* Posts by Tom 35

3040 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Na'vi on your sat-navatar

Tom 35

txìng musìna tsengit (exit roundabout)

They have a word for roundabout?

I can see Jump off the Cliff, or Climb that tree (both handy for your GPS unit).

FBI top-brass ask Google, Facebook to expand wiretaps

Tom 35

Backdoor everything?

So they want a backdoor built into everything, and give the FBI the key? No doubt they will say they can't tell anyone that there is a backdoor, and they will be able to keep the key secret and no one will be able to find the backdoor...

Are they going to make Cisco backdoor their VPN products? Who outside of the US will use it them?

Open source software might be a bit difficult to backdoor.

If the FBI have a key, everyone is going to want one too.

Exposed: leaked body scans published online

Tom 35

Is someone watching the watcher?

They could just take a snap of the screen with their cell phone even if the system was locked down.

NY youth makes $130k selling real(-ish) white iPhone 4s

Tom 35

Find a better price for real-ish white covers

It seems he found over 400 suckers at that price.

They may not be exactly stolen, but they are not legit. Companies in China will often run off more items then were ordered, or take defective items and sell them off into the grey market. They are no different then high quality bootlegs.

Prof to drill camera into own skull

Tom 35

I expect the students

would moon/flash or hold up rude signs behind his back.

Tom 35

And it just has to be "new"

The first person to throw shit at a wall and call it art? A master!

The second just gets arrested.

The last time I was at the local art gallery (20 years ago) there was a guy that worked there talking to a couple of people telling them that a very nice painting that was stuck in a corner was no better then a paint by numbers, but a big 10' canvas covered in coloured blotches was a master work. He got pissed off when I said that it was a paint by numbers by a guy that could not stay in the lines (or it might have been the people he was trying to impress laughing that pissed him off).

3D printers, one-dimensional enemies

Tom 35

fully functioning roller-bearing

How many seconds would it last if you actually tried to use it?

Tom 35

Hand-crafted copyright infringement is epidemic,

I went through a few pages from the ebay link and the only thing I saw that might have been "hand-crafted" were some pins. The rest appears to be the normal made in China knock-off crap. There is no way a 3D printer will be able to compete with China.

A few people might go to jail for creating 3D Simpsons porn though.

Alleged bad Appler should pay back $1m

Tom 35
Badgers

normal consultancy contract.

Just because it's "normal" is not proof that your not bent.

I've had to deal with some real crap, but it's ok because the IT manager got a new plasma TV.

Steve Jobs no longer Eggman as Beatles hits iTunes

Tom 35

Don't care

I have the CDs already.

The only thing this is good for is anyone that just wants a few of singles that happen to be on different albums.

Gov and telcos in Aussie wiretap death match

Tom 35

"All they gotta do is give us a letter, and outline some of their plans — it's not burdensome."

And what if they don't like what they see in the letter?

We have a new P2P VOIP service that is outsourced to India. We can't intercept calls or tell you who is calling who except when the call is to an Aussie land line or cell phone.

So letter done, no problem right?

So did Windows Phone 7 'bomb in US'?

Tom 35

Classes exist so you can be the judge

Classes don't exist.

It's just crap someone made up (marketing BS). Who draws the line? Is it 30k? Is there some magical difference between something that costs 29k and 31k that you don't see between 27k and 29k or 31k and 33k? If I have 32K am I not allowed to look at a car that costs 28k?

And as for the phone, a W7 phone is in the same price range as an Android with similar hardware, and not much less then an iPhone. It's not being compared to a phone that costs 5-10 times as much.

Tom 35

What?

"Windows Phone 7 is a nice platform, within its limits"

That's as bad as the car companies that say "best in class". It's saying that it's good as long as you don't compare it to anything better.

Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect Launch Games

Tom 35

It's just a little more direct with Kinnect

http://failblog.org/2010/11/10/epic-fail-video-kinect-fail/#comments

US opts out of carbon trading

Tom 35

shell game

Pay someone to not do something (that they were not going to do anyway) then add a fat markup for the middle men / traders and sell the 'rights' to another to keep doing what they are doing.

The result? Save 0% carbon, and a load of money for the people running the game.

Anything saved is due to people not being able to pay for the credits. It would be better to just charge a straight tax so there is some chance that the money would help pay for services rather then going into the pocket of some scam artist trader.

Hacker unshackles Kinect from Xbox

Tom 35

Did it cost £500?

No it cost more then that, because it came with a 2 year contract that cost 30 a month so that would be 720. They don't just sell you the phone below cost and hope you will use it on their network.

French go after Google for brand grab

Tom 35

I don't see a problem

As long as bootlegs are not showing up in the ads, and the ads don't effect the search results I don't care what shows up in the ads.

Not surprised that the French are whining though.

Disguised impostor clears international flight

Tom 35

Beat the system

They think he went through check in as himself then put on the mask and swapped boarding passes with an accomplice before boarding, (the pass was in the name of a 55 year old American, he could not pass as 55). They should have required photo ID to board, but didn't.

Now the security types here are saying that nothing should have been released about this (as they don't like all the people laughing at them I expect).

Plastic plod used police database to find dates

Tom 35

She had to resign?

I'm sure she was given the choice of resign or get fired. I looks better on the stats then fired with cause as anyone just looking at the numbers can't tell the people who just left on their own form the ones who were pushed. And it's better for her if she can say she left her last job on her own, then if she has to say she was fired.

'Pervy' private chat case springs back into life

Tom 35

But if this is about Situation B

There are other laws in place for that.

More likely Situation C. The cops know he is bad (or they don't like him) but could not find anything worth while to charge him with so they just bent a law out of shape to fit what they did find.

This is never good, even if the guy really IS a bad person, because next time they may use it on some one they just don't like.

Daily Mail rails at Street View in women's refuge wrongness

Tom 35

But what about...

All the schools on street view... and GASP playgrounds!

Adobe Reader browse-and-get-pwned 0day under attack

Tom 35
FAIL

Upgrade treadmill

PDF was a Portable Document Format. But Adobe want more money, so they want to sell upgrades, so they need new features that the marketing department can stick on the box.

They ran out of useful new features years ago and now keep sticking more crap that has nothing to do with documents into Acrobat. Who asked for Flash, video, sound in PDF files?

Credit cards get colour screens

Tom 35

I think the idea of the colour screen is...

So they can run ads on your card. Every time you authorize a payment you have to click past an ad trying to sell you some extra crap.

So forget games... can it run Flash?

Online badness: The kids are not alright

Tom 35

teenage boys are "more exposed" to sexual images

I'm shocked I tell you! Shocked!

Google illegally divulges user searches, suit claims

Tom 35

ixquick

https://ixquick.com/do/metasearch.pl

Same search on Google

http://www.google.ca/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=test+search&meta=&btnG=Google+Search

Google puts everything but the kitchen sink into the URL.

Google boss: 'Creeped out by Street View? Just move'

Tom 35

It will be over a year and a half...

So they will have forgotten that they did it the first time.

Hurd fingered in HP bribe case after probe

Tom 35

bribes to secure US government contracts

They need to look at the other end too. It's not just HP offering bribes, the government workers taking the bribes (or often DEMANDING them) need to be dealt with. I used to deal with large quotes and I would get a request followed by a phone call. The call was to tell me I could charge what I wanted as long as something else was delivered to some other location off the record. Add 20k to your quote and a 50" plasma to the guys living room and the deal is yours.

Just how special are Power Users?

Tom 35

Director != power user

The last place I worked was very top heavy with managers. They all had to have the latest laptops available so they could email powerpoint and excel files to each other. When something new came out the "old" laptop would be passed down to the next most important person in their department and there laptop would be passed down... so we had a hodge podge of laptops. Sales and marketing primadonnas demanding toys are almost as bad.

The real power users doing design work had to fight like hell to get better monitors.

I'll take power users over managers with toys any day.

Cinema iPhone pirate escapes jail in test case appeal

Tom 35

For the same reason downloading is theft

i.e. it's not. But they want to jack up the penalty.

MS to unveil fresh Flash challenge next week?

Tom 35

And a few big events

Like the Vancouver Olympics streaming video (I'm sure some money was involved in the choice).

Phone 7: Another Vista or another XP?

Tom 35
Troll

What?

Don't you mean Bing?

Tom 35

and no removable memory either - Microsoft reckons it complicates things

Another Apple walled garden approach. MS seems to be very jealous of Apples garden.

CEOP chief accuses UK.gov of putting kids at risk

Tom 35
Joke

Why?

It helps stop spread of AIDS.

And pisses off the Pope.

Tom 35

And also, how is bagging offenders _not_ protecting the children ?

Too much of that and they might cut his budget and wast the money on robbers and murderers. Worse his screen time on the news would be cut.

Believe this guff? He is one of the ones making it up!

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

Tom 35

They could follow the Canadian liberals on helicopters

Cancel the useful helicopter order (to expensive!) and order some cheapo model. But here is the brilliant bit, order one that only exists on paper and CGI animations. Then you ask the US to act as your taxi service.

List-makers battle to keep football fixture lists protection

Tom 35

List of facts

All the work they are talking about is done to schedule the games. They do it so they can actually play the games not for the purpose of creating a list. Once they have their schedule creating a list is trivial and only contains a list of facts that should not be covered by copyright.

'Condom in my Whopper' man pulls case

Tom 35

Word origins are intriguing

How about beaver?

It seems to me that people make up code words for things that are not considered polite to name (how many names can you come up with for penis?). So you will hear kids say poo or wiener for example. Over time some of the code words become even worse then the proper name (like your "c" word) and a new code word is created. The origins of some are clear like wiener for example. Others may be lost over time or be obscure (like the Bulgarian airbags reference you sometimes see around here).

Tom 35

So...

The Condom turned out to be a dumb con.

Apple wipes smile off FaceTime in the Middle East

Tom 35

Google facetime sex

Given the list of countries affected I think there is a good chance that they are more worried about video phone sex causing the next big earthquake then lawful intercept of calls.

Lexmark adds Twitter to printer

Tom 35
FAIL

It could be worse...

They could give the printers email address so they could spam your printer... oh wait...

This is what happens when they fire everyone and have marketing come up with the new features. I guess they are just trying to out stupid HP. If only they spent half the money they spend on making it had to use no-name ink on making the printers work better.

Now were is my toaster / wifi hotspot combo?

Trial and error: online comments court attention

Tom 35
Thumb Down

Forgetting the first W in WWW

There was a trial in Toronto for a sex murderer a few years back. There was a gag order but since it was big news it was covered in the US. The Toronto news outlets could not cover it, but you could pick up a copy of the New York Times at the news stand, view any number of US news sites on the web, turn on the TV or Radio since US stations reach Toronto.

The gag order was a joke, but Toronto news services did not think it was funny as they were loosing money as people went to US sources for their news.

OOo's put the willies up Microsoft

Tom 35

And I think "some retraining" rather understates the case

But the same can be said for moving from Office 2003 to 2007.

From what I've seen Outlook/Exchange seems to be the biggest lockin for most mid-large companies.

Major US carriers sign up to sell Apple iPad

Tom 35

How long until...

AT&T whine that customers are using too much data?

Microsoft confirms Russian pill-pusher attack on its network

Tom 35

I would not be surprised...

If the root password was Passw0rd or something like that since it was something they were playing with in the lab.

Jobsian fondle-slab in SEXY FILTHGRAM CRACKDOWN

Tom 35

Should take about 10 seconds for kids to figure out how to get around it.

Life's a beach, so fork off.

Assuming most parents can even figure out how to turn it on...

Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'

Tom 35

They could be lion about the whole event.

Maybe an iOS powered iMac.

'Big Four' lose filesharing case against Irish ISP

Tom 35

I know who I would much rather face off to.

What makes you think you would not get both?

HP accuses Hurd of repeated lying

Tom 35

Choices

Give money to the engineers to develop new products, see returns in 3-5 years.

Or fire the engineers and outsource everything to India/China and give my self a bonus.

Choices, choices... what to do.

Hefty physicist: Global warming is 'pseudoscientific fraud'

Tom 35

Science for sale

Has always been a problem. Tobacco, oil, chemical and drug companies have had pet scientists for quite some time. In all those examples it's clear who is running the show, and why. Who is running the Global Warming fraud? The people hiding the UFOs in area 51? Elvis? Greenpeace?

Sure your going to get a few people jumping into anything to try and make a buck, and a few crackpots (what ever happened to Kevin Warwick?) making things difficult for others, but if this is a fraud someone is pulling the strings. Who?

Everyone but me and my friends is making up stuff!

Much better odds that he is a pet scientist dishing out some FUD.

TV numbers sink as iOS usage rises

Tom 35

Wrong

TV numbers sink because of the ads.

For the few shows that don't suck I still find them un-watchable.

You get...

ad, ad, intro, ad,ad,ad, part1, ad,ad, part2, ad, ad, part3, ad,ad,ad,ad, end,ad,credits (squished over with more ads.

Then, oh dear our revenue is dropping, we will have to put in more ads...

And in the slots where you used to get movies, old classics, or kids cartoons, now you get a 30 min ad for total shit (but wait if you call now you get extra shit, just pay shipping and handling...)

It Peter gets his way we will not want to use aps, because they will be full of ads too.