffic routes *and* drive my car while doing all this!
Though having a major robotic workforce seems to be more like the Boomer concept, in which case we definitely need some Knight Sabers.
Mine's the one with the thermoptic camouflage.
Usually it is what it means, bricking a device means you're screwed and it won't work. The term has been used for indicating firmware-wipeout cases, usually those where JTAG access/knowledge is required.
See the Sony PSP, you can "brick" it by shutting it down while updating firmware, but then unbrick it using the Pandora Battery trick. Same for the NSLU2 devices if you're stupid enough to wipe the bootloader!
For the PSP case, it was inaccessible to the public until the Pandora Battery project emerged. So until then, it was for all purposes "bricked".
I think it can be traced all the way back to Richard Stallman's concept. The GPL was deliberately worded so that *any* code that uses it would "become" GPL itself. Of course, it would also mean that the mere act of compiling with gcc would make your code GPL, as you're linking GPL'd libraries. Thats what LGPL solved: you may link LGPL libs and are only required to give source code for those libs.
Now mix in this GPL behaviour with the common misunderstanding on what "free" means in "free software". Software companies usually don't give their software for free, you know. That is why the term "open source" came to be, as well as "software libre", which gives me some chuckles as it uses a Spanish loanword. (Actually, the GPL uses two loanwords, I've seen "gratis" somewhere in the GPLv2.)
Now I get why its called "Windows 7", even if we do seem to count more versions.
Remember the 9x branch was axed, so the "real version" branch is that of NT. In this one:
Win2000 = NT 5
WinXP = NT 5.1
Vista = NT 6.0
... does this mean they'll release Windows 7 as, err.... NT 7.0 ? Anyway, if anything, Ross Fleming said it well:
"I'm sure Vista was the stop-gap between Whistler (XP) and Blackcomb."
Yes it is. Vista is the new ME, and as crappy as ME was.
Enter Mexico City.
From midnight to 5am, it is perfectly legal to run red-lights. Why, you may ask? Because standard procedure is that if you see some strange dude coming to your car at a stoplight, you just floor it and take off, no matter what color the stoplights on.
Carjackings over here very often involve violence, gunshots, or "express kidnappings" consisting in said carjackers taking you for a nice city tour, withdrawing cash from your credit and debit bankcards. Oh, and occasionally you'll get shot even if you do comply.
Dead vulture after getting mugged in the Buenos Aires neighborhood.
"Google Maps is so out-of-date the subdivision I've been living in for the past 6 months is still a farmers field."
My current apartment complex shows as halfway done. Thats the current pics, but about 6 months ago, there was *nothing* showing in the area where my apt stands.
The other city I lived in has a pretty nice BRT system, but if you check the city (Leon, Gto, Mexico) on Google Earth you'll suddenly see the BRT stations "disappear" when going south-east. Notice that this system's been working since 2003, and I noted this during late 2006.
While Google Earth seems as a nice idea, I really don't see the "advantage" over Street View other than a voyeuristic's fantasy come true.
its been like 2 or 3 years now, but I've been bombarded every now and then by some people in my contact list (MSN Messenger) with "Check out my pics!" followed by some suspicious-looking zip file.
I get them in English, Spanish and Portugese. This last one is a dead giveaway, as not a single person I know talks Portugese! Sad to say, there are still a looot of people that mindlessly click to download/open these files, and end up being 0wned.
I'm not surprised this thing has gone on growing, even more so now that chain-letters are being made on powerpoint, further enticing users to "click-and-forget" files...
Um... thoe Blackberries have something called "Disable all connections" or something like that, so they can perfectly use the BB as long as they did disable connections.
Of course, there's always the retarded guy who fires up his Blackberry without shutting down that option! Important notice: you've got to disable the "cellphone network" *before* entering the plane/turning of the BB, otherwise it WILL try to contact the network long before you're able to disable that option!
I'm just waiting for some Darwin Awards-candidate to forget turning off his mobile and getting a flight to crash. That'll be the end of inflight mobiles for a looooong time...
Of all the companines out there, Yahoo! seems to be the only one standing ground against what is for all purposes a hostile takeover by Microsoft. Its even battling against stupid shareholders who are more interest in a quick cashout than the best interests for the company.
This is one of the reasons Capitalism isn't working: its bias on the shareholders' side undermines not only the consumer side, but also the company itself. See what happened to Computer City; CompUSA took over, then sold off everything and killed the store. I didn't understand how it was possible for this to be legal, but thanks to this Yahoo! controversy I've finally learned why: it's legal as long as the shareholders earn a big buck.
I've also learned that it might not be a good idea to do an IPO as it turns your company into a sitting duck. Screw that!
Um.. IIRC, last time I checked, my phone line's voltage was 60VDC. Though I haven't used phones that old, most I've gotten my hands into were rotary-dial bakelite handsets that were still in widespread use here in Mexico back in the 80's!
Zapping devices are commonplace amongst secondary school and highschool students, why oh why is this classified as a "lethal weapon"? That would mean all our shock devices are "lethal" as well...
Sometimes I feel my own country's "third world banking" (Mexico) seems to be more advanced than some, but then the Bulgarian system seems to be more efficient. Oh wait, PKI has already been proposed over here.
OTP tokens over here are *mandatory* since 2007. Though it is true that implementation itself isn't regulated, so some have the OTP challenge during initial login, others have it for any third-party transaction; and some use challenge-response systems. Oh, and one bank uses some funny "number matrix" cards.
So security's been upped nationwide, and we have the added advantage that we have INSTANT inter-banking electronic transfers (search "banco de mexico SPEI" for that) unlike other countries where "quick" means "next day" or "next 2 days".
Even with cheques, longest time to wait would be 24 hours for "other bank" deposits.
Downside of course that fraud investigations usually take about 2 months to solve, and even then you might not get your money back. Oops! But at least they do try to be secure.
Oh man, why do they do such a fuss about a *film* portraying a place like another country? Another James Bond flick I remember doing this was "Licence To Kill" with Veracruz portrayed as "Ishmus City", which gave me the giggles as they basically maintained everything as-is, even the licence plates were Mexican plates with "Ishmus City" in the place where the state designation would usually be.
On the other hand, I'd like to see what would be the reaction for locals if someone were to film on the Falkland Islands as a stand-in site for ... Argentina.
Hm... RIM products selling good... being the only ones with actual good security preferred by large organizations, good battery life, is this to be surprised with?
The iBone's crippled in strategic areas that would make the device useless for business use (at least for legally developed apps), Windows Mobile's a joke, so that leaves only Symbian-based smartphones as real RIM competitors.
As the previous commentor, full disclosure: BB 8100 user, I'd say those were the best spent $300 of the year.
Ok, I was pretty annoyed back when IBM decided to re-brand its server line with nonsensical names (pSeries, zSeries) though it gave me the advantage that if I now mention RS/6000, System/390 or AS/400, I'm automatically tagged as "old school" IT person. (Ok, except for AS/400, as most IT folk still call it that.)
Now it seems like the server line formerly known as AS/400 and the other server line formerly known as RS/6000 are becoming one. Is this one of those Dragonball Z style "fusions", where the new "fused" saiyan has twice the fight^H^H^H^H^H processing power???
Oh well, I began my UNIX days on an RS/6000, which at least I know means "RISC System 6000" and miss the old namings. Current server branding makes me think the Jobsphere warped the IBM branding team...
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