* Posts by Daniel B.

3134 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2007

Please don't leave me... bitch

Daniel B.
Boffin

Lots of friends, dood!

Heh. The only place you'll find me with 100 odd friends would be hi5, and even I admit that only 50 or something are actual, Real-Life friends. The others are sometimes people I know, but not that much of a friend though. hi5 did have my attention as I was able to get in contact with long-lost friends, so Facebook came too late for me. In fact, I think hi5 was the first one out there, as most of my close friends call social networks "hi5 imitators".

While I do believe you can have internet-based friends, that doesn't automatically mean "linked by a social network". Even with instant messaging or email, there are a lot of people that only send me crappy chain-mails and nothing else. Thats the reason my livejournal has about 3 friends, my MSN spaces thingy has about 8 and only the hi5 one has "a lot". I don't really link anyone but actual friends now, I just grew tired of getting craploads of chainmails because that is someone's braindead idea of "keeping in touch".

If I want to read jokes, that's a BBS job. Oops, the Facebook generation doesn't know what that is. "Huh? What's that DOS thingy?"

Obituary: HD DVD 2002-2008

Daniel B.
Boffin

Ah ... region coding.

Ok, so the thing is dead, but there are still people that *think* that HD-DVD didn't have region-coding. It did, it just was "disabled" because of the format war. Had this gone the other way, you'd find Toshiba, M$ and their siblings sending the "firmware of death" activating the region lockdowns and rendering your over-the-seas cheapo import HDDVD's unviewable.

As for me, there are a crapload of reasons for backing Blu-ray, even if I don't even have an HD TV or either player (or even a PS3).

1. The name. It sounds ugly, looks ugly, and feels like one of those "Microsoft MSN Live Windows Hotmail Mail service" hideous naming schemes. (Wait, who's backing this now?)

2. Storage capacity. Apart from being video-only (and yes, I know DVD stands for Digital VIDEO Disk and not "Versatile", and the CD being audio-only) it had lesser per-layer capacity. The argument given above about "2-layer HDDVD being better than 1-layer BD" doesn't hold for me, it didn't do it either when Apple went Intel.

3. Java. BD went Java, HD-DVD went behind some weird Windoze-only interactivity stuff. At least Java is cross-platform and might hint me that I won't need weird stuff (read: DeCSS) to be able to play my BD's on, say ... Linux.

4. Microsoft... because I'd love to see M$ *lose* something for a change. Thanks for backing the loser!! Plus, anywhere M$ gets its hands on, suddenly turns "Windows only" and I wouldn't let that happen with a next-gen format.

5. Arrogance. The HD-DVD group insisted to promote themselves as "superior", even with the technical flaws that gave them the lower hand against Blu-ray.

There are more reasons, but I just can't remember now. And those toting "downloads are teh futoore!!! dooodz!!!" seem to forget that harddrives sometimes die, and take away all your downloads, legal or not. I'd like to see the face of someone losing $1000 worth of movies because of the next Blaster virus...

US spooks see Sadville as potential terrorist paradise

Daniel B.

SL Banks?

"The virtual "communities" offer many of the same amenities of the real world, including banks"

No banks, though. After the 2007 Scamfest, the Linden Labs decided to kill all virtual banks last January. So don't worry about al-qaeda "terror money" finding its way in there.

Then again ... if they did invest in say ... Ginko Financial, that bank crash would've actually hit them too. Wouldn't it be better if they *were* using Second Life? They'd be losing craploads of money there ;)

'Facebook fatigue' kicks in as people tire of social networks

Daniel B.
Thumb Up

Those **** sites...

Ok, does anyone remember hi5? That was the first social networking site I remember. Actually, most of my former classmates remember it as "the first one". That must've been 2004, as one of my pics there is from my ex-gf.

Then a crapload os "hi5-imitators" came along, and so massively that by mid-2005, we already thought we had enough of that.

So now the only blog I update is my MSN Spaces one (which I got because of my hotmail acct) and the hi5 profile... Every 6 months though.

Facebook didn't even register as a blip on my radar (I confused it with "Facebox") until I saw the regular article feed on El Reg.

I just hope this also kills the annoying "Web-2.0" shite as well...

Et tu, Gmail? Simple hack defeats last barrier to decades-old attack

Daniel B.
Boffin

Reverse Auth Proxy

If you think SSL will "overload" your servers ... well there's those "reverse proxies" you can look at, like IBM's Tivoli WEBSeal and such. Basically, you can offload all SSL operations *and authentication* to the thing, and it'll resend the request to the "back-end" which can be either SSL or plain-old HTTP. As an added plus, server-side cookies can be "hidden" and stored instead into the server-side session, and the thing's session cookie stores a whole lot more than just a "random string". So the thing itself is partly immune even to the "session hijack" attack, even if SSL isn't enabled.

Really, the only thing I see as a problem with SSL is the whole "one certificate, one IP, one server" thing, and even then, using the "reverse proxy" method you can stick in one single proxy serving as many "backend-servers" as your proxy's hardware can cope with.

Israel electric car project aims to wipe out oil

Daniel B.
Boffin

ICE

<quote>"Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)"

Thank you!!! I'd been struggling with that for quite a few posts.

</quote>

Ah, so I was not alone. At the first mention, I thought they were talking about the Inter-City Express, and wondered how the hell would a train be *less* efficient than a 1-person run car. Fortunately, "smelly ICEs" gave away what the acronym would mean.

Though if you're using EV, the correct acro would be ICV, wouldn't it? ;)

As for battery swap, there is also those "flow batteries" mentioned some time ago... only swap over the fluids. Maybe even quicker than the battery swap :)

Sociologists: Studying engineering turns you into a terrorist

Daniel B.
Boffin

Sociology has a use

It isn't just "artsy study", in fact they do real studies on social behaviour. I see a problem though on architects being called "engys" ... but even more that some people don't consider us CompSys Engineers as "engineers"! Ouch!

Wait, I mean real CompSys Engineers, not MCSE's or the entire "it is related to a computer" dudes.

Anyway, I'd say that the study is in fact backwards as some have pointed out, with Islamic terrorists studying stuff that would help them, or just not be controversial to their beliefs. IIRC, engineers as a bunch tend to go to be lefties on a lot of stuff (even "false leftism", like the Web2.0 sheep) as conservatism is basically against the engineers nature: no change, ever; while the whole point of engineering is change.

Now, if they took their stats for CompSci alumni out of the BOFHen, well... of course you'll find a bunch of terrorists. Not jihadist, though ... ;)

Leaked email reveals civil service laptop rules

Daniel B.
Boffin

Re: Er ... how do you encrypt a telephone number?

Ah. You can do that with a BlackBerry... of course its a bit of a hassle as doing stuff the "real secure way" means that getting an incoming call while the device's locked will only show the Caller ID, but not the Contact Info you have in your phone (as it is encrypted and the private key's wiped out while the BB's locked down.)

Still, that is assuming everyone even *has* Blackberries... I doubt they'd supply an entire fleet of BB's to ever man+dog in the place just because of new security requirements.

At least they are conscoius now; I have been in places where access to sensitive stuff like root passwords are kept in cleartext ... in a financial institution. Or having some hassle with "something about SSL certs" and Management giving the green light on firing up a *production* service *without* SSL as a temporary solution. Oh, would the SOX guys feast on such stuff...

Oh, and only 4 of us even knew of PGP. Of course, all my sensitive stuff was PGP'd, so much that I think no one will be ever able to get useful info from my former PC ever again... ;)

Autothrottle problems suspected in Heathrow 777 crash

Daniel B.
Boffin

Suddenly I remember something...

"so for the plane to lose height it would need both engines to fail at the same time"

I suddenly remembered that Darwin Award where some dudes that sounded like Beavis & Butthead took an RJ-200 up to 41,000 feet (the design ceiling for the aircraft) and managed to stall/kill both engines. The black box recordings by themselves are priceless, you'd think someone was transcribing "Beavis & Butthead on a Plane" or something like that. Ironically, they overrode the automatic stall prevention system, and it was their doing that ended up killing them; while the "usual" fly-by-wire incidents are because of the system overriding the pilot and screwing up everything.

Microsoft prints get-out-of-jail card for Vista Home

Daniel B.
Boffin

@Tim Bates

"Win2K wasn't new and interesting. NT4 was. 2000 was to NT4 was 98 was to 95."

Ah ... as much as I like to bash M$, I have to disagree there. While the look & feel for 2000 was pretty much the same, there were some MAJOR changes under the hood, as 2000 was when M$ started going for open standards.

Win2000 saw the birth of Active Directory, which is an LDAPv3 implementation "done the Microsoft way", but LDAPv3 at least. I can talk to it using common LDAP APIs, though some stuff requires doing weird things (try adding a common user, for example) but at least it was now doable without using M$ tools.

I did a user manager for AD under Java which was able to *create*, *set passwords* and even enable/disable accounts! This was impossible with NT4.

Of course, also for the win9x crowd, win2000 was "new", though back then it was "enterprise OS" so no DirectX (remember that?); and then ME came out. Poor sods who went for that... my laptop remained with Win95 OSR2 until I bought another one by late-2001 with WinXP.

Anyway ... Vista does look like the new ME.

Apple's iPhone numbers do not add up

Daniel B.
Flame

re: bash, bash, bash

... And thanks, Paul, for reinforcing the idea that Apple fanbois think that non-Apple users are all MS users/fanbois. Mind you, I have used Macs since the Mac Plus, System Software 5, HyperCard 1.2... We old school Mac users actually think that Apple has lost its way. Which is why my last Mac is a pre-iMac Performa... Which has survived at least 4 PC's and 3 laptops.

I currently use Linux, as that's what covers most of my needs. The only use for my winXP install is tor Starcraft, and Blackberry syncing :)

Oh yes, the same BB 8300 that I'm using to post this comment while stuck in Mexico City's traffic. OTOH, my coworker's iPhone's useless and collecting dust, he hasn't cracked it for fear of bricking it (and stuck with the no-software-unlock firmware.)

Guess who's enjoying more... ;)

BlackBerry gets fruity with Lotus

Daniel B.
Thumb Down

Rival handset vendor?

Are we talking abot that handset that can't run 3rd-party native apps? The iPhone is for home use/entertainment, not business, the crackberry is.

Oh well, the hype's up, and the thing's being called a "smartphone". As for Lotus Connections, isn't BES already doing stuff like, umm, extending groupware?

Remembering the Commodore SX-64

Daniel B.
Paris Hilton

This laptop

This SX-64 seems to be as lightweight as the modern 8-kilo "laptop", sans the bone-inspiring 17" widescreen LCD (why would I want a screen as big as my desktop?), DVD, and super-stereo sound system. If anything, at this rate it seems like this baby will we *lightweight* compared to current laps.

It seems like there are no more lap-tops anymore... Oh well, at least the SX64 might run good old Test Drive ;)

Mobile phone users should drive faster says prof

Daniel B.
Stop

Mobile madness

I used to have this rule: NEVER answer mobile when driving. Now that the Mexico City Traffic Rulebook has been updated, I'll have to stick to that again because you can't do it anymore. You can get fined *even if you use hands-free*. I would almost agree to that ruling, as I had a near-miss driving at 80 km/h in the highway while talking to my mom, hanging up and realizing I was moving slightly into the right lane ... and right into a bus. Two swerves later, I was back on course and cursing on answering my damn mobile... had I been traveling at 130 km/h as I was before answering I might have crashed instead.

That said, I got my first cellphone at age 15, and since about 6 years or so, the "always on" culture has permeated everyone. I remember we used to switch off mobes during the night or while at home, 'coz it was stupid keeping them on when we had our landline. Now I *have* to keep it on, because even co-workers expect you to answer 24/7, and some employers even give you mobes where you are contractually *obligated* to answer, no matter what you're doing.

Fortunately, I usually prioritize while driving; heavy traffic usually makes me go silent and only say "wait a minute" or something like that.

Lindsay Lohan crowned 2007's worst actress

Daniel B.

That 300 movie

Hey, at least I got a new line for describing my RAID...

IDE? THIS .. IS... SATAAAAAAA!!!!

Google it. There are some mighty funny photoshopped pics on that ...

Thom Yorke dismisses net-only album paradigm

Daniel B.

Phys vs. Download

Silly you, mp3's are for portable players!

Saying that CD's (and any other physical media) is dead is like preaching vinyl is dead because of cassette tapes back in the 80's. The only difference is that an mp3 doesn't degrade more after initial recording, unless you manage to corrupt that file.

There are many reasons for wanting the actual media, just see what happens when your download-only software dies: you gotta buy it again. Having the media saves you that extra dosh :)

And being music, even if everyone has the mp3, you know that those albums may turn into collector items 20 years from now, especially those "limited run" editions. No added value for an mp3, dude!

Toshiba sues DVD duplicator Acme

Daniel B.
Alert

ACME?

Somehow I wonder what would happen if my dad bought one of those, as his ISP's Road Runner. All that's missing is Wile E. Coyote.

Anyway, better check it out, as it might blow up the first time I try to play a DVD while using Road Runner!

MEEP MEEP!

NYC hit by bedbug epidemic

Daniel B.
IT Angle

Bed Bugs

I remember distinctly a short story I read back in secondary school. It was about some rare kind of "bed bug" (actually, some type of geese-infesting parasite) that lived in a geese-feather pillow. It sucks so much blood from its host that the bug kills her. I was 12 at the time, and got very, very scared about these type of pillows.

1 year later, my dad bought geese-feather pillows; and of course I didn't use them. Then, some time later my cousin went on a week-long visit and *also* avoided these pillows. Guess what: she read the same short story.

Heh. So reading now about bed bug infestations tells me that maybe we weren't so crazy after all ;)

PD: The IT angle is ITCH.

World outlook worst since dot-com crash

Daniel B.

Falling house prices

Oh, do I wish that happened over here in Mexico City. Then I might actually *own* an apartment instead of renting one.

Wait. In fact, it seems to be happening, because some wise-crack decided to build new tower block condo's in the middle of bad neighbourhoods. Oops.

Still, anything decent-sized and in good locations (near subway and decent public transportation) is over $90k, I still can't pay that.

But why, oh why are housing prices going down something bad? Lower prices means people who can't afford a house might afford one now, isn't it? Sheesh...

Microsoft warns on Home Server bug

Daniel B.

Re: Windows Home Server could be Great

@TW Burger

"Windows Home Server could be great all they had to do was take Windows Server 2003 which is a good product (although not quite great) and cripple it to only handle five users, remove some large commercial components, and add a the audio/video layer and cheesy consumer interface wrapper."

Ah ... isn't that called "Windows Server 2003 Small Business Edition" or something??? Anyway, it seems like Home Server is basically doing the same stuff that some Small Biz do over here: setting up a w2k or XP Pro box with some shared folders and set up some perms.

I usually recomend an actual W2K or 2003 Server, or Linux+SMB for those who are savvy enough to properly configure one. Even as an anti-M$ user, I do give credit on 2003 server's stability, even if it never shuts down cleanly after installing Exchange or some other stuff...

Highways Agency forecasts last year's traffic

Daniel B.
Joke

Doc! Doc!

Damn. I should've listened the Doc instead of drunk-driving the DeLorean over 88 mph last night. I think I jumped 2 years into the past!

I need to get back to the Future!!!

Junk food ads target net

Daniel B.
Pirate

Oh please

Could you stop bullhorning Firefox Adblock every single time anything resembling 'ads' comes up? My homebrewed squid acl does a niftier job on that, and I enjoy using Firefox too even if I don't use adblock.

That said, even adblock+noscript won't prevent your kids playing games on mcdonalds.com, which seems to be the point here. If anything, those "social network" fads turning into merchandising have found ways to lure kids into getting bombarded by ads in exchange for points.

Search for something called "nipper". That one sounds fun... someone uploading their pic on that might find him/herself being the new "Dump your pen pal" girl!

US flight authorities tighten rules on gadget battery storage

Daniel B.
Flame

The Flaming Dutchman's laptop

Wouldn't this be because of, you know, all those exploding MacBooks and Dell laptops last year? Though in that case, I'd be weary of a Mac laptop anyway as they overheat far too much because of the fan not being turned on as much as it should. (Remember, this is the same Steve Jobs that sold the Mac Plus without *any* kind of fans.) Overheated laptops by themselves up the risk of spontaneous battery combustion.

I chose the flaming icon 'coz the laptop's on flame, and the last one using it was the BOFH. Oops!

Burma hits satellite TV where it hurts

Daniel B.
Black Helicopters

Yeeeowch!

That price looks disturbingly close to half my months salary, after tax. I think I could get an E1 link for that price, monthly.

Definitely a push to kill outside information leakage into the country. IIRC, most of the freelance info that got out last year was because of unblocked satlinks to the internet. So of course they'd block it.

Old school VXers calling it quits

Daniel B.
Boffin

second-gen VXers?

Wouldn't that be the second generation of VXers? The original ones like Michaelangelo were made in x86 assembly or C, became resident, overwrote boot sectors and so some truly ingenious stuff like playing the Yankee Doodle song with the PC speakers and killing other virii.

Up to ~1996, I remember a list of about 6000 virii definition lists. it was under 1000 back in 1991. Then came Visual Basic on Office files, and the mayhem began. Anyone remember the "GoodTimes" prank? Thanks to M$, its now possible. Those "open this link and your computer will die" jokes? Again, possible thanks to ActiveX and VBA.

Virii defs went up to 11000+ by 1997, and god knows how many of them are there, plus malware, adware and such. Me? I'd prefer the "Your computer is now stoned" or "Insert HAMBURGER in drive A:" joke messages from some truly old-skool virii.

Now RIAA says copying your own CDs is illegal

Daniel B.
Thumb Down

Fair use?

IIRC, that was settled 20+ years ago with cassettes and Videotapes, you know, that thingy about "fair use".

Keeping a backup copy in your PC is just using another medium, especially if you're trying to, say, copy them to your mp3 player, or your iPod.. whatever.

See, there's even a tool for my W300 that does exactly that: it rips a CD, then transfers it to my cellphone. Except part of this LEGAL process involves copying the stuff into my PC. According to the RIAssA, I'm breaking the law.

Strike 'em down. This is borderline maddness from the RIAA.

The protection's off, as Warner commits to Amazon

Daniel B.

Patents and DRMs

mp3 a "patent-encumbered" format? I'm not aware of anything there... I actually thought it was some half-baked pretext for RedHat not supporting mp3's under xmms (as of RedHat 9 and then Fedora). My .ogg files seem to work only in Linux, and I don't want to be OS-restricted in the same way .wma does to Windows. Oops!

As for Apple's DRM, the matter is not if you can or can't crack DRM, but the fact that its there, and its "illegal" to crack it. Sure, I might be able to drive 200 km/h on the wrong side of the road too, but I don't think the cops would like that argument.

Japan confirms world's fastest maglev plan

Daniel B.
Boffin

Transrapid

Hm... didn't the Transrapid achieve 510 km/h on the Shanghai tracks during testing? It is running at *only* 430 km/h because 510 km/h was its max speed, and usually vehicles don't run at actual max speeds but at set "cruise" speeds. So is 500 km/h its max speed, or cruise speed?

Oh, and which maglev tech are they using? I distinctly remember that the Japanese project involved some superconductors and weird stuff that required a "minimum takeoff speed" (they don't hover at low speeds) and had the slight problem of generating a strong magnetic field inside the train. If you got a pacemaker, don't go into that train!

Russian railways in robot repairman revue

Daniel B.
Joke

So...

Because somebody had to say it ...

In Soviet Russia, Robots Repair YOU!!!!

Ofcom, US senators turn on to cognitive radio

Daniel B.
Thumb Down

Remember R/C cars?

Looks like lots of people didn't have R/C cars in their childhood. I remember there were the 27 MHz and 49 MHz variants specifically to allow two kids to race their cars. Why? Because two 27 MHz cars would have interference and do weird things! I remember that using the controller for one car on the other would do funny things like making the car go in reverse with any command (turn left, turn right, and such).

Of course, sometimes you'd find out your neighbor was playing with his car when turning on yours ended up in your own R/C car running full-speed against the wall.

Now imagine this on a larger scale, affecting TV sets.

The art of software murder

Daniel B.
Flame

@Andy Davies

Ahh... you beat me to the ultimate murder. Yes, as a former FoxPro developer I cringed from the jump that was FoxPro 2.5 (it does everything I need, and better than dBase) to "Visual" FoxPro 3. Fox Technologies should have never sold out to M$...

And whatever happened to Aldus (Adobe) PageMaker? It was one of the original "killer apps" for the Mac, so much that many other apps tried to copy their concept (Ventura Publisher, M$ Publisher and such). Even my CV's still in PageMaker 6.5 format, as most of my research papers. Speaking of Aldus products, its funny how PageMaker went to Adobe, and Freehand to Macromedia... now both companies are one and the same. Fate?

ICQ might be another example. Yes, its free, but it seems that most versions after 2002 have crippled most of the functionality that distinguished it over the others: no more "real-time chat" (it worked like UNIX's talk) and other features I can't remember.

I could go on and on ... Norton Antivirus, Office 2007, Vista, but my memory's failing and I'd bore to death with such examples. :)

Why Borland trashed its spreadsheet

Daniel B.
Boffin

F**kin error messages

Ah, profanity in code. I remember my Compilers and Compilers 2 courses; by the time I was in Compilers 2, I had forgot most of my code, and built the code generation phase on top of the year-old codebase.

Imagine my face when I find something along the lines of:

case 'A': // accept symbol, fuckin' A!!!

(loose translation from Spanish, the original Spanish phrase was a little bit more offensive)

Which was on plain view for my teacher. And the rest of the class, as it was on the projector. Oops.

Recently, a small change on an existing app caused a bug that triggered one of those "can't get here" logger messages. The reaction from users was amusing, as this message was:

"Error 666: HELP! THE MACHINES HAVE RISEN! RUN TO THE HILLS! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"

Ok, that's what happens when you mix Terminator with Iron Maiden. I wonder if my other apps have shown "If you can read this, your system is stoned" messages...

Plunging player prices to reveal Blu-ray vs HD DVD winner?

Daniel B.
Alert

Physical Media isn't dead yet

Claiming that Physical Media (DVDs, CDs and such) are dead is as stupid as the Web-2.0ites claiming native software is dead 'coz you can do everything with Javascript AJAX applications.

Flash memory is unreliable, hard drives crash ... I'd love to see a 512 Gb HD crash with $300 worth of HD content! CD's, DVD's and such don't fail unless you're careless with them... ok there are bad quality CDs but commercial movies aren't that bad. And it is always good to have a hard copy somewhere.

As for the media wars, I root for Blu-Ray. HD-DVD sells only because its temporarily region free.

Drivers on the phone face the slammer

Daniel B.
Thumb Up

Ah ...

Well we don't have laws that harsh, but the new Metropolitan Traffic Rules (Mexico City) have effectively banned mobile chatter except for speakerphone mode. Yes, even hands-free sets!

And they are necessary, I almost earned a Darwin some time ago after doing something stupid: answering my mobile *without* using hands-free, running at 120 km/h on a highway. (Ok, I did slow down to 80 km/h.) Still, I had veered a little bit to the right, and had it not been for a sudden swerve, I might have slammed right into a semi.

Kids, screw the cellphones. No matter who's calling, DON'T answer 'till you've stopped.

Facebook accuses MP of impersonating MP

Daniel B.
Coat

I wonder...

Does he have a T-shirt with

I'm an MP ... bitch

BOFH: Balancing the budget...

Daniel B.
Happy

Eek

I just had flashbacks of my previous job as a State Gov't temp worker. End of year meant lots of buying, and I mean stupid and insane volumes. Unfortunately, even if our area was the one doing the buying, the 90+ workforce area had only something like $8000 for computer equipment ... *yearly*. Guess why half the office was stuck with win98 and real slow PC's. Good thing another area had craploads of budget to spend and sent us their surplus equipment...

Wigan man traps todger in metal ring

Daniel B.
IT Angle

The IT angle

.. is that the pipe in question was bought from uTube. ;)

The day Microsoft 'embraced and extended' Java

Daniel B.
Flame

Re: Javascript is EVIL

Ah, so I'm not alone! I had high hopes that Javascript would finally die with JSP, .net server-side scripting and all those things that made server-side programming better than lame-ass Javascript.

Except someone made up that ugly thing called "AJAX". Web Services were NOT meant for end-users, they were meant for EDI transactions! Now we have Javascript "applications" that eat away on your RAM, slow down the PC while loading and are nigh-impossible to debug, because the "HTML" is now generated by Javascript, instead of server-side.

Not to mention inter-browser quirks, courtesy of IE. I'm just waiting for someone to do something stupid like coding an online bank system in AJAX so the damn crapware shows how unreliable the turd is. Eek!

As for Visual Basic ... I haven't seen uglier syntax like that except in ill-advised compiler courses. ugh!

Mother launches attack on epilepsy inducing video games

Daniel B.
Flame

Remember Pokemon?

That cartoon induced epileptic seizures on people that *didn't* have epilepsy. I remember about 10 years ago that watching cartoons with what I call "fullscreen strobe effects" (that is, all screen white, then all black, then all yellow, etc. etc.) would be kind of painful for me to watch. And I know for a fact that I'm not epileptic.

I think that the aforementioned "fullscreen stobe effect" is something that should be banned, its stupid and a cheap way to "impress" players. Much like the default PowerPoint "animations" commonly abused by dull managers.

Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia

Daniel B.
Flame

Wikipedia

The whole thing has gone downhill since they started going trigger-happy with a lot of stuff. See their removal of "copyrighted" material and replacement with stupid pencil drawings. Or the jokingly "jerk wad" in the semen article (a topic covered in El Reg too). Or the "trivia" discouragement, even when some articles do need this. Notice that the original tag was {{toomuchtrivia}} but the actual text was "Remove this trivia section, d00d!", isn't that called "doublespeak" ?

Sadly, it is still the only catch-all point for finding information, as search-stealing search engines and pagerank pimping sites have turned Google into a less-than-reliable source. Not that it was that much reliable; most of the "interwebs" is full of biased or unfounded claims, and its really, really hard to find real facts in it. And *if* you find something, there is still the matter of verifying if it's true or "something I pulled out of my arse".

MI5 warns over China hacking menace

Daniel B.
Coat

EWMD

... but EWMD wouldn't stand for E-Weapons of Mass Destruction ... it would be Electronic Weapons of Mass Deletion!

.... coat... taxi....

British teens score a C in international science poll

Daniel B.

@Finn

Whoa. You just made my day; it means that my choice for postgraduate studies at Helsinki *is* the best option after all. A country that respects teachers is a good thing.

The NCLB crap in the US is similar to the constant dumbing-down standards in Mexico, where the equivalent to kindergarten is somewhere around *three* years old (3 years kindergarten) though it is really only enforced from age 5 / last "kindergarten" year. Not to mention that usually kinder's a joke compared to US standards (well, 1986 standards anyway).

Public schoolbook reading stuff is usually boring, and God help you if some wacky teacher tries to make 6 y/o kids read "weird" stuff like "the Classics", in language the kid doesn't even understand. I think my joy for reading came more from Dr. Seuss books, Berenstein Bears, Norton Juster's "The Phantom Tollbooth" than "classics".

And whatever happened to the Speak & Spell / Speak & Math toys? Kids will learn, even on their own, as long as they think its fun.

Facebook founder loses court battle to keep personal data offline

Daniel B.
Thumb Up

Geeze, I can actually sing this...

Welcome to the facebook california

Such a lovely space

Such a lovely face

Plenty of room at the facebook california

Any time of year, you can post it here...

Anyway, I really love how El Reg pokes on Zuckerberg by using the "... bitch" line against him. "I'm a walking billboard... bitch" "I'm in privacy trouble... bitch" and others. ;)

Bought some uranium ore? You'll need the anal douche, then

Daniel B.
Boffin

1.2 Gigawatts!

Ah, so Doc Brown was right! 22 years into the future, and you can already buy nuclear fuel!

Anyway ... it would still take Marty a week to get his DeLorean running again ...

Rove investigator erases his PCs - to kill computer virus

Daniel B.
Black Helicopters

Well...

"Didn't a regular citizen just receive "default judgement" after wiping her hdd when accused by RIAA?"

Right on. If the RIAA 0wned a common citizen, why should this mofo get scott-free? Fry him! bwahahahaha!!!

FBI crackdown on botnets gets results, but damage continues

Daniel B.
Pirate

So..

Great. Doesn't look like any of those dudes is the botnet master for Storm. I'd say it would be better if they went after overseas botnet masters, as I think the masters are Russian dudes.

And the FSB on your tails ought to be spookier than the FBI ... after all, they are the former KGB ;)

Facebook faces UK data probe

Daniel B.

Facebook

So it seems a good thing I didn't bite into it. I actually didn't even budge on creating a Facebook account, because I thought I already had one ... I was confused by the Facebox service. Mind you, all of those services are the same shite, only packed differently.

The first one I remember was hi5, which was kind of fun; then a lot of these thingies started sprouting overnight so badly it just wasn't fun anymore. I kept myself only using the live spaces (only because I use messenger) and hi5 ... just because its there. I was fortunate to get a referral on LiveJournal (an older, but less Web2.0-ish blog service) though I haven't used that one too much.

Bleh.

Microsoft loses battle of the piggybacking passwords

Daniel B.
Pirate

I cite...

X-Win32. They use something similar for their products, which unlike M$ products, actually work.

And as the previous user commented ... eek. Its like rooting Sauron or Emperor Palpatine. Though if the troll prevails, that would be the end of Windows lockout protection schemes. I hope WGA also gets axed with that...

Vista provokes user synaptic collapse

Daniel B.
Happy

@Jonathon Green

Anybody else here remember the old classic PC POST message... "Keyboard errror: press F1 to continue."?

I remember a friend getting that one ... IN A LAPTOP. Now that was really weird...

NASA reveals manned Mars mission plans

Daniel B.
Mars

Damn!

So my space ambitions are truly dead, as I might be 40 when the first manned mission reaches Mars, and still be that much far away from Mars colonization. I still hope for a Lunar Base, but I just don't see that happening unless the Chinese do it. I think my best bet would be to buy a ticket to the ISS with the Russians... except I don't have that kind of $. :(