Posts by Ammaross Danan

Title

The thing that gets me is the shear ugliness of their "start" screen. A HUGE swath of screen space is wasted because of a tiny right-arrow near the top of the screen. Such a waste! At least put a VERTICAL tile or something there. Perhaps like a vertical stock ticker! There's a thought. And I hope that ugly grey background can be set to a custom wallpaper.

Re: Only on IOS

"On OSX I can install what I want when I want and do what I want. No different to Windows or Linux"

Just one question: "Can it play Crysis?"

Perhaps

Perhaps the juice being pumped out by one single battery isn't enough to power the laptop, so throw in 3 more batteries (for weight distribution as mentioned earlier), to up the total juice output capacity. Perhaps having 4 smaller, less output, batteries is cheaper than 1 large output battery too? At the very least, perhaps they're trying to avoid a flaming laptop a-la-Dell by distributing potental flares across 4 batteries...

Title

Just kick them both in the nads and turn in your paper/proposal/et al as an Adobe PDF.

Fail

"...to multiply that "almost zero" probability by the "almost infinite" number of pebbles in said vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big Space. Surely, this has to affect the odds"

Sorry, but the "probability" of the initial collision would have to have been calculated using the number of "pebbles" vs the volume of the "hugely, mind-bogglingly big Space." Therefore, would not need to factor in an "almost infinite" number of pebbles a second time.

Title

Adobe Updater downloaded updates for Reader are stored in:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Setup Files

As for Windows vs Linux debacle on "security" based on patch count: tossers. Windows calls them "patches" because they rarely release increased capability outside of major revisions. (Office 2003 to Office 2007, if you can claim "increased capability" in that....), whereas in the *nix/FOSS world, "updates" of minor point revisions are usually "security patches." This disparity and lack of understanding of what the X.XX.XX major, minor, and point-revisioning system actually is representing is a core cause of the fail argument of: "Linux is rock solid! Just look! All they do is update their software with more FEATURES!!! and Windoze just patches their security holes!" Both patch their security holes. FOSS just happens to have the development schedule to do so (arguably) more rapidly. Neither is always a "best" solution. Linux can get a virus just as easily as Windows can. Don't believe me? Send a rootkit to a Linux user and tell them to run it. They won't? Send it to your Grandma running Linux and tell her to run it because you found out her computer had a virus and it will clean it. Sound like the scareware scheme used most of the time in the wild? Thought so.

Title

Certainly. I'm more concerned about virii that rename regedit.exe and the like, and put themselves in its place and simply do their "make sure the computer is still infected" game then continue you on to the exe you were actually looking for....

That a virii tells FF to save your passwords (a noticable thing, albeit subtile) isn't as concerning (see "transparent" virii type above, coupled with a keylogger).

First....

First, who would use a 5400rpm (or even a variable rpm) "Green" drive as their primary system disk? Secondly, does your system even support a 3TB primary drive? Many do not. Lastly, the "green" drives DO have quite decent performance for most takes, easily handling "mp3 playback" and the like. It's definately shooting for an archival drive though, since a 3TB drive is beyond most BIOSes ability to address atm.

Title

They did this on the USS Enterprise during WW2. Granted, it took down a fair portion of Zeroes, but, guess what? The ship still sustained heavy damages throughout the war. A small assortment of laser weapons (perhaps 3 per side?) with some method of auto-targetting (the background noise of radar posing a problem in this case) and a means of directing the laser rapidly (deflector mirror of some sort, rather than mechanical turret-style) and you could easily insta-zap hundreds of targets in a matter of seconds. That is, once they figure out that running these things with a nuclear reactor rather than gas-powered turbines is the smarter avenue...

Title

The unfortunate truth in the PC world is things get implemented based on consumer takeup. In the fruit world of the Apple flavour, the hardware is unilaterally pushed from the trunk itself. An EFI BIOS is one of the last bastions preventing OSX from easily installing on a PC, which is probably why Steve put it in Macs. However, there are a few boards out there which support EFI, and likely would be able to use such a drive, assuming a GUID-based partition table...at which point it becomes: Linux: Yes. Windows: who knows.

Technology restrained by a monopoly: Intel vs USB3/SATA3 for reference. Fortunately, AMD-based mobos that fully support SATA3, and have a couple USB3 ports, are readily found for <$100. Hopefully EFI BIOS will follow soon.

Fail

You failed to read the part about the "native SDK" to be released on launch.

RSync

Your problem is solved with RSync (as has been pointed out by many others). RSync is a delta-copying program, which makes successive copies faster/less bandwidth because it only copies changes in files. Great for WAN connections. Not only that, but it has a retry in event of connection loss. If all else fails, you can always restart the transfer and it will make sure all is in sync (in-line verification!).

Linux has its place in the world. It comes into play when you need to do something that your ACTUAL (usually Windows) servers can't.

Title

Can't sue a telco for not providing coverage. Would be like me sueing my mobile co. for not giving me "emergency services" while I was stuck wedged in a cave 1000ft underground and needed to get help. Burn them! I should have checked the coverage map!

Title

Perhaps you have stumbled upon why sysadmins take 6-12mo to update/patch their software! WinXP+IE6 for everyone! Why? Because we have automated scripts to manage that (and you don't get a block-all popup requesting authorization to make system changes, Vista/7).

Title

"A full scan on all these machines revealed several virii...."

Isn't that what Scareware does? You have 130 virii infecting your machine!!! Pay me now! Granted, I do agree that /some/ AVs are better than others, free or not. However, a pay-for solution isn't always the greatest either. (Stick Norton Internet Security Suite on your computer and you'll see what I mean)

I do agree, however, that switching from Windows isn't the answer, since virii will follow the users. It doesn't matter how "secure" your system is. Linux can get infected by malware just as easily as a Windows box: "You're infected! Run this program!" (almost) all OSes allow users to install/run software, and it's that ability that gets exploited, regardless of OS. It just makes more sense to make your scamware for the majority, rather than minority.

Title

I agree, this ruling is a loss for copyright holders due to the "whack-a-mole" result. If YouTube was more of a no-name, or little-known outlet (as there are many YouTube wanna-bes I'm sure), the copyright holder may not even be aware of the infringement, but still suffering losses or what-have-you because of it. It's only when it's be around the block in smaller channels so much that it makes its way out to the likes of YouTube that the holder even becomes aware of the infringement in the first place. It is a sad day when copyright holders, themselves, have to run a Google-esque indexing/searching spiderbot to sniff out their works on websites.

Title

"BTW, I would love to have MORE computers in my front room. If I could Id have a media PC for DVDs, music etc and a nettop for surfing while chilling on the sofa and a powerful one for work/ gaming in the corner."

Fortunately, my "office" is right behind the wall the TV is up against, so a "small" hole and an HDMI cable later and I now have mirrored desktop display to the TV. Oh, with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Now I have a media PC AND the powerful work/gaming one, all on the nice bigscreen.

@Chad

Perhaps your hands are just unusally dry? Skin oil (snake oil too?) has varying concentrations depending on the person. People in the vids may just have a hyperhydrosis issue (as one Apple fanboi that I'm friends with). However, I'm sure it affects pretty much all but the most dry of hands.

Last I checked...

So, they're admitting to fraudulantly inflating their cell phone's reception bars to "appear" to have a superior antenna design and resulting reception... Oh, sorry, a "software bug" improperly calculated extra bars... Yeah, "Look I get great reception! Buy an iPhone!" BS.

ReCAPTCHA

Re-CAPTCHA fails in that it provides one OCRable word (can be read by computers) and one non-OCRable word, and only truly validates the OCRable word. The other word can be "guessed" and most likely make it past, since the nonOCRable word is unknown. If they cycle "correctly guessed" nonOCRable words through the system, you may have to make your OCR software a bit better, but Re-CAPTCHA's goal is to "translate" the non-identified words, so more often than not, it will assume you guessed correctly.

Fail.

Clarification

"But it mainly seems to come down to hand size, with the larger span finding an iPhone harder to use (but, if rumour is to be believed, they'll have less need for an iPhone in the first place)."

In order to get the most from this punch-line, I think it should be properly explained to those that don't have the mental capacity to operate a phone without big buttons and or those that require someone else to make it "just work." The rumor in question is the correlation (oh yeah, big words...um "link") between large hands and a certain "male body part" being large as well. In which case, one would not need to compensate (oh big word again..."make up for") for being lacking in a certain "body part's" size, and thus, not have to own the fad fondle-slab.

Hopefully that clarifies the joke, so more than just Droid owners can see the mirth in it.