Posts by John Tserkezis 2242 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2007
"I was a bit stunned and I have to say a little nervous when Jamie suggested this but he reassured me he wouldn’t blow the school up," the head recalled.
"he reassured me", really? "he reassured me"?
I've never, ever, ever had a school head OK one of my "special" projects that easily. He didn't cast an Imperius Curse on him first did he?
I don't have any iThings anymore, so am not sure how what is tied to any device.
Upon first reading the article, I was under the impression this guy needed the ID to get stuff off the iPad in question. After reading the responses, it was clear there are third party offerings that can do this for you. Further on, it is evident you can reset the Apple ID, at the cost of losing the data (which you had just conveniently saved in the previous step).
So why get the lawyers involved? Is he that desparate to maintain his mother's details be tied to that iPad regardless of cost? Or is he just an idiot?
Sure, Apple isn't doing themselves any favours here, but then again, lots of other companies are anal like that. Ever tried to have a Skype account removed?
This has been in the works for some time. Even Samsung was happy to burn that bridge by pricing the last of Apple's CPUs to fund their lawsuit, and the lawyers, and their lunches.
I think they're both happy to be rid of each other for good.
Whether the ongoing lawsuits are going to end or even slow down, is another story altogether.
"It does look at the moment as if a war is being waged against Bitcoin as a whole."
Could be, but I don't think so.
I think it's more likely they're easy pickings. In the ~4000 year history of real banks, they've learned a thing or two about not getting robbed, and how to handle the situation when things go wrong (remember the depression?).
The backyard boys who run bitcoin "banks" apparently haven't learned a damn thing, mainly because a lot of them are running it out of their bedrooms. The "robbers" know this, and take advange of this. Easy pickings.
"The software itself may well be free, but Dell are providing an employee to do the install."
No they're not. It's part of an automated script that runs mostly outside of human intervention.
Sure, they had to pay people to craft that script, but it's a case of write-once-run-many. Total cost to Dell is very little when you spread it over their range.
"But if you're a professional, working at professional contract rates, then that 10 minutes of not working/earning could easily cost you in excess of the £16-odd that Dell are asking for."
Nope, doesn't count. Same as the unpaid housework thing.
Because you either can't, or don't want to do your own housework, doesn't entitle you to a rebate for someone else to do it, exactly the same as if DOING your own housework yourself, doesn't entitle you to payment. However, if *Dell* offers to do your housework, then they ARE entitled to payment.
The ONLY issue left here, is negotiating price. It's true that Dell is charging above and beyond what it costs them to do, but they're allowed to do that. It makes them prats, but they're allowed to do that.
"Windows 7.0 (Win7) - Windows 7.5 (perhaps) (Win8)."
v4.0 build 1381 Windows NT SP6 (windowsnetworking.com)
v5.0 build 2195 Windows 2000 SP4 (netfaqs.com)
v5.1 build 2600 Windows XP x32 (Windows XP Mode in Win7).
v5.2 build 3790 Windows Server 2003 SP2 R2 (blogs.msdn.com)
v6.0 build 6001 Windows Server 2008 SP1 (windowsreference.com)
v6.0 build 6002 Windows Vista SP2 x32 (wikihow.com)
v6.1 build 7600 Windows 7 x32 (One of my boxes)
v6.1 build 7601 Windows 7 SP1 x32 and x64. (More of my boxes)
v6.2 build 9200 Windows Server 2012 (petenetlive.com)
v6.3 build 9431 Windows Server 2012 R2 (enterpriseserver2012.blogspot.com )
v6.3 build 9600 Windows RT 8.1. (Tablet)
Microsoft lesson # 1: Never assume a number on a microsoft product reflects the actual version number and progress of the underlying code. Don't believe me? Have a closer look at Microsoft's Office numbering: There are leaps and bounds - and yet, not really.
"Y2K was a non-event precisely because serious fixing was done."
What? You mean slap a sticker on it that says "Warning: This device is not Y2K compliant". Been there done that. I shook my head the entire time, but hey, it's a paying job.
"I thought you weren't allowed to take apples into Australia."
You can, but you need to dispose of it in one of many thoughtfully supplied fruity bins directly after landing.
Though, if you risk it by going through customs undeclared, where they check it for bugs. Though that never happens, because apples never, ever, catch any sort of bugs, they're immune you know...
Take Australia for instance. The laws are clearely stated - or so you'd think.
You can use your phone as a satnav, provided its in a commercial mount. You can also receive SMSs or eMails on that phone through audio alerts.
However, sunk deep in those rules, what you're NOT allowed to have, is a visual representation of the message, pop up automatically on the screen. If you're one of the lucky few where this is not a configuration option, you need to turn off your phone, or convince the copper your phone was off when that twitter update comes through.
Seriously, it's as if they make the rules intentionally vague just to confuse people. No wait...
"Almost all microSD cards I've used in my phones have not lasted over a year. I've not skimped on quality/price BTW. They all seem to be shit."
I upvoted you because the downvotes are not entirely justified.
I had the same experience when I used a USB flash drive for work. With constant daily usage (read AND writes), I couldn't get more than about a year out of them. Considering they were high capacity units, I was sick of spending a couple of hundred bucks every time one failed.
So I pissed them all off and replaced with a 2.5" drive in a USB case. Four years later I'm still using that very drive.
Some brands are better controller-wise than others, they really do help with the write tolerance. Also not filling the flash device to the brim helps the controller do it's job in shuffling data around.
So, if you're using a flash storage device ON THEIR TERMS, it most certainly can last many, many years. But let's face it, we're dealing with Real Life (TM) here, and that's what the downvoters don't seem to see.
"So going from 32 to 128 should be more than enough to give this sucker stubby little wings... and a Titan V Booster Rocket up it's arse"
It doesn't work like that, there is the law of diminishing returns, but either way, Readyboost only supports up to 32G per drive. Windows 7 supports multiple drives, up to 256G total, but you'll start seeing the performance peter off with that many (if you can cram them in...)
"although MicroSD is too easy too lose when you drop it on a carpet, or between cracks in the floorboards."
Or when it's flush against the case, and you have to use your fingernail to click it in, then the spring action slips past your nail, and flys across the room? Yeah, I hate that, happens to me all the time.
Microsoft has a long and rich history of doing what they now claim would be 'economic suicide'.
It started with an early version of windows that sent your entire directly tree structure down the line when you connected to the internet. Covertly.
Apparently, doing that doesn't count as 'economic suicide' either.
"What they DO is allow non-bigots to identify religiously oppressive businesses to deny custom (and profit) to."
It probably varies from country to country, but here in Australia, religious businesses CAN AND DO discriminate based on religion - and it's legal!. Try working for one, and part way through, casually mention you're an atheist. It is with absolute certainty your days there will be numbered.
However, as you say, one right they can't take away from us is our ability to vote with our wallets. Paid any taxes lately Sanitarium?
"If you're going to offer a service to the PUBLIC, then you have take ALL the public, not just a subset."
The "right to refuse service" clause was created to stop the arses from coming in and making a nuisance of themselves. Without it, you would *HAVE* to serve that customer behaving like a right prick. You have no choice, it's embedded in law, and if you refuse, you will serve them one way or another anyway - but usually as the "defendant".
The fact that clause gives the business the right to be arses themselves, is a separate issue entirely.
Fortunately, the court of public opinion can fix that: view the recent spate of businesses refusing service to, or asking to leave, breastfeeding mothers in Australia. No need for court cases, a bit of media coverage for the name of the business exercising their right to choose their customers fixed that up nice and quickly. They can be all the arse they want to, but even they have to concede that a zero customer base equals zero business.
"Truth is, by a strict interpretation the only major religion that would object to LGBTs is Islam. A strict interpretation of Christianity and Judaism would mean acceptance and understanding of all."
By that reasoning, you can add christians to that list. Seen what's been happening in Uganda lately? (majority christianity, which is why I mentioned it) Not content with refusing business to anyone they please, they've just passed what they call the "Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014". Apparently, it used to be called the "Kill the Gays bill" by the media, because it had a death penalty clause. Yep, they didn't want to leave it to chance that someone's "interpretation" might let a gay through the cracks, they passed law so you can't even question it.
Seriously though, this is not a religious thing, it's a nutcase people thing. The nutcases will use religion to bolster their view regardless of what that is, even if it has no basis in their religion. Don't get me wrong, I'll be happy if they outlawed religion overnight, but like changing the tax laws, it's not going to make a damn of difference - the nutcases will restructure to get their point across one way or another.
I say nuke them from orbit - just to be on the safe side. Sure, the planet will be left a wasteland, but at least homosexuality will the the LEAST of your worries then.
"unless there was a "deal" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, Bob's your uncle)"
It happens a lot, and I've been in the situation a couple of times where I was part of the process.
Everybody, and I mean *everybody* in the chain gets blamed for faults, whatever the reason, except the original vendor who's supplying and should be responisble for the crap in the first place.
Microsoft just happily give up their lock-in? Not without a fight they won't.
Remember when they knobbled windows to make Word Perfect for windows work "weirdly"? Pretty much screwing many clients and leaving them without a working word processor of their choice? The only way to get them going was to either fork out for Word, or, pirate it? One way or another, Microsoft made sure they were the last man standing - whatever the cost.
Remember that? Because I do.
But it goes much deeper than that, I'm STILL seeing software today that spouts "this requires Internet Explorer vX". Are there still programmers around today that are that lazy, they can't find libraries outside of IE to do the job? Shame on you.
"Makers could if they have half a mind give up the screen res at the expense of a core or two. I'm sure the end result would be a lot happier customer."
A happy customer is not what they care about. They only care about you getting the thing out their door - what you think about the device afterwards is insconsequencial to their sales numbers.
That's why they sell on numbers, how physically big the screen is, how many cores or streams (or counting streams and calling them cores), how large the hard drive/sdd how much ram... Even worse, the battery life on one charge is gained much like they get fuel consumption figures for cars - user a lightweight driver, take out the spare tyre, use high octane fuel, pump the tyres up to oblivion, never test in traffic, favour downhill, you get the idea. And yes, that counts as "normal" use, if only "sometimes".
And if you think the public forums are going to give you a clue to if a particular device is a lemon, maybe not:
The official reviewers only give high praise or doom it to hell. Average users mostly give their "impression" but can be quite vocal. Reviewers have ulterior motives or an axe to grind, average users are sometimes too embarrased to say the device they were talking up beforehand, actually turned out to be a piece of crap.
The power users do their homework, look past the fluffy sales crap onto the guts of the specs, what "normal" people have to say about it, average the whole lot, and make a guess on that. Most of the time it works out. Yes, sometimes we get it wrong, but not as wrong as all the iPhone 1 users who talk of it like gold and "forget" it couldn't do a copy and paste....
No raid 5, no raid 6, no hot pluggable, mac-only interface, who would buy this? Sure I like to fun of fandroids, but they can't possibly be stupid enough to go for this overpriced, under-featured piece of crap.
No really, pick any NAS array - any one will do and it'll have a bucketload more features than this, and at comparable prices. It'll have raid 5 & 6, hot pluggable, it can run some basic (and some not so basic) apps, it supports linux, windows and mac clients out of the box. And that's just for starters.
No, really, why?
"OTOH, I'll wager that the advertisers like Aereo for that exact reason -- extra eyeballs for no extra outlay."
This issue had me stumped for a while, I couldn't think of a single reason why wider coverage was a bad thing.
But this makes sense. It's not so much the networks and advertisers are getting wider coverage, it's the networks could be getting more money out of advertisers, but have no way of measuring the actual increased numbers.
So what the networks doing in effect, is actively removing one advantage an advertiser has with that network (wider unmearsurable coverage). This can only possibly mean it'll end badly for the networks.
Then again, they are renouned arseholes. Kerry Packer (used to run the Nine Network here in australia) said it well: (though I'm paraphrasing) "All television is crap, it's only important you get people to watch it and the ads".
But it *can* be phone calls. Before data was a regular part of everyone's diet, roaming only affected phone calls. You tell your carrier you're travelling to whatever country, and they'll happily and easily rig it up for you. You realise why it was so quick and easy when you get home. Three bucks a minute for starters - for any phone call. anywhere anyhow.
It was unlikely to turn in to a ten thousand dollar shocker, but not that far from it either. A couple of grand is still *entirely* unreasonable.
The ONLY incentive that carriers have to change their roaming rates, is money. If their customers are stupid enough to use it as-is, then great, they pay. If their customers bail out and use another carrier, then they have incentive to bring the prices down - better to have some money, than none at all.
One thing for sure, government, lobby groups, or that weirdo on their soapbox aren't going to make ANY difference at all - what the carriers are doing isn't against the law, not even near that end.
Turn left at Joe's Restaurant, ask for the Chef's special where you get a discount. Continue straight at the next intersection, but don't pass up Zingo's Gas, best fuel prices in the area. Whoops, you've made a wrong turn, but all is not lost, while you're turning around, stop at the nearby Annie's Antiques, where you're sure to find that something for the living room. Before you hit that mute button, you don't want to hurt your fingers - Gary's Gloves is just up the road to help you with all your hand protection needs. I understand you're utterly completely pissed at this stage, but before you throw your phone out the window, take the next right and visit Graham at the HealthRight Pharmacy - he's guaranteed to have Xanax in stock.
I've googled this, and may have a neat fix: While there may be some alternate roms out there that have this disabled (or at least non-functional), you can do the following that'll work on any windows box.
Create a batch file with these contents:
TASKKILL /F /IM "rpcnetp.exe"
TASKKILL /F /IM "rpcnet.exe"
TASKKILL /F /IM "upgrd.exe"
del "C:\Windows\System32\UPGRD.exe"
del "C:\Windows\System32\rpcnet.exe"
del "C:\Windows\System32\rpcnetp.exe"
del "C:\Windows\System32\rpcnetp.dll"
del "C:\Windows\System32\rpcnet.dll"
md "C:\Windows\System32\UPGRD.exe"
md "C:\Windows\System32\rpcnet.exe"
md "C:\Windows\System32\rpcnetp.exe"
md "C:\Windows\System32\rpcnetp.dll"
md "C:\Windows\System32\rpcnet.dll"
Run the batch file once. It stops the processes, it deletes the files (which normally come back at reboot), it creates folders named the same as the files.
The files can't come back, because you can't create a file if there is a folder of the same name. And it stays like that, because the offending code that creates the files is usually not smart enough to realise it's a rougue folder that's preventing the file creation.
Let me know if it works.
"our unit has an NBN connection:"
Read your Acceptable Use Policy and try to tell me that it's unlimed. The definitions are all so broad, even THEY don't know what's unacceptable.
It's been said you'll never get a straight answer out of them - and for the vast majority, I'll believe it.
I had been pushing my uploads at about 80% capacity consistently for a couple of months before Optus threatened me with disconnection unless I "stopped". So I emailed and asked what *is* acceptable.
It took a bunch of emails back and forth before they gave me a hard number that wasn't "less than what you're using now". And I'm guessing that number will be different for everyone.
Face it. You DO have a limit, it's entirely undocumented, and it's different that anyone else. Good luck in finding out what it is. This is what domestic internet is all about.
"> Check out the site with images turned off."
"Or with Noscript installed."
It gets worse. I have NoScript, GhostScript, and AdblockPlus installed and running.
I have to disable all three, and thus make my browser inherently insecure, just to view their site that doesn't even tell me how to make my browser secure.
Not only that, with LightBeam, I see they connect to a number of sites that are considered the pinical of security: Facebook, Twitter, Mookie1.com, doubleclick.net... (there may be more, I have a lot disabled)
If you visit the Privacy Policy page, note how they collect information about you, then spread it via Twitter, Facebook, Mookie1 and doubleclick. If there is text with a scroll knob, try using your mouse scroll wheel to scroll up and down the text. Then try watching their sample videos, the first half loads quickly, and when it waits to buffer again the second half loads quickly - I'm appalled to say, but the YouTube experice is by far superior.
I've just started playing with the Pis, and I'm forever having trouble with the SD adaptors. On my first go, I went through three adaptors of the half-dozen I had that didn't work reliably, and out of habit now, I'm forcibly jamming my thumb against the card to make sure it makes contact. And that's not counting the accidently bumped cards that cause their own issues.
I'm not entirely blaming the Pi for this, it's the super-cheap-we-don't-care-if-it-actually-works SD card adaptors that are at fault.
Well, no more, I've ordered a few pIOs, and I'll be done with card problems.
I can understand the basis for Metro (sorry, the interface formerly known as Metro), as one code set for all PCs, Tablets and phones - and that's a good thing. But it's so overly restrictive, it makes it useless to me. Microsoft is where it is today *BECAUSE* they opened up the software development market to anyone and everyone.
Yes, yes, I understand it has some upsides, like the lesser likelyhood for malware to get in, but that doesn't make up for it. "I" as a single person, release a bunch of code not only out of my bedroom, but also for work, that I would not be able to if it weren't for either cheap or free compilers. I do not have to pay for the "right" to release code. I don't have to jump though hoops *just* to get my code into distribution. I do not have my code vetted by one person who's moral righteousness (see iPhone news aggregation app that was blocked by Apple, because one of the news stories it passed through was outside their porn policy). Then, not only me, but the *millions* of my peers who do the same thing.
Most of all, it was that exact 'freeness' that made Microsoft who they are today. I hope they don't forget that.
"I believe that it is actually easier to maintain a vacuum than to store Helium."
It's the same thing. Since you have to ensure none of the Helium gets out, (and prevent other gasses from getting in), you need to seal the vessle against pressure changes entirely - that's effectively the same as being able to contain a vacuum.
"heads have to "fly" on a cushion of gas"
We had a drive come in with a damaged head, where the arm was resting comfortably on the disk surface. It wore out a groove through the aluminium platter, in some places all the way through, leaving a semi-circular gap - and yet it was still balanced in place.
Now, if you were ask exactly *HOW* that came to be the customer had the drive powered up the whole time, and didn't use it at all, and didn't actually complain till it "started" making noise...? I have no idea.
Would I be cheeky to mention this brand spanking new system would be as good as the current NavStar (with WAAS corrections) that we've had officially for some five years now (about 10 years if you count testing), but more expensive (due to royalties that were said to be inflicted onto each device)?
I live in Australia. We have a promise of fibre, that will never actually happen in most areas.
The stop-gap measure is fibre to the node (AKA your local telephone exchange), and then copper to the home (AKA existing *DSL).
In other words, we're going to have the privelege of arguably paying more for *exactly* the same service we were getting before.
At least we have running water and horseless carriages. Well, depending on the area, mostly running what they call "water", and carriages that occasionally smash into each other...
I like to see who's behind a mob to see what they're *actually* backing.
Have a look at FAST's member list, then note their entire purpose for existing, is to further the interests of their members. That is, from the get go, they are entirely against any sort of licence shuffling, because that would inherently reduce profits of their members.
I'm not sure that it matters what is a grey area or not - not at this stage anyway - because they are NOT interested in "protecting" the rights of end licence users.
The brokers on the other hand, have the end users in their interests, they shuffle pre-loved licences around, the end users get a licence cheaper than new, and the broker gets a cut. That's a win-win for them.
This back and forth whining is normal, and is in fact a good thing. No protection means the software vendors don't make money, and a perfect copy protection system that ties to one user and one piece of hardware, for ever and ever, pisses people off, having a negative effect on sales.
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