* Posts by John Tserkezis

2242 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2007

BT boss to Oz: we're wonderful and so is copper

John Tserkezis

"3. It's vital to ignore criticism over the cost or speed of the rollout."

Well, at least it appears the NBN certainly has THAT point down pat.

Want to be the hottest thing since Melrose Place? Get these Lycos patents

John Tserkezis

"Who wouldn't want to own IP from firm that peaked 20 years ago?"

Yes, there is nothing more I want in my life than to become a fucking patent troll.

Heroic German rozzers rescue innocent lamb from sordid brothel

John Tserkezis

Re: Give the Polezei Credit

"At least they didn't shoot it."

Oh, I was going to ask when the BBQ is on.

Come one, I know you were thinking it!

iiNet claims victory in Dallas Buyers Club case it lost

John Tserkezis

Good.

Now I don't feel so bad for pirating that piece of shit movie.

Traumatised Reg SPB team barely survives movie unwatchablathon

John Tserkezis

The story I heard behind Battlefield Earth...

... from what I've read, the plot involves some Alien dude (played by John Travolta) who did the nasty with the General's daughter. Turns out, the General was rather dispeased when he found out, so assigned this guy to a mining planet, occupied by a bunch of slaves, who were also very displeased about having to mine a planet.

Crossing over to real life, the story goes that John Travolta did the nasty with a producer's daughter, and when the producer found out, was rather displeased, so cast Travolta into the head role of a story under the guise that it was written by Hubbard, and he was so enchanged by this, Travolta accepted immediately without actually reading the script. Sadly, he didn't realise his career had ended till after the royalty cheques quickly dwindled to nothing.

That's the truth, I aught to know, I read about it on the interwebs.

SHOCK! Robot cars do CRASH. Because other cars have human drivers

John Tserkezis

Re: Evidence

"Down-voted for wanting accidents independently investigated - any down-voters care to say why the DON'T want that?"

Likely because they want to protect the guilty, er, innocent.

Crap ad app hack hole affects '100 MEELLLION'

John Tserkezis

"Look at what apps you install, Welton said. Recognize the apps that are driving risk"

No shit Sherlock. Especially interesting comment when you have no way at all at being abeing able to tell what's crapware or not. No problem I hear you say, just don't use any mobile apps that communicate with the internet when they don't have to.

Congratulation, your smart phone is now dumb.

Windows 10 MURDERED your Lumia? Microsoft says it may have a fix

John Tserkezis

Nice work Microsoft.

Not content with having tiny market, you're actively wrecking phones now.

Health apps and wearables make you nervous, not fit, say boffins

John Tserkezis

"I agree it's a common error, but think it is the role of doctors to tell the unfit they should be fitter"

Too bad that's not how real life works at all.

If a GP were to actually do that, with many clients, they'll just leave and never come back. Turns out, people just don't want to be told they're unfit.

Googley TENTACLES reach towards YOUR email

John Tserkezis

Re: Opt Out? Oh, but you can.

"Try Blur"

Hiding behind an Anonymous login to promote that piece of shit that Blur is, isn't going to fly.

Read the reviews, it will spam you mercylessly until you dish out your first born - and all your personal details.

Also a nice try in bad mouthing Do Not Track, the predescesor.

So, Anonymous Coward, stop pissing about and tell us who you REALLY work for. Adine right?

Holy crap, what a surprise.

Dev gives HBO free math tips to nail Game of Thrones pirate leakers

John Tserkezis

Seems like an awful lot of trouble you went to to create those equasions.

How about spending a lot less trouble and creating equasions that result in widely and fairly distributed content rather than noosing anyone who doesn't comply with your barbaric demands? Then you don't have to worry about who pirates what.

No? Don't like the sensible approach? Fine, you can continue watching everyone pirate it then.

Sprint fined $16m for sticking it to The Man: Telco 'overcharged' Feds for phone wiretaps

John Tserkezis

So, not only do they want to know everything about us, they want it at a discount rate?

Only fair I suppose. (cough)

What a time to be alive ... hard and floppy disk drives play Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit

John Tserkezis

I was a bit concerned the voice coil hard drive wouldn't be able to keep up with the racket the floppies were making - but no, it not only kept up its part of the bargain, it did a bloody good job of it.

Well done.

Toyota Yaris Hybrid: Half-pint composite for the urban jungle

John Tserkezis

Re: How times change

"This little city car has almost identical performance figures to a 1970 Mk3 Ford Cortina 2000 GT. Apart from fuel consumption which was in the region of 27mpg if you were careful."

That's nothing, you want scary? You got it.

It compares very closely to my 125cc Scooter. That's performance and fuel economy - almost identical.

By "almost", I mean my Scooter will get to 60mph in about half the time, AND the scooter is less than a tenth of the price.

Being a motorbike, it's also exempt from congestion charges (or a 100% refund as I understand it, I don't live there). Worried about getting killed? Obesity and related diseases are the biggest killers, start counting down from there, and when you get to bikes, let me know. Best of all, you won't ever creat clouds of Smug.

Sony to PlayStation 4 gamer: 'You got hacked, not our fault. Now give us £50'

John Tserkezis

"You're OK, no one else has a 5 1/4 inch drive."

I have an 8" floppy disk. I found it nearly 25 years ago in a junk room of an old job.

It was a novelty even back then.

Streak life: Oz woman flashes boobs at Google Street View car

John Tserkezis

"It amuses me because what about the drug dealers of the town, the murders that have happened in this town, shouldn’t you be focusing on that?"

No, flashing your boobs should result in the firing squad, ditto for speeding - that's just plain wrong.

But when an Australian is caught selling drugs in Indonesia, and the law over there dictates the death penalty, every fucking Australian, and every fucking politician get together to save their lives and bring them back.

I've had enough, I'm going to planet Splong.

Playing by stealth: Twelve gaming headsets to plonk on your noggin

John Tserkezis

Re: Glasses

"Now I'm reduced to using in-ear buds because nothing breaks immersion more than the screams of agony when you realise that your glasses are now embedded into the side of your head and you didn't notice until you went to adjust them"

I'm in the same boat. Short of "try before you buy", read lots, and lots of reviews. You'll likely find someone else who's tried them, and if they're comfortable with glasses, or not.

Microsoft drops Do Not Track default from Internet Explorer

John Tserkezis

Re: DNT = AdBlock Plus

"Does anyone know why ads are so crap?"

Firstly, it's still easier, cheaper, faster and more effective to blanket bomb the users with every ad they have, rather than use specific targeted ads. Why? Holy crap, I wonder why? I'll tell you why, they found the holy grail of advertisting, "targeted advertising" is a monumental waste of time after all.

Soooo, that's why it's still easier, cheaper, faster and more effective to blanket bomb the users with every ad they have.

SPY FRY: Smart meters EXPLODE in Californian power surge

John Tserkezis

If this happened in select areas of Australia, where smart meters are forced, users would be jumping for joy.

It just so happens, among the promises that power bills will get smaller, they actually get much larger.

There are even some examples of smart meters blowing up "all by themselves". They are that hated.

Dot-com intimidation forces Indiana to undo hated anti-gay law

John Tserkezis

Re: @Tel

"I avoid controversy by refusing to wear clothes made of fibres."

I go one further and refuse to wear clothes of any type. I couldn't possibly offend anyone now.

Bigotry posted by your Facebook account? Use this, Mister UKIP MP wannabe: 'I was hacked'

John Tserkezis

"Please could you add a NSFW tag to this? Thanks"

I'm sorry, are you offended that pigs spend all of their lives nude?

Teen pleads guilty in Microsoft and Valve hacking case

John Tserkezis

Ah, so Microsoft is allowed to steal (excuse me, use underhanded tricks) to get stuff from others then extort unreasonable "licensing" fees from their users, but it's not OK to steal from Microsoft?

No, no, that's allright, I get how it works now, I just wasn't sure how a regular business worked, that's all.

Google cracks down on browser ad injectors after shocking study

John Tserkezis

Not only with Chrome either.

A Firefox Addon called "DoNotTrackMe" was sold out to Abine, and became "Blur" an ad delivery system.

There is no way in anybody's hell I'm going to call it what their promo web page claims, because straight off the bat it delivers ads to your browser's 'desktop'.

You can get rid of those ads - but you have to register and pony up a heap of your personal information.

Ironincally, this was exactly what DoNotTrackMe was trying to stop anyone from doing in the first place.

Fuck you Abine, fuck you very much.

POODLE vuln dogs Australian consumer modems

John Tserkezis

Re: Typical mindless action from TPG

"Sadly iiNet customers can look forward to this sort of mindless responses, no wonder Michael Malone came out against the takeover."

I agree, but for different reasons. This is the generic alert you're going to get from ANY isp.

We received one from the ISP where I used to work who blocked only the port the garbage was being sent on. Once we knew what was going on, we tracked down the offending user who's machine was compromised (virus scanners are bloody useless), and once we verified he wasn't spewing spam anymore, we got in touch with our ISP and told them to take the block off and see that we weren't leaking anymore. And that was that, all rather painless. We did however, know what we were doing.

Home users on the other hand - good luck with that. It would make sense that TPG block only the port(s) that were doing the spewing, but to take the brutal approach and block the entire account is too much.

It's especially amusing they suggest antivirus software, as in our case, the malware went straight through it like that vindaloo you had for lunch last week.

Like I said, I was going to churn to iiNet, but since TPG is buying them - hell no.

Bloke faces 25 years in the cooler for upsetting Thai king on Facebook

John Tserkezis

"Either the King is senile and doesn't know what "his" ministers are doing, or else he's an idiot"

"All of the above" is still a valid proposition you know.

Harper review: break up ACCC, free up IP*, let freedom reign

John Tserkezis

Going on past experience, especially where the ACCC's teeth were concerned (or more importantly, LACK of teeth), I don't see too much changing. The one's who have the most to gain with the current rulings will ensure the status quo is maintained.

Unless you're the end user - then you're just screwed. Bit ironic really, bet the ACCC doesn't see it though.

This one weird trick deletes any YouTube flick in just a few clicks

John Tserkezis

Might have been useful to finally get rid of all those f**king cat videos.

Though, they'd probably be up again within the week. Seems to be no end to those.

Firefox hits prime time as version 37 manifests

John Tserkezis

Even more phoning home?

I'll just wait till we find out what the config options are to turn that off before I upgrade. It's like we all have unlimited bandwidth here or something.

Just WALK IN and buy an Apple Watch. Are you mad?

John Tserkezis

Just WALK IN and buy an Apple Watch. Are you mad?

Perhaps they're vetting their customers, ensuring just the rabid fanboys are the ones who get to review it.

It won't work: Clearly they don't understand how the Internet works.

Cross-dressing blokes storm NSA HQ: One shot dead, one hurt

John Tserkezis

Re: _THAT_ was the plan?

"Pfft--DARPA has all the aliens working for them at Area 51."

Do the aliens have the same worker rights and minium wage rights as other Americans?

No wonder they want to get on their spacecraft and leave.

Easy come, easy go: Euro astroboffins blast brace of Galileo sats INTO SPAAACE

John Tserkezis

"Excuse my ignorance, when the system is eventually up and running will my current GPS device ( Garmin running watch ) be able to take advantage of the extra satellites or will I need to buy a new device?"

Like GPS (NavStar) and GLONASS, you will need a new reciever. But unlike those two, from the report, I infer that the publically accessible signals will be degraded, or somehow lesser-featured than the primary commercial (paid for) signals.

I can also guess that by the time it's finished and operational, and by the time we mere mortal human (non-EU branded humans that is) can actually pay for it, we won't care anymore because GPS and GLONASS would still be working. Well, GPS anyway, I have no idea what the funding reliability for GLONASS is like (remember when it fell into disrepair?)...

As far as how much Galileo will cost, as per usual, it's anyone's guess at this point.

Bye bye, booth babes. IT security catwalk RSA nixes sexy outfits

John Tserkezis

I don't subscribe to any of that Political Correctness bullshit. It isn't sexist, insulting, and at least on this edge of the pond, harassment (and only verbal) is just rare. And the eye candy is nice as well.

What IS the problem, is that when a vendor constructs their entire exhibition around dancing girls, mirrorballs and flashing disco lights - we tend to lose respect.

Us dumb smucks don't need to know what products they have now, how they've evolved from the past, and what plans they have for the furture - nope - the vendor doesn't give a flying fuck about all that - they only care about how many units you're going to buy after purving at the girls.

Not mentioning any names: Intel.

Scientists splice mammoth genes into unsuspecting elephant

John Tserkezis

Re: I'm thinking that a mammoth is itself

"Is it true that some down there enjoy licking the skins of cane toads or drying then eating or smoking the skin for a psychotropic effect?"

Only if you narrow down the right substance and purify it. Generally, licking enough of it off the back of the toad to get you high will get enough toxins to stop your heart too. In other words, you're just gonna die.

Probably for the best, if you think licking cane toads is a good idea, you're probably not well suited for this society. Might be ok for a politician though.

Taylor Swift snaps up EVEN MORE pr0n domain names

John Tserkezis

I was going to say, if things get any worse, Swift will need to get her PR team to sack her legal team.

But after what I've seen so far, she should sack her PR team as well.

For that matter, she should sack herself, just to be on the safe side.

Cops cuff Colorado girl for allegedly poisoning mum after iPhone ban

John Tserkezis

I would be even more disturbed...

...if she tried to kill her mother for taking away her Windows Phone.

Woman caught on CCTV performing drunken BJ blew right to privacy

John Tserkezis
Coat

"Us humans, we are disgusting sometimes"

It depends on which side you stand. Or kneel, as the case may be.

Fine, I'm going.

Our 4King benders are so ace we're going full OLED, says LG

John Tserkezis

Re: OLED Burn-in

"I've never heard of OLED burn"

Like Plasma, OLED is a phosphor based display technology - and that inherently makes it suseptible to burn.

But as the technologies progress, the phosphors get better. Early Plasmas were so bad, the burn-in procedure (excuse the pun) took 6 months of having limited choice of what and how to display content to age the phosphors enough that they become more resiliant to burn.

That is entirely unreasonable, and foisting this onto even early adopters was probably a major cause of the technology dropping off the end of the earth - even if they did get better later on.

Another post mentioned burn in LCD, it's not quite like that, but the effect is very similar. LCD pixels get "sticky" if not exercised from a particular state, and become reluctant to swing once the electronics directs it to. It does have an "easy" fix however. Applied once every few months under harsh conditions, display a video or Gif or simlar, that flashes black and white (fast and slow) and let it run for an hour or so. There's even lots of software around that does this for you. It is reported that with early LCDs, if you abuse it for some years, it is properly stuck, and can't be fixed.

But again, as with Plasma, as the technology matured, the panels are better, and are less suseptable to sticking - nowadays (and for a while actually), you're unlikely to see it even under harsh conditions, and certainly never see it under "normal use" conditions, even if you never "massage" the display.

John Tserkezis

Re: Is LG a good brand?

"Good brand - investing in new TV tech instead of trying to flog the dying horse of LED/LCD. Proper innovation."

Some people are never happy (yes, I mean you AC).

LCD sells to a different market, where you get reasonable performance, for a more reasonable price.

If you were to ban everything except 4K OLED, you would entirely obliterate the TV sales industry overnight - because no-one could afford it. The next thing the engineers would get to work on, is a super-cheap version of 4K OLED, but because YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR, it will match the performance of traditional LCD.

And I bet you would still complain.

John Tserkezis

Re: Is LG a good brand?

"Let's get this debate started."

There's a debate?

John Tserkezis

Re: HDR?

"I must have slept, what is HDR?"

High Dynamic Range.

Along with the other responses, in this particular context(*) however, it means the difference in brightness level between Full Off (black), and Full On (white) of the display technology - the wider the difference, the better.

Raw screen brightness is only half the equation, how black the blacks are, also factor in. It's kinda like the LCD vs Plasma debate all over again. Plasma has a darker black, but LCD overall is better in other areas. OLED has the technogical potential of doing better.

(*) HDR in the context of photography is a "different" thing. In Real Life(TM), dynamic range is just extraordinary, in space it's as wide as the physics can make it, on earth, atmosphere tends to make it fall short a bit, but it's still Holy Crap(TM) wide. Even though the human eye can't compete - it still rates as bloody good. Present day technology however, be it Film, CMOS, CCD, Plasma, LCD, OLED, etc, are just terribly narrow in comparison.

To address this, HDR photography involves taking a range of photos of different brightness of the same scene, and picking the best of the darks, middles and brights, and manipulating the images in software to make it narrower overall.

It does NOT magically give you a higher dynamic range, it just takes Real Life, and makes it fit within today's technology, so it looks nice.

So while HDR in future technology would most certainly be a good thing, I think we're a long, long way away.

Noobs can pwn world's most popular BIOSes in two minutes

John Tserkezis

Re: Didn't PCs used to require switching a jumper to flash the BIOS?

"Whatever happened to that? Too user unfriendly?"

I remember when we had to remove the EPROM chip, erase it, program it with the new BIOS, and re-insert.

Ah, for the good 'ole days, way back in the era when seeing "your PC is now stoned" was funny.

Fujitsu SPARCs up liquid cooling for smartphones

John Tserkezis

"The type of coolant is the secret recipe"

Nothing secret about it. The type of coolant used, along with the pressure of the contents are adjusted to suit the application.

You start with a fluid that has a liquid/boiling point that is close to what you need, then adjust the pressure higher to work with higher temperatures, and lower the pressure to work with lower temperatures. Choose the wicking material to suit your coolant and flowrates - and that's the basics done.

It just so happens that in a lot of computing applications, water suits the purpose. Nothing secret about it.

John Tserkezis

Re: difference between this and heat pipe ?

"I think that this being formed as a loop is the difference. That leads to other questions of course."

Fluid dynamics not being my strong point mind, but this appears to function in the same way as a regular heat pipe, but in flat device, you don't have the luxury of a pipe thickness.

Where in a heat pipe, the coolant flows in both direction (either wicked liquid along the edges, or in vapour form in the open centre), you don't have that space (pipe diameter) available to you in a thin device.

If you flatten it all, you can still transport the coolant *separately*, without losing effectiveness via the new flat pipe.

So, it's the same thing, just transporting the coolant a differernt way, and a lot flatter.

NASA wants you to help space mining corp strip mine the Solar System

John Tserkezis

But what if..

...the smelting facility on the asteroid starts creating duplicate robots, and they come back to earth for vengance?

iiNet to be scooped up by TPG for $1.4 billion

John Tserkezis

Arg dang it.

I was going to move to iiNet, but hearing that TPG will be running the show - probably not.

Some time back, a company I worked for was with TPG, and every bloody week without fail their email servers would fall over for a better part of a day.

We were almost on a first name basis with the support staff, well called them that often: "email server is down again", "yes we know".

Later on, I was assured by a colleague that TPG's management had changed hands - but I can't shake that old feeling. I am aware many ISPs nowadays either don't supply email at all, and most don't touch newsgroups anymore, so we're driven to third parties - that's fine, but back in the day, using your ISP's email service was the done thing.

Reading reviews doesn't help. It appears that if you're dealing with insurance, real estate or ISPs, you're not going to get out of it happy.

Dream job: Sysadmin/F1 pit crew member with Red Bull racing

John Tserkezis

"Can I actually apply for this job. I can't see it on the Red Bull racing website?"

Like most higher level forms of racing, you usually don't just get there by applying through your "regular" channels.

Like the story says: "Admit it: you want this job. To get it, I'm advised you need to be keen on motor sport, work your way up through lesser formulas and network to make sure you're aware when an opportunity arises."

That is, if you're reading this here on ElReg for the first time, you're not eligible. Sorry.

John Tserkezis

"Most jobs in F1 aren't brilliantly paid, the teams budgets are squeezed enormously."

This filters down to other forms of racing too, where at best, you might get flights and accomodation paid. At best.

Even if not at F1 level, you're looking at multi-day events, trying to wrangle to get time off work (you do have a regular job that pays money, remember?).

We've read all 400 pages of the FCC's baffling net neutrality rules – here's what YOU need to know

John Tserkezis

Who would have thought?

"It is notable that on many issues within this whole complex topic that whatever Google said has happened. Google gets quoted repeatedly in the justifications, and so far at least we have not seen a single example of where anything Google opposed has been included."

So, all those nubes who thought that Google WAS the Internet were right after all...

Somebody hold me, I'm frightened.

Should online pirates get the same sentences as offline ones?

John Tserkezis

Re: nothing competes with:

"Oh god, I'm having flashbacks now... The horror! Prison is too good for whoever produced this..."

Was that Jeremy Clarkeson in the convertable? The expression on his face says he regretted signing up for it.

Says it all really.

"WARNING!!! WARNING!!! JEREMY CLARKSON IS IN THE VIDEO!!!"

Thanks for the warning, but too late, I already clicked on it.

John Tserkezis

Re: 10 years...

"But the vast majority of cases will not get anything like that. That upper limit is for big commercial scale pirates. Whereas for manslaughter you're not going to find the majority cases result in a fine of a few hundred or a thousand quid."

Fair statement. But let me bollocks it up for you.

Explain why a registered child molester, who's identity and location are protected by law, can still go to the local swimming pool, when the law says they can't?

Explain why career criminals can rip off the local 7-11 three times in a row, and, not having learnt anything, get "caught" every time, only to be soon released to do it yet again?

Explain why, in some countries, you simply cannot buy factory-mastered DVDs, but find DVD+-R's aplenty, and a casual look in several homes finds mostly writable DVDs, with perhaps only one or two "real" ones?

How about that lawyerboy? Do you really think 10 years (or a mere fine) is going to make a squat of difference to the industry?