* Posts by Tom 38

4341 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2009

Apple now most valuable company OF ALL TIME

Tom 38
FAIL

Re: OSX is shoddy, hardware is commodity, only iOS?

Incidentally I can't believe they were so un-tech-savvy that they didn't notice Cisco already have an operating system called IOS, do they not know what a search engine is ;)

Irony fail

Watch out, PC disk drive floggers: Cloud will rust up those spinners

Tom 38

Reasons why all our data will not live in the cloud

1) Your data is suddenly slower to access and update.

2) Your data is now reliant on some the 2nd party to ensure it is available.

3) With a disk, you pay your upfront cost, and then it is yours. With cloud, you pay once and then every month.

4) Your data is now at risk of some 3rd party removing access to your data. Your suppliers' ISPs, carriers, your own ISP, and potentially even hostile governments can make your data disappear.

5) Online capacities are minuscule compared to offline capacities.

Surfing ROBO-shark hunter stalks great whites along US coast

Tom 38
Alert

A wave-gliding robot has been deployed off the coast of San Francisco to stealthily keep an eye on attach lasers to great white sharks in the Pacific Ocean.

FTFY

Samsung: 'You want $2.5bn? WRONG, Apple, you OWE us $420m!'

Tom 38

Re: Wow

Nice try, that data is from 2007, and covers Apple in 2006. Try using recent data.

Tom 38
Stop

Re: Wow

Apple has increased its R&D spending from $1.8 to $2.4 billion this year versus last, according to a filing Wednesday by Apple to the SEC. That’s a 33-percent increase, and makes the 2011 spend more than half that of the previous four years combined.

So they spent ~$7 billion on R&D in the period 2007-2011. Your definition of "fuck all" differs wildly to my own.

Acer: Windows 8 'uncertainty' deflates Wang's big growth aim

Tom 38
Unhappy

I was going to do a growth/Wang joke, but it's too crass, even for me :(

Did Mitt Romney really get 117,000 REAL Twitter followers in ONE DAY?

Tom 38

Re: Put up job

The problem is Romney now represents the beast that is GOP. He, or someone on his campaign team, may well have done this, however it could as easily be the actions of one nutjob with a credit card who has just read about buying fake followers on Ebay.

I've got a really bad feeling about this election. A Mormon slash and burn capitalist (from Bain, no less) as leader of the world's most powerful army.

Assange granted asylum by Ecuador after US refused to rule out charges

Tom 38

Re: @Chad

Both Sweden and the UK have pointed out on multiple occasions that they cannot allow Assange to be extradited if he might face capital charges - its the law, the same law that may force them to do something stupid to extradite some twat to Sweden. Point that out, and the mob simply say "ahh, he will be extraordinarily renditioned".

Only two things are certain in all of this - Assange will never willingly go to Sweden - a country he applied for citizenship of - to face his accusers, and Britain will look like a cock. Thanks Julian.

Optical Express 'ruined my life' gripe site lives on

Tom 38

Re: I would love to have LASIK

Look, I'm only reporting what my uncle - an consultant NHS eye surgeon, who has literally written the book on eye surgery - has told me about it. He spends his days trying to fix botched jobs, and I am simply repeating his explicit advice to me when I expressed an interest in getting it done.

I'm sure all these providers are up-front about the risks, but the providers don't provide the after-surgery care for those with problem cases - just look at the website in the story for details of how OE treat problem cases - they go to a special unit in London.

Therefore all the treatment centers see are the successes (and the commissions). None of them can recollect having anyone having sight ruined, because anyone with ruined sight would not be dealing with them at that point.

Tom 38

Re: I would love to have LASIK

Absolutely, don't let my fears affect anyone else's decision - I know I'm a pussy :)

Tom 38

I would love to have LASIK

However, my uncle is an eye surgeon, who spends his time trying to restore eyesight to people who've gone through windscreens, people who have knifes jammed in their eyes, and, yes, people who have botched LASIK surgery. He won't touch your eyes unless there is already something wrong with them, since fixing problems with your eyes is damned hard.

Yes, 97% of people who have LASIK are quite happy with it, and yes, LASIK has been around a long time now. Would you take a 3% chance that your eyesight won't be ruined?

I'm also shocked at some of the reports on that website - OE treated both eyes at the same time! WTFery! If something goes wrong, like it did in his case, at least you would still have one un-fucked eye.

Experts argue over whether shallow DNS gene pool hurts web infrastructure

Tom 38

Re: djbdns works fine - and it is free

And for me also. I found it much easier to do things like telling djbdns to query my employers DNS server for various domain names than in BIND. Well, that's an understatement.

However, if your a DNS administrator, your day is spent in BIND zone files, so the differences are marked. Also djb has a bit of a reputation...

Four in five (80 per cent) of the world's internet-facing DNS servers are essentially genetically identical, according to Domain Name System vendor Secure64

"80% of the world won't even consider buying our DNS server, so here's some FUD."

Windows 8: Microsoft's tablet-desktop still painful to swallow

Tom 38

Re: "Windows key... that you have never used before."

My keyboard doesn't have a windows key :/

I suppose I could buy a new Unicomp keyboard, but I'd prefer to keep my Model-M.

Goldeneye

Tom 38

Yar, "no other game before this". Nowadays, I get my jollies cutting zombies in half with the grav gun and a cutting blade in HL2. 1000 different ways to dismember zombies.

Tom 38

Goldeneye made me buy an N64. The first 20 seconds of the game had me hooked - pick up a snipe rifle, shoot someone in the balls, and they grab their balls. No other game I can remember had different reactions like that depending on where you hit people.

Also, it wasn't about shooting people. Some levels, you shoot people, you will lose, as the sound brings an ever increasing number of goons to investigate.

Finally, each level had a timer associated with it. Beat the timer, enable a cheat mode. Even after we had finished the game in single player multiple times, and bored of multiplayer, there was always someone trying to beat one of the levels. FYI, got them all but one. I think it was luxor, you had to do it in a minute or some such crazy shit.

The cheats made for awesome multiplayer fun. Stick on Donkey Kong mode (massive heads) and golden gun mode, everyone running around with single shot boom sticks. Legendary.

Apple's lone wolf approach to security will bite it in the rear

Tom 38
FAIL

@Ammaross

Apple are major sponsors of the TrustedBSD project, which aims on hardening BSD (and consequently OS X). It didn't exist before they started it, and it pays for the research of obert Watson and his team at Cambridge. It is fully open sourced, with major contributions from inside Cupertino.

Security doesn't happen by accident.

Tom 38
Headmaster

@Peter Gathercole

I may be misreading your post, but OS X is a UNIX operating system - both 10.6 and 10.8 have been certified to SUSv3, making them without question UNIX. However you may have been saying that Mach and BeOS where not UNIX, which is correct - BeOS is not even 100% POSIX, and Mach is just a kernel.

BSD is possibly UNIX - they all descend from 4.4BSD-Lite (certified UNIX), and at least FreeBSD has a SUS compliance program, but none are certified. Linux is not UNIX, it is POSIX, but the cost of UNIX certification means most distributions concentrate more on LSB compliance, which is similar to, but not that same as SUS.

Few 'Likes' for Facebook from hedge-fund moneybags

Tom 38

Re: made at least $7m

The short fees alone on $27m worth of shares over two months would be more than $300k. Way more.

Tom 38

made at least $7m

BS BS BS.

You are saying that if they borrowed $27.7m worth of FB shares, sold them through a broker, and then 3 months later, bought $20.4m worth of FB shares, that the total of the broker fees for the sale, broker fees for the purchase, and short fees for borrowing the shares come to less than $300k.

Bull. Shit.

US appeal dismissed in Dotcom case

Tom 38

Re: Standard Chartered

I'm not convinced about SC/Iran tbh. It wasn't the SEC that went after them, it was the finance dept of NY state, a state which is perilously close to broke. They find 'massive evidence of illegality', and threaten to not allow SC to operate in NY, but then a quick bung and everything is gravy again.

None of that money went to the Federal government, it all went into NY state coffers.

Nokia CEO: No shift from Windows Phone

Tom 38

What a load of nonsense. Nothing Windowsy? You take pictures, they are uploaded to Windows Live Skydrive. Want to identify music? Use the Bing Music Search - no Shazaam here. Make a note about something? Its now on OneNote. Want to play some music? Fire up the Zune player. Want to use an IM? Fire up Windows Live Messenger.

Personally, I've not tried a WP. But then I don't need to. I've already made my choices about where I'm going to keep my contacts, my photos, my music, my files, my security certificates and so on. Based upon 24 years of using products built by MS, I'm quite glad that I have the choice.

Korean boffins discover secret to quick-charge batteries

Tom 38
FAIL

@Mips

My kettle is 3kW, so I doubt that "the distribution system for housing is only 2kW".

SurfTheChannel Brit movie pirate gets 4 YEARS' PORRIDGE

Tom 38

2 eps per DVD

Ah, Stargate SG-1. They really milked the fanbois on that one.

Tom 38

Re: Evil pirates of the high seas!

Good analogies! However, you missed the bit where you duplicated and created an additional parking space at the car park and cloned a carriage on the train.

Brits obey mobile ads, says mobile ad biz

Tom 38
Facepalm

Re: "All the cool kids are doing it"

Sidebar: I remember the R Whites ad from the 70s, but I remember it from the 90s. I'm not a secret lemonade drinker.

An interesting point. For something like insurance, do I compare the market (meerkats getting old, same ad plays every ad break in the cricket), am I confused, or should I go compare? Perhaps I should forget the comparison sites and get the aviva deal, or should I behave badly with churchill (oh yes!)

One ad did work, I sold an old car for £50, was hoping for more like £100,000. Name who I sold it to for an upvote.

Hard-up Kodak stalls crown jewels sell-off to milk bidders

Tom 38

Re: Mouse income

I'm as poor as a church mouse, that's just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese.

Designer punked fanbois with asymmetric screw

Tom 38

Re: Punked fanbois? Not really.

The Apple screws aren't that "custom", they just aren't ordinary screw heads. I believe that they do this so that they can apply more torque when assembling them, and making them more resilient. I don't think they have any tamper-proof features apart from obscurity, they don't have break-away heads, they aren't one-way screws, they are simply obscure.

Before Apple started using pentalobe screw heads, it was hard to find a pentalobe screwdriver. Nowadays, you can get them for very little.

Saudi royals seek ban on .virgin, .sex, .catholic, .wtf and 159 MORE

Tom 38
Stop

Re: Some Suggestions for Saudis..

Who upvoted this racist shit? Just because the government of Saudi Arabia objects to these things should not give some AC the right to call all saudis "camelscrewers".

Get back in your hole.

BeBook outs Kindle-beating e-book reader

Tom 38

You're confused because I was mooting not buying a Kindle, but buying a BeBook, and wondering how I get all my purchased Kindle books onto a ¬Kindle.

Tom 38

All my ebooks are on Kindle (app), and I've often thought about getting a real Kindle - touch screens are useless in the sunshine. If I get one of these, how do I get my Kindle books onto it?

Tom 38
Joke

Re: How many shades of grey?

Fifty.

Apple 'offered Samsung $30-per-mobe' patent licence truce

Tom 38

Re: $30, well that's fair and reasonable...

I think you are intentionally missing the point. The patents that Samsung wanted 2.5% per patent for are patents that Samsung must license on fair and reasonable terms, as part of their membership of the 3G patent pool. Apple are contending that these are not FRAND terms, and they won't pay non FRAND terms.

The 'patents' that Apple wanted Samsung to license covered the device and UI. Apple are under no obligation with these patents to offer them on fair and reasonable terms. Samsung cannot content that the terms are not FRAND, so they must contend that the patents aren't valid.

Samsung are on shaky ground here, as not licensing FRAND patents in a FRAND manner is a big no-no. Even if they get all of Apple's design and UI patents thrown out, they still going to get one for pulling that shit.

Tom 38
Meh

Re: $30, well that's fair and reasonable...

He is missing one letter from making that comprehensible. Are you really busting his balls because he missed an 'r' off 'your'?

For example, "fair and reasonable" in this discussion means RAND (aka. FRAND) patents and your reference poorly frames the following text, because it is intentionally unclear to what you are referring.

Not a Cloud in my holiday sky

Tom 38

Re: Providers and Manufacturers need to sort it out

Only if you turn on 3G roaming. If you don't turn on 3G roaming, your 3G doesn't roam.

It's tricky, this telecoms lark.

Cars, lorries stalked via GPS to create live traffic super-map

Tom 38

Re: From the original article...

Nonsense, there have been many studies to work out the most effective speed limits on a motorway. Above a certain speed, happily around 80 mph, increasing speeds reduces the throughput of the road (the number of cars that can pass a certain point in a single hour).

Also FYI, fuel duty and Road Tax do not cover the spending on roads. You may as well say "Ignoring the fact that we already pay for road usage (tobacco duty)…"

Tom 38

Re: Ease congestion on the M25?

As an example of the sort of traffic rectification exercises they can under take, imagine (it's not hard) that the M4 into London is backed up to Slough. They can use that information to apply a temporary speed limit east bound into London, so as to reduce the number of cars arriving at the end of the M4.

Now imagine that they can see the gridlock before it happens. With some traffic management, they can try to avoid the gridlock ever happening. And if they can't, the numbers may make some compelling argument for the M4(S) and M4(N) to be built, so that there is no J15 on the M25 anymore.

BOFH: Our Excel-lent new boss and the diagram plan

Tom 38

Re: A few invoices later,

I hope you included a few notionally blank sheets of paper ("This page intentionally left blank") so that the number of pages is a power of 2.

Curiosity's new OS upgrade ready to go live

Tom 38
Stop

Re: New software already?

Can we have one thread on the register that is not prattling on about iPhone and Android, please? There is some real science going on here. Our robot invasion of Mars is proceeding on schedule.

Privacy snafu as TOPLESS Mark Zuckerberg picture leaks online

Tom 38

Re: @moiety re. Either is good

Do you not remember the sagas of the exploding bulgarian airbags?

NASA’s new lander CRASHES AND BURNS

Tom 38
Mushroom

Re: http://eternian.wordpress.com

Seriously, read this blog. Wow. An excerpt:

51) Can you show, even by the scientific method, what difference it would make if everyone believed evolution?

Whacked out crazy christian fella needs to understand what "the scientific method" means. It's really easy (this is why you should have been taught it when you were 10) and consists of only a few steps.

It starts with a question. The scientist takes that question, and provides a possible outcome - we call this a "hypothesis", it's greek for "to suppose". Now we have a hypothesis, we can make a prediction about what this means. Having predicted something, we now derive a test. The test is formulated so that performing the test will tell us if our hypothesis is correct.

Finally, having derived and tested a hypothesis, we compare the results to our prediction and analyse them.

This entire process is the scientific method. It starts with a question, and a hypothesis that can be tested, testing that hypothesis and analysing the results of the test.

So, now, back to your blog: "what difference it would make if everyone believed evolution". My hypothesis is that the world would be a much more civil place. In order to test this, using the scientific method as you request, I now need you and all your 'christian' friends to start accepting the theory of evolution. Once this is done, I'll start analysing the results and get back to you.

Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

Tom 38

Re: The blindness of cat lovers...

The loss of wildlife in areas mainly comes when it goes from fields to 'urban/sub-urban'. Any subsequent feline decimation is minor in comparison.

Tom 38
Headmaster

Re: The only legal way to kill a cat...

Which site?

Tom 38

This is only a surprise to subscribers of Cat Fancy and city folk.

I grew up on a farm, at the most we had 8 cats, who all lived outside and spent their time killing anything smaller than a chicken that came within range. Interestingly, lots of them had favoured prey - one of them would go crazy about dinosaursbirds, one would mainly hunt baby rabbits, one mainly rats.

Quite often, they would bring whatever they had caught 'home' to the back door and eat everything except the entrails, leaving them on the step.

Another thing that all cats like to do is play. People go *c*r*a*z*y* when a cat starts playing with a laser pointer, or a ball of yarn. The same people look much less impressed when the cat is playing with a heavily injured mouse, catching it, mouthing it, letting it go, catching it again, until the mouse dies of a heart attack.

Only much much later did we ever have a cat that came inside the house. I stopped that when I woke up one morning to find half a dead rabbit at the foot of my bed.

Internet Archive serves up 1.4 million BitTorrent downloads

Tom 38

Re: Sensible decision

BT is a dog on networks though. From a network efficiency point of view, choosing HTTP over BT is a no brainer, but if you don't care about the network outside your DC, choosing BT over HTTP will save you money.

First full landing site and colour pictures back from Mars

Tom 38

Re: Hyphenated Americans

Go to Michigan, plenty of Dutch-Americans.

Tom 38
Joke

OMG!

Have they realised what is about to happen? They better get that rover moving PDQ, otherwise it will be sent to the Phantom Zone.

Tom 38

Re: Bobak Ferdowsi

Nah, you're missing it entirely. In America, as soon as you emigrate, you become '****-American'. Instantly. You are now just as American as the WASP down the street. As as soon as you know the patriotic chants (hint: "USA! USA! USA!" goes down pretty well), that's it, you've made it.

Contrast that to the UK, where even 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants will cling forcibly to their old nationality, and not consider themselves "British" in the slightest (qv the Tebbit test). I think the US does a better job of integrating (legal) immigrants into mainstream society than any other country.

Having said that, it is funny in cities with strong Irish links (Chicago, Boston etc), on St Patricks Day, everyone is Irish. Even the Mexicans!

Rivals routed by Apple, Google smartphone onslaught

Tom 38

Re: Why Android and not iPhone for my sister.

I'm real happy that that phone works well for your sister, but I would not describe that phone as "great" - "competent", "good value" maybe.

A "great" Android phone would be the Nexus S or a Galaxy S III, both of which are comparable in spec and price to the iphone. Android phones are not cheaper than the equivalent Apple phone, but Apple does not provide a comparable low end model.

Android app DRM quietly disabled due to bug

Tom 38

Entitlement is part of being a fandroid

FTFY

So you get all the choice, and the developer of the app gets none? If your choice is between an app that costs £5 and is protected by the developer against copying by using DRM, and a pirated version from a russian app store that costs nothing, you would choose the pirated version and feel morally justified in your decision?

And they say Apple has the reality distortion field.

For flock's sake: Scared sheep send SMSes to Swiss shepherds

Tom 38
Joke

Re: be pro-active

In that case it texts "Free ribs"