* Posts by Dr. Mouse

2114 publicly visible posts • joined 22 May 2007

Wikipedia bans Church of Scientology

Dr. Mouse

@AC

"Anyone desiring information about the Scientology religion should visit the Church web site at www.Scientology.org to form their own opinions"

So, then, if you want to learn about a "religion", you should listen only to views from that religion?

I am agnostic myself. I keep an open mind. But to gain a complete perspective you must listen to BOTH sides of a debate. Religions themselves will always paint themselves in the best possible light, and offer only views which correspond to their own agenda. It is the same with anyone trying to put forth their own argument.

I will add to this that I do not condone what WP have done. It is censorship, censorship is baaad, m'kay.

But, I also dislike CoS. I believe them to be a money-grabbing business playing with peoples lives for profit. I do not believe that any religion should charge people for being a member, or to gain knowledge of the religion they are following. All facts should be made available at the start, so the person may peruse them at their leisure, and eventually discover whether they actually believe.

One last thing @AC: If you want people to take you seriously, do not cower behind anonymity. A comment on here doesn't even show your real details, just your chosen user name, but at least people don't think you are scared to show your face. It is labelled "Anonymous Coward" for a reason...

Getting real about Linux on the desktop

Dr. Mouse

@jake & Alastair

"If your IT staff can't handle more than one OS, I submit that you need new IT staff."

BRAVO! I wholeheartedly agree!

"You've made two big leaps of logic there.

1) People actually do find Linux fine. In my experience they don't- I know at least two people that bought original eeePCs and then took them back and traded them for Windows ones. They didn't like Linux.

2) This means users will want to try it on their home PCs. Netbooks are used for browsing and little else, home PCs can be used for all sorts of things. The average user never even reformats and reinstalls Windows in their PC's lifetime, it's quite a leap to suggest that they'll try out a Linux live CD"

WRT 1) I also know of people who did the same, but then they were idiots expecting it to be a fully functioning laptop. They were just as dissappointed with the XP versions. Those I know who bought netbooks for what netbooks are designed for (i.e. a bit of surfing, email, a few card games, IM...) were quite happy with Linux. Even those who bought the Maplin Minibook (Also CCL minibook, made by CnM) were happy for what they paid. The problem is the people who buy an eee and expect it to run the latest 3D games etc, and then whinge that they bought the wrong tool for the job.

As for 2, I know plenty of people who just use their expensive desktop PCs just for browsing & email. And the reason I walked this line of logic is that people have asked me to install linux for them, after trying a live cd that either a colleague gave them or they found given away for free. I discount the ones who actually downloaded and burned it themselves, as they actually know about computers to some degree. The low-end, non-computer-literate ppl liked the siomplicity, the speed, and the fact it was free (most of them were running pirate versions of XP before that).

What I wrote was actually based on my own experience, and that of people I know.

Dr. Mouse

Incremental increase

Can I just say that 15 years ago, when I first started using alternatives to Windows, most people said "Linux is only for geeks, noone else will use it!"

Now, we have moved to "Linux is for geeks and people who dont use their computer much".

Sounds like an improvement to me...

Whats happening is that slowly, Linux is gaining more users. As it gains more users, more apps are developed for it, user interfaces are improved, people become more familiar with it, and it gains more users.

Take netbooks & nettops. People are taking them up and finding Linux is fine, not the scary beast they heard of. This means they try Linux on their desktop, probably using a Live CD. They like the fact that it runs quicker than Windows, and try out the alternative apps. They like it, so install it.

Now we have a user who would most likely be quite happy with Linux on their corporate box.

I think, as was mentioned above, the real sticking point will be the IT Pros, many of whom consider themselves experts because they took a 1-week course. They have only ever dealt with Windows, and will have to learn from scratch to move the company over to Linux. So they will dig their heals in, and spread scare stories to the management about how hard Linux is to use.

As for applications, well, it is going to be a slow process IMHO, but as more ppl move to Linux at home (and the number of ppl asking me to put Linux on their machine instead of Windows is growing), the more apps will be written for Linux. This will be prompted by many, many phone calls to their help desks saying "I bought your software and it wont work on my PC", to the point where they see that it is worthwhile to port it to Linux.

All this will likely take another 10 years or so, but I seriously beleive that MS's days as dominant power in the desktop world are numbered...

Seminal password tool rises from Symantec ashes

Dr. Mouse
Thumb Up

Welcome back!

I remember using this about a decade ago. At the time I was helping the Admin at school to secure the network (he'd just started, and we all knew the holes, as we'd been using them for years).

I noticed while rooting around that the password database on the NT DC was left on an unsecured share and I made a copy and took it home.

A week(!) later I brought back 200 double-sided pages of A4 containing everyone's username and password, including administrator (except mine of course). He actually toyed with the idea of changing it so the users couldnt change passwords so he could just tell them their password when they forgot. Instead we implemented a password strength policy.

It was amusing seeing the headmistresses password was... password, and of course the first one picked up by l0phtcrack. How much fun I could have had, pity I'm such an honest guy.

SATA Revision 3.0 released

Dr. Mouse

@AC 23:41

"I've never seen a drive which can go any where near that fast"

Just because most current drives cannot acheive the speed doesnt mean the bandwidth isnt usefull for something.

Take for instance SATA rev1 @ 150MB/s. When it was released most drives didn't even come close to reaching it. Now we have flash drives putting through sustained rates of over 200MB/s. In addition, if the data is already in the devices cache, it will be read at (at least close to) the bus speed.

The interface speed should always stay ahead of the device speed as, sooner or later, the devices will catch up.

Incidentally, IIRC, SATA rev2 @ 3GB/s is capable of 300MB/s, not 375, due to the 10/8 encoding scheme used.

Buddy unveils Metro e-car

Dr. Mouse

Too expensive.

As you can get a small petrol city car, which will have much more range and performance, and will not need expensive battery replacement after a couple of years, would probably work out cheaper over the 1-2years life of this thing. You would save about £7000 by going for something like an Aygo. Thats about 7000l petrol at current prices, 1540 gallons, or approx 90,000 miles (60mpg Aygo 'combined' economy), plus you would be able to take it on the motorway without being scared ****less (and a danger to everyone else)

They need the cost to be down in the £6-10k range before it will be even close to worth it.

'Thieving' sperm whale caught on CCTV

Dr. Mouse

Whos the thief?

So, for thousands of years these whales have been eating fish from those oceans. Then along comes a cheeky fisherman and takes those fish from the whales. Who's the thief?

Seems to me the whales are just taking back what was theirs in the first place!

Unsafe at any speed: Memcpy() banished in Redmond

Dr. Mouse

Simple solution

If you are a programmer, use C, check your work, acheive fast, efficient programs.

If you are a script kiddie, use a language which checks everything for you.

Seriously, although everyone makes mistakes, this is just indicative of the dumbing down of society. It's like the warning lables on coffee cups at starbucks et al, saying "Contents may be hot." IT DAMN WELL BETTER BE IT'S COFFEE!!

That warning should be replaced by a standard notice on the door saying "If you are an idiot, do not enter." Similarly "If you are not a competent programmer, do not use C"!

Intel hit with largest ever EU fine

Dr. Mouse

@AC 10:36

Yes, currently Intel offer better performance, and AMD better value. Thing is, it used to be that AMD and Intel were on a level playing field wrt performance, but AMD offered better value.

Would the gap in performance exist if Intel had not used it's muscle with OEMs to hurt AMD? We will never know. But the situation may have been reversed had Intel not been naughty.

For me, I prefer AMD CPUs. I refuse to pay the premium for Intel, in terms of both CPU and Mobo costs. And Phenom II is such a big step in the right direction that I could see AMD catching up some time over the next few years.

( One last point, slightly off topic: Am I the only one who thinks Intel's i7 is just a copy of the Phenom? )

Tesco tills go titsup

Dr. Mouse

ASDA

I remember this happening more than once at ASDA when I worked there (10+ yrs ago).

If the tills went down, the policy was for all managers in the store to man a checkout, and "estimate" the value of the goods in each trolley, just to keep things moving. They considered it worse for business to close the store and waste all their customers time than to loose money by undervaluing the goods. Worked well, although it took longer than normal if at a busy time (due to there being less managers than checkout operators), it helped keep things moving, and kept the customers goodwill.

Brown pledges to make Britain's drivers greener

Dr. Mouse

@Tony Smith

RE: "As for those twits who zig-zag back and forth from left to centre lanes as they encounter slower traffic, what part of 'lane discipline' don't they understand?"

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The rule is stay to the left unless you are overtaking. Therefore, in normal circumstances (where you are driving a car, so are legally allowed to go faster than the wagons) you WILL 'zig-zag'. You will drive in the left hand lane until you are approaching a slower vehicle, pull out into the middle lane, overtake, and pull back in.

I may have misunderstood your comment, though...

British film board rejects 'disturbing' sexual torture film

Dr. Mouse

Done the job

The BBFC here have probably done more to help the stated aims of this film than could have been done otherwise.

First off, many people will download the film just to see what the fuss is about. Personally, I won't (it's not my cuppa tea, give me some good ole' fashioned humping, or a bit of girl-on-girl, any day, I'm boring like that...), but the number of people who will see this film has likely now shot up from the BDSM crowd to the average, curious layperson.

Secondly, those who (like me) won't now at least know of it's existence, and I may be having a look round for info about the film and it's subject matter (if I get a rare free moment...)

Texas Memory Systems punts Texas-sized SSD

Dr. Mouse

OK I'm an idiot

That SHOULD have been AC, but it wasnt. My brain isnt working today...

Dr. Mouse
Thumb Up

@Mike & TeeCee

I agree...

I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANT ONE....

wait, thats not true...

I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN I WANT TEN

:)

Then again, price would have to drop substantially for me to be able to afford it. Maybe I could convince work it'd be good for their db servers, and accidentally order extra...

AC in case I put my plan into action

NHS study produces ejector-seat ambulance design

Dr. Mouse

You've gotta remember...

they are art students. To quote the immortal Dave Lister

Lister: ...the whole of my life I've never had anything to hang on to - no roots, no parents, no education...

Rimmer: No education?

Lister: I went to art college.

MPs vote to keep addresses private (theirs, not yours)

Dr. Mouse

You have to laugh, or else you'd cry...

"Second, and more worrying, was the way in which this measure was introduced into the House on Monday, as an amendment, with no debate permitted, to the Political Parties and Elections Bill."

This is the way of the current govt. The number of "ammendments" that have been made which should really have been passed through parliament for full debate is staggering. It mocks the entire political process (although this in itself is a mockery at the moment). A friend told me that some of these "amendments" have been larger than the original law, and others have been completely unrelated to whats being amended.

Also @Matt:

RE: "MPs are not a special case, they are our servants and need to remember that."

Ha! This has not been the case for a LONG time. They are our overlords, we must bow to their magnificence!

Three months on, you still can't get off the DNA database

Dr. Mouse

I found this hillarious:

"...your details will now be retained within my department..."

So, sonny, you have written to us to ask that your details, retained by us, should be removed. In response, I shall retain EVEN MORE information about you... MUAHAHAHAAAA!!!

Brits find accommodation a little uncomfortable

Dr. Mouse

Actually

I remember such 'txt spk' being used in IRC a long time ago. I'll bet there were other places too before that, but I'm only young :)

I absolutely hate how little emphasis is put on correct spelling and grammar today. For one thing it makes things more difficult to read. I often use abbreviations in text messages, but normally when I've run out of my 160 characters and need to compress it.

A friend told me something interesting recently, though (a teacher). A student taking an English Language GCSE exam can write the entire paper in txt spk and still acheive 95%! They can only penalise 5% for spelling, punctuation and grammar, ON AN ENGLISH LANGUAGE EXAM!!

Photography rights: Snappers to descend on Scotland Yard

Dr. Mouse

Hmm

"they affect a negligible fraction of the populace"

OK, so I can go out an kill one guy... coz that affects "a negligible fraction of the populace"

Vatican endorses Darwin, slights intelligent design

Dr. Mouse

@Sean Kennedy

"Sorry, AC, but there really isn't a place for God at the science table. Unless it can be tested, hence falsifiable, it's not science. And God, by most definitions, can not be falsifiable."

This is not a matter of a place for god in science. It is the place for Science within Religion.

I agree, God has no place in Science. BUT there is no reason why religion cannot embrace science. This is what the church is saying, and I agree completely.

Large Hadron Timewaster

Dr. Mouse

@Stevie

RE: "Exaclty how does this promise to benefit anyone but a bunch of daft Physisists who can't make themselves understood in a room full of normal people and who spend all their lives underground in Switzerland because they can't get girls?"

Yeah an understanding of Physics and subatomic particles has NEVER benefitted anyone has it?

It may be that we cannot see the outcome right now. It may even prove to be that there IS no usefull info to be extracted from the LHC, and it's a giant flop. But without doing this experiment, we will not know.

What if the result of this research is a cheap, safe, sustainable source of power? Will it still be a waste of time then?

Even if all the LHC does is rovide more data, to be used by the next generation of scientists, to design more experiments, IMHO it is still worthwhile. Advancing our understanding of the universe is a worthwhile goal on its own, even if there are no immediate, tangible benefits.

Parcelforce website cold-shoulders Linux lovers

Dr. Mouse

So what?

To be quite honest, I've always found them to be a rip-off anyway.

I tend to use www.interparcel.com for anything larger than a letter, and theyve always been very reasonable. No probs under Linux.

As has been said multiple times above, this is either a case of crap developers, in which case I dont trust putting my card details in, or a specific block against OS's other than those they list, which is idiotic. Its a frigging web page!

UK.gov backs ISPs on charging content providers, throttling P2P

Dr. Mouse

Skipped

a load of the comments coz I dont have time to read em, but heres my 2p worth.

THE ISP IS A PIPE! Or at least should be. It's only job is to provide a connection to the internet. It should not decide what we can or cant see, how fast certain things are allowed to go, which bits are important. They should provide a link into the network, full stop.

UK cops' road accident reporting going paperless

Dr. Mouse
Coat

Obligatory

So what happens when CRASH crashes?

2TB drives arrive down under

Dr. Mouse

@twat

"Try a 3 MB/s SATA interface"

Erm, that would be SLOOOOOOOOW.

It IS on a 3GBit/s SATA IF, aka SATA-II, delivering about 300MByte/s max interface bandwidth. Drive wont get this, but it'll be more than 3MB/s. Even a slow, cheap USB flash drive would be faster than that... even for writes!

Obama reverses Dubya's tailpipe emissions

Dr. Mouse

title... nah

RE: "Bye bye jobs, bye bye US auto"

OK, it may not be a good thing that jobs will be lost, but I must shout a big "HURRAY!" for the death of the US Auto industry, with their huge, inefficient V8's, huge, cumbersome chassis, and cheap, tacky plastic interiors.

RE: "A 2007 law required that new cars and trucks produced by 2020 obtain 35 miles per gallon of fuel."

Yes, most small cars in Europe do get better than 35 mpg... but I would assume this one is in US gallons, which would make it 42 mpg(Imperial). Thats actually quite good for even a small petrol-fuelled car.

RE:"The problem with that is US manufacturers now have to either:

"1. Make a different car for each state

"2. Make the highest common denominator to satisfy all laws"

No, actually it would probably just be done with different ECU settings. The VW Polo Blue Motion is available in 2 different models with different emissions figures, and they are just the same enging with a different map. You can get the same (if not better) economy loading one of those maps into any polo with the same engine (although not the same emmisions, as they use a filter on the exhaust).

ISPs slam CEOP bid to rewrite RIPA

Dr. Mouse

EEJIT!

I'm sorry but this guy is taking out of his arse.

Obvoiusly the ISP needs to be compensated. It takes time to gather the records and provide them to the police, and probably costs the ISP more than that average £18.

And I do not agree there should be a fixed price structure. It will cost some ISPs more to provide the data than others. A small ISP may not have the infrastructure to automate it all, so have to manually pull data from the logs (I dont know this for certain, its just an example of what could push costs up).

Also, the sheer quantity of requests from this unit is stagering, especially considering only 3% the number of people were arrested. Looks more like they are just going straight to the ISP in the first instance in the hopes of finding something, rather than doing their job.

Breakthrough paint blocks top-end spectrum

Dr. Mouse

@Farmer Hackit

"My house has been painted with RF blocking paint for years. My Wireless LAN is a joke."

It actually says in the artical that such things are available... just not to cover the top end of the spectrum.

Although to be fair, such high frequencies would have a lot of trouble getting through normal brick walls, or even plasterboard for the 150GHz-ish range. It doesnt seem like this stuff would really be necessary, unless used in blocking much higher power transmissions.

Fisker posts Karma Sunset shots

Dr. Mouse

@Pete James

"Damn sight more than the French, let's put it that way."

Erm, yeah, you do realise that's not saying very much, donchya?

I personally don't rate the Yank car 'Styling'. As for the "difference in values for the typical American consumer"... Yeah the typical Yank needs <tongue in cheek>

a) something big enough to fit into,

b) can't do with a light weight car because they'll weigh more than the car, and

c) would die of shock if they saw the lovely, twisty back roads of Europe.

</tongue in cheek>

This is why most Britts & Europeans do not like Yank cars, and yes, it is all down to a difference in values. In the UK, good handling is important. America have straight roads, so dont need to be able to corner.

Yank cars r still crap though :P

LibDem cheeky boy rides to Segway's rescue

Dr. Mouse

Admission of Guilt?

<QUOTE>Opik responded with reassurances: "I use a Segway on the United Kingdom’s roads, and indeed the byways of Montgomeryshire, and not once have I come to grief even though I have the road-based model."</QUOTE>

If it is illegal to use them on public roads, is this not an admission of guilt?

Should he not be arrested?

Also: If he tried to deny it, would that not be admission of lying to Parliament, which would surely get him in hot water? (The admission, not the lying, we all know politicians lie, but they don't ADMIT they were lying!)

Sounds like a bit of an eejit to me...

UK.gov prepares for filesharing fracas

Dr. Mouse

High Speed Internet

The ISPs have a point here: Which home user will pay for a high-speed connection when they can only browse the web on it? *

Without a decent legal alternative to illegal downloads, most people simply would not need more than a basic, say, 2Mbit line (in fact 512k would probably be more than adequate). Hence ISPs loose money.

* of course there will always be those who don't realise they don't need such a fast line and will get the best they can afford anyway, but this is just general stupidity....

Brit porn filter censors 13 years of net history

Dr. Mouse

Got about half way though...

the comments here then got bored.

To all those who say "I've encountered CP accidentally and want the IWF to opperate": You know you can actually filter your OWN connections right? Then at least you have controll over it. Net Nanny among others.

RE: IWF do/dont filter arguments.

No, they dont. They provide a list to the ISP for a 'nominal fee'. The ISP must implement the filter themselves.

Heres the catch though, they MUST use the ENTIRE list or not at all. If they discover a mistake has been made, they are in breach of contract if they remove the block.

Also, most implementations do not just use DNS hijacking, they use a routing table that redirects certaion IPs through the transparent proxy. This proxy then intercepts (HTTP port 80 only), checks the URL, and drops the connection if the URL matches one on the IWF list. So use of alternate DNS servers will not always work (sometimes will if a site has multiple servers and you pick up an IP of a foreign server not on the list).

Anyway, IWF is a joke, as ANYONE could EASILY get round it. And do you REALLY think that real paedos host their mucky pics on public websites anymore?

Dr. Mouse

Please please please...

... let the arses at the IWF make MORE of these mistakes, it's the only way to let the average Joe user know whats going on!

It's not even as though it does any good in stopping real peados accessing CP (anyone heard of newsgroups? not blocked. SSL? not blocked. BitTorrent? FTP? VPN/SSH to a server in Russia/Sweden/USA/Anywhere else?), all it does is stop law abiding citizens from "accidentally" accessing "potentially illegal" content.

Go on, censor more, piss more people off, and trigger a revolt!

Cows can't detect earthquakes: Official

Dr. Mouse

You're all wrong!

The cows got together and decided, "Hey, why should we let THEM know we can tell when these disasters are comming. Let them all die, and we will rule the world! MOOOOAHAHAHA!!"

Deception of 'up to' broadband speeds exposed

Dr. Mouse

How about

paying per Mbps? So an 'up-to 8Mb' connection is priced at, say £8. If you get 2Mbps, you pay £2.

OK, it would mean that customers getting the top speeds would pay more, but it would be fair.

As for me, I get about 17Mbit/s ds sync on my Be line. It should be more, but the copper's cr@p!

Intel accused of stealing chip virtualization, violating God's law

Dr. Mouse

LOLololol....

<sarcasm>OK, sounds perfectly credible to me...</sarcasm>

Lets just assume, for one moment, that he DID come up with a very similar design to the C2D and that all he says is true.

Then he is a complete MORON for disclosing the idea to a guy like Jobs without filing for a patent first, or at least getting a signed NDA off him. Does this guy have no idea how the world works?!? People lie, people cheat, and people steal. Successfull people do so even more (its why they are successfull).

IT salary survey says: ‘You’ve never had it so bad’

Dr. Mouse

Eejits

I agree with the comments on here about the idiots who go on a course then think they are an expert. I have known many, and despise them. The only place they should be employed is on a helpdesk reading from a script.

I took a mock MCSE exam, and easily passed despite having only played with Win2K Server on an old PC for an afternoon, several months before, when I was bored. What counts is time spent doing the job. It's how I've learned.

I'm now in a great job as a Windows & Unix admin (Linux & Solaris). I'm only 27yo, but I have been Administering computers since my father got his first CAD box (I was about 11-12yo then). I know I am not the best, and regularly call on the expertise of my colleagues (who have been in the field for 20+ years), but you cannot learn this in 2 weeks.

Hopefully this'll cull the dross from IT, but I doubt it. They'll more likely get rid of the well paid real experts, keep the eejits, and rely on how well the experts have already set everything up. Its the way of the world...

Microsoft issues emergency patch warning for IE

Dr. Mouse

Ha!

And non-techies wonder why I refuse to use IE except at work, and even then not much.

Firefox all the way. Hopefully this incident will have damaged MS's market share, mainly because it would force sites to stop being designed to work propperly only in IE (several sites I have been on try to tell me "most people use IE, so thats what we design for. Try using IE")

Oh and @AC WRT "closer to my secret pledge, which is to reduce the use, by my assigned herd of lusers, of MS crapware by 50% during my reign":

Thats a damn good idea.

Be Broadband doubles down on ADSL to catch cable

Dr. Mouse

All well and good

I joined Be* over a year ago. I joined mainly for the download speeds, but also because I had heard they had great customer service, they listened to suggestions, and pretty much treated it like a democratic club, with every member having a say.

And they were right. I revelled in my new-found ISP, who didnt expect you to recheck all the basic points when you phones for support, who you rarely HAD to phone for support. The usergroup was great, and I was in internet heaven.

Then along came O2. It did not happen overnight, but now we find that Be* is not as it once was. They must answer to O2 about everything. A good example is the recent IWF-Wikipedia debacle. Rather than the debate and discussion we used to get we Be staff, we got fed marketting PR bull and a complete lack of interest in our opinions. This was at least partially down to O2 insisting they do thin gs a particular way. Wellcome to standard ISP practice.

IMO the only good reason to be with Be now is the speed, and you can get that cheaper through O2 if you have an O2 mobile. I am extremely disappointed in them, although not surprised. Just bear this in mind if you are considering joining for any reason but the speed.

2TB Caviar drive too good to be true?

Dr. Mouse

KB

"suggest that the capacity is actually measured at 1000B/KB instead of 1024 bytes/KB, which would make the drive capacity about 1.86TB and not 2TB"

Hasnt this always been the case with harddrives?

If you check the capacity of any drive (and I mean before partitioning/formatting) you will find that the size is closer to the SI unit than the computer unit. A 500GB drive will be closer to 500,000,000,000 (500 x 10^9) bytes than 536,870,912,000 (500 x 2^30) bytes.

Hard drive manufacturers have used SI units for years. This is why there is confusion. Hence, many refer to 1024 bytes as a KiB (kibibyte). So, in these terms 2TB=1.86TiB.

FSF throws sueball at Cisco

Dr. Mouse

Then it's about time!

"The group added that it had never taken a company to court before over a copyright dispute in the 15 years it’s been enforcing its licences."

Companies will always try to squeeze out of such commitments. Cases like this NEED to be brought before a court in order to establish precedent. This makes the licenses stronger in the future.

BOFH: Blackmail and fine wine

Dr. Mouse

Absolute Quality

This boss seemed much better than the others, shame he had to cock it up by being stupid.

Why port your Firefox add-on to Internet Explorer?

Dr. Mouse

No one programs in C++ anymore

BULL!

C++ is a REAL programming language, like C and Assembler. There may be more real programming languages, but in my book if you cant use one of these 3 you are not a real programmer*.

The problem is, many 'script kiddies' consider themselves programmers (and I classify VB, Java and Python to be scripting languages, not programming languages), and there are so many of these who call themselves programmers that the oppinion has become mainstream.

*Do not flame me for this, if you know of another let me know. I know that I tend to have more extreme definitions of things than most people, but I like my definitions to be accurate. Like my definition of friend - drinking buddies, online chat buddies, aquaintances... all these most ppl would call friends, I dont.

Junk science and booze tax - a study in spin

Dr. Mouse

@DavCrav

RE: "Net result: all pubs shut, supermarkets boom with increased profits. Well done, Labour."

Have you not noticed that most govt efforts in any area which affect the local pub are directed TOWARDS closing them all down.

The most prominent example of this I can cite is the smoking ban. The govt forces all pubs to spend huge amounts of money on ventilation systems, then ban smoking. Therefore said ventilation systems are useless, added to which a large proportion of people stop going to the pub during the week.

In my local, the majority of the patrons smoke. The ban has not encouraged more non-smokers to come to the pub, and has stopped many who came down to socialise during the week to stop. Hence the pub is virtually empty on week-day nights, when it used to be fairly busy, and custom on weekends has stayed about the same. Hence they are struggling very badly.

As to your point: "I won't increase my budget (we're in a recession after all) and so I switch, and consume all twenty pints from a supermarket.", thats what will happen, the govt knows it, but the govt doesnt want pubs to exist any more so dont care.

Broadcasters and ISPs cosy up for iPlayer on Freeview

Dr. Mouse

@Comments RE tv license

Actually, my friend, who has recently decided not to watch TV, instead relying on DVDs etc, was told by the TV licensing ppl that if reception equipment is 'detuned', ie you can not select any channels, you did not need a license. So she has kept her big screen TVs, disconnected the aerials, and watches DVDs on them.

Similarly, I would expect that the TVOD Freeview boxes would receive their on-demand stuff from the internet (as how else could true TVOD work over freeview? there is not enough bandwidth available). Therefore if you tuned the box so it could not pick up the freeview multiplexes then you would not need a license.

The only problem would come if it somehow needed the freeview broadcast signal to operate (e.g. they sent out listings info on a data channel on freeview, which was needed to dl the content), although I am sure someone out there would find a way around that.

BBC, ITV propose 'open' TV-over-net platform

Dr. Mouse

@Michael Admans

Why? I like the BBC as it is, I don't want it to change.

Incidentally, the license fee is not 'paying for the BBC'. It is a license to watch TV. The fact that the BBC, a fantastic public service, is payed for from this money, is irrelevant.

If you do not want to pay it, do what my mate has just done: Stop watching broadcast TV. Buy your films/series etc on DVD and watch them. Go to the sporting events you want to see. Go to the cinema.

HP puts Linux on business PCs

Dr. Mouse

Dependencies

QUOTE: I've been using Linux since RH 3 and I've always dreaded the words "dependancies required".

I used to hate this too, until I used Debian. I now use Debian stable (currently etch) for servers, and Debian Stable & Testing or Ubuntu for desktops. As long as you stick with the prepackaged software, or well set up 3rd party repositories (like debian-multimedia), you will have NO problems with dependancie. "apt-get install <xyz>" just works and is WAY easier than many things on Windows. Alternatively, for those who dont like command lines, there are plenty of GUIs to APT.

Other distros have similar tools, but I havent used them for years so I don't know how well they work.

Remember: APT has Super Cow Powers

2008's top three netbooks

Dr. Mouse

One for the tightfists/low budgets

The CnM Minibook (sold under various names, mine is from CCL as the CCL Minibook) is a very underpowered netbook, but it is also very cheap.

Although it is not nearly powerfull enough to replace a desktop for browsing purposes, as a tool to;

a) check your email and/or browse on the move or while watching TV, or

b) run network diag/maintenance tools,

it is a fantastic tool. I mainly use mine for (a) while watching TV, plus playing solitair. But when at work, with no PC to hand (coz you are on your way to fix something else) and a vital server is having a problem of some sort, it works great for ssh etc to diagnose the problem on the move.

Although it has severe limitations, I love mine, and I see no reason to pay more (mine was £120) except to get decent video playback. For that I can just get an MP4 player.

The Mother of All Demos — 150 years ahead of its time

Dr. Mouse

RE: had to laugh...

"Well, who says humanity has more intelligence than that, as a group? :-)"

Maybe said as a joke, but I fear this is all too true... :(

GPLv3 to reinforce FSF open-source license position?

Dr. Mouse
Joke

RE: I want some!

"So all this software I've been using was written by /imaginary/ programmers?"

Yes, but in order to represent their numbers you would need a two dimensional plane...