Posts by J 3

Wow...

Snake oil, and expensive one at that. Unless AC above is right and these programs DO make a difference in typical John Doe computers.

Now... Three minutes to boot a 1 year old "super" computer? One minute to start bloody Office? Really? The thing has a quad-core, 7200rpm HD, 2 (or 4) GB of RAM, FFS... Not that boot times matter (you don't do it much), but the app startup is a bit more of a problem. Sorry see bit rot is alive and well in the Windows world. Let's see if Windows 7 finally solved it -- but being a Vista service pack, I wouldn't hold my breath.

I mean, my 4 or 5 year old single core (nice 2.4 GHz though) Dell with a run-of-the-mill 5400 rpm HD and 4GB of RAM takes 5-10 seconds from starting OpenOffice Writer (not exactly known as a speed demon) and being fully ready to use, same for other OOo programs -- running Ubuntu 9.04, by the way, don't know how it would be in Windows. And I've never timed the boot (haven't booted in months) but I think it's about one minute or so to have the desktop ready.

Er...

When I read the title I thought "wow, they changed the asteroid's trajectory, how come I haven't heard of such an interesting mission?", but then it was just a much more mundane *recalculation* of what the trajectory might be. :-P

Anyway, I eagerly await that pass, and I hope it will pass over a region from where I can see it. That will be something cool to watch, even if just a small dot.

@Password in wallet

Well, you'd reset them the same way you reset forgotten passwords now, I suppose?

Although it is sure true that the bank would love to hear that you kept the bank/credit cards together with the written passwords...

A system that works well for me is using the first (or second, or third, etc) letters of each word from part of a song/book passage/poem/motto/whatever, substituting some character for others (e.g. 3 for an e, 1 for either i or L or even the whole word "one", etc.). That way you end up with something that "looks random", but that has meaning to you. Then your password reminder could be something like "Douglas Adams" or "SRV", and good luck to anyone who'd try to guess which part from which book/song (and using which scheme) you are using there.

WWPD?

@Sir Runcible Spoon

"banned from running for office for 8 years!?"

Yup. In Brazil, when you get removed from a political position because of doing something wrong, you get stripped of "political rights" for 8 years. (said rights meaning holding office, although I think the person may still vote, but I don't know the details)

We impeached a corrupt President (Collor) in the 1990s, and after his eight year ban he came back to politics. In the meantime, one of his minions who used to control the money got "suicidated" with his girlfriend (they said she killed him and then committed suicide, but the investigation is reported by some to have been sketchy). Collor got elected by his state (shameful Alagoas) to the Senate, and is now powerful again.

Sad, but true.

@Another demonstration

...of Poe's Law?

I suspect so too.

@Her?

Well, do YOU know what Luna is up to in those few days of the month when it effectively "disappears" from our view? I don't, so it could be...

@Destroy All Monsters

Apparently the joke was lost on you. Did the sarcasm trick you?

@AC

"The practicalities of stripping off just in time before the gas cloud reaches you also aren't good."

True, but those would be entertaining final moments at least.

Cranking?

"But one downside to the phone’s integrated crank, as we see it, is that you will need to keep cranking the handle while the phone’s clamped to your ear."

Sure that would be hard. And presumably noisy when the phone is help up to the ear, so who would even be able to crank and talk at the same time anyway?

Now, for continuous use for longer periods a "remote crank" would sure be useful indeed. For quick emergency calls... not sure whether the extra hassle of gear would make it up for it.

@Erp Erpington

Well, assuming the thing does indeed work well (to be seen?), I can see a big advantage to it in situations such as:

- bank site developers are lazy and/or uninformed and don't use this technology;

- bank site users become victims of XSS;

- bank is then easily shown to be negligent in their security practices, and will be held responsible for losses.

If this indeed occurs as I naively see, then I guess banks (and other sites with sensitive content) would definitely have quite an amount of incentive to keep their devs' practices good at work under penalty of sacking and all that.

Or not.

@What do do about Baby Carl Marx..

"Everyone else sells cocaine, everyone else does it, is it perfectly legal?"

No, you stupid idiot. That's not what the quote said. Go back to second grade. He didn't say everybody is doing it, therefore it's legal. He said it's legal, and everybody else is doing it too. Huge different that anyone with an IQ higher than a chimp's would promptly spot.

Now, whether what they were doing was legal or not is another, completely different story.

Glad...

Glad Amazon lost the money, too bad it did NOT go to the end in the courts. If they settled, they must have thought they were likely to lose, no? It would be good for the legal precedent to be established here -- against Amazon's acts, of course.

@James O'Brien

And some idiots and morons think it is fine for corporations to remotely mess with people's property and get away with it. Funny world, innit?

Well...

A Maltese (and similar rat breeds) might be small, but their bite can surely make a lot of damage. Strong jaws, the carnivores, y'know. My cat is nearly twice the size of the average Maltese. With canine teeth about 1 cm long. Same for claws. He won't be able to immediately kill anyone, sure, but it won't be pleasant if he decides to attack. Same for these little yapping dogs.

Now, the rant on dog education. It's common to have this type of problem with toy breeds. People treat them like babies or toys, but they are pack carnivores. So they end up being the alpha animal after a while. And everyone goes "aw, how cute the little dog being brave"... Idiots, Chirac's household included.

Oh, and in case you don't know it can work with cats too. Mine is quite obedient, at least when I am around (I know he does the forbidden things like go on top of the table when I'm not, but that at least shows he knows who's the alpha animal in the house). My girlfriend, that would be. :-)

@David W.

I take it you downloaded 9.10 (or whatever), installed it and the multiple monitors didn't work, then. Right.

Damn...

Getting tougher and tougher. If Linux starts getting this kind of problem, then I will be in trouble too...

Well, if you can't switch to Linux, then at least use a live CD to do such sensitive things. Easier, but more cumbersome (rebooting and all) than a VM, for the average punter.

Gaijin?

I'm afraid to go to that site right now, maybe later...

But why is the foreigner fucked? Worries me, since I have gaijin cousins living in Nihon...

Prices high?

"the lack of printing and distribution costs that ebooks enjoy could cut publishers' overhead significantly"

"Could" is the right verbal tense. But if other digital media prices compared to the physical equivalents are any indication, prices won't change much. But profit surely will. Damn, I've seen downloads that are MORE expensive than the physical product!

I'm afraid...

I don't know how these things work, but I hope that does not mean the end of a great on line store. You know, when they have to satisfy shareholders more than they have to satisfy customers, things go downhill. I've bought quite a bunch of stuff from Newegg. Good prices and good service. Are prices gonna go up and service quality go down to make it be just another Best Buy/Circuit City/ fill-in-the-blank?

I hope I'm completely off the mark.

Damn pigopolists...

I am not one to defend big corporations or the like, but YouTube is doing these record companies a big favor. Why in hell do they keep fighting it is beyond me. YouTube is advertising their music for free.

Anecdote time.

A few weeks ago a friend created a FaceBook event, of which I was one of the invited people, to go see a band called Gogol Bordello. They're coming to town next month. Never having heard of the guys, and being a bit busy with many things at the time, I clicked on "no". Fast forward a couple of weeks, and another friend (musician) who's a fan of that band posts a YouTube link to one of their videos. Being more unoccupied at that moment, I decided to click on the thing to see what all the enthusiasm was about. The damn gypsy punks are awesome and I was blown away by that and several other of their crazy videos on YouTube. A few more days and I had bought a couple of their MP3 albums on Amazon. And now I HAVE to go see that concert.

None of that would have happened if Gogol Bordello's videos weren't freely available somewhere for a friend to post them (watching TV is not my forte, and "music video" channels do not really exist anymore anyway). I don't listen to radio often either, and this band is not the type of thing you hear in the typical 'Merkin airwaves very often, unfortunately. Now I've spent a bunch of money on their albums and concert, and have new music I enjoy. Who's lost anything here, I wonder?

I for one...

I will be more than glad to pay the required price for the upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.10 myself in all my computers. Worth the money.

Agreed...

Google should not be "helping" Microsoft have a modern working browser. All they have to do is make their site with whatever tech they want. Say, YouTube, GMail, Docs. Then if the user visits the site with a browser that can't understand the public standards that most other browsers do, then just tell the user so. "Your browser lacks the capabilities to display this site. Please see this list of some of the most popular browsers that are capable of this." When MS finally gets a browser that is capable, then it gets added to the list too.

As far as I can see, which might be not much, this would make one of two things happen: either MS gets off their thumbs, or IE loses market share (imagine the average punter trying to see the latest YouTube gem a mate recommended and getting a "your browser sucks" message). Either is a good enough idea, methinks.

Er...

It's amazing our ancestors managed to reproduce before such amazing collaborative tools were bestowed upon us by Google...

@Anonymous Coward 29th September 2009 09:49

You don't see anything wrong with those questions and then post as Anonymous Coward, eh? Priceless irony. And no, that's nothing to do with a deficiency in important metals.

Although it might have been because you are ashamed of your appallingly bad spelling and grammar skills...

Hm...

So, who cares? (apart from the leak of patient info, which is obviously very bad, etc.)

I mean, It's is not like the students started doing/saying those things with the advent of Web 2.0, is it? I'm sure the profs mentioned did all the same things but they had no mean to put it on line to the world to see, so very few people saw it at the time. The yuff is just as stupid as ever (neither more nor less), but with more powerful tools that divulge it all to the world. That goes for the patient info in a way too, of course. In the past, the students would mention that to friends and family. Now they post it to friends and family and the rest of the world to see on line.

Fail all around, but just business as usual.

Heh...

"Useful article, but what is disappointing is that none of the applications get start up time anywhere near the original 35secs of the new clean install - One feels something could be done to recover this?"

Install Linux. It had to be said. :-P

@whining libertards

I can't tell whether your reading skills are limited or whether the frothing at the mouth after reading the title alone was so strong that it even blackened your vision, but the article does say that the user CAN override the preset limit.

So who cares.

If they did NOT allow the overriding, then I would complain too (not that Europe has any direct influence on me). But I can read. I think. Writing though...

Free?

Damn, this is crazy. So now to shut down somebody's account all you need to do is send them some sensitive material and then say "oops, my bad"? The bank screwed up, and then Google and its user, both completely innocent, are screwed? Well, more the user than Google, but they do get the bad press -- can they refuse to comply with the court orders, and at what price?

Re: Re: I'll show them insulting

Well, projecting much, are we, Bassey?

I myself pay for the thing. Not that I really care about the logo change -- we always get reminded that Flickr was part of Yahoo! anyway, when logging out and seeing a message in huge typeface asking whether one wants to log out of Flickr only or out of the whole Yahoo! network instead...

Ai...

@Anonymous Coward Thursday 24th September 2009 10:50

Well, maybe they only show up when the story is actually at least slightly related to call centers, outsourcing operations, snake charmers, poverty, cows, caste system, etc. Why so pissed off? Angry about being a dalit or a boring day at the call center?

@ John Smith 19

"Earth density is about 5700 Kg/m^3. That's a bit over 2 metric tonnes."

Hm... as far as I know 1 metric ton (t) is 1,000 Kg.

A bit rich...

"This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take"

Ah, just like running Microsoft OSes, a risk I would not recommend my friends and families take. But anyway...

Gee...

What a sick society...

And...

And if this goes like usual MS (OK, capitalist) modus operandi and they kill the Apple stores, they then switch to treating the employees and customers like Wal-Mart does theirs. Nothing new there.

@They missed a trick

"Hm, thinking of sexy, I can use this for pr0n and nobody will know? Score!"

Well, depending on how good the pr0n is, people might notice at least something going on...

Oh, my eyes!

Why? WHY!?

Make the damn thing look like a Smart, maybe, or something like that. Anything is better looking than this.

@Jimmy Floyd

<quote>

"...gamers who don't feel the need to brag of their allegiance to a gaming brand."

Is that really an issue for gamers? Or, indeed, anyone?

</quote>

You haven't been around the hallowed pages of El Reg for long, specially the commentard-filled ones, I can see.

@use the right language

...and Joe A. Public fell asleep around the 4th word of the third line...

Re: And my hopes were dashed...

I couldn't help keep reading it like that either. I wonder if the same problem happens in French...

Re:Chris Thomas Alpha

If the human's browser can see the CSS, which it must to be able to present the page correctly, then so can any computer on the Internet, including the bot. Then?

Besides, one would have to identify, in the HTML form, the fields that are supposed to be hidden. Unless it's done differently (or at least randomly) each and every time, the bad guys will learn which key words to avoid. Does not sound very comfortable to work with.

Pet peeve time

"no discernible affect on the brain"

What's up with wrongly using the verb "affect" instead of the noun "effect"? Quite common Anglophone mistake, with these two homophones, and one that quite annoys this Latin language. C'mon, how hard is it to get it right?

Unless you mean that there no discernible liking for the brain, in which case I might complain about your choice of preposition. :-)

But who am I to talk about prepositions, the bane of the non-native speaker, in any language...

Oh, my...

Some commentards are just plain stupid...

Anyway, adding to the choir, the first ones were funnier, this one... Meh.

What is funniest for me is that one of my friends looks quite a bit like "Prince Obi", and speaks in a similar way too! Only he is from Liberia, not Nigeria... I'm probably committing a terrible African faux pas by saying that they sound similar -- maybe like saying that a German and French sound similar when speaking English -- but I care not.

Faceful of nastiness?

Oh, well. Life is tough.

@ tee hee AC

Rape? What rape? Threat of violence could be anything. I didn't see any indication that said violence would be rape -- he could be threatening to beat people up if they refuse to have sex in public. Which is quite different from rape, although they could coincide. But I don't see that in the text.

Only a porn-addled, rape-lovin' asshole geek would automatically jump to the conclusion they were talking about rape. One track mind, much?

@How Simple Can It Be???

And some people like to say that Linux is hard...

Oh, yeah, and the hiding of the extensions by default is pure evil too.

Nice...

Almost tempting me to replace my 1st gen nano, which is still working as well (or you might say badly depending on your taste, but I like it) as the first day. Seems like a waste to buy another if this one is still going strong -- ignoring the scratches, of course.

I only listen to radio when I forget my iPod at home, and I couldn't care less for videos, so I'd rather have those in cash discount. But anyway. The pedometer is interesting though, IF it works without requiring the Nike shoes (does it?).

Re: Don't let creotards

No, "design" is a BAD word for this, and I avoid it like the plague in my lectures. Unless you always write "appearance of design" or "appeared to be designed", which is unwieldy and useless anyway -- since we know the appearance is just that. But it would be the technically correct way.

Grab your dictionary and look up design. It is always related to intention, planing, purpose, etc., while biological evolution has nothing of the sort. As a typical example: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/design

Mind you, I don't like the word "selection" either for similar reasons, but is a much lesser problem.

Re:Gates must be shaking his head in disbelief.

"Gates must be shaking his head in disbelief."

Well, maybe not, considering the very bad ads he himself starred in with Seinfeld... OK, not as bad as whatever Ballmer does, but still...

Gee, I didn't know that video for Europe's song... Almost as bad as the Windows 7 commercials, but at least the made me smile a little with a poodle band's antics and all that.

Safe from fungus...

...until the dandelion eating fungus shows up, that is.

@The trouble with haemophiliac Dandelions & CO2 sink?

Maybe, maybe not. Supposing that the enzyme is useful in the little plant's survival, it would not spread well in the wild. I'm just speculating here, but it might be that the latex needs to polymerize quickly to heal any wound caused to the little stems -- the large rubber trees wouldn't need that speed, since they are big and can spare a big of latex while the healing occurs. So, in the wild, a small latex plant that "bleeds" quickly would not survive well. Just like human hemophiliacs.