Posts by Daniel B.

Shagathon

Hm... at least the Mexican "Teleton" is a load of crap, if *this* was part of it I might actually watch it!!

Show me the money!

<snip>

Accordingly, Peggy Fossett has now asked a judge to "begin the process of distributing her husband's assets according to his will", the Telegraph explains. The petition, filed in a Chicago court, said: "[Steve] Fossett's wealth is vast, surpassing eight figures in liquid assets, various entities and real estate."

</snip>

Now that's the kind of stuff that usually turns you into Prime Suspect. Hey, boo-hoo, my husband's dead ... SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!

IF Fossett's alive, I think the first thing he must do after being rescued is file a divorce and disown that "human being". I might have believed the "we gotta admit he's dead" feeling, except it was immediately followed by "start distributing his wealth". Sheesh.

I chose the pirate avatar 'coz this smells like plunder, matey! Arrrrr!!!

Notes crap? Show me better...

Well, as a former Notes 4.2 user, I must say that I was impressed with it 9 years ago when my school started using it for the "LearningSpace" platform. Damn better than the loads of crap "web apps" that superseded them like BlackBoard or the internally-developed one after that.

One of the things I really, really liked was replication: I was able to do homework AND submit it on time *without* having to be online; something that was crucial in the dialup days of internet.

Apart from that, it had loads of stuff I didn't even know existed back then: PKI management (all logins use this), Access Levels, and loads of stuff. Oh, and we used it for everything *BUT* email. Maybe if you take out the email factor, you'll stop hating it.

Want to see ugly email? Try SAP R/3. Urk!

I would ...

I usually would sympathise with the underdog (PSI) ... except M$ is funding them. So screw them, M$ isn't doing this for "interoperability", it wants to rob IBM from its main business. And why on earth would I want to run ESA/390 software on an inferior Intel chip??? I'd think that would be a case for organizations without the dosh to buy/maintain one of the big 390 monsters (or zSeries, how they're called now).

I do think PSI has a place, but M$ definitely doesn't.

Re: 7 days

"One of my big beefs with the UK banks - in India, all local cheques are cleared within *one* working day"

I live in Mexico. Any cheque, from any bank, to *any* other bank in the entire country is credited within one working day too. Actually, new regulations made it that other-bank cheques will be credited after 12pm, so now the process is relatively slower than before. It used to be 9am or later. ;)

Electronic transfers come in two variants: TEF (spanish for Electronic Transfer Fund EFT) which is next-day, much like cheques; and SPEI which is 1-2 *hours* same-day. Of course, SPEI has a cost, TEF is (usually) free of charge.

As for cheque clearance, its easy: cheques not yet cleared appear as "SBC" (salvo buen cobro / on good payment), cleared ones add up to your actual balance. I was amazed when my dad said that in the US checks usually take 4+ days to clear. Eek!!

HD-DVD ain't free, dudes!

Ah, the Reg Hacks beat me to the point. Which is: HD-DVD buyers that buy HDDVD solely because they're region free are being suckered in. When in a product war, there will always be stuff that will try to sway the sheep into their way: be it lower rates, insane plans, oversold bandwidth, premium channels for free, etc. This is how Sky crushed DirectTV in Mexico, and how many cable co's drove out the competition's ISPs.

In the end, when they win, they'll nerf most of the "extras" and guess what ... they will do it because they *can*, and there's nobody left to run to. If studios were really keen on region-liberating everything, we'd have region-less BD's out there already. I doubt it.

Here in Mexico, back in the pre-regionless DVD era, we were nerfed by being saddled "region 4", while the US is "region 1". So what did we do? Easy: Buy your DVD-player in the US too. By the time the PS2 came out, I remember vividly that even stores sold the region 1 PS2's.

@John Bayly

"Saying that, anybody who knows how to do that will realise why they're being served the wrong image. In fact they probably won't bank online, or possibly not even have a bank account (they are paranoid after all)."

You just described my boss. He follows the Scrooge McDuck doctrine: all his money is in his moneybin... oops ... I mean in cash, in home. He does no online transactions, and he *works* maintaining an online banking system. Too bad the über paranoid protection leaves him wide open to old-fashioned stickups, or whoever decides to rob his home will hit the jackpot. Oops!

Intel GPU's ?

Based on my experience with the i830M, no thanks, I'll keep my geForce 7600GT.

I think the whole *point* of 3dfx cards was to offload all that stuff from the main CPU and run it more efficiently on dedicated hardware. Hell, the Amiga did it decades ago and it was bleeding-edge tech back then!

Batons kill too

"You can die by being hit with one of those cool extendible batons (and people probably have)"

Yes they have. About 10-12 years ago, one of those "border shoppers" (Mexicans living in border towns/cities that do their shopping in the US side) in Cielo Vista Mall got smashed to death by a cop. The reason: Dillard's was closing, and he wanted to exit the store through one of the "now closed" doors. He argued with the cop, which led to him being subdued by nightstick.

Granted, knowing common Mexican disregard for cops it is very likely this guy was being an ass; but I wonder how good a beating he got for him to die.

Anyway ... I don't think the Taser by itself is the problem, it is the abuse of cops using it stupidly or sadistically. And IIRC the ones that fire prongs do have a 30-second timer on them (at least the one my mom has) and it won't fire again unless you put the safety on, then back off, then fire again. So extended shocks are definitely the copper's fault.

Pocket knife?

He used his "pocket knife" to hack his arm off?? No way, unless his pocket knife is Crocodile Dundee-sized!

Anyway, this incident somehow screams of "DARWIN AWARDS!" had he been unsuccessful in his arm hacking stunt! Remember, safety first!

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to retrieve a piece of wood thats jamming my blender at full speed.

Global Warming is real, dudes!

@Mark: "Hours later and No Such Comment."

Didn't read Webster Phreaky? Funny thing it came right after AC's comment. ;)

@Webster: Warming/cooling cycles and climate change do happen, global warming is happening; the question is if it is really part of nature or because of increased CO2 levels and modern industrial processes. Aside from that, the sheer quantity of pollution generated by zillions of petrol-based engines running are damaging by themselves. Oh well, then again, this comes from someone who thinks there is no such thing as Latin America (as there are NO former Italian colonies in America) ... oh well...

I think the Global Warming camp might have benefited huge in the US because of that "Day After Tomorrow" movie, but even more when a year later, New Orleans went underwater.

@Joerg

I just cracked up. Yeah sure ... only servers.

I cannot tell who, but there is a major finantial institution with branches over most of Latin America that's switching from OS/2 to Linux. That's a crapload of PC's to the count.

And even those who don't switch entirely to Linux have at least tried it. I know about at least 4 non-techies who have set up some kind of Linux distro inside a VM for playing around.

I just don't see OSX doing the same bang, at least over here where average income is US$500/mo (even "good" jobs are on the $1500/mo. mark) and Mac pricing is too bloated for that kind of income. Oh, and OSX is as much a "real Unix" as Windows might be "a real POSIX", in that case. Search "Interix subsystem".

Russian Launch site @ Cuba

Actually, I'd be all for it. The 1962 crisis was triggered not only because of the USSR planned silos at Cuba, but also because of similar "too-near" silos the US was placing in Turkey.

A cosmodrome in Cuba would give the Russians a nice advantage and it would also give a kick in the nuts to Bush placing that stupid missile site in former USSR countries. ;)

@Jason Aspinall

That search gave me a Jack Sparrow figure. Didn't know that Pirates are classified as WMD's!

Arrr matey!!

I request for JAXA

Please, please JAXA team, orbit the original 1960's moon landing spot, zoom in and trash those stupid "moon landing hoax" hoaxers. At least that is a conspiracy theory that can be shot down with current technology ;)

The "bumpy moon" optical effect has to do with the lighting angle, I had read about it on M.C. Escher's paintings, and they specifically made comments on the moon photos having this effect. It's nice to finally see this effect on video!!!

Still fun...

Everything came about because of voltage. Oh well...

I just remembered back in secondary school when I failed a math exam. Funny thing was that one of the problems I got "wrong" according to the teacher was something like this:

3. Monday at noon, a thermometer shows that we are at 11 ºC. By midnight, however, the temp has dropped down to -3 ºC. Whats the difference between these two temperature readings?

Guess what: I answered 14. And according to my teacher, I WAS WRONG. And you know what was the most funny thing about this? More than half of the entire class had also answered 8, confirming my fears that I was surrounded by stupid people. Thank God I transferred to another school (and city) 3 months later.

Yeah ...

then I will put Monday's Spaghetti Bowl for 1000 quid, because it has the figure of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The solution is easy...

Set up a server in Antigua. Then host there your photoshopped Prince contest ... and when the DMCA sends its take-down notice ... give 'em the finger. Added bonus: make it impossible to get user's information, so even individual users can't get sued. ;)

Javascript "language" ?

"it is clear that the author is unwilling or incapable of learning what is in-fact a very powerful language."

I reel in shock from the sudden IQ loss. All I have to say about JavaScript is what Joe Buchanan said about Frankenstein's Monster: "It's an abomination in the eyes of God".

Instead of dying as it should have, some wise-crack decided to "mate" the damn thing with Web Services, which were NEVER meant to be used by end-users, but instead for B2B EDI transactions, and create the AJAX "technology". Urggggh...

That said, its a useful app 'coz it blocks "iPhone" and its source code shows how shite the Javascript "language" is!

I prefer server-side Java (J2EE) or even client-side, as it'll run independently of your browser or OS.

Has anyone submitted it?

Because if not, I'm submitting it for the Darwin Awards. Might even win it. Please, if you have just crossed a bunch of warning signs AND people are shouting at you, *listen*. Or even better, jump back.

Better to spend some months in the slammer than being croc meal. Unless you're James Bond. Or Crocodile Dundee ;)

PD: Save the croc. It isn't like the croc went out on a killing rampage or something ...

Incoming call...

ring ring ...

I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD!!!!

*beep beep: Low Battery*

I made it! I'm in. ... *power off*

Hell if you'll ever be able to find a charger up there!

And...

If you add up that there is no LOCK mechanism for memory segments to avoid them going to swap, that compromises even more any crypto process in Windoze.

Now that I think it, you don't need to monkey around with RNG's. Just wait for IE to go over to swap space, and wham, you got your decrypted SSL keys right there in the swapping partition. Oops!

Whats this ABP?

"The alternative to ABP is simply not visiting sites that have intrusive ads."

No. It's squid. I've been blocking annoying ads since long before Firefox was even concieved. My mom was pretty happy on her dialup connection speeding up because of this. ;)

Oh, and squid works with any browser, which works for some of my friends that don't use IE *or* Firefox, but Opera. I don't want to block all ads though, Project Wonderful an example: they are well targeted and are one of the main webcomics revenue streams. I'm not bothered by those.

Doubleclick, on the other hand ... well, I've had enough of "YOU ARE THE 999,999 VISITOR! YOU WON!" so any advertiser showing those will join the trashverts.acl list.

Black English?

Maybe speaking in that weird English common between gangsta rappers? Or maybe it *was* an actual rapper trying to do the stickup ;)

Maybe...

I'd think that maybe it is because the mobile games industry is as bloated as the videogames one back in '83? Too much videogames, too expensive, and lots of crap games.

I've checked a lot of them, and I think the good ones would boil to Doom RPG and a Castlevania port. I've had no problems transferring them though, some low-level utils are capable of extracting the jars for re-installation elsewhere.

Oh, and I should mention I paid something like $3 for "Pacman", but got something called "Pecman" instead. It was a pacman "clone" with lots of bugs and very, very ugly. Sadly, the game was actually made by a software company; I wonder if Namco would mind other companies ripping off their games, but then again, it's "pecman". Ugh.

Ahhh....

So the British indeed are smarter than the Yanks. The "pay phone, pay contract, not both" mindset is also prevalent over here in Mexico; even those who have the money to spend pointlessly tend to go for the "free" phones, or pay < $100 USD for does that do have a price. Hell, *my* phone would have been free if I had signed up for an 18-month contract!

I won't bother for the eye Phone as most of the hyped stuff is already provided by my W300i, or just hype I'll never use (browsing "normal" web pages on a cellphone? screw that!). Oh, and no Bluetooth? Wonder how we share all our ringtones/pics...

The iPhone is doomed in the eyes of those without money, or savvy enough to ask for extra stuff.

iPod iTunes

iPod *is* tied to iTunes. By using software other than iTunes, you're breaking the terms of use of your iPod and the Jobs Police will drag you away. ;)

Seriously, the ony reason there are third-party hacks for uploading music to your iTunes is because of reverse-engineering, which means someone at least broke the EULA for iTunes, thus making the resulting software "illegal".

Its more like raising a lawsuit because I can't play my DVD on my Linux machine (gee, remember that thing called "DeCSS"? There's your legitimate use right there...)

Doooooooooom

"Don't expect to be running Doom off this any time soon. Besides, you'd run a pretty fair risk of actually opening a portal to hell if you booted it up with this one."

Ooooh that made my day ... I haven't stopped laughing. On the other hand, this might actually be able to run Doom 3 in "Ultimate Mode", a configuration so high not even the top-notch GFX cards could cope with it back when Doom3 came out ...

FLAC? OGG? WTF?

mp3's sell well for the same reason DRM-free, Redbook Standard CD's sell well: they run everywhere. (Well my Fedora 6 installation didn't, but that was solved downloading a player.) Most car stereos now recognize mp3's, some even can read from USB Flash memory; my Sony Ericcson plays them, etc, etc.

Meanwhile, I once downloaded an entire album in OGG format, which resides somewhere in my Linux filesystems because there is the only place I could hear them. FLAC? I don't even know how to play that ;)

Maybe a good service might be based on the erstwhile allofmp3 service, you select desired format, desired quality; they encode it and you download it. Everyone's happy! :)

Age of consent...

Ah, at least you get everything at age 18 in the UK. The US screwed up some stuff by letting tobacco at 18, but alcohol at 21. Thus even if "coming-of-age" is at 18, you still are barred of most "cool" places because they have a strict 21+ policy. Idiots. </rant>

Anyway ... that birthday party beats the stripper-shaped cake once proposed for a friends' 20th birthday ... whoa!

PKI for dummies

Hm... if you're too lazy to install the Java JRE, you deserve to get your ass handed to you. The whole point of Hushmail (and any PKI-based crypto system) is to have end-to-end crypto, leaving nothing in cleartext between two users. The Java applet enables this, but for someone to be so stupid to ignore this ... well, you deserve it.

I've gone as far as generating a zillion keys, one for each PC I use. The more your private keys roam around, the more chances someone will get them.

Arnie's catchphrase

I remember more the "I'll be back" line from when I first watched it, because of the carnage that immediately follows that scene. However, I watched the "EDITED FOR TELEVISION" version, so I think that the "Fuck you, asshole" line may have been cut out back then... *and* I was like 5 years old.

Hm... I wonder why "Mr. Sulu, Warp Speed" isn't one of those quotes. My dad used to use that line when entering the highway, which usually meant we'd grab on to anything as he would speed up to 160+ km/h. Ow.

As for Goldfinger's "I expect you to DIE, Mr. Bond!", it really sounds like the most badass line ever given by a Bond villain. Right to the point: I don't want you to talk, or fight, or whatever. I want you to die! bahahahahaha!!! Note that 007 had *no* means of escape, it is only because of his bluff that he is able to save his arse. Oops!

babelfish

I remember once that babelfish used to translate "on" as in the context of "turn on" "switch on" ... but nothing else.

So translating "The pen is on the table" to spanish would get "La pluma esta encendida la mesa" (The table is [turned on] the table) when it sould be "La pluma esta en la mesa".

There's a fun page called "Lost in Translation" (no, not that fugly movie) that does roundtrips around a lot of languages, then back to english. You get really funny stuff in there, especially if the input doesn't make sense (try "all your base are belong to us", for example.) Still, they're the first in translations, AND they named it after Douglas Adams' work. 42! ;)

If I had this power

I'd change my *worst enemies* grades, cover enough tracks as for me not getting incriminated (but enough for the hack to be caught). Then wait a month, and if the school dudes haven't noticed, give an "anonymous tip-off". WHAM!

I mean, even with school grades someone is bound to find out; anything with a paper trail or audit logs can and will be checked upon. So I'd go for screwing up someone else ... though even then you might get caught. oops.

The congestion theory is flawed.

@Paul: Yes, according to how the net works, it would be appropiate to equate road/highway/motorway/whatever networks to internet links, as this is what its all about. Except it isn't the *car* you're buying, you're buying the *road*.

Problem is, the ISP's (Comcast) seem to be selling 4-lane access roads to your front door, full with "EXIT 29A: JOE'S HOUSE" signs ... except once you're on the highway, you find you're stuck on a 2-lane highway. In Comcast's case, it would be one of those 2-lane "expressways" that have at-grade intersections, to add insult to injury.

TCP RST isn't the Internet's Busy signal, it is the "HANGUP" equivalent for phone lines. Does my telco or mobile operator hang up my calls because I've talked more than 20 minutes? No, I don't think so.

I wonder...

Offering the family van as payment ... a van that would be tracked real quick. Not only the kid would be stupid, any professional hitman would not accept that as payment! Sheesh, looks like the kid doesn't know much about real life stuff.

Moooooooo

"Jumped off 'without warning'.

What kind of warning would one want?"

There was a warning, all right ... MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

Which means: MOOOOOOVE OUT OF THE WAY!!!!

I see dead people

Hm... it seems like this is a 100% fine African "invention", courtesy of your average Zambia street child. I hoped this to be a hoax, but there's even a BBC take on the story, years before this craze started. (And the Wikipedia article's from 2005). I know kids would try any kind of shit to get high ... but ewww, they actually try shit now. *barf*

Still, this would put Scary Movie into a new perspective:

Shorty: I see dead people...

Shorty: This shit is really gooood!!!

... except now Shorty's going to be inhaling well... yuck.