Posts by mittfh

I always thought...

...it was the Daily Wail.

Edited either by Chicken Licken or the proverbial sandwich board man proclaiming "The End of the World is Nigh!" (particularly if you're in their definition of "middle class" - i.e. earning >£40k)

Then again, from recent news stands, it seems as though their arch rival (Express [1]) seems to be getting in on the act as well - they already appear to have started their version of the oncological ontology project...

[1] Are there any satirical takes on that paper's name?

Mandriva users...

Use the Fedora 32-bit RPM. It works fine (on 2010.0 at least) :)

It'll even add it's own repository, so theoretically should update itself as/when a new release arrives.

Tux for obvious reasons :)

Interesting...

Now IIRC, the BOFH and PFY are on good terms with Security. After all, the security cameras have to have a temporary fault just at the moment someone trips over their shoelaces at the top of the staircase, so no-one will ever find out there were certain other parties present at the time. Whether that has any relation to the Councillors office is another matter entirely...

But you'd think that after his two week course, the PFY would have learned to be just as cautious of what the BOFH would do to him as the BOFH is cautious of what the PFY would do to him.

No doubt once they get over this temporary feud, they will put their competitive rivalry to good use - by trying to outdo each other on ensuring they are nowhere near the latest victim of a staircase fall, corporate espionage attempt, or other means of removing other employees from the payroll. And of course, the more elaborate the "accident", the better :)

ACID3 68%?

By the time IE9 is released, almost every rival will be up to full compliance - even FireFox is 94%+ - and no doubt the people responsible for the ACID test will be designing ACID4...

Horse Dead a Flogging

Rearrange the above to form a well known phrase. If SCO are filing for bankruptcy protection, then their legal team must have the mindset of a compulsive gambler.

do {

echo "I'll just take out another loan, I'll just get another credit card, I *know* I'm going to win the next bet / round / case!"

goToCourt(); # Lose the bet / round / case

} while (!bankrupt)

Gullible Lusers!

Love the idea of the RTFM chip - sounds just the kind of ploy the BOFH / PFY / PFY-acting-as-BOFH would use (along with rewiring the PSU when they next do a site visit to provide a 12kV output that can be triggered remotely...)

And talking of April Fools, I wonder what Google are planning for Thursday? :)

Never suspected...

"It has been reported that Hall also spoke to her killer...via MSN, which publishes the CEOP button. It seems she never suspected his approaches."

So precisely what difference would have been made by forcing FaceBook to publish the CEOP button? None! As far as I can tell, the only point of the CEOP button is so the company can claim "We're doing everything we can to combat paedophiles - look, we even publish this button as recommended by the UK Government!".

In reality, you can almost guarantee that if they are persuaded to publish it, CEOP will be inundated with false positives - teenagers can be incredibly vindictive when they want to be ("I don't like you, so I'm going to report you to CEOP! That'll teach you for dissing me!")...

Acid3

Bet it will still perform abysmally in the Acid3 test - and even worse when Acid4 eventually arrives...

...unlike almost every other rival it has (including the mobile browsers!)

Bear in mind...

...that the BOFH probably spent Christmas in hospital after realising too late that the PFY had wired his chair up to the mains...

Unfortunately, given how motivated each of them are by clearing away rivals, that was a big mistake on the BOFH's part. After all, whilst temporarily incapacitated, the PFY could put certain schemes in motion...

Whatever's happened to the BOFH, it's clear that he's legally dead even if not physically dead. So resuming his former position seems rather unlikely. Needless to say, the interviews for a new operator/sysadmin are going to be "interesting" - and no doubt the local hospital might consider placing an ambulance on standby outside the building to deal with any surviving unsuccessful candidates...

Having said that, IIRC Simon and Steven have met the occasional like-minded IT person working for other companies in the area in the past...

Grenade as it's an appropriate warning for potential candidates...

Classic PEBKAC error

Aren't they all? A colleague's SO has received coding notices for a previous job, ignoring the one he's in at the moment. Apparently he's already been on the phone to them several times.

Apparently lots of people are similarly affected - there was a story on The Today Programme yesterday about it.

Other OSes are also available...

...which presumably are immune from this bug :)

Having said that, Mandriva Updater finds security updates for various bits of my Mandriva 2010 box several times a week. So although there are hardly any viruses in the wild that exploit Linux systems (probably due to a combination of relatively low usage and a better security subsystem), evidently developers are continually finding (and fixing) security holes in the various components.

Then again, the updates are usually very small in size, and are delivered as/when available, rather than several MB in size, collated together, then released once a month. And it's entirely up to you to initiate the downloads, unlike Windoze which downloads by default, unless you specifically ask it not to. Oh yes, then there's the joy of rebooting whenever any major update is installed :)

I have to use Windoze at work, but at home, give me the penguin any day :)

Improving the UI

Actually, if you read their blogs, they are working on reducing the amount of screen real estate taken up by menus / toolbars / Awesome bar / tabs etc. - with some improvements in 3.7 but the big changes will be happening in 4.0.

It's just that being a multiplatform browser, they need to carefully work out a UI that not only looks good, but looks good on multiple platforms AND doesn't alienate people used to using the [ File / Edit / View / History / Bookmarks / Tools / Help ] menu system to navigate.

The worst thing they could do is blindly impose a radical UI change like the Office 2007 ribbon.

As for things such as HTML 5 video, you need the support in the browsers BEFORE web developers start including the content, as they'll only include things in formats which are supported by a large portion of web browsers.

The whole point of the exercise is to facilitate an increase in the adoption of FOSS audio/video codecs (and associated software), so there's less chance of the web community being bitten in future by companies claiming patent rights on proprietry codecs and demanding payment for their use.

Oops!

OK, the same mistake could happen to anyone, but the fact it's Microsoft just makes it several orders of magnitude funnier :)

Bing may be the third most popular search engine around, but I can imagine it won't take many years for it to succomb to the same problem that affects most Microsoft products - bloat. And it wouldn't surprise me if at some point in time they roll out a version of Bing that makes heavy use of Silverlight. All the time increasing the eye candy while not concentrating too hard on the algorithms behind the information gathering, collating, categorising and indexing.

Greasemonkey

So they've finally noticed the numerous GreaseMonkey scripts that already do this for computers running Firefox? Of course, FF can also kill the ads :)

Darwin

Watch out for the episode where the Boss wins the award for causing a great service to humankind by unintentionally removing himself from the gene pool before he has had a chance to reproduce, courtesy of an act of unimaginable stupidity.

In other words, the BOFH and PFY dispose of him, then seed the websites of various news outlets with details of his tragic "death by misadventure" (as the Coroner would report it). Needless to say, the BOFH and PFY have a cast iron alibi for being in a completely different town on the day, as verified by numerous computer records and CCTV footage (it's amazing what you can do with video editing software these days...)

Acid3

Courtesy of Wiki's page on the test:

IE7: 14/100

IE8: 20/100

IE9: 32/100 (so far)

So what could they aim for?

Firefox 2.0.0.12: 56/100

Konqueror 4.0.2: 61/100

Konqueror 4.3.2: 89/100

BlackBerry: 91/100

Android 1.5: 93/100

Firefox 3.5.5: 93/100

Firefox 3.6: 96/100 (so far)

Chrome 3.0.195.33: 100/100 (not pixel perfect rendering)

Chrome 4.0.249.0: 100/100 (not pixel perfect rendering)

Epiphany 2.28: 100/100 (+ pixel perfect rendering)

Midori 0.2.0: 100/100 (+ pixel perfect rendering)

Best workaround

Bill's fan club will probably hate me for this, but it has to be said:

1) Download a Linux Distro

2) Burn to CD/DVD (Mandriva Free is a DVD ISO)

3) Insert CD in CD drive

4) Reboot

5) When prompted, say "Yes, I do want to reformat my HDD"

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that. You'll probably want to backup your documents first. And in between steps 4 and 5:

4a) Realise your computer has ignored your CD and is starting to boot Windows.

4b) Reboot again

4c) Hit Delete like a mad thing to get into your BIOS

4d) Spend a merry 5 minutes working out where they've hidden the boot order screens.

4e) Amend your boot order.

4f) Press F10 (usually corresponds to save and exit)

4g) Wait for the computer to reboot and start loading the CD

4h) If it's a Live distro, double check that most of your hardware still works.

4i) Double click the button to install it to your computer.

-oOo-

But I'm not surprised at the Microsoft employee admitting they're not entirely sure of the dependencies any more. What almost certainly happens when they're building a new version of Windows is to start with the existing version, then change / tweak bits as needed. And if the programmers don't document their code fully, then seek alternative employment, you're screwed. Heck, there's probably still some Win 95-era code hiding in Win 7... and maybe the occasional method or two from Win 3 or earlier...

Ugh!

Silverlight 4 "programmatically tied into the computer" - sounds like it'll either be heaving with DRM / WGA, or it'll only run on Win 7 ("We're gonna make you upgrade from XP one way or another...muhahahahaha!") - so anyone using Macs and Linux can forget Silverlight.

Not that anybody worth their while actually uses it (*cough* ITV *cough*), as Adobe's Flash has been around for what seems like forever and is seemingly everywhere.

IE9: Balance between standards compliance and "real world" usage.

Excuse-moi? You can achieve a full "real world" multimedia experience whilst remaining standards compliant. I suppose what they mean by "real world" is "backwards compatibility with all the crud we piled into all previous versions of IE".

Now, choice of icon... Thumbs down, Stop, FAIL, Flame, Grenade, Badgers or Evil Bill? I'll go for FAIL as it's already destined to be one :)

Other papers (@Evil Graham)

You forgot The Telegraph, which would have had an exclusive investigation revealing that the studio where the picture was taken was being rented by an MP, who (you've guessed it!) was claiming the full cost of rent and bills on expenses. Not to mention a dozen copies of the film itself...

Not just Apple...

OK, so they're probably unlikely to have heard of a British startup called Acorn Computers, but back in 1988 they were producing 32-bit multitasking desktop systems with a taskbar along the bottom - seven years before Bill was doing the same with Win 95...

UAC - good idea, implemented far too late.

If UAC had existed from Win 95 onwards, then I suspect we wouldn't be seeing most of the problems associated with it.

After all, UNIX/Linux was built from the ground up to request elevated permissions when doing potentially risky stuff (e.g. Mandriva Control Center, writing to any folder other than /home/username) application developers made darn sure their apps only wrote user data to 'safe' folders.

Windoze didn't have anything like that, so app devs were free to write user data wherever on the system they darn well wanted to ( C:\Windows used to be a favourite, then the app folder within Prog Files). So trying to shoehorn a set of security protocols onto a system that wasn't designed to have any was bound to cause problems - as oodles of applications tried to write data to 'unsafe' locations and prompted the UAC prompt.

Oh, then there was the problem of graphics drivers. Unless you had exactly the right version of graphics driver (not necessarily the latest), switching to the "Secure Desktop" would take painful seconds to do so. And between taking a snapshot of your desktop, storing it somewhere in the recesses of your computer's memory, and drawing the image onto your screen, you'd be presented with err...nothing. Literally.

And with this research, once you fall off the end of the 30 day AV trial most PC manufacturers bundle with Windoze, if you haven't already upgraded to a full AV package, you're b*gg*r*d if you venture onto the 'net...

Conspiracy theory

The school computers looked a little dated - hell, they were still using CRTs! As for the routine - judging by the lyrics on the board, they'd probably had one lesson (if that) to both rehearse and film it. Including the scene in the corridor outside the classroom. By the time you've heard that infuriating song once, you should be intimately familiar with the chorus.

I bet it was a deal to grab themselves some decent hardware (and Win 7) at a discount...

I'm disappointed though that it appears that none of them have had the shrewd economic sense to flog the free T-shirts on E-Bay yet...

(I would try and find a Google-themed song for balance, but YouTube is down for maintenance atm...)

@jamesperson

If what you're saying is true, send FB an email from the account you registered with, and ask them what they will accept as evidence you are very much alive. Then if/when you get your account back, see how long you can resist posting this quote as a status update:

"I regret to inform you that rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

Name fail

Who in their right minds would buy a car called "Revolte"?

The word's too similar to Revolt (to rebel against authority - 'leccy cars are hardly revolutionary!), which in itself is too similar to Revolting (disgusting).

Never mind the apparent concept of suicide doors with no central pillar - doesn't exactly inspire feelings of safety...

Making money?

Given the large proportion of people who communicate on Twitter using third party applications, they'd never be able to make enough money through advertising alone.

Charging license fees to use the API might be one route - although given the API is currently free, it would have to change significantly.

Another route could be being bought up by a media conglomerate who won't mind shelling out for the hosting / handful of staff on the basis that the loss is more than compensated for by other aspects of the company.

A third route would be do go down the Wikipedia route - forget all notions of becoming a profitable company, and instead set up as a charity. You don't charge for anything, but 'gently' remind users logging in to the web interface that they need so many million dollars per year to cover the cost of the hosting...

"What are they spending their millions on?"

Hosting (on a decent specced server / server farm) and bandwidth (the more the merrier!). Individual data packets may be small (140 bytes), but the volume of packets is incredibly high. Most people familiar with Twitter are familiar with the "Fail Whale", and the only way to avoid being too busy is to ensure you have enough server and bandwidth capacity to handle the ever-increasing volume of traffic.

Having said that, implementing a more effective 'seek and destroy' policy with regards to spam bots / pr0n bots / retweet bots would help reduce demand slightly :)

An oldie but a goodie...

An English teacher wrote on the blackboard:

A woman without her man is nothing

and asked the students to copy it down and punctuate it correctly.

All the male students wrote:

A woman, without her man, is nothing.

All the female students wrote:

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Punctuation is powerful!

Only 3.75% spam?

Does that include or exclude the spambots that retweet random messages without attribution between their links to make automatic detection harder?

Definitely not included would be the spambots that follow given hashtags, and automatically follow anyone using them...

AC Thurs @ 19:40: "Twitter is for twits" - ITYM -i +a in that last word :) Just don't say it on radio :)

And what do they mean by "5.85% self promotion"? If they mean promoting websites etc. run by you, then surely some of that figure could be included in the spam count?

Does "news" include accounts that grab RSS feeds from news sites and tweet them?

I assume "conversational" is probably @ replies or mentions.

And talking of pointless babble and self-promotion... :D

As well as tweeting under my nickname, you'll find me behind a couple of twitterfeeds: @CovWeather and @LonWeather - both of which should be self-explanatory!

Now to spend an enjoyable evening blocking the 100s of spam accounts that will have read this and decided to start following me as a result...oh, and if you're deluded enough to genuinely want to follow me and read my random incomprehensible gibberish, might be a good idea to let me know so I don't include you in my next purge...

Darwin!

I'm sorry, but it looks as though that chap's attempting to do the unthinkable - achieve a Darwin Award whilst still remaining alive...

(Remember: permanently removing yourself from the gene pool before you have a chance to reproduce could entail the accident making you infertile whilst still remaining alive)

Jolly Roger? Look below the skull for a much quicker way to achieve the same result...

Crashes

The Linux version of 3.5 (well, 3.5.2) still has a few stability issues - it doesn't like loading a YouTube video while the One & Other feed is running, and last night it decided to crash when loading a Wikipedia article...

The clearer connection between tab and page on the 'tabs below address bar' version is to be welcomed (the current four pixel stripe, of which only the central two are the same colour as the tab - so 2px effective - isn't very clear, especially if you have similarly coloured tabs), although I'm not too convinced on the same shade of translucent grey for everything - especially as it looks as though it's optimised for Windoze rather than platforms in general. How about having no 'background' colour, and allow themes to use gifs/pngs with an alpha channel, so the theme can decide how much transparency you get and where?

Browser free OS?

So what about all the applications that expect to find a browser?

And if you haven't got a magazine CD with Firefox on, how would you install a browser from the web - unless MS ship some form of FTP client?

That Browser Ballot page looks interesting and could possibly get around the EU legislation - perhaps they could also do a media player ballot while they're at it... and a "productivity software" ballot (i.e. office suite)...

Hell, go the whole hog and offer to download rival OSs (e.g. Debian, Fedora, FreeBSD, Mandriva, Mint, OpenSolaris, OpenSUSE, PCLinuxOS, Slackware, Ubuntu ... and maybe even something that attempts to ape Leopard - but on x86 hardware)

I'm puzzled...

In the light of this revelation, I rushed over to NetCraft to see what OS / software Visa's web server was using. The results were highly suspicious - Microsoft's IIS 7.0, allegedly running on a Linux box...

Given that IIS 7.0 apparently only runs on Windoze Server 2003 and Vista, methinks someone's telling Netcraft porkies...

Also in the USA...

Sitting proudly in the Most Read articles section of this very page:

"US State Dept. workers beg Clinton for Firefox"

'Nuff said.