Posts by Paul RND*1000

@John Dee

John, if you're representative of the sort of arguments and general attitude presented by ORG activists, it's no bloody wonder they took a kicking.

I would say a well deserved kicking, but by taking the extreme line they did and getting stuffed, they've made things worse for everyone except the music business.

Yeah, job well done there.

By contrast Stop43 seems to have been a textbook example of how to engage in the political discussion in a way which can carry influence and gain results.

The reality distortion field...

...doesn't have a first amendment. Or any free speech provisions whatsoever.

Because

Too many people just vote for the same party they always do, regardless of any other factors. Usually the floating voters and turnout will decide the outcome of an election, but in some places there are such large concentrations of voters who always vote the same way that really, having democratic elections is a bit pointless.

Which quite defeats the purpose of having democracy in the first place.

Amen to that

Somewhere back in the mists of time, PDF was simple. Acrobat Reader was simple and small. They did exactly what was necessary to provide a portable document ideally suited to on-screen viewing, printing out and *nothing* *more*.

Then, as usual with these things, the software company responsible had to go ruin it with needless "convenience" features and fancy stuff nobody really needs (Javascript? Embedded executables? How is it a portable document if it's got an OS-specific EXE buried in there anyway? WTF??), and in the process left it full of security holes, not to mention turning a simple document reader program into a full-fledged example of bloat gone wild (a 38MB download for version 9? Really? Their heads have come undone if they think that's acceptable).

You would *think* that someone would have figured this out after the raft of viruses targeted at Word and Excel files, but apparently not.

Eric the half-a-laptop

Half a PC, philosophically, must ipso facto half not be. But half the PC has got to be, vis-à-vis its entity - d'you see? But can a PC be said to be or not to be an entire PC when half the PC is not a PC, due to some ancient history?

Sinclair tried this too, about 22 years ago with the ill-fated PC200. At least this new Commodore's specs aren't obsolete 5 years before it launches (assuming it's not vapor)

At least 8 months here in middle of nowhere USA

They happened to do our street (main rural highway) on a day where there was snow on the ground from the only snowfall that winter. That narrowed the spycar drive-by down to a 2-3 day window about 8 or 9 months before the images went up.

Can we add the US to that as well please?

Seriously. Can we have some of these too?

I don't want a high-priced jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none device which combines a crappy phone with a crappy camera and half-assed attempt at being a full-featured computer and requires charging twice a day even when you don't make a call.

I want a phone which works properly as a phone and has a decent interface for texting, is rugged enough to survive being generally abused over its 2-3 year lifespan, and if I do happen to accidentally drop it in the toilet/drive over it/lose it down a ravine it's going to cost the same to replace as a couple of months of cellphone insurance would anyway.

The moral here is...

...never, ever trust an installer package. Assume that they'll try to do something you'd rather they didn't.

There's some good free-as-in-beer software for Windows, Foxit being an example. But you do have to treat it all with some suspicion. Use the custom install options and carefully examine what the installer is about to do. "Typical install" + blindly clicking on "Next" will catch you out.

Hell, even Sun's Java installer/updater tries to force the Yahoo toolbar on you these days.

I know they're just trying to earn some affiliate money, but I'll be tarred and feathered before they earn it by screwing with my computer!

evidence

The clue is in which side of the road the car is moving along. This is in the UK, so if the center line is to the right of the camera position you're looking in the direction the car was moving. Or at least I bloody well hope so!

In fairness

I felt the same way, until the last time I traveled with my employer who made the observation that she does that all the time; she takes an empty bottle in her hand luggage and fills it at the convenient drinking fountains located next to the lavs beside the boarding gate.

Sure enough, I tried this and wasn't dragged off for a beating and internal examination by armed thugs masquerading as security. They even let the deadly bottled H2O board the plane with me. Is it wrong that I feel just a teeny bit subversive for pulling off such a heist?

Of course that does assume the greedy buggers haven't taken out all the drinking fountains so as to force you to buy your water at vastly inflated prices. It also assumes the water is safe to drink.

except

Paying subscribers tend to be as rare as hens teeth on Teh Internets, unless you're providing truly unique content which is not available elsewhere. Which more than likely means you're operating in some narrow niche which isn't served by anyone else anyway.

General/tech news sites aren't likely to survive long behind a paywall. Even one as entertaining as the Register. Not when you have 1000 other sites providing the same basic information in some form or other.

On the flipside people who actively block web advertising are really pretty uncommon and I bet half of those wouldn't bother blocking ads at all if the damn things weren't so obnoxious and in your face so much of the time.

Me too

That's what I was imagining too, something that truly redefines the meaning of "projectile vomit".

reply

File under "just because you refuse to talk about or acknowledge it doesn't make it go away".

Perpetual war

"I believe the answer is that there needs to be "a baddie", to keep the war machine well oiled."

while (1984) {

print ("We are at war with Eastasia!");

print("We are at war with Eurasia!");

}

paperwork

A pile consisting of every Sun page 3 dating back to 1985?

Because...

...they're a greedy shower of useless wasters and 500 million quid buys a LOT of coke and hookers?

Since the system is broken anyway

Might as well see the broken patents system turned against some of the biggest supporters of keeping it broken for their own benefit.

Petard, hoisted, etc.