Posts by Shakje

GDI

Basic Windows code is all internal, the GDI is only really there for doing things such as drawing stuff, and by drawing stuff I mean like what you would see if you started drawing stuff in Paint. It can be used for more complex stuff, but anyone who does is not doing their users any favour, or themselves. It is significantly easier to code the same effects in OpenGL or DirectX, and it will run significantly faster. Ever since the mid 90s when 3D cards started becoming standard, GDI was doomed. Slowing down GDI will be very unlikely to slow down any apps you run at all significantly (and shouldn't slow them down to the point you can notice them slowing). There will be a small slowdown.

@alistair millington

As stated COUNTLESS times before, Vista uses RAM as it is freed. You can no longer estimate how much RAM is being used, as Vista makes as much use out of RAM as possible. It will fill it up if it can, and then decache stuff when you need the RAM for other stuff.

When '95 came out everyone screamed about it for using up too many resources, then after a few months people started working out that it was actually not bad at all.

During XP's lifespan it got slated for being insecure, needing a reboot too often, BSODs.

Vista comes out, everyone screams because it needs a better PC than XP, even though it fixes the above problems with XP.

Also, my install works fine with my home and company networks.

What it really shows

is how easy it is to make mobile owners pay for useless tripe. This is backed up by Crazy Frog etc.

@Dominic Kua

I wonder if I can get your comments without crap sarcasm?

So it couldn't just be...

That China offers untraceable proxies.

@Brett

Well done for ignoring advertising, yet you still buy into the biggest scam there is by paying monthly for a game you've already paid for.

Re: Microsoft: "We're above the law"

Yes, it's ridiculously easy to take a bash at MS, but really, this isn't the place as the patent is ridiculous. The courts do in fact get it wrong sometimes, and MS do sometimes get it right.

To further the cause of MS I've patented ranting, trademarked M$ and copyrighted fanboi.

From what I've seen (no pun intended)...

it's not difficult to override the optic nerve. There's some random professor in the UK I remember seeing on TV who plugged a sonar into his optic nerve to simulate how bats see (after blindfolding himself of course). It worked quite successfully.

I'd of thought it would be easier to put stimuli into the brain than get meaningful data out.

Since when did ISPs have full reign over their bandwidth?

Yes it's technically theirs, but it's paid for by their users. If you provide a service to users they should be able to do what they want with it. If they use it more than you can cope with you obviously should have thought of your capabilities better instead of resorting to throttling. If you can't support a certain amount of traffic, then why sell a service that allows people to download their limits faster? It's not that difficult to predict how much bandwidth you're really going to use is it? So perhaps the solution is to stop them selling things they can't control.

Anyone watch BBC last night?

I ended up watching a bit of Watchdog, purely because when I turned on the TV I saw them saying "are Carphone Warehouse lying about the iPhone?". Unfortunately, I wasn't blessed by an article exposing how bad the phone is and how overpriced it is, or telling us that Carphone Warehouse were failing to tell customers that they could probably buy it for less in a few months anyway. It was about insurance, and once again they drew attention to "people queuing for the iPhone!" and called it the "must have gadget this Christmas". Reminded me why I don't watch that terrible programme.

On another note, who uses their phone for P2P? Surely it's not fast enough or battery saving enough to be feasible? And doing it with the shit net that the iPhone has???

Yes, but...

my PC cost £450 and has a quad core that goes up to about 10Ghz.

@IQ AC

There's nothing to suggest that IQ is hereditary, since there's no clear understanding of what intelligence is, and no way of defining it. Is intelligence the ability to pick things up quickly? Is it common sense? Is it shape recognition? Is it maths? Is it pattern spotting? Etc.

People are not "born stupid", and they definitely do not "inherit stupidity". It's arguments like that which keep the underprivileged right at the bottom of the food chain, and which feeds the class system. Brains are wonderful things, and can be trained to do almost anything.

@Kim Mason

Silly Kim.

It has nothing to do with hating the west, in fact there are two situations here, which has apparently confused you sufficiently. Part of the problem is the manipulation of Gaza by the West, and the plight of the Palestinians from Israel.

The second is funding extremist countries through Saudi oil.

Stop. Think. Type. Re-read. Think hard. Press post.

Also, "Growing plants abstract CO2 from the atmosphere", arty plants? oO

Re: Sex offenders include morning after regrets

There are, of course, major failings in the system as far as rape prosecution is concerned. 5.7% is a tiny percentage, and a lot of cases are thrown out because evidence is not admissable because of strict criteria. A lot of cases also get thrown out because women are too ashamed to report rape early enough for evidence such as vaginal bruising to have gone.

Having a narrow minded "they ask for it" view is not just naive, but childish and completely useless.

Re: But why is the law different for copyright infringement?

Right, your comment seems to have no relevance to your title, however, addressing the comment, the difference between fraudulently getting a discount at a music store is that the music is already produced, and when you buy it with your discount you are taking a sale that could have been bought by someone else at full price, thus there is a loss.

With copyright infringement they are not making any money at all from your copying or downloading, so there is a provable loss (ie if you had gone out and bought said track or album).

In this case, Renault actually *made* money on the purchases even though they were fraudulent, as well as the fact that the fraud was apparently ignored by Renault in the first place. The cars weren't already there but were custom built, so there isn't the argument that someone else might have bought them.

Of course, all this is obvious if you read the article. Personally, I'm anti-RIAA etc. and I think that the losses are hugely inflated by the above, but that's what the courts are there to decide.

@Andrew Bolton

Why would you look at the Tory site anyway? They're as fanatical about terrorism as Labour, and were as happy to go to war, then of course there's the problem that David Cameron can't form opinions on his own. I hate the loss of freedom, but at least Labour did something useful before the whole war thing blew up, the Tories would have gone to war *and* broken the economy. I was a staunch Labour supporter growing up, and until 2001 I still was, although I was a little disillusioned (meaning I voted for Tommy Sheridan when I could, Labour when I couldn't). I'm Lib Dem at the next one though, and on top of that Nick Clegg is a thoroughly nice person.

Re: I'm dying here

It's actually a UK site, and I'm guessing the majority of comments above are from UK posters, not Americans.

@Spider

We weren't too different about 100-150 years ago. There's nothing to suggest that Muslims all want world domination, I truly believe that most of them just want to be left alone by America to their own internal policies. Taking the moral highground like this is the reason that they hate us, it's condescending, patronising, and when our own cultures have so much wrong with them, can you actually find any fault with them not being entirely enamoured with democracy? Our only way of convincing them so far seems to be, it's great, trust us, then invading their homes, killing their children and forcing control onto them. Getting them to read some blogs telling them how great democracy and The West isn't going to help at all because it's exactly what we've already tried, and weighing up some random blogger telling you its so against your dead family and friends, not such a big thing really is it? Once again another person looking like a twat because he's condescending and patronising purely so he can take a stab at religion.

Re: Warning Will Robinson - Run away

Using his nationality as part of an attack on his character is clearly at least verging on racist (whether or not the race in question is part of the UK). This is equivalent to suggesting that an Irish politician wants to blow up London because he is Irish.

Reminds me of the editor of the Sun (in England, got a slightly weird name, not going to look it up) and his recent tirade on Question Time against Gordon Brown based purely on the fact that he is Scottish, and "all Scots want is money".

I had goose for the first time...

last year, and it's amazing. It's near the top of my favourite meats list, never mind birds alone.

@wobbly1

That's a problem with documentation. Anyone who's done any programming at all, will be quite clear that API functions usually do something different to what you expect it to do. Without reading documentation on it (even if the docs weren't available to you), you can't complain that it's wrong, and you're still referring to it as a workaround, when it is actually just the correct way of generating random numbers with the function. The real problem is the lack of documentation, nothing whatsoever to do with the function or what it does.

@Risky

I thought the statistics on the number of people killed in Iraq, while varying wildly depending on who you speak to, still quite clearly state that the British/Americans have killed far more people than have died in the UK or USA due to terrorism. He's hardly a conspiracy wingnut for pointing out that those figures would suggest you would be more likely to die in a British invasion. You could also argue that Muslim suicide bombs are a direct result of the invasion. Of course, you wouldn't agree, anyone who opposes the war must be a conspiracy wingnut, and that makes as much sense as what you said.

@John A. Blackley

Once again you're on the immigration issue. There isn't a terrorism problem, driving, walking down the street, falling out of bed, are all bigger threats to your health and safety than some guy wearing a bomb belt. Using terrorism as an excuse to close our borders is ridiculous, as is the worrying trend in newspapers to report as loudly as possible on any crime committed by an immigrant (see Italy as to why this is a BAD thing). To put it into context, immigrants commit 10% of crimes in the UK, and make up 20% of the populace (see Independent from a week past Saturday when discussing Italy since you'll no doubt tell me it's unsubstantiated if I don't mention this). Do you agree with Enoch Powell as well? After all, only illegal immigrants would commit terror acts.

Interesting...

finished reading a Dale Brown book just last night that had an illegal Mexican immigrant working at the top levels of the army.

@Cameron Colley

Even though it is stupendously sad to do so, these people have in fact bought the items with REAL money. Burglary is the wrong charge, but it is theft.

Re: The comment about the SAS

I very much doubt that the SAS/SBS carried out the shooting, as everything says that if they had they would not have made such a shambles of it such as getting close to the subject, holding him down, and shooting him 7 times in the head. I fully believe that if the SAS were under orders to shoot the suspect they would get into the carriage, tap him in the head without getting that near him at all, check he was dead, then leave.

While I fully agree that we cannot limit our forces by needlessly harassing them over every shooting, that means even more that we should follow them up on every innocent person that they kill. If we are to give them more freedom to operate at their discretion (as surely ground forces who are meant to deal with EXTREME situations must use) we absolutely MUST monitor and punish them when things go wrong, so that they do not use their discretion without reproach, and to prevent the use of deadly force in anything which does not completely fulfil criteria of an extreme situation. It does not matter whether they were acting on good faith, unless they were 100 per cent certain they should not have shot, and moreso, they should never have tried to deceive the public. In this alone they failed twice in their duty to protect the public.

As for the BBC, sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't. It still has a lot of objective journalism, but it gets closer to corporate media every day, and the lack of objective reporting in our media really worries me, almost as much as the lack of depth in the two main political parties. I tend to read El Reg, The Week (as a compilation, makes much more interesting reading) and occasionally The Independent. I only really watch the news on TV when there's a Newsnight special, or something in particular I want to see, or if I'm bored after a film or before a programme starts.

And there's a question on why people have terrible debts...

It's obvious isn't it, if you are £8 in debt it's less than £6 in debt. It's just odd that the more money you take out of the bank and the more you put on your CC the less you owe. Great economy we have, amazing.

@Blitz

You eat dirt?

Yo Steve Welsh

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR(ammar police)

You sure fucking told them. Cunts.

Casablanca...

is "here's lookin' at you kid" IIRC it is actually said like that in the film...

Plenty of stuff that should be in there.

@Peter W

Horrible why? Patronising? Maybe a little, I can just think of the times when UAC would be good, just because it's implemented a bit (read a lot) heavy-handedly doesn't mean it won't be useful. The best example I can think of is asking you if you want to run embedded content on websites or allow ActiveX holes to be exploited to run executables. Vista will stop me from having to make the mad dash to close my browser, then run a scan.

If you don't use it regularly, and are quite happy to spend time picking small holes in the OS then fine, go ahead, but quite frankly I'm more than happy with it, and used to its little quirks.

@James Findley

Was it called Tomahawk? Faintly remember something like that, my parents loved playing Batman and Robin on it and Head Over Heels (forgotten classic), as well as the Jewels of Darkness set and a fighter sim called Ace (not very good but I thought it was the dog's).

Also, Vista goes to sleep when you click the shut down button, takes 5 seconds to shut down and 5 seconds to boot up again. Happy, happy medium (although it doesn't work too well with my USB headset).

@Chris Morley

Sounds like a total ripoff of War Games.

GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR!!!1

This article ruined my day...

with its stupid and pointless exclamation marks, I'm going to go cry in a corner now before taking out my rage on a beetle.

@Maty

Maybe relatives of the French Resistance are on the list of 2000 dangerous people in the UK. I think they'll be ok though, they're European and (hopefully for them) white.

Just for the hell of annoying some people...

Paris Hilton Uses Leopard - Can't Play Warcraft

Of course...

putting this kid in juvy is the perfect way to fix all his problems while punishing him. He obviously has real problems, and it says a lot to me about his parents that they didn't support him through this (no sarcasm about that thanks). He obviously needs psychiatric help, and maybe a bit of love, not what appears to be more authority (which would seem to be what he has a real issue with) and rejection from the people he is so angry at in the first place.

You suggest that 5-10mins is not a fair test...

but assert that just because your connection is fine, everyone else's must be. While strongly worded, this is a pretty weak article, with far more emotion than intelligent discussion.

Is QT

going to go the way of the Internet Explorer debacle and software that is forced on the user?

Most of the tracks I download...

I already have on a CD somewhere, but either I can't be bothered finding the CD, I want the track on my PC/MP3 player or the CD is scratched beyond repair. I got into file sharing when Kazaa ruled the world and used to download dance tracks I heard when I went out, or singles on the radio that I liked. After that I would pick up compilation CDs (mostly) that had the above on, along with other tracks I liked. I rarely bought artist albums in those days, as I found that a lot of albums I bought ended up either completely different to what I expected from the singles, or plain crap.

Since I have accumulated most of the classic albums I've wanted over the years, and collections of tracks I want, I mostly only download tracks if I can't be bothered finding the CD really, and I now know better what albums I want (and I think that albums are a lot better than in the early 2000s/end of the 90s), but some of this is to tried and tested.

@John A. Blackley

You probably don't know how many we've 'let in' because you haven't specified what type of immigration floats your boat. Illegal, legal, asylum? Illegal's a problem, but nothing that our country can't cope with, legal is a non-issue, and asylum is far worse for asylum seekers than for the UK. If you really want to believe the paranoia peddling in certain papers maybe you should apply for Italian citizenship.

If the ISP sells you a speed...

you should get that speed. What is with all the people that have decided that even though they paid for something, it's perfectly acceptable if that service is reduced? Why is it so stupid to try and get what I pay them for?

I have a serious problem with throttling because it suggests to me that they have sold something that they cannot cope with. Are they going to double speeds in another 5 years and throttle it more, or cap it more because they still can't provide those speeds? When you're allowed to download 50meg before you get reduced to 1/3 of your internet speed will you still say it's fine and dandy and only partially the fault of ISPs?

Regardless of what I'm downloading through it, it could be important and legal, it might not be, it's not the ISPs decision to throttle it based on WHAT I'M DOWNLOADING. They have got themselves into the pickle of more people using streaming video and music, and not having the bandwidth to support it because they never thought everyone might want to use all their bandwidth, so they're resorting to throttling p2p so that they can have the 'moral highground' while keeping the masses happy. If anyone questions them seriously, they'll say that the majority of downloads through torrents are illegal anyway.

Throttling based on what is using the bandwidth is a thousand times worse than throttling in my book, if you can't supply what you sell then admit it, if you're going to throttle, then throttle everyone. If someone downloads a huge file over http surely they're having just as much effect as someone who downloads a torrent over the same amount of time at the same speed?

Re: Limited Sympathy bloke

The issue that you have missed is that they are accused of breaking connections for torrents, not throttling. What are your views on that (not meant to sound judgemental, just came out that way)?

Can't resist, sorry

"Mr.M case shows how hypocratic our country has become", if that was true I would expect our health service to be booming.

On a serious note, I can't stand people who say, well now they might not shoot a terrorist because they're scared of repercussions. Yes, maybe they won't, but it will definitely mean they think twice before shooting an innocent person. I would have thought that in an operation like this, if you don't have enough information you should CALL OFF THE OPERATION. I do feel for the men who killed him, they were quite obviously being given pretty conflicting advice and information, and were probably being 'adrenalined' up, especially if they were being told they were confronting a terrorist (I would expect they would say 'possible terrorist' rather than 'someone who had possible links with 7/7'). I wouldn't blame them, but the information that they were given and poor poor training. If indeed it was because they couldn't remain level-headed in such an 'exceptional' situation it's the police force's fault for not training them well enough.