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* Posts by Ammaross Danan

1042 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2009

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Motorola punts mega huge Droid phone

Ammaross Danan
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Bulk

I think that camera bulk should make the phone sit right well on the shoulder for those that still require two hands for tasks while on the phone. I do like the mini-HDMI port on the side. Since it shoots 720p, I am assuming that it displays 720p (and not 1080p) through that port. Very nice. At $100 less than the iPhone, not a bad steal IMHO. The lower res on the (larger) screen is kinda disappointing though. At least it has an SD card slot, since 8MP camera shots could eat it fairly quickly.

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AMD muscles Nvidia with fanless GPU coprocessors

Ammaross Danan
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Boffin

Cooling

Server cases have internal fans that direct airflow efficiently. These cards have heatsinks designed to effeciently sit in that airflow channel, so it is like having a large fan strapped on to their heatsinks. Servers are quite densely packed and don't have "pretty" airchannel spoilers such as glowing fans and perforations all over the case.

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Microsoft justifies lost Office 2010 upgrades

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Title

Saying they only have a windows box for the schoolwork is almost screaming they run an "alternative OS," for which I'm sure OpenOffice is more than happy to run on. I used it all through the whole Office2003 -> 07 snafu with file-format issues, and it worked just fine reading those "new" 07 formats that the instituation pushes out. Fortunately the 2010 update is merely incremental, even for the file format, and should not be an issue.

Therefore, the "cost and burden" of maintaining a Windows PC simply to run Office is a load of bullocks. Pull your Mac/*nix out and stuff OpenOffice on it if you simply can't stomach MS Office's price. Perhaps you just don't want your child to be trouncing around in your shiney toy perhaps?

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Halley's comet is actually ALIEN VISITOR

Ammaross Danan
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Alien

Surely

Surely, the Oort Cloud can be "verified," albeit by much debate and alien-scaremongering, when the Horizons spacecraft gets pulverized by a micro-meteor of "The Oort Cloud" (or so they think...muhahaha)

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Fanbois howl over 'hang a lot' Safari 5

Ammaross Danan
FAIL

Of course...

But of course, it's a Mac, so don't worry. It just works. (or in this case, Apple software for all those cross-bred Safari-on-Windows *cough* beta testers *cough* software users)

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Intel delays USB 3.0 chipset until 2012

Ammaross Danan
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Go

Title

"Firewire interfaces with signaling rates of 1600/3200 megabits are said to be in development"

What does this matter? You go on to say "buy FW800 cards" as if, by some miracle, a simple firmware update will suddenly enable these "6.4 gigabits!" speeds. Bah. That "in development" firewire is about as close as USB3.0 from Intel.

I definately agree though, AMD, VIA, etc should build USB3 into their chipsets ASAP if they want to stay ahead of Intel. AMD is already flagging behind on their top-end CPUs (although, they're still radically cheaper, which is what there market seems to be atm).

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AT&T to ax unlimited data plans on iPhone Monday

Ammaross Danan
Stop

Title

I would say they're charging extra for tethering because people tend to think of a computer as a bottomless pit, and in many cases, they're right. I would have no qualms about downloading a 4GB torrent on my computer, however, with my smartphone, I'd start wondering if I actually had the storage for it. Basically, all that data would have to be streaming data, rather than downloaded bits, due to capacity of the device. Also, switching from "unlimited" to caps will prevent those tetherers from thinking they can download torrents on the go. (yes, I'm using torrents for an example, simply due to their usual nature of being monster sizes)

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Drinking coffee offers no real benefit, say eggheads

Ammaross Danan
Go

Title

I dislike the smell/taste of coffee myself, but I think the "tests" they conducted must have been some form of rubbish. I more fancy a dose of caffeine with some form of herbal coctail that (traditionally/arguably) preports to enhance mental function (I phrase it this way to not name any particular product). With this, I definately must admit it works very well. I went on the stuff during school years of early-morning classes (I'm a night owl), and not only did I not feel narcoleptic, I found myself able to think through programming tasks and such better. Of course, even now, having it in the morning still works beautifully, so perhaps I'm just "returning to normal" with the added herbal benefit...but I think the increased heart-rate/blood pressure helps with the drowsiness.

To each their own. You can offer me a cup of swill, but I will not drink, for I have better (for me).

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Steve Jobs beheads iPad apps for acting like desktops

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Title

Gah, you beat me too it by a few minutes. :(

Anyway, "Come to the iP*d! We -h-a-v-e- had 300,000 Apps! Want to use your iPad as a photo frame? There (was) an app for that!"

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Hitachi launches Blu-Ray-SSD hybrid drive

Ammaross Danan
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Boffin

Title

Until your ISP hobbles you due to hitting some unspecified magic number of bandwidth usage during the month. Having a local, saved copy of some content will always be valued. It's the whole intrinsic worth of having a physical object that is "mine," rather than a video feed that will be most-likely "leased."

But as far as the ACTUAL tech goes, I think it's a splendid idea. I don't think it will work as intended, due to "The HyDrive can be used in conjunction with a PC's normal hard disk drive or, HLDS says, on its own in netbooks and tablet form-factor devices" since a netbook sporting a optical drive AT ALL is fairly uncommon. One sporting a BD drive would most likely be for the person who shells out the little extra for a media player netbook, instead of a 7" portable DVD player, since the netbook can surf the web and the like as well. I think the ideal market will be in normal notebooks. A single massive hard drive for data storage, and a SSD conveniently tucked away in the optical drive, not wasting internal space in a fancy 2.5" shell.

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Should we be encrypting backups?

Ammaross Danan
Boffin

Title

First, @fatchap, "transported in secured containers" is bullocks as a replacement or priority suppliment for encryption. I'm sure it takes more than just a hammer to get into 2048-bit-key encrypted data.

For companies dumping their 500GB or less data to tape, and expecting it to last indefinately, they should really research alternatives. 500GB hard drives are very common, and NTFS isn't going anywhere. Also, many people have demonstrated the longevity of computers with "antiquicated" interfaces (think of the Floppy Drive, if it took that long to die, just think how hard it will be to kill USB 1/2.0, not to mention the kit that supports USB 1/2.0, and the OS to read NTFS). I say NTFS, because FAT doesn't allow for >4GB files (think TrueCrypt containers or the like). Fortunately for those using TrueCrypt for encryption, it doesn't require a license key and can install on ANY of those "old" systems that support USB and NTFS....convenient that. No more having to find some server with an ancient SCSI card (with drivers!) to hook up a dusty tape drive that probably has grime on the read-heads anyway (be sure to run a tape cleaner through it first!!!). Then loading an OS that supports the archaic (ArcServe!) software, and don't forget the license key!. Then hope that the particular file you want hasn't been corrupted due to degredations of some sort, or even worse, the index.... Hard drives aren't impervious either, but I am willing to bet that a hardly-used hard drive sitting on a shelf will degrade slower than a tape sitting in the same environment.

That said, newer tapes and devices allow for storing many terabytes of data, which is currently impossible for single hard drives, and for large organizations, tape is the only way to go. However, the best solution would be regular restores and transfers of older tapes onto current-gen tapes to overcome degredation and outdating hardware. This of course is time consuming and probably best left to that 2nd year college student that the firm is interning for the summer...

Lastly, for those "just store it online" folks, some regulators will prohibit some organizations from using such services because it can't be guarenteed to be "safe." If the data isn't encrypted locally, then shipped over an encrypted VPN point-to-point-style, and stored in encrypted form on said remote system, without the keys, then it is useless. (Uploading a TrueCrypt container to such a service would be plausible...). However, I would doubt dumping 400GB worth of data to an online service would be remotely cost-effective, let alone having "archived" copies available. And if you have to archive backups locally, why even bother with an online service anyway? (No, I'm not talking about home users with 10GB of unchanging data, saving to a service in case their house burns down. They can [and probably should] use such services, since that is for whom they are designed.).

As for CDs/DVDs/Archival DVDs, these may look attractive, but I don't trust such media to store my data unless I have two copies. I've had enough disks that get a simple scratch for whatever reason, and then become coasters. And archival DVDs rated for >10yrs are simply as expensive as their tape counter-parts, but require even more uncommon hardware.

/rant

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3 men charged in $100m scareware scam

Ammaross Danan
Go

Title

It's about time the Antivirus 2008 people were caught. I can't walk 10 feet without bumping into someone that is gullible (read, uninformed) enough to actually follow the popups and manage to get this installed on their computer. I say, one they're convicted, force them to change the "now click here to pay us money" with a popup briefly educating the victim about malware scams, then automatically cleanly remove the malware.

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Whispers of Western Digital 3TB drive

Ammaross Danan
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Go

Title

Or they really are coming out with a 3TB model. It's been long enough having only a 2TB model at the top of the food chain, even a moderate step of 2.5TB would have been more than appetizing.

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Google: Android fragmentation isn't fragmentation

Ammaross Danan
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Boffin

@AC

"so basically all new features/apis are useless to devs until market share is high enough? Unless they wish to code for all platforms?"

So, AC, I take it you do not program then? The new features are there for those that need/want to use them. They are relevant. However, this is akin to the Windows Operating System. Windows 7 has a snazzy GUI for which you can write your programs. However, these GUI APIs do not work on WinXP (or older). The developer would have to implement some checking and use the most suitable GUI API for the platform the app is running on. Most (lazy) programmers just go for the lowest common denominator. Others with more time, knowledge, or backing can write their apps to use older API calls for Android 1.x, and newer ones for 2.x+ if they really wanted to include newer features or GUI changes.

The failing of backwards-compatibility is a sad note, but we have no official word if these "broken" apps are just shoddy code churned out by monkeys, or properly written apps. I would dare say the "broken" apps are simply poorly written, perhaps missing an appropriate error-check or not utilizing API feedback....

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iPad users put tablet to netbook tasks

Ammaross Danan
FAIL

Title

I agree with the idea of iPads being owned by Apple Fans, and thus getting the cult-response thumbs-up. Of course, it is a wonderful device to plod along on I'm sure. However, at the price of a decent laptop that can play Crysis, the only appeal it would have would be as a tablet as showcased in such Sci-Fi shows like Star Trek or Stargate. Of course, there is that lack of actually being able to print to your network printer, multitask (until v4), hook up an external HDD (yeah, you try stuffing all your favorite XViD/DiVX rips into that little storage space, let alone your MP3, oh sorry, your DRMed m4a collection). Oh, and that pesky annoyance of shorter battery life due to charge cycles? Just ship your whole device off to Apple and get a DIFFERENT iPad back (albeit "new" [probably refurbished]). So much for what you had saved on it. Hope you backed it up to an external HDD....

If it was capable of actually allowing you to connect and use anything you cared to (think netbooks here), preferably without having to shell out another $50-$100 for some Apple-branded specialty dongle, I would be more apt to buy one.

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Google halts deletion of Street View Wi-Fi data

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Title

Agreed. The wireless data was publicly available. It was collected from a public location. This, arguably, was just as legal as rummaging around in your trash can that is sitting curb-side on trash day. You can take whatever you want. However, if you manage to find a non-cancelled, non-impaired credit card...well, you can take it, but you'd only break the law by using it. Also, a Googlemobile probably was only within range of the "hotspot" for a mere 3-5 seconds. Not much data could be usefully gleaned during that time, unless you're very unfortunate. Even so, any suitibly "private" data would have been in an SSL session, and even potentially floating on a WPA2-encrypted packet as well. If Google wants to throw its 2+million servers at decrypting 3 seconds worth of wireless packets to know I was shopping on Amazon for a "Wireless Networks For Dummies" book, more power to them. They'd be better off sifting that data from my Gmail once I placed my order...

9 13

Apple kills 'Get a Mac' ad campaign

Ammaross Danan
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Jobs Horns

Title

Oh, and we can't forget the "We don't have to worry about virus and worms. It just works." Virii are most likely on their way, if Apple ever becomes significant enough. And as for "It just works," well tell that to the Core i7-based iMac... or perhaps the WiFi in ANY of your mobile devices... That and try explaining to your grandma why she can't use that PC-only app she heard about from a friend.

I'm glad they ended their almost-blantly-lying ad campaign. Perhaps the "I'm a PC" and "Windows7 Was My Idea" ads were cutting too deep? I don't agree with some MS practices and solutions, but at least their consumer marketing isn't entirely forked-tongued.

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Seagate to announce SSD-threatening hybrid drive

Ammaross Danan
FAIL

Title

One question, why would they worry about stuffing SLC into this item when their cache is meant as a read-cache? Sure, it will learn over time to stuff different info in the cache, but it would hardly change as much as a pure SSD would to worry about write-endurance. And since they're writing to the HDD first, they could hardly be concerned about write-latency (which is the other primary reason for SLC). Lastly, WTF only 4GB??? Win7 is twice that installed, not to mention if you stuff Office and a few choice games on there. That cache would fill up quite quickly. I would buy one if it had a 3.5" version with an 8-16GB cache.

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US wireless not competitive enough - FCC

Ammaross Danan
FAIL

Not Enough Competition

The industry (of course they would) howls that there is plenty (up to "3 or more"...) of competition? If they can get away with charging $0.10 per text one sends AND charge $0.10 for your 'victim' to receive said text...there's something wrong. And that is just for the CHEAPEST per-text rate. That and your data plan costs more than your home DSL....even the 40MB/mo ones... And of course they won't sell you a smartphone unless you get a dataplan.

I agree with the unbundling idea. Sure, people would lose subsidizing their phones, but it would also make wireless providers need to be cheaper to drive people to actually buy a smartphone and put it on their network instead of someone else's. No more $99/mo phone plan for the iPhone, just because you HAVE to be on AT&T. Fortunately, my BB is with a decent company (at least there's plenty (3 here) of BB carriers), and that should hold me over until I can pick up an Android of some flavor in a few months once v2.2 is mainstream.

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DARPA trying to beat block lists, deep packet inspection

Ammaross Danan
Boffin

Title

@mittfh: I agree. This is probably designed for operatives in China to be able to report to Home.

However, wouldn't this be best handled by some form of P2P VPN setup with layered, proxied encryption? In Gnutella lingo, if you VPNed to an Ultrakeeper, then were assigned a "virtual IP" by that Ultrakeeper (since it would know, or could query, if there was an available [IPv6 presumably] address), you could massquarade around on this P2P network as the virt IP and appear to be coming from the Ultrakeeper. When you do search requests, the request itself is encrypted (think SSL or somesuch), which are propogated THROUGH the Ultrakeeper, rather than from your computer, so it looks like the Ultrakeeper is performing the search. Using your virtIP as the "return" address in the network, which is being routed "physically" as the Ultrakeeper's IP, no one would know it was you, unless they could match you up as a machine that connected to said server through some ISP logging. But that is where layered proxying comes in. The CDC (Cult of the Dead Cow, not the gov agency) wrote a similar encrypted proxying network for their Chinese "associates." It would proxy HTTP requests through random end-points in the network, at any range of depth (usually around 6 or more) and popped out to the internet at some unrestricted (US, Sweden, etc) end-point which would perform the actually GET request and pass the info back along the line. Each point only knew the next point in line, rather than the whole. This kept anonymity between P2P users as well, as one machine did not know every node in the network, nor could they request that info.

Anyway, a good, multi-layed network with encrypted information ought to be enough of a deterant, until the Firewall in question decides to block VPN traffic. Then you could just masquarade as HTTPS or some other definately-allowed traffic (port 22 perhaps? We know China doesn't block that particular one...). Of course, the obvious downside is the amount of traffic that would be proxied through the "Ultrakeeper"s, but I'm sure the gov't would be more than happy to compensate people who wish to become one. $30/mo (extra, for upgraded internet services) for 200,000 ppl across the globe is less than an old F16 every couple of months. I say 200,000, since it would be quite a long time before all 200,000 are found out and blocked by the tGFoC if the initial connect-list is handled properly.

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Google TV: Android and Chrome on your boob tube

Ammaross Danan
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Go

Title

Nah, the search bar will probably be Google-server driven, thus not able to be blocked for lookup at the very least. Of course, even TiVO phones home to report usage. This sort of datamine is right up Google's alley. I just hope that the Advert at the top of my Gmail inbox will start having lines like "You haven't set the new series premiere of Haven to record yet!!!! Click HERE to have it record automatically!"

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Jobs drops hint on Google open video codec

Ammaross Danan
Boffin

Title

The idea of "good enough," as stated in other comments, has entirely passed this x264 developer by. Of course, even I would bias my opinion toward something that I am actively contributing to. That said, I would agree that there are many things in VP8 that need some (or A LOT) of work, but that is what FOSS is all about: let the community do it. However, in the mean-time, the codec is "good enough." No one designs websites to be elegantly displayed on high-res 1920x1080+ LCD monitors. Likewise, no one would use VP8 to encode Blu-ray discs. VP8 is being pitched for web-hosted videos, not offline content. Therefore, it is EXPECTED to be lower-quality, grainy, blurry, etc. There's plenty of people that have no problem watching youtube videos that look like a VCR tape being eaten alive. A quite-decent picture (albeit not as sharp as high-quality h264) will most likely be more than adequate for the rescaled, mob-phone-shot vids of loser garage bands banging on trash cans in their underwear or an advert of someone brushing their teeth (it might even blur all those "white" teeth enough to make the ad believable! Bonus!).

3 1

Google blames developers for lousy Android battery life

Ammaross Danan
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Go

Title

In spite of the toilet incident, I'd just say your battery is reaching end-of-life and should be swapped out with a new one. I do this with my phone (not an iPhone) on a yearly (or there-abouts) basis...unless you're using an iPhone with which you can not remove/replace the battery....oh wait. :P

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World's mightiest supercomputer to design new nuke plants

Ammaross Danan
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Title

40 years assuming a "major" breakthrough doesn't happen in the mean-time.

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Solid state drives set for huge growth

Ammaross Danan
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Boffin

RE: Colin

www.rethinkdb.com

This is an InnoDB strap-on to MySQL that was written with SSD-based storage in mind. Therefore, "It takes time to recode things, especially when you're waiting on a vendor to do it." only applies to proprietary vendors, or FOSS that has a marginal community around it. :)

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Flash! Enterprise SSD looming at HP

Ammaross Danan
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Boffin

Re: Colin

Yes, no moving parts and less heat generated, but that does not contribute to their failure rate. With SSDs, failure rate is determined by write cycles. HP figured that chunking data under a 100% workload for 1 year (up to the 3-5yr range for the non "boot drive" SSDs) would be the reliable write-endurance for these drives. Of course, if you don't continuously stream data to the drive, you could see longer life expectancies from these drives. HP just won't replace them under warranty if they crap out on you. I'd love to stick a few of these bad boys in my DB server under RAID6. I'd just feel sorry for my RAID card.

OT: Anyone know the dynamics of TRIM with the SSDs in a RAID? One would think that since the drives are in a RAID, each delete request wouldn't be able to request a TRIM on each disk affected...but I'm not sure.

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Adobe tilts at windmills with image apps for iPad

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

@Tim Cook

Wrong. In order to sell a commercially-developed application for OSX, your program must pass an Apple inspection to ensure your GUI is inline with their GUI standards (for one). If it fails, you can't sell it with their stamp of approval.

0 1

Norks 'have answer to humanity's greatest problem'

Ammaross Danan
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Alert

If

If the US declared war on Iraq to steal their oil, then why are my gas prices still going up? (yes, respond with some capitalistic "so the money can go into the hands of American oil companies instead of OPEC")

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HTC slaps back at Apple patent slap

Ammaross Danan
FAIL

"Invention"

The patent system is broken. You built a fusion generator? That should be patentable. Designed an image compression algorithm using sine waves? Have a patent. "Invented" the concept of using a finger to point at something on a screen to "select" it? FAIL. Same with using "multiple" fingers to select edges and corners and use "gestures" to do some form of action. FAIL. Sure, the hardware to do it? Patentable. Perhaps even the code to cause it to happen, but NOT the IDEA itself. Rubbish. Maybe I'll patent the process of viewing symbols to derive some meaning based on the sequence of said symbols and call it "reading." I'll patent the symbols while I'm at it, and the concept of forming multiple "pages" of these "symbols" into a bound copy called a "book."

0 0

Acer Timeline X 4820TG

Ammaross Danan
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Coat

Linux

Can't pop in a LiveCD if the DVD drive has no external eject button...

(I say use a paper clip to trigger the drive tray release and stuff it in that way, but who wants to carry a paper clip around???)

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Latest iPhone 4G leak reveals A4 CPU

Ammaross Danan
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Jobs Horns

Title

Last I checked, when a Beta copy of Win7 "leaked" to the *net a few days prior to release-to-beta-testers, it mounted a significant number of downloads, torrents, and plenty of media coverage. Perhaps it is the Taboo of having something you're not supposed to see yet. (which falls back to Apple's secretive nature)

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Google screws Scroogle

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Title

Sorry, but I myself have written a screen scraper that's ran for a few years now. It is a kludge, it can break on a whim of the developer of the page being scraped, however, with proper maintainence, it is VERY easy to keep up. 3 minutes of analyzing reveals this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=jobs&hl=en&start=0&sa=N

hl=en is the language,

start=0 is the page to view results. So, the "next" button can be set very easily. As for results per page, simply run two or more queries (and assume 10 results per page view) and compile them together.

Shame Scroogle removed their "open" source. Any by chance have a link to their project page perhaps?

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iPad, iPhone driving 'renaissance' in nuclear reactors

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Re: "It's safe and proven technology"

436 Commercial reactors, and some 250 research reactors and one USSR [read "dodgy"] reactor explodes and you stretch to claim a 0.2% (1/(436+250) == 0.14577%, which makes it even less significant). Anyway, nuclear power has gone a long way since Chernobyl was built in !!1970!!. I'm sure we can't base today's nuclear power prowess on 40-year-old USSR tech. Would be like saying computers have poor performance because my old IBM machine circa 1970 was "slow."

Fail.

Granted, nothing has a 100% rate of success, no matter how much a fanboi insists. Even death, "biblically" has failed a few times. ;)

0 0

Apple iPad

Ammaross Danan
FAIL

WTF?

"Like any 1.0 product, the iPad has its rough edges, the worst being the erratic Wi-Fi reception."

WTF? The iPad is an oversized iTouch. It doesn't get the right to claim v1.0 bugginess. Then again, most i*d products have had "spotty" WiFi out of the gate anyway (and some still suffer). But yes, I agree the score's a bit high considering price and limitations.

1 0

WiGig gets spec and Alliance endorsement

Ammaross Danan
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Joke

Title

700 Mbit/s assuming you don't have a metal object, tv, RF-noise-generating-object, sheet of paper, etc between your device and the router. And you must be within 6 feet to get max speeds, but no closer than 2 feet... (read the fine print).

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Perv scanner todger quips provoke Miami airport assault

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Title

I give him credit for lasting a year before acting. However, Human Resources for workplace harrasment would have been the better option. Either make them fear you with the threat of HR, or get them fired so you don't have to work with the presumably childish behaving people any more. Of course, it IS is the USA, so a lawsuit for mental anguish and invasion of privacy for having been scanned in front of co-workers in the first place would have been the more common approach...

0 0

F*ck you, thunders disgruntled fanboi Apple user

Ammaross Danan
Jobs Horns

because...

"I can't jump because I'm still a virgin since I can't download iSex from the App Store!"

The Linux user jumps, since his desktop is in the Cloud(s) already.

1 0

Report reams IT admins for secretly snapping student pics

Ammaross Danan
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Jobs Halo

Title

"Hang on, this is a teenager. I find that somewhat hard to believe."

Nope. No nudity. These were 2 MacBooks, and Mac users would never do anything questionable...

I would have asked for the one with *nix on it. Then I could at least rest assured there's a small chance the cam wouldn't even be operational... :)

0 0

Adobe CTO paints Steve Jobs as Big Brother

Ammaross Danan
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Coat

Title

Yep, just like the new Core i7 iMacs....oh you had to send yours back due to not booting/cracking? So sad.

Your iPhone gets spotty 3G or WiFi service, even next to a cell tower/router? *comfort*

You can't go to the movies with friends because you had to take out a small personal loan just to by your Mac Pro (without a monitor even)? I feel for you.

Can't watch YouTube or news video on your iPhone? Oh yeah, Apple banned Flash. That's your fault for buying it.

Yep. Apple makes excellent products that work extremely well.

Perhaps more of the Mactastic crowd should take to their neighbor's 10yr old. They could probably cobble together a better PC solution nowadays. Sure, you'll have to run Win7, but honestly, is it really that bad? No more having to explain to grandpa that he can't "borrow" his neighbor's copy <insert some app that he absolutely has to have (MS Office for instance)>.

3 1

HAMR knocks perpendicular recording down a notch

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Title

HAMR is not the tech they use for optical mediums, since the amount of heat generated is significantly less, over a significantly smaller surface area, hence, significantly faster to write a bit.

0 0

Microsoft drops second IE9 preview

Ammaross Danan
FAIL

Title

Question is, if they already have a video HTML5 tag implemented, and it currently can handle H.264, is it really all that hard to pipe the datastream to a different codec? I would think a browser would jump to support as many things as they could (isn't that why plug-ins were created in the first place?). I think H.264, VC8, and Ogg would be a good mix of the three main codecs to support, and it would cost what? 2 weeks of coding and testing by a real coder? (I say "real", because I'm not sure how many undergrads they have monkeying away on IE9...)

1 0

Apple demands public apology for iPhone parody

Ammaross Danan
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Thumb Down

Agreed

I think this thought has merit. Perhaps it was their plan all along, just feeding off the anti-Apple sentiment of crack-down.

"Hey! Let's do an Apple parody of some sort!"

"That sounds funny! Know what would be even better?! The following episode, we can stage a 'fake' apology, claiming Apple didn't like it! Our rating will go through the roof as everyone reports our 'apology'!"

3 0

Google tutorial lets developers play malicious hacker

Ammaross Danan
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Title

I'm sure the misue act allows for "educational purposes," which is what most exploit code, etc is released as. This is simply an educational tool to help classes with known exploit vectors in a piece of dodgy software.

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Researchers spy on BitTorrent users in real-time

Ammaross Danan
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Boffin

Title

Their switching system just before The Last Mile knows what MACs connect to it from which lines (one of which is your home btw and they know EXACTLY which line leads to your home). Simple matter to echo these MACs back to The Home Office for proper logging. That's how they associate your IP vs your MAC, charge end-users for services, track your usage over a given month, etc. If you're on the internet, your ISP knows who you are. True anonymity would be to only access the internet from WiFi hotspots (free ones, not the "pay us for use" ones) or wardrive/hack weak/unsecured wireless networks, and constantly rotate networking hardware (NICs, etc) or have one that spoofs its MAC addy and randomize it frequently. Of course, whether this would actually be effective in practice is an exercise for the trolls I guess. :)

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Apple rejects crazy canuck's seal bludgeon game

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Title

In Montana, stealing a horse was punishable by a longer jail sentence than 2nd-degree murder.... Some places/people do value animal life more than human life. Or in the case of Oregon/Washington tree-spikers (the "conservationalists" that drive metal spikes into tree trunks so-as to kill/maim loggers when their chainsaw backfires), "nature" is more important than humans.

We know Apple drones don't sleep well at night. They're drones. They never sleep, they just run really slow all the time.

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US boffin builds ultra-dense nanodot memory

Ammaross Danan
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Title

That or calibrated so somewhere along its wave, it is able to predictably make contact with the proper 6nm bit, perhaps at a peak or trough.

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Stick a fork in floppies - they're done

Ammaross Danan
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Go

Title

"What are we going to use for a Save icon in the future?"

A flash drive. What make and model will probably depend on who wants to cough up the highest bid for the slot. (think movie product placement!)

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Windows Server to ride upgrade wave

Ammaross Danan
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Boffin

Title

Which OS is loaded on? Most likely VMWare or XenServer so they can host WinServer03/08 with a couple *nix OSes (well, at least 1 if their IT dept has any idea what the OS is actually good for).

Of course, there's the more Windows die-hards that will load Server08R2 or somesuch bare metal and play around with Hyper-V, but they might as well just install VMWare ESX2 for all the features and capability (not to mention stability/hog of the host OS....).

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Ridley Scott talks up 'nasty' Alien prequel

Ammaross Danan
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FAIL

Title

"Only worth watching for the hot busty babe."

Which would be quite the spectacle in 3D. Just think of how exaggerated Angie would have been if Tomb Raider had been shot in 3D...

Ah well, I'm a Sci-Fi fan, and thus will be prone to watching it, no matter how terrible it may be.

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Gizmodo faces visit from cops over 'found' iPhone

Ammaross Danan
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Thumb Up

Re

Gizmodo could not be absolutely sure who the owner was, based solely on the word of the person selling the device. Therefore, Gizmodo would have to assume the owner was unknown. HOWEVER, the person who sold the device to Gizmodo had seen the original owner (and thus was able to tell Gizmodo), so HE therefore is the one liable based on the law of theft.

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