* Posts by Rattus Rattus

1068 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Oct 2009

Australian Prime Minister: Mayan calendar 'true'

Rattus Rattus

Labor Party, left-leaning?

Pfft, hardly. They are just not AS far to the right as the Coalition, is all.

Fred Flintstone may not have been real but his pet Dino WAS - boffins

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Re: Forget Fred

> "I don't know. Betty Rubble was kind of hot!"

Well, I would go with Betty... But I'd be thinking of Wilma!

Microsoft's anti-Android Twitter campaign draws ire, irony

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Re: What is it with Microsoft?

"I don't know of any other organisation suffering such a severe and persistent case of foot-and-mouth disease."

What about the RIAA?

Microsoft’s so.cl network now open to all

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So you need either a Facebook account or a Microsoft account?

I have neither and I do not intend to get either. Perhaps if they open it up further I might give it a go.

Windows 8 fails to revive world CPU biz

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Gaming no longer driving the upgrade cycle

There are many factors contributing to decline of PC sales, of course, but one I have not seen mentioned yet is the longevity of the current console generation. Since most PC games are not PC-exclusive but are designed for consoles as well, and since the leading consoles have been around for such a long time, games no longer require anything more than a cheap midrange computer. I bought a fairly cheap video card nearly three years ago and I have still been unable to find anything I cannot run at maximum settings.

Curiosity finds organics on Mars, but possibly not of Mars

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Re: One or two questions

"Why would the dust stick to the wheels if the climate is dry anyway ?"

Elecrostatic attraction?

Who's using 'password' as a password? TOO MANY OF YOU

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Re: The IT crowd

Wow. That's an impressive mix of really good security and really horrible security. Very schizophrenic.

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Re: The golden rule of passwords is to assume that they can be seen by anybody ...

@JimmyPage - I think what he is getting at is that if your single LastPass vault password is cracked, then the attacker has access to ALL your passwords in one hit. I do use LastPass myself, with a suitably secure password, but it is a good idea to be aware of this one particular weakness.

Scientists build largest ever computerized brain

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Re: Time Issue

*sigh* Really? Can we please stop giving air to that December 21st lunacy?

Ex-Nokians fish MeeGo out of bin, launch Sailfish OS

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Don't tell me...

...they swiped it?

UN: Greenhouse gas emissions gap is out of control

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Errata

Sorry, that should have said "the only reliable means of generating base load power right now without also generating massive amounts of carbon dioxide".

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Sometimes I agree with Lewis Page,

Sometimes I very much disagree with him. But one thing I cannot argue with is his view on nuclear power. It is one of the safest, cleanest power sources we presently have, and whatever your own views on climate change, nuclear really is the only reliable means of generating base load power right now. All the opposition to it is ridiculous.

Swollen SUPER-GIGANTO PLANET sighted in Andromeda

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Re: Only in astronomy

*cough* Particle physics.

Post-defenestration Microsoft: It's the APIs, stupid. And Metro

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Re: Interesting.

Exactly, the issue is not whether it is technically possible to deliver the same applications across all types of devices, but rather whether it is appropriate to even try. I would agree that it is not, since the use cases of each device class are so different.

Conroy says filter demise a win for community consultation

Rattus Rattus

So for the next phase of "Community consultation"...

...Can we call for the sacking of Conroy the C*nt?

Serenading mice can sing along if you hum a few bars

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Re: I heard mice sing...

Barbaric, horrible, cruel things sticky traps are.

Microsoft: Pirates at high risk of malware infection

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Or, since Windows oh-so-helpfully hides file extensions by default, someone may have downloaded a file called "britneys_tits.mpg.exe"

Boffins prove Queen ballad 'world's most catchy song'

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I only...

...know three of them, myself. And I'm not so sure about male voices necessarily making the most "catchy" songs. The song I've been least able to get out of my head is "Winter Wrap-Up" which is sung entirely by female voices.

Fixed broadband rules downloads, mobile rules new services

Rattus Rattus

Don't forget...

The copper network is in a poor enough state that quite a lot of residences - in inner suburbs of capital cities, no less - cannot get ADSL at all and therefore have to resort to mobile connections or dial-up. Also, many households with a fixed connection will also have one or two mobile connections in the form of smartphones.

Reebok used 'very fit woman' in buttock-related deception

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I'll skip visiting the link, thanks. Muscled and/or skinny women with flat asses really don't do it for me.

Google+ chases MySpace for second place

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@BorkedAgain

Sigh. I despair.

45% of Android users to upgrade to rival phone OSes

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@defiler

"Still looking for a really good music player that'll handle FLAC files though."

Dude! You've already got an Android phone. Just put a nice big MicroSD card in there and buy some decent earphones. Your phone will happily play FLAC and then you don't need to carry two devices.

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Speaking for myself,

I bought my Android phone so I didn't have to install the giant steaming pile of shit that is iTunes. Being able to use my device as I see fit without needing the manufacturer's blessing was a nice bonus.

'iPhone 5' chippery captured on camera

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Have they made the case any less ugly yet? Seriously, every iPhone I've seen looks like a cheap plasticky device from the early 90s.

Sixty-seven WIMPs spotted in the wild, maybe

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@D.M

Argh! Please don't say "theory" where you mean "hypothesis".

Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray disc set

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Yeah, not buying it

I'm pretty much over Star Wars altogether now, largely due to George spending so much time and money telling the fans what they should like and that they're wrong for what they do prefer. I'd rather spend my time on entertainment made by people who actually maintain a good relationship with their fans and where they don't talk down to their audience. You know, like MLP:FiM.

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You mean

Ian McDiarmid, not McDermott. And nobody cares because you don't exactly get any kind of decent view of the Emperor in TES, and McDiarmid *was* the actor who played the Emperor, quite well too, in ROTJ.

More transistors, Moore’s Law, less juice

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@Marky W

Indeed, my smartphone has approximately equivalent CPU, more RAM, and significantly more secondary storage than the desktop PC I had ten years ago.

Big Music trumpets ‘Cliff Richard’ term extension

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@AC 13th Sep 23:30

No, people are simply *enjoying* it, not profiting from it. Or do you think Shakespeare's plays should still be in copyright because people are still enjoying them? The point isn't that works should enter the public domain when nobody likes them any more, it is that works should enter the public domain while they still have some use left in them and the original creator has profited from them just enough to encourage him to make more.

Copyrights should be about 15 to 20 years, and should be non-transferable.

Apple plan to rate shops etc by number of iPhones visiting

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Sounds quite useful

Can I get an app for my Android phone that'll check this iRating? That way I know which businesses to avoid so as not to deal with smug tossers.

Industry pitches piracy research ahead of Attorney General meeting

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Lying liars and the lies they lie

Ah well. Way to incentivise further development of anonymous filesharing guys. You just keep on aiming that gun at your foot.

Microsoft inks new patent pacts over Android...and Chrome

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@Tomato42

No, the translation layer I meant would be in the phone's electronics. It can present Windows with whatever it expects to see through the USB port, while using it's own, non-patent-encumbered filesystem internally. It just means Windows wouldn't be able to read the MicroSD card through a normal card reader, it'd only be able to read it through the phone.

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Facepalm

Why-oh-why...

...are manufacturers still using FAT32? Why not use an open-source filesystem? You can have a conversion layer as part of the USB connection if you need to connect to a Windows PC, or even just include a filesystem driver.

Kingston Wi-Drive wireless flash storage

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FAIL

Who are they trying to kid?

16 Gb for nearly a hundred quid? In a package that size? I have a terabyte portable drive that cost less than this, and it's about the same size. Sure, it doesn't have wifi, but so what? If I need more storage on my phone, I have a micro-SD slot.

This is an expensive, shiny gimmick for people with more money than sense. Who do they expect to buy this? Oh yeah, that's right...

NASA releases stunning new moon-landing snaps

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Not another *stellar* object...

...that'd be a bit warm. But we have left footprints on an extraterrestrial object. And I agree, we should be ashamed as a race for the failure to follow up.

I wish the US would stop spending it's remaining money on stupid pointless shit, like "bringing freedom" to people who just want to stop getting shot at and for Americans to fuck off back to their own country. (Really, who outside America itself DOESN'T want Americans to fuck off back to America?)

And it'd be nice for the rest of the Western world to step up and and make a credible attempt at a manned space program of their own rather than standing back and letting the US bugger it up like this. Russia did it to a degree, China's doing it, India's doing it - what the hell's wrong with the rest of us?

Samsung outs 5in Galaxy Note as new smartphone concept

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Thumb Up

I'd like one

It's the perfect size. Smartphones are just a little too small to use comfortably and tablets are too big to carry everywhere like a phone. Now if only it doesn't have Samsung's traditional shitty build quality I might have just found my next phone.

All WikiLeaks' secret US cables are on BitTorrent in full

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@vic 4

Ask Barbara Streisand, apparently she knows how.

Google's Moto move spells iPhone doom

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The car analogies don't really fit

Fashion analogies are much more appropriate in this case. People with more money than sense buy expensive designer label jeans in order to show them off. This is the Apple market.

Other people who don't care about showing off the latest expensive shiny gear would instead buy plain jeans that offer the same function but don't have the expensive designer label, such as a half-eaten piece of fruit. This is the Android market.

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@Giles Jones

"Much of the backlash of jailbreaking has been due to it then being used to unlock the phone or run pirate software."

How is this a bad thing? For starters, I see no moral problems whatsoever with unlocking a phone.

If I were to also choose to run pirated software then that's between me and my conscience. My technology should have no say whatsoever in any moral decisions I choose to make.

Google+ succumbs to Facebook game envy

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Been waiting for G+ to open up

so more of us can get in. I've always been a Facebook refusenik, but I might finally give social networking a try when G+ opens to the public.

Lossless music goes High Street

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@twunt: Not the point

The point of lossless isn't for better listening quality, it's so you can keep the best quality source possible. That way, when you convert it into one format for one device, a different format for another device, and want to use part of a track for backing music for your latest Youtube video, they each get created from your high quality source and you don't get the gradually declining quality from shifting between lossy formats.

It's purpose is archival rather than listening.

London rioters should 'loose all benefits'

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"An island at the arse end of the planet"

Hang on, I thought you wanted them *out* of Britain?

Sony confirms investigation into warehouse blaze is underway

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I was against the rioters before...

...now I'm starting to feel maybe they're not all bad.

Italian boffins to robo-grapple space junk

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I like...

...a mix of this and the Japanese idea. Use the Italians' satellite to deorbit the larger pieces, then deploy a large aerogel catcher from another satellite to scoop up as much smaller stuff as possible before firing it's jets to deorbit the lot.

Old Republic parallel imports okay, says BioWare

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A quarter of a second?

Wow, I want internet from whoever you're with! Standard ping time for transatlantic servers from Perth is around 500 to 600 ms. If it's congested, it's sometimes a full second or more.

Two solicitors fined and suspended for file-sharer letters

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That's a bit unfair

My rats are friendly, good natured, cute little guys.

Cheapskate Aussie net-shoppers safe from GST for now

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Corporations wanted globalisation...

...this is the corollary. Globalisation works in both directions.

Bullfrog Syndicate

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re: "Without the express permission of the copyright holder it is not legal to distribute it."

And who really gives a shit about the copyright holder's permission? Especially when the holder in question is EA. People want it, the copyright holder isn't distributing it. Therefore people will find their own ways of obtaining it.

Firefox maker moves towards a browser-free world

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@Ru

The difference between Flash and HTML5 is that Flash is slow, buggy, and shit. My PC can run Crysis at max settings and high framerates without breaking a sweat, but if I fullscreen Flash Player I'm lucky to get 20 fps. And almost every time I get a crash in a browser session, it's Flash that has crashed. Also, may the Flying Spaghetti Monster help anyone who tries to run Flash under Linux.

The sooner we're rid of Flash, the better.

Jupiter spacecraft mounted atop bloody big rocket

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@Ben 50

Hahahaha, that site is comedy gold. Mind if I share it around my colleagues? They could do with a good laugh.