Posts by Fred Flintstone

Wrong construction

With a bit more work on the bottom part you could keep the 2 year old *inside* the thing.

Plus, if it really, really isn't working anymore, you can fill it up with water and use it as a fishtank. That's clever, recycling already planned..

As for sound, I'd spend that money on a couple of electro static speakers. That's the thing you ought to compare it with: electrostats plus base driver, and these speakers, and some good classical music with plenty of violins and percussion. Just my opinion :-)

If only Google offered this itself

I would actually not have a problem with generic ads if Google would forego scraping everything I do. Hell, I may even read some instead of actively blocking them.

Yet that precise option is what Google is actively trying to avoid. The pain of NSA sponsorship, I guess..

No, it's camouflage.

.. you hav not learnet ze Microzoft lezzon: animations hide performance problems.

eBook are typically equipped with fairly simple chipsets, because that takes less energy. The flipside (pardon the pun) is that this is thus slow, and a cute animation will trick you into accepting the page delay while the chipset hoists another page into view. It's a bit like TV satellite links where they switch fullscreen to people on either end, it hides the satellite lag (you may notice they never really interact, only ever hand over).

Microsoft started to do this sometime around W2K when it got complaints that the bootup times were crap. It responded with a fast appearing desktop, which some idiots used as evidence of a faster boot process - until you actually tried to *use* the system and realised that having a desktop is by no means equivalent to having a USABLE system - it still takes a good extra 5 minutes before everything is loaded, updated, patched, booted, linked in (etc).

So that's what animation is for. Camouflage.

Won't survive court

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying that.

Especially the volume of failures will make it improbable that they would win in any court case. You only have to prove one single instance of an error (like arriving at court in your car despite it being "parked") for them to lose. As a matter of fact, all you need to do is ask for test results and failure analysis. If they don't have it they cannot prove the system works 100%, if they have it there will be a clear track record and you'll end up with a settlement before it ever comes to court (because they sure as hell cannot afford to have any such cases to go against them for fear of starting a veritable avalanche).

In addition, I've never been in a garage so equipped, but isn't there an automatic exit barrier?

If not, I want to know where that place is as there is lots of scope to make a complete mess of that system (think plate swapping and cooking up proof you were elsewhere). I'd have these people tear out their hair in a good week or so, all it takes is some planning and strategy.

I've once had an argument with a parking garage in the City of London. They were not happy I parked my car across their two exits before I went to discuss some very strange charges, but it did speed up the discussion and decision process tremendously. It does help I have a foreign license plate, a very thick skin, an even thicker faked accent and a brutally dangerous black sense of humour :-)

Shorter version

"Prince just needs attention, like Lady Gaga"

I know it takes more time to write a short letter (according to Mark Twain), but you're taking the p*ss here.

My own opinion of Prince? Unprintable, but to adopt your longhand style, remove one "r" from "Repetitive Strain Injury" and you'll have some idea..

IXquick

http://www.ixquick.com/

'Nuff said.

Not the v3i

Personally, I think the v3i was from a form factor perspective the best phone ever made. It was exactly the right size, shape and weight, had a removable (read: changeable) battery and worked quite well, and as a flip phone it was also discreet - it wasn't announcing to all and sundry who had just emailed/SMS-ed or called you like iPhones and other almost-smart phones.

The only problem was the user interface, "Joe Bloggs" came up twice if he had been so bold to have two separate numbers, WTF?

But from a physical point of view, I have not found a phone format that approached perfection so well. I still have two..

I have a feeling ..

.. that slightly less legal methods of extraction will result if the people he ripped money from ever get hold of him.

However, you should see this in context of the greater principle here: citizens now so worried about government interference in their lives that it upvotes what appears to be a criminal.

I like the 180 degree twist here: this is technology that has been used for evil, but can also be used for good. Usually the considerations are the other way round..

Two biiiiiiiig problems

The bit Visa (et al) don't tell you about this technology is that it's pathetically simple to pick up from a distance. To help you understand this, think of WiFi: that wasn't "designed" to go more than a couple of meters through doors at the allowed maximum radiation, yet people have managed to bridge miles with it. It is all a matter of setting up the right antennae with the right equipment, and if it's worth the money it will happen. 50 Meters is absolutely no problem AFAIK.

However, what is more important is that the fundamentals are broken. The whole credit card idea was never designed for Internet use, and is thus prone to all sorts of problems, mainly originating the the fact that disclosure of ANY component will break the system. Any merchant losing a DB of credit cards immediately puts those at risk, PINs can be shoulder surfed because they remain static, ditto for CVS and the Visa 3D program happily BS-es people into believing that if a virus can read your keyboard it somehow magically fails to do that with the Visa 3D popup.

Most importantly, NOTHING in those "protection" schemes is for the customer - all of it is focused on dropping the liability of any cock-up in your lap. Anyone who comes up with a way to change that has my vote - and my business. And no, you can keep anything wireless, thanks.

Coherent but worrying..

I got worried after the first three words. "Really smart guy" in relation to Zuckerberg says things about the speaker I don't even want to contemplate for people who are supposedly going to lead the country out of the current mess.

Forced opt-in means collecting garbage

You perfectly illustrate something that anyone with half a brain would know already: as soon as you force people to something you will end up with garbage data.

They want real addresses? Easy - they will either get their own address or one of the competition. Or of a politician. Ditto with phone numbers - call centers are very handy resources for that :-). Email address? Sure, plenty of spam killers around.

It would be fun to run a campaign that would make all those tricks really widely known, because you cannot protect against them - it would force opt-in a lot faster than any law.

Quite simply, PRIVACY IS A RIGHT, not an inconvenience. And it's open season any anyone and any company who doesn't respect that. You want my business/money - then respect my rights.

Where? Well, there..

Given what I saw Jonathan Ross display what was, umm, dug out of an inmate (when part of what he stored started to ring, I leave the mental image up to you), I think there is scope for adding a knife (sheathed).

Having said that, maybe not. A nookie with that, ahem, "payload" would be somewhat on the sharp end, if you catch my drift.

I'll be here all week at this rate, but there's one thing I'd like to add: tasering someone is like running them over with a barbed wire whip, it only leaves less traces. That's why cops like it - a truncheon leaves telltale signs of excessive force, whereas nobody has an idea what it feels like unless they have done it to themselves. Personally, I think it needs extremely careful monitoring under what circumstances it is used, and abuse should be rewarded like for like.

So that would be two taserings, in the gonads?

I can..

.. but the London Underground joke has already been made. Sorry.

Well, umm..

.. I vaguely remember that approach with Microsoft approved drivers and signatures. Didn't go anywhere proper either..

That's what the plastic sacs were for..

That wasn't disabling them, just camouflage.

Do we actually PAY these people do be this stupid?