Posts by MacroRodent

Re: Don't Forget...

Don't forget that some commenters on this forum opined that Zuckerberg's mandarin was scarcely intelligible.

One of the hardest things in learning a foreign language in adulthood is getting the pronunciation right, if the phonetics of the new language differs a lot from your native language. I suspect Mandarin is an especially difficult case in this respect, because the right intonation is very important for meaning, unlike in English.

Re: Reading books - wats dat ?

"of all fiction apart from Hemmingway-style realism"

Wasn't 451 the Bradbury story where all books were banned? (And burning them was the job of the firemen). He had another story where only non-realist fiction was burned... I think it was (google google) "Usher II" (part of the Martian Chronicles).

Re: Wrong question altogether

A case of diminishing returns. It has been argued quite convincingly that getting some kind of eletronic messaging to everyone does "lift people out of powerty" by making the markets more efficient (see the article on sardine fishers in Kerala, a few weeks back on this august web site). But that can be achieved with GSM. It could be broadband just adds access to kitten videos...

Re: Please help a penguin

You're right, telnet has no place on modern systems unless you have a need to leak credentials.

Telnet is quite OK in a closed network where you have no need to secure communications. In this case its simplicity and low overhead is an asset. But naturally no telnet port should be open to the internet, not even to the company intranet.

Re: Year of Linux on the laptop

I use an old scanner with XP drivers with Windows 7. MS supplies a handy virtual XP machine free of charge...

Yes, if you have Windows 7 Professional or better. Home computers typically come bundled with Windows 7 Home, and I'm not going to pay any more Windows tax than absolutely necessary. MS also no longer patches XP and their page about "Install and use Windows XP Mode in Windows 7" now warns not to use XP mode for any PC connected to the internet.

Re: Past, learn from, uh...duh...huh?

Just an idea. Maybe we'll want to ban the use of these antibiotics in animal feed???

Agreed! The practice should be made illegal world-wide. Protecting millions of human lives is far more important than making some cows grow a bit faster.

Re: No 3G? Useless in some parts of the world...

Secondly, in their desire to keep the name Microsoft "exclusive" (hah!) they've created a situation where even if this new cheapy phone is a success, there's no brand upgrade path. Microsoft must have a special strategy department dedicated to snatching defeat from the jaws of any potential victory.

Indeed, Microsoft is looking more and more like Nokia did in its last mobile phone years...

Here's a free idea for Microsoft: Reintroduce WP 7 for the low-end phone range. By today's standards, WP 7 is quite frugal with hardware, so it should work well on cheap phones, but yet allows a smooth upgrade path to phones with a newer WP.

Re: Necessary XKCD Reference

> fire up a local copy of the software and shutdown the one on Mars.

Ah, but would that really transmit the "being"? The original might not want to shut down. I recall once reading a science fiction story, where a alien race introduced a "teleporter" to humans. The problem is, it worked by transmitting all data about the subject to the destination, where it was reconstructed, then the original (which was not harmed by the process itself) was normally killed. The aliens saw this as a necessary clean-up operation, the humans ... objected.

Re: No such thing

even education although it should be a right is not basic.

In a modern society, not being able to read, write and to do simple arithmetic relegates one to a second-class citizen status, with hardly any jobs available. Therefore at least the elementary education should be considered a basic right in our current society.

Re: Do these flaws apply to all GAE; or just to Java GAE instances

I also wonder if they escaped the Java sandbox only to be confined in a private Linux virtual machine instance. Or does Google run multiple Java sandboxes in one (real or virtual ) host? The latter case would make the exploit very bad news.

designed by ex-nokia guys

The YotaPhone was actually designed in Oulu, Finland by a team which included ex-Nokia engineers.

Re: Crown is correct

Maybe it was common parlance when wrist watches were the kings of personal technology, but Ive's reference to it is the first I have seen for many years.

(I stopped wearing wristwatches years ago, because they seriously irritated my problematic skin, particularly in winter, and the mobile phone became available as an adequate replacement timepiece. Apple and others can keep their smartwatches as far as I am concerned).

Re: enterprise systemd

>Depends on your definition of pretty soon.

Well, two or three years... The server guys here are just starting to install RHEL6 instead of RHEL5, and we have just barely got rid of RHEL4...

Re: VLC

> Why does everyone love VLC so much, I've always found it to be resource hungry and buggy.

I at least have not found it to be resource hungry and buggy. Don't know about loving it, but since VLC generally plays any type of media I throw at it, and is free, I tend to install it on any computer I use for any period of time.

Re: I can't agree with this

>openSUSE is now either the longest running distro (1993?) or second,

SUSE was introduced in 1994. Of the still existing distributions, Slackware and Debian are slightly older, 1993.

Re: Polish the turd, yo!

Please remind us again - how many patches were needed to kill Shellshock?

Three, I think, but they came within days or hours of each other, not two years. Also the proposed solutions were discussed in the open, ensuring the quality of the final solution, but giving bystanders an impression that there were even more issued patches in the end than there really were.

Re: It will: I won't be exchanging the DVD drive

This isn't just an initial distribution vector. It's also a re-infection vector.

That line of thinking would require stripping out any peripheral with reprogrammable firmware, whether USB-connected or not, which is practically all of them these days!

Back to MFM disk drives...

Re: User error

It depends if iMessages were the default (are they? I have no idea, not owning an iPhone). Most users don't try to change settings, if the defaults appear to work. So any problems caused by them cannot be called a user error, when talking about a consumer product.

Re: So why didn't ancient Greeks progress?

Mental barriers are more significant. It has been claimed the Greeks did not bother with more machinery, because the hard work was handled with slaves, so why bother. Automata remained toys for the elite, and when wars and conquests destroyed the elite, knowledge was lost.

I fear the 20. century (and 19. before it) may have been exceptional. Shifting ideologies might mean science is de-emphasized, or crippled (worrying signs in U.S about some scientific knowledge being effectively banned from schoolbooks because of religion). Rising income equality may result in knowledge again being confined to the elite, why educate the plebs? The pool for new talent becomes shallower. We may also have already picked all the low-hanging fruit in science and technology. Certainly we have already mined the most easily accessible resources. Further progress becomes harder.