* Posts by J 3

896 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Watch out, Tokyo! Samsung readies a 15 terabyte SSD

J 3
Happy

15.36 or 16...

I do not care, I want one for my server!

SourceForge staggers to feet after lengthy STORAGE FAIL outage

J 3
Mushroom

10 days later...

Well, almost. Nine days. It's 2015-07-28 and SourceForge is still not fully functional -- try adding a new project.

Mobiles at school could be MAKING YOUR KID MORE DUMBER

J 3

Re: Teaching kids

"Schools are supposed to teach kids stuff."

Obviously. But are basic good manners one of them? Sure they can help with that, specially in the "interacting with lots of people" kind of situations, but good parents/family should probably be the ones doing most of that otherwise. The blaming of schools for the lack of simple human interaction skills sometimes goes too far, methinks.

J 3
Headmaster

Re: @werdsmith

"The standard of English found on the Internet suggests YOUR RITE. But THEIRS a well-attested phenomenon of contextual usage."

Er... I hope you were going for "funny" there. On purpose.

Don't pay for the BBC? Then no Doctor Who for you, I'm afraid

J 3
Paris Hilton

Re: Telly Tax exit stage right!!

And from whom is Netflix licensing the content?

Now Samsung's spying smart TVs insert ADS in YOUR OWN movies

J 3
Mushroom

WTF!

Nevermind the "mistake". What shocks me is that the capability exists in the first place!

I could always say "no Samsung telly for me", but what good would that do, when all other makers are probably following in their footsteps soon, if they haven't already?

Japan's death threat hacker collared ... BY A CAT

J 3
FAIL

This is one crappy article...

Unintelligible, or maybe I'm being slow due to Friday. So, why the hell did the cat have an SD card on its collar? How does that have anything to do with catching the guy?

It makes you wonder: if I have to go elsewhere to understand what happened, why read The Register in the first place? Damn lazy writers...

Ubuntu smartphone to go on sale: It'll be harder to get than a new iPhone

J 3
Go

Re: Ubuntu is using flash sales, announced via Twitter, as a marketing tool to create buzz

It works for Apple, so why not give it a shot? Maybe it works *only* for Apple, not sure, but still gotta try to be sure.

Strap on fitness finesse: Withings Activité Pop

J 3
FAIL

Unimpressed

It looks nice, but functionality-wise it seems too expensive for what it can do. I got a Fitbit Charge about a month ago, which works as a watch (show month and day too) and measures more things than the Activité seems to. And I paid $130 (note: US thaler, not sterling pound) :-)

Windows 10, day ZERO ... Will Nadella be the HERO?

J 3
Meh

How much longer are consumers and businesses going to put up...

Agree with what you said there, but I do not think either "consumers" or "businesses" care about "Microsoft's dirty business practices", really. They use that stuff as an amoral tool, they have little choice in what to use, and could care less about the details of how that particular sausage was made. They don't even look for that info to begin with. Guys like you and me and I suppose most El Reg readers are the people who read these stories and know these things. Some of us do care -- but end up having to use the "evil stuff", whomever made it, anyway since their job demands it. But the populace out there? They just use whatever they need to and go home and don't (nor want to) think about it.

Polish chap builds computer into a mouse

J 3
Joke

And then...

Oh, and then just add a keyboard and a screen to the unit and that would be perfect!

'If you see a stylus, they BLEW it' – Steve Jobs. REMEMBER, Apple?

J 3

Indeed. My wife has been using her iPad with a stylus for 3 or 4 years now. I pretty much never see her finger touch the screen...

LIFELESS BEAGLE on MARS: A British TRIUMPH!

J 3
Alien

Last thing it saw...

...was probably this guy. ===================================>

Kim Jong-Un shoot-em-up Glorious Leader! yanked

J 3
Joke

Hm...

To avoid legal trouble, should they choose to resurrect such worthy and advanced project (screen shot looks like something from the mid-90s), I suggest they name the basketball-playing character something like, say, Pennis Manrod or whatever? Oh, way, wrong genre.

Android users are massive wan … er … smut consumers

J 3
Coat

link vaguely NSFW - no pics but still contains the word Pornhub

As did El Reg's URL (not as domain name, sure) and article...

Hawking and friends: Artificial Intelligence 'must do what we want it to do'

J 3
Terminator

"eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable"

Hm... I suspect they use the implicit assumption that disease and poverty are solvable by technical means. Disease, in some cases (but not most), is indeed waiting for "technical" solutions. Poverty, on the other hand, is a purely socio-political problem, and no matter how much tech you throw at it, it will still be a problem until there is the real will to solve it. Resources are not lacking.

Now, is it reasonable to expect that a digital super-intelligence of some kind will manage to somehow convince humanity to end poverty and (most) diseases? Depends on your answer to the questions: are people rational enough? Are people good enough?

J 3
Headmaster

Re: Kill Robot Kill.

Oh, I do think the robot will have trouble understanding that command.

If it was "kill, Robot, kill", then it would have no doubts.

Sony releases Nork flick The Interview straight to DVD (digital video download)

J 3
Coffee/keyboard

Why is he complaining?

From the screen grabs I've seen, Sony has at least made the Supreme Leader look much better in the film than he actually does in real life...

The future looks bright: Prepare to be dazzled by HDR telly tech

J 3
Mushroom

Re: Not convinced

People seem to like very saturated, high contrast pictures. I see the same phenomenon in photography. After my photographer friends pass their shots through Lightroom, for example, they come out supersaturated and very sharply contrasted, I've noticed. That's always gets plenty of oohs and aahs -- and since I was sometimes there when the shot was taken, I know that the sunset looked nothing like that to the naked eye...

Happy 2nd birthday, Windows 8 and Surface: Anatomy of a disaster

J 3
FAIL

Still

"[interface] sufficiently extreme that users had difficulty using apps and navigating the operating system"

Still seems to be the case, at least from my admittedly anecdotal evidence. I hadn't seen Windows 8 until about a month ago, when I went to a scientific conference where the laptop that was being used to feed the projector was running W8. Or maybe 8.1, don't know. Either way, it had that accursed tile interface.

What kind of surprised me was that everyone but one or two guys in the audience seemed to be baffled by the thing. Considering that it has been out for a couple of years, I had expected more people would be familiar with that. But whenever people accidentally fell out of PowerPoint, they would have no clue what to do to get somewhere familiar. Not even the "AV support guy" who was there seemed comfortable in it -- and the guy from the audience who knew would tell them from the back where to click. It would be funny if it hadn't been annoying.

Linus Torvalds releases Linux 3.18 as 3.17 wobbles

J 3
Mushroom

Re: Seems wrong...

Yeah, made me think of this segment by John Oliver...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz29_bFxBZA

Beyond the genome: YOU'VE BEEN DECODED, again

J 3
Headmaster

Identical twins

Well, nearly. Even they have differences. Much fewer than two non-identical-twin siblings, of course, but they are not guaranteed to be identical. Examples:

Bruder, C. E. G. et al. Phenotypically concordant and discordant monozygotic twins display different DNA copy-number-variation profiles. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 82, 763–771 (2008).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18304490

Maiti, S., Kumar, K. H. B. G., Castellani, C. A., O’Reilly, R. & Singh, S. M. Ontogenetic De Novo Copy Number Variations (CNVs) as a Source of Genetic Individuality: Studies on Two Families with MZD Twins for Schizophrenia. Plos One 6, e17125 (2011).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21399695

Also, each gene can code for quite a few different proteins, due to various processes, starting with alternative splicing and taking off from there. Really cool stuff.

J 3
Happy

Re: @Trevor

There are just some 3,500 known species of mosquitoes (the actual number is expected to be at least 3 times larger), so keep swatting.

Oh, by the way, "only" about 200 of those species are vectors for disease causing critters.

One year on, Windows 8.1 hits milestone, nudges past XP

J 3
WTF?

You must have one hell of a gigantic tablet, for 1080p tp make a difference...

That sub-$100 Android slab you got on Black Friday? RIDDLED with holes, say infosec bods

J 3
Joke

Sponsored...

...by Google and Samsung?

Seriously now.

"A lot of these issues could be fixed if Google encouraged manufacturers to push out updates to Android faster."

Well, there is also the question if the near-free tablet even has the hardware capable of running the latest and greatest, no?

Ubuntu's shiny 10th birthday Unicorn: An upgrade fantasy

J 3
Paris Hilton

Re: Does the LibreOffice formula editor appear?

I'm also running 14.04 (LibreOffice 4.2.7.2) but in my system pressing the left Alt then iof (with or without shift, just in case) just brings down the insert, format, and file menus in quick succession. Pressing the right Alt then iof just gives alternative characters). Am I doing it the wrong way?

Oh BOY! The MICKEY MOUSE Apple Watch is no heart-throb

J 3
Meh

Re: What if you're mad like me

"What if you're a bit mad, like me, and keep your watch running a couple of minutes fast so you don't miss the bus, tram, train, boat or whatever?"

Problem is, besides being a bit mad, I'm also an adaptive bastard. So I got used to my watch being fast -- oh, that's OK, the watch is a few minutes fast, I've got time... Famous last words.

Heads up, Chromebook: Here come the sub-$200 Windows 8.1 portables

J 3

Re: re: There are also many who aren't happy with the limitations of Windows

Well, the non-Retina iPad mini is much inferior hardware compared to the Nexus 7 (2013 and up), at least in my book. Starting with the screen, but much else too. So it would not be surprising if the prices were similar, obviously. But when both of them were new... The mini was grossly overpriced -- or the Nexus 7 2 grossly subsidized, if you wish...

Brazil greenlights $200m internet cable to Europe in bid to outfox NSA

J 3
Paris Hilton

Re: Another reason it might be pointless

vulnerability != spyware

You can crunch it all you like, but the answer is NOT always in the data

J 3
Alien

In other words, we begin to measure the physics of the flip. Is this actually possible?

Well, all nice and good, up to a certain extent. Otherwise, we get to a point where it is silly. Or, as a couple of complexity boffins said quite a few years ago now, "Don't model bulldozers with quarks". Now, finding that sweet spot is the real problem...

Yes, yes, Steve Jobs. Look what I'VE done for you lately – Tim Cook

J 3

Re: Tim will be remembered for allowing Yosemite on his watch

"I thought most non-Americans would be familiar with it via Warner Brothers' Yosemite Sam"

There are many people in the world who do not speak English as first language. And at least in mine the cartoon/movie characters usually do not have their original names, or even close. For example, if you do a literal translation of Bugs Bunny's name from my country's version of the cartoon back to English, you'd have "Long leg".

Before living in the US, I used to think that Yosemite rimed with mite...

iPad AIR 2 and iPad MINI 3, 5K iMac: World feels different today – and it IS

J 3
Gimp

Re: $399 on the 16GB Wi-Fi model

Well, you are one of those people I alluded to, who has a specialist need. Not many like you out there. For the vast majority, who only do web, social media, read some PDFs, simple games, etc., then yeah, they are throwing money away buying iPads.

J 3
WTF?

$399 on the 16GB Wi-Fi model

Seriously? Unless you really need (it could happen, rarely) an app that is iOS only, that's a silly way of wasting money. Oh, right, the much better tablet that cost almost half this price that I bought a year ago does not have "that" logo on the back, so it is no good.

PEAK APPLE: iOS 8 SHUNNED by refusenik fanbois

J 3
Alert

Aphrodisiac

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Anyway, my old iPod touch is still on iOS 6. Because it is "not compatible" with anything newer. Not sure if that would affect figures significantly, but anyway.

Apple's SNEAKY plan: COPY ANDROID. Hello iPhone 6, Watch

J 3
Paris Hilton

"lifting your wrist to your face"

Methinks someone needs an appointment with the eye doctor. I ain't no spring chicken, but I sure can easily read my watch -- running faithfully since 1989, battery lasts a couple of years -- from half a meter away...

Premier League wants to PURGE ALL FOOTIE GIFs from social media

J 3
Happy

Re: GIF's?

Being too lazy to look it up, I myself imagined this stands for "I am not a lawyer but I post opinions on the Internet", but I now favor the "poking" version someone else provided.

PEAK APPLE: One MILLION fewer iPads sold this quarter

J 3

Re: I wouldn't say it is Peak Apple

Er... no. Read again:

"the total slab market world-wide bounced 41.5 per cent year-on-year, those emblazoned with a certain fruit fell 9.2 per cent"

So, while growth is slowing down overall, Apple's share is getting smaller. For a while now, so not sure why the surprise. And no wonder. I for example bought a much better tablet for much less money than the equivalent Apple one would cost. So apart from people who are bound to the platform by some specific app that is critical and not available elsewhere, why pay more? Also, as people learn that they use tablets for surfing the Web and little else, as someone said, why again pay more? Status?

Mozilla gaffe exposed 76,000 email addresses, 4000 passwords

J 3
Coffee/keyboard

76,000 email addresses, 4000 passwords

That's all? Feels like the total amounts I have nowadays to handle all the online crap of today's life...

Supermodel Lily Cole: 'I got a little bit upset by that Register article'

J 3
Paris Hilton

Yeah, but which fraction?

"Cole says it's a "fraction" of that" (it being her wealth)

OK, but it that fraction something like 5/4 or 19/11 of the published value? Inquiring minds (don't) want to know... (that's an inquiring mind right there in the icon)

Microsoft walks into a bar. China screams: 'Eww is that Windows 8? GET OUT OF HERE'

J 3
Pirate

Re: Coming up next: Chinese XP.

Source code. That's the thing. Software companies should be forced to release to the public domain any code that they stop supporting, so others can do so if there is demand for such service.

What do you say, the new OS is mostly old code? Well, if that's such a problem then why (rhetorical question) release a new version at all and kill the older one? If the new thing is so much more advanced and different, and not just some cosmetic crap sprinkled with a few worthy performance/security patches, why care about the old code, right?

MacBook Air 13-inch: If you squint hard enough, you'll see a lesser-spotted Apple Price Cut

J 3
Joke

That is...

...one hell of an expensive netbook! Oops, let's not forget the icon, forgot to wear my asbestos (I be old-skool) undies today.

Our Reg reader 'mutt's nuts' dictionary is le chien's biens

J 3
Go

Brazilian Portuguese

I can't believe none of my fellow lusophones has added our contribution to such worthy linguistic matter. I can't believe it's even closer to butter either, but that's a different pet peeve. Either way, Camões' language deserves better! And the World Cup is upon us, so you need to know what to say over here, or at least to your telly when your favorite footballer scores nicely.

First of all, the literal translation of "mutt's nuts" wouldn't have the British meaning here in Brazil, at least in the regions I am familiar with (the country is huge and there are very strange idioms and sayings in other regions that are not intelligible in others, so who knows...). But fret not, we do have an equivalent genital-based expression to provide; a very naughty language, (Braz.) Portuguese.

The literal translation could be "as bolas do cão" (the dog's balls, where ão is a sound that is allegedly exclusive from Portuguese, and sounds sort of like what you get if you say "uh" followed by a deep "mmm", quickly and very nasally). If you don't want to wrestle with the damn ão, you can use "cachorro", which is another word for dog, but that would make the saying much less snappy, admittedly. Also, if you want to keep the mutt (as in "of mixed-breed") element in the saying, use "vira-lata" (literally "turn-can", a dog who lives in the streets messing with trash cans to get food).

We have other ways to refer to the gonads, so you could also use "o saco" (the sac, scrotum) or

"os ovos" (the eggs) instead of "as bolas". I never promised it would be easy, or even less that it would be succinct. Not my style.

Now, the genital-based expression I promised earlier is "do caralho" (where "lho" is like the Italian "glio", i.e. something like "ly-oh" said quickly in English). It is somewhat NSFW (although we're not very shy with the swearing down here, and you might be surprised with what you can hear at work), and it literally means "of the cock", but not of the avian kind, obviously. When a Brazilian says something is "do caralho!", or the shortened version, "duca!", pronounced doo-kah, streess on the doo, as in booing, it means... it's the mutt's nuts. The species of the owner of the "caralho" is not specified here, but the meaning is still the same.

PEAK APPLE: Mystery upstart to hurl iLord from its throne 'by 2020'

J 3
Alert

Re: "one that we have never heard of"?

Assuming the numbers are even correct to begin with. Color me cynic, but they are coming from a site called wmpoweruser (originally, from a "mobile payment company", done who knows how and subjected to who knows what inherent biases). Looks like an ad (hot on the heels of iPhone, really?). Genetic fallacy? Maybe, but I'd rather see something more substantial before drawing any conclusions.

Top tip, power users – upgrading Ubuntu may knacker your Linux PC

J 3
Linux

Yup, happened to one of my computers. But 5 minutes later it was fixed -- well, because I had the live USB right there, I'm familiar with Grub2, Linux boot, blah blah. If I wasn't, then things would have been definitely more scary.

Report: Climate change has already hit USA - and time is RUNNING OUT

J 3

From the little I have learned of the physics and dynamics of this, I seem to recall that weathering of the carbon from the atmosphere takes several hundreds of thousands of years. So, unless we invent an efficient way to scrub it off the air, things won't improve a bit EVEN if we do quit being stupid right now and stop using that tiny atmosphere of ours as a rubbish dump.

J 3
Mushroom

Re: OK, predict next year!

One of the biggest problems with humanity is incarnated right there: people like Herby, who have no fucking clue about what they are talking about, but go on to talk about it anyway. We're doomed.

J 3

Oh, good. Someone please go show this to all those stupid animals and plants that are changing their distribution or behavior. They will sure be relieved to know they were duped.

Please work for nothing, Mr Dabbs. What can you lose?

J 3

Re: Absolutely

It seems to be widespread, then. My graphic designer friends all rant about all the "for-exposure" work they get offered to perform. You know: "I don't have the budget right now, but if this business takes off hundreds, maybe thousands of people will see your work. All you need is to design this logo/flier/website/whatever for me". Amazingly enough, some designers must still believe that is a good deal.

Ubuntu N-ONE: 'Storage war' with Dropbox et al annihilates cloud service

J 3

Re: Shoddy

They were quite late with the email, but it did come. I (non-paying subscriber) got it yesterday (07 Apr).

Five-year-old discovers Xbox password bug, hacks dad's Live account

J 3
Mushroom

Re: Microsoft security

<blink>CONGRATULATIONS!</blink>

You are commentard number 1,000,000 to make that witty comment!

Go to http://fun.drno.de/flash/ButtonRedBig.swf to win something! Maybe! Just follow the instructions!