Posts by Eddy Ito

Obviously

If Google gets Skype they will record all your conversations and create a searchable database so the NSA can keep track of everything you say and they will sell companies data on your inner most pseudo-private desires in the hopes you won't be too pissed when they call during dinner hours.

Facebook controlling Skype would be much different. Your friends would video/voice spam you with every "must have" for the game of the week they play. Simultaneously everyone will be able to keep track of every bloody sound you make and of course, they will sell companies data on your inner most pseudo-private desires in the hopes you won't be too pissed when they call during dinner hours.

Either way within about two years there will be inet-nannies demanding that the gubbermint "do something", probably "for the children" and the good old congress critters, in the interest of being reelected, will certainly "do something" stupid and ineffective like make a "Do Not Skype" database that will require you to sign up and inform the folks in East Buttfuck what handle to send the majority of their skype spam to. Of course, the usual suspects will be exempt from the don't bugger list based on how much political influence they have or can afford. Typically they are, in order, political parties looking for donations/ support, religiosity groups looking for donations/ support, police and fire groups who want you to enjoy their balls as much as they do and any odd sales fucker you made the mistake of saying hello to in your travels.

eight word title for a two bit comment

Hot helium for lift? A dirigi-balloon?

Flames... for the heat of course.

So it begins

The carriers are just making a grasp to prevent slipping into the abyss of commodity service. Can it be long now? Soon wireless internet will make the same slide as wired internet that terminates in an endpoint and from there you connect whatever you damn well please. They may take our :80, :25 and :142 as we give them the :79 but they'll never take OUR FREEDOM!

Doesn't make sense

Why would a company put an unlimited 3G SIM into a device that has to transmit... what, maybe 1 KiB per month? Shirley... or is it Sheila, the smart thing to do would have been an arrangement for a limited data PAYG arrangement that was renewable every few years. FFS, it isn't like they were getting a family plan with an emergency mob for grammy, the usage would be pretty much fixed given the number of meters... oh yeah, fixed meters and frankly GPRS would work just fine.

It's good I'm not a judge, I'd tell both companies to split the A$200k as a lesson on the cost of stupid.

Big deal

Now we need permission to sue corporations just like we always needed permission to sue the state. Great, just another sovereign entity. I can't wait until the courts decide the state can't sue corporations and corporations can't sue the state. Oh yeah, I'll have the beer and peanuts ready for that one... assuming I'm allowed of course.

All I can say

I'm damn glad none of this counts toward the paltry data limits imposed by our wireless network overlords... what's that? What do you mean this isn't free? You seem to imply those two bits are going to cost me two bits?!?!?! _Why those __dishonest__ bastards!!_

Frosty beverage because I damn well deserve one and [pick your "favorite" phone company] should be buying.

Look and feel, prior art?

Let's see, a rectangle with slightly rounded corners and a grid of icons as UI... hmm... where did I put that old USR Palm Pilot from so long ago. Oh wait, my Windows 3.1 desktop should do nicely. Can we agree the icony is ironic?

To point out the obvious

"The data was three days old by the time Ehman spotted Wow!, meaning that if it were a message, the sender could have moved on for lack of a reply."

"Could have"? Let's allow for a bit of reality here. If it had come from the closest Terebellum star, Omega Sagittarii, the message wasn't 3 days old it was more like 78 years old so... yeah it's quite likely the sender has, without a very impressive lifespan, probably shuffled off by the time Ehman saw it.

Equally, if it had come from some space schooner much closer to us, say under a light year, it is disappointing that they are either so daft as to not have a proper comprehension of physics to go the last mile in their herculean undertaking or so egotistical as to automatically assume we would instantly know WTF 6EQUJ5 means (for the record my statistical analysis shows it to mean "mostly harmless"). In either case, all I can say is, good! We have plenty of halfwits in the case of the former and plenty of pols if it's the latter. Then again, maybe 6EQUJ5 is just the sound Voyager makes when impacting the only other intelligent life in the 'verse.

I, for one,

Am SHOCKED! Seriously, what took them so long? You'd think that for what MS & Co. pays for pols this would have been fast tracked.

260k vehicles

So that would roughly be the Google street-voyeur fleet.

Nothing but reruns... again

Dueling handba... er, trashcans at dawn! Hey, at least it's fun to watch.

Shed?!?!

Holy slippery silkie shit... 5,000 sq. ft. and it's a shed! Why that's over 22 NanoWales which, if square, would be a bit long of 2.3 Double-decker buses on a side! Hell, it would fit my last house in it four times and still have enough room to park the car, even if I drove... a double-decker bus! Remind me to never take directions from Lewis. He'd tell me to watch for the crack in the asphalt and it'd turn out to be a 200 foot deep vertical wall yawning chasm that can't be crossed for 1000 miles without air transport.

Shed my arse! A pint for the rest of you lot feeling a mite jealous.

A neat trick

Don't the DARPA sect understand that this may be a feat more difficult than mere VTOL jeeps or flying submarines that transmogrify into a fleet of armored battle bots you can carry in your pocket? Seriously how do they expect to lock down an operating system that is built upon selling the spy data it continuously collects? Then again, perhaps they do understand, the "pre-boot environment" would effectively be a container that separates the pretty OS from the data needing security, it could even lie to the location interface so software running on the OS couldn't track the user's movement. But if you're going to go through that kind of hassle why not just write a secure OS with emulation capabilities to run the iOS/Android software?

Huh?

Since when is making a gesture for a keyboard shortcut or mouse clicks patentable? Oh, it's two fingers that makes... no difference at all.

May I

MS SOS!? Oh hell yeah, that's way better than MS Bob

Oh shit!

Damn, here I thought I was safe from all the bandwidth sucki^W^W iPhone types. Time to check... oh double shit, Sprint bought Virgin's US operations a few years ago. All I can say is if Verizon buys Sprint, mobile choices are going to look a lot like election day. Meaning you get to choose between mayo and mustard but you're still getting a shit sandwich.

Would come as no surprise

He would fit in well with a government more interested in poking around in the citizenry's private business than it is actually functioning as a government. Gee, that he is loved by both sides of the red and blue divide can only mean it would be the worst of all possible worlds for the folks actually paying the bill for all this meddling.

What do you mean that isn't an Eric Schmidt icon?

He should have walked

Clearly asking for an ID was in violation of his 5th amendment rights protecting him from self incrimination!

I don't understand

Key rings on that side of the pond must be made of seriously tough material if so many people can't be bothered tossing an unidentified key, or three.

Thank the gods and little fishes

Poor spelling is perhaps the single largest bane of good coding. I can't tell you how many times I've seen "foo" and "bar" initialized as different variables. FFS, it's "FUBAR"! How is anyone down the road going to maintain a steaming heap like that? To make matters worse, they are often commented out and that's frequently both printf statements! Programmers, an infuriating lot!