* Posts by Bleu

860 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2012

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It's replicant Roy Batty's birthday – but hey, where's my killer robot?

Bleu

Re: Your arsehole sthn. hemisphere 'moderators'

I withdrew my stupid comment, it was, in fact a browser problem on my side.

Sincere apologies to the mods here. Overreaction from really rubbish deletion by Guardian idiots (yes, the antipodeans there are the worst, they delete on the slightest pretext, avoid forever, they can have their echo chamber!). Here, the problem was the browser I'd been using for Reg., did not make a continuous connection, so posts sometimes disappeared.

Again, apologies to the Reg. mods.

Not that I have anything to say on other threads right now, only the above, which I should have posted earliier this year, but health problems made it late.

Bleu

Your arsehole sthn. hemisphere 'moderators'

are as idiotic as when they slave for the Guardian & their left-wing self-righteous troll sites. Tonight, I used Opera, no data squeezing, to make an informative and relevant post.

Nothing controversial. It was made to disappear.

The Reg. should look into this. I cannot be bothered to replicate my thoughtful, well read, and informatiue post. Curb or eliminate the troll 'moderators'. The Reg. will go back to being a good site in all time zones if you dump Oz mods en masse.

If you want a USB thumb drive wiped, try asking an arts student for help

Bleu

Re: Rambling free style

Never seen it. Thanks, suppose I should, though not for the soundtrack!

Bleu

Re: Actually

Used to have fun resuscitating files on magnetic media. It was also useful at times Windoze decided to fall over and die, at the time when the temp files were often readable.

Must look into how to do it on NAND flash memory, have precisely one photo accidentally erased, a happy scene outside Tokyo station.

The article is pretty crap, but the OP's comment about wear-sharing, it makes sense that a device won't really erase the blocks until there is no space where they are not LRU. Must check!

With flash mem., I think from too much of a writer-controller, not end-product level.

Bleu

Re: Rambling free style

I thought they only did one, Flash Gordon. Don't much care really, only saw it once, it was fun.

Longing to bin Photoshop? Rock-solid GIMP a major leap forward

Bleu

Re: My (grumpy) prediction for 2016

Nice line, but your joke fails by having Torvalds instead of Stallman.

Bleu

Re: Tough Sell

Those are the same people who believe that Apple is the world's only tech. company, and flaunt their devices as if they were some kind of badges of merit.

Bleu

Re: My (grumpy) prediction for 2016

Nobody is forcing you to download what is, as the review clearly states, pretty much a beta version.

Bleu

Re: Does it still hate the user?

Once again, my post vanished. Suppose I had better use anything but Opera for reg. posts in general, I foolishly lost everything but phone list, mail, photos, and one-seg videos with recent repair.

I hope that the 'one window' approach does not preclude floating toolboxes, I prefer them.

Even with the archaic version of the Gimp on my PC, it does what one wants, if one wants to do something complex, it takes a little thought and planning, but that is as true of Photoshop.

My one irritation when learnimg the Gimp was the extreme lack of forgiveness re. not having precisely matching numbers of pixels, liked that except when trying to mix something smaller in, that was irritating. Sounds like it is beyond that now.

Would sir care to see the post-pub nosh menu?

Bleu

Once again, my post disappeared, although from Opera, with data squeezing turned off. As is this.

Very strange how reasonable and possibly entertaining posts vanish like that in the reg. of the now.

Japan's 'White Stork' soars heavenwards to ISS

Bleu

Re: secondary usage

JAXA has just such a mission in planning, only not combined with the return of a supply vessel. .

I wrote a much better post, but the reg. or Opera mini have trouble, timeout somewhere, since I had data squeezing switched off, I suspect that the reg. may be at fault.

Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock dead at 42

Bleu

Re: Mental illness

Ha, ha.

The cheaper copies also work, at least in Japan. Yakult verges on cult religion territory.

If the product doesn't also come by bicycle delivery, with a very plain but never ugly woman delivering the products, you are missing out out out on half of the phenomenom.

Frow western literature, their uniforms are like a cross between

Orwell's Anti-sex League and Huxley's lower beta or gamma types.

I must give you a vote, I am impressed that Yakult is making progress overseas!

Bleu

Re: This smells to high heaven.

My opinion, not that it is worth much, your 'community' should not let up until the facts come out.

OTOH, cops can be arseholes, anywhere, but not everywhere.

Seems to me to be a plain case of suicide.

Read the article a little more closely.

Bleu

Re: very sad...:-(

Sounds like he had a total collapse.

Probably suicide.

I suspect that it was the same with Lemmy Killhamster of rock fame.

'Died of cancer'. Sure, experts are able to cite very rare cases where diagnosis is rapidly followed by death, but two days? Surely, he died by his own hand, not 'of cancer'.

I am sad that both Mr. Murdock and Lemmy are no longer with us.

The period at the end of the calendar year, in the northern hemisphere and culturally related places sees a big spike in the suicide rate every year.

'tis the season to be jolly.

Five key findings from 15 years of the International Space Station

Bleu

Re: Industrial processes... in SPAAACE!

The key, foundational, and dangerous work on at least two of the five points in the article was done on Mir, not the ISS. Some work on the others, too.

Which craft have been most reliable on lift to, descent from, and supply for the ISS?

Soyuz and Progress.

Compared with the Mir programme, Skylab was a joke. Sure, the ISS is great, modules from even Italy (the viewing module). us, but the core remains Russian.

Happy New Year to all Regtards!

I have you now! Star Wars stocking fillers from another age

Bleu

Re: I can state with some confidence

The earliest arcade game had vector graphics, possibly on top of bit-maps. I don't think MAME has the capacity to turn one's pixel-driven monitor into something like a CRO.

I have not seen that game for very many years, it was great, but the vector graphics bit is now too pricey to replicate.

The next one, big cabinet, pixel size to match, still wire-frames, sure, it was fun. The machines are occasionally seen around. They likely do have MAME, or something like it, inside.

The DS version of Attack of the Clones was good, the 8- to 16-bit isometric feel of the GBA game plus enjoyable space battles on the DS hardware.

I am very annoyed about the pod-racing game, Lucas seems to have had an exclusive deal with Nintendo, so there never was a Dreamcast release here, I played it on an N64, would sure have bought it if the DC version was available here.

After Death Star II blew: Dissecting the tech of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens

Bleu

Re: It's not that unlikely

I do not know when or if I ever want to see this heap of steaming poo.

Maybe on cable TV if they have a channel playing it.

So Rey is the son of Organza and Solo, one can assume that the Han Solo centric movie in production will explain this. Trained by Luke. Goes dark-side for no logical reason.

Meanwhile, his twin (I assume, but perhaps Luke's daughter) is somehow dumped on a planet almost exactly like Tatooine?

The Rebel Alliance won, but just thirty years later, they are the 'Resistance' to a new empire?

Sorry, the prequel trilogy had many great parts, the most wooden thing about it was Natalie Portlyman as princess Amygdala.

despite all of the bullshit, this sounds much worse.

Bleu

quasi-disaster of The Phantom Menace run of films, expectations are high for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In 1977, Star Wars achieved a rare feat in sci-fi film history – going boldly where Star Trek went before

Well done in a trollish article.

Star Wars and Star Trek have little in common, they are only conjoined by the cheapo recent

director in recent times.

The only reason I ever want to see this, is that Ford was great at laconic (never better than in the dressing room scene in Bladerunner, but not the only time), if he delivers it again, as is reported, I would like to see it, but I can wait some time to see it.

I can understand the complaint of the venerable Terence Stamp for not being able to do direct dialogue, but I would suspect that was the choice of Natalie Portlyman, and not that of Lucas. Christenson gets so much crap dumped on him for being wooden, watch it again.

Christenson plays Anakin;'s conversion to the dark side perfectly. Look at it again!

The wooden actor was Nataie Portlyman. and that name has no connection with real names.

Bleu

There Is neither tech nor science in Star Wars. It is squarely in the fantasy genre, spacecraft making noise as they fly, impossible physics, using the parsec as a unit of time, etc.

The original likely inspired the slogan for Alien, I would not be surprised if o'Bannon himself came up with that.

I made a better post earlier, but either the reg. has become hateful to mobile devices or, more likely, Opera released fucked-up versions of their browsers recently. ... post-repairs.

Kiwi judge rules Kim Dotcom can be extradited to USA

Bleu

Re: I agree with

KimtheHutt@jabba.com

For all of the downvoters, sorry, from the chest up at least, Kim is a lookalike for Jabba.

What the USA is doing sucks, NZ judiciary collaborating is rotten (although I doubt they will continue to do so as the case goes to higher courts).

That said, Kim/Jabba's fortune is plainly based on a very dirty business model.

Bleu

I agree with

The many commenters who are disagreeing with the decision for extradition. OTOH, he made his pile of money in an unethical way.

... but, looking at the photos, what I really want to say is

HE SHOULD CHANGE HIS NAME TO

Jabba the Dotcom

or

Kim the Hutt

or

Dotcom the Hutt.

Strong the resemblance in this one is!

Not joking on this point, the similarity of countenance is clear. Almost a dead ringer.

El Reg picked a pack of ace pic-titlers

Bleu

That did make me laugh,

up from me. Srsly, only rampantly trollish captions could bring true hilarity to the pic.

Source of the pic. would be interesting to hear, one may assume someone in the Reg. or an associate, clearly a pose.

Bleu

OMG that is amazing!

I am so happy to have such a photo of my pet cat to upload!! It will get me so many likes and so much sharing!!!

alternatively

Best photo of me I've ever taken! It will get me so many likes and so much sharing!!

or

OMG! I have my highest number of likes ever on Facebook!!

more alternatively

Finally got that GIF animation I made in the Gimp running! Looks amazing!!

more more alternatively

When I got the raster interrupt tricks going in my C 64 emulator, I was more than over the moon!!

more likely

I am so happy to hear from ...!!

or

Just cleared the level! It took hours!! So happy!!!

or

Are you really about to pop out of there and visit me?! it's so exciting!!

None of mine are very funny, but the photo surely suits the first to third, and current 'net obsessions.

Not that any of the winning entries made me laugh.

You’re clever? But are you clever enough to give a Reg lecture?

Bleu

but NDAs, covering things that are vital but generally not spectacular, no mention possible in general.

Ideas about what is happening, but have other necessary things to do.

Also, too far away. However, I would like to write the occasional article for the reg. later.

Too busy to go to SemIcon Japan this year, a big disappointment.

Today, I was surprised to see a giant ad poster for the Murata chearleaders on a station platform (with the slogan translating as 'hooray, hooray, hooray, for makers'), since Murata doesn't directly make consumer electronics, I was very pleased to see that they bothered to pay for the ad at a station where I had to change trains.

I think that the Murata cheerleaders are on the way to being a pop-culture phenomenon, at least here.

Also think the new Star Wars copied the BB8 concept from the Murata cheerleaders, Disney Corp. should have to pay Murata royalties.

Brit 'naut Tim Peake tucks into space bacon sarnie

Bleu

Re: Surely ketchup

Ketchup, brown sauce, sure if it is part of a hamburger. If not, hot mustard or at least mustard of some kind is the only tasteful choice.

Bleu

I used to go to a tiny bar

near Tokyo station. (15 or so minutes on foot), one of the other regulars at the time would occasionally turn up with home-made bacon made from wild pigs.

It was exquisite, of course not served in bread.

The Canadians and some USA people rate Canadian bacon highly, since I have only ever eaten it here, I am not sure how real or ersatz it was, but pretty good. Not so sure about the maple sauce combo, flavour is alright.

I am sure that others have mentioned that Major Tim (ground control to ...)is not the first Brit in orbit, it was a woman, Helen, I forget the surname, but she went up on Soyuz to Mir years ago.

Rebels defeat the Empire (again) by giving BB-8 an API

Bleu

Re: “Go play with the cat,”

To me, this design for BB-8 (which will never be an icon, just a merchandise-pusher) *must* be being based on the Murata cheerleaders (look it up).

I have many great photos of them, wanted to make a short vid. at the last CEATEC, but the vid. cam. had flat batteries.

I am hoping that Murata is able to extract big fees from Disneycorp, because the Murata cheerleaders were clearly the inspiration for this 'droid'.

Adding, even the Reg. also had an article on Murata cheerleaders well before this clone of the first Star Wars movie was using the idea. The Murata cheerleaders performance is very impressive.

I have an old talk-and-response robot from Tomi (supposed to be USB progammable, but they never did anything with that, AFAIK, never released the specs, not that I would have the time to do anything with them right now), also a little insect controlled by Wonder Swan, nice toys. The later PC-controlled version may have been a better choice, but still have a working Wonder Swan, so no complaint.

Still running IE10? Not for long, says Microsoft

Bleu

I understand

that some businesses have applications which rely on certain standards-breaking quirks of IE 6, but the only times I have ever used their browser product were in ''net cafes or hotels where downloading an alternative would have taken too much time, only to be eliminated by a re-boot, except at the many hotels where. if one wanted to be randomly malicious, one could have a field day.

Not being randomly malicious, I generally just erase the mass of stored passwords and login names, of course, usually after logging out. I tell the staff, they are generally clueless, but that is not the fault of IE.

However, using it at times over the years, it is clear that any 'idea' MS has ever had was based on

1. trying to break the Internet to make it an MS monopoly (sure, they don't do it much now, but it was a guiding strategy under Gates after he worked out that he'd missed the Internet bus) and

2. lame copying of features from others.

Why does anybody (except for the businesses with programs depending on quirks in IE 6), bother to boot it up?

Even the name is supremely lame. 'Hey, those people have "navigator", why don't we call ours something really different, like, say "explorer"?'

Pathetic.

Jimbo 'Wikipedia' Wales leads Lawrence Lessig's presidential push

Bleu

Re: More hypocrisy from Jimmy Wales

Mr. Orlowski,

your last sentence was missing a verb, I'd guess it was 'say'.

I would not compare Lessig and Whales.

Lessig's attempt, at his nation's Supreme Court, to stop the endless extensions of copyrights and trademarks on Mickey Mouse et al., was entirely admirable.

Disney (not so much Walt, he did the pillaging, too, but I very much doubt that his intention was rights in perpetuity to the characters as trademarks) pillages and debases nineteenth-century literature for children, which was in the public domain, then claims trademark rights.

Worst example of pillage, Frozen.

Worst example of theft, Winnie the Pooh, but of course, Milne's estate, although well-off people, were greedy enough to sell a trademark right that did not even exist at the time of Milne's death.

It is a sick system.

There is a USSR animated version of what is claimed to be the source material for Frozen, it is much more faithful to the source, and much better. Very touching.

Lessig's reaction to his loss in court may not have been well-considered, so he falls in with Whales to some extent, but he deserves more than a little respect for his more direct try to reform the system to start with.

Work on world's largest star-gazing 'scope stopped after religious protests

Bleu

Re: Native Nimbys

There are two observatories on Mt. Fuji, one weather, one military radar.

The latter may no longer be there, but I cannot recall.

The lower slopes feature golf courses, an amusement park, army training grounds, the only poetic thing is the forest on the south-eastern slopes which is very popular for suicide.

Whole point of 'UNESCO world national treasure' in Japan is to increase internal tourism, and spray much concrete about, Mt. Fuji is already popular, and has too much concrete about, it is a matter of national pride to the pollies (hard-right).

The last time they tried, the UNESCO inspectors were too disgusted by the amount of rubbish, stench of human excreta, and erosion to go along. Ten or so years ago.

This time, they managed to ignore all of that (I am sure that the govt at least organised a rubbish clean-up), but I am equally sure of diplomatic bribery.

So they got it (UNESCO international treasure status).

We don't preserve our past well at all, but if you look at the UNESCO list, Japan is grossly over-represented. Mainly for internal tourism, as I say above.

Bleu

Re: Shooting themselves in the foot

I am sure that all want to get on with their lives.

Fact is, annexation by the USA was a very nasty move, the Queen of Hawaii was still in power when it was a British protectorate.

Rotten behaviour, I cannot see how the Monroe doctrine extends to the mid-Pacific, frankly. I cannot see how how it was ever valid at all.

Bleu

Re: Until I Read...

I have never been there, but Hawaii's weather is strange. Another mountain has the world's most precipitation, matched by a part of India, but IIRC, the place in Hawaii wins on constancy.

Here, Mt. Fuji is wrapped in clouds to the summit on most days, been past on trains or viewed from a far place in all seasons, clear views are seldom.

If anyone with knowledge of it can explain, i would like to hear why the site in Hawaii is a good one.

USA seems to have the trend for cutting off the tops of mountains, I read of it happening in Virginia, Dakotas.

A 'sacred' mountain near Tokyo, Mt. Buko, is being slowly destroyed to make cement and concrete.

Half is gone.

Hate that, is there no way to recycle materials from demolitions?

Plenty here.

I dislike the Guardian in general

Bleu

I dislike the Guardian in general

but read it at times. The writing is not always the worst.

The article was pretty crap, but this comment thread has much that was of interest to me, and will be to other regtards, first time I have been impressed by and interested in many comments on one of their 'tech' articles. Whether the most interesting one is true (a man named Main claiming to be responsible for "main()" in C), it is worth reading.

www.theguardian.com/discussion/p/4en88

From Zero to hero: Why mini 'puter Oberon should grab Pi's crown

Bleu

Re: Operating system in Pascal for Pascal

I would recommend for the hard-core, the boards for the Renesas RX and RL processors. You won't get something that is plug-and-play, and have to use a soldering pin to do more than program them,

great products if you (as I) love bare-metal programming, interrupt-driven C.

Relevance, also greatly admire Pascal, it is syntactically very similar to C, except for the unreadable use of pointer statements in C.

Taxi for NASA! SpaceX to fly astronauts to space station

Bleu

'Ten minutes to make it better'

has not worked for me even once from here.

What I meant to say is that Musk takes much advantage of state funding, people trained by the state and other state-supported institutions, but he seems to put very little (or nothing) back.

Bleu

Re: My God, it's full of stars

I gather that notowmenwilson was replying to my posts.

My objection to the Space X tale as it is told is that people like to pretend it is all by a brave entrepreneur, it is not, he had a very solid base of capital, used a little to buy ex-NASA and other state-trained expertise, trained at much expense. Puts nothing baa

Bleu

Re: Better than most

I do not think it 'is better than most', except for the early space-race days.

However, I am only posting here and now because I cannot sleep and to pose an interesting hypothetical: what if Lisa Nowak had delayed her flip-out until she was again in orbit with her cheating bf Odom on board as the commander?

Of course, she may have been able to control herself, after all, here on Earth, she didn't go after him, but his new paramour, stupid reaction in itself.

Interesting scenario, IMHO, lucky for NASA it never happened. It does remind me of many 'insane in SPAACE' sf stories.

Bleu

Re: Boo, hiss

Well said. I am not an American, but appreciate the sacrifice (sorry, cannot define the Shuttle deaths as heros, brave people, tragic deaths, for sure, Apollo 7, sure, tragic heroes, but victims of bad engineering).

The latest serious space hero was the first taikonaut, he was bleeding from everywhere after landing, the Chinese govt did not want people to see that, so they cleaned him up and put him back in the capsule, to take photos.

IMHO, they should have emphasised the earlier ones. Space is harsh. Re-entry can be harsh. They had not worked out the latter at the time.

Bleu

Re: My God, it's full of stars

Up from me

It has indeed blown up, and not just on the vertical landing attempts.

Just how much Musk has spent, from his garguantuan dragon hoard, it seems to be a little in the early days, on the government gravy-train since. I know the rabids will down-vote this post if they see it, for the rabids, please give exact figures on Musk's personal wealth, how much he has invested at risk in Space X projects, and how much is extracted from the US taxpayer?

I have a pretty good idea, he has

invested FA since getting the supply contract, probably well before, and, it seems, no penalty for screwing up on supply.

Sure, Space X is probably doing better value than the US competition, but they have a far from perfect record for cargo delivery.

NASA has already transferred much knowledge, gratis assistance, tax dollars from US citizens, and, perhaps not yet, but they will or are, transferring techniques stolen from the USSR and Russia to Space X.

Passengers? I loved the mock-up, it doesn't look like it would be bearable under high-g take-off, the only idea was to make it look like a miniature Star-Trek bridge.

Doubtless the American taxpayer is paying for a seating arrangement that doesn't break the rider's necks taking off.

Microsoft Windows: The Next 30 Years

Bleu

Modern, secular Turkey?

I think Andrew speaks of emigre communities or is three or four elections out of date.

Do agree that MS is having a good go at an old model, as said before, kudos to them for having a serious go at context and content handover. Pour moi, I prefer fragmentation of devices, having to use physical media, reformat and all, control, but MS will really be on a winner if they can make the cross-device model work smoothly.

Bleu

Re: @ jake (Who colonized Japan?)

I am a little disappointed at Andrew's poor perception of 'never colonised.' Most states of what is now Malaysia were never colonised. Thailand was never colonised, they even gained their now-fractious southernmost provinces in a showdown with Britain.

India was not, as a whole, colonised. Bhutan was not colonised. Former outer Mongolia was never colonised. Most of China was never colonised.

Japan was only colonised at the end of that war, but within a few years, politicians of the habitual ruling party were claiming that we had actually won the war, I am not sure of the logic there, mix of very upper-class profiteering and bravado, I suppose.

I will also answer the earlier commenter, of course Germany and Japan remain colonised, only they are not colonies in the old Greek sense at all, the US occupying forces are still here, but most have very little to do with the population (many crimes in Japan, fewer lately, do not know about Germany).

Bleu

Re: Thailand is the only Asian country never to be colonised

You need to study it more, I have a romantic attachment to many of the rebel movements.

Under the last shogunate, clockwork, western-style medicine, architecture, all became very advanced.

Meiji reformation was a long process, many betrayals, much opposition. Not a simple thing.

Many of the ideas of some rebels later became policy, like invading Korea.

Europe didn't catch the pox from Christopher Columbus – scientists

Bleu

Re: It was around before that

Misuse of antibiotics ... not to mention the obscenity in industrial farming, except for Japan, many east Asians, including Chinese friends, take them like popcorn at the slightest hint of, for example, a cold.

Used to be able to get them without a prescription in many places (Thailand, Korea, Hong Kong from direct seeing).

Bleu

Re: Don't forget the chocolate!

For Duffy.

I suspect you are correct, think that I've heard it before, too.

Bleu

Re: Don't forget the chocolate!

You have a very good point, which often makes me wonder. What did Indians (sub-continent) use before chili came along? I know that hot food is not everywhere and always, maybe it was mainly like Hare Krishna prasad, which is tasty.

So many regions, that, if so, would only be so in some places.

The Hare Krishnas also use potatoes a lot.

Cacao was not used as a sweet before, but as a savoury.

Bleu

Re: It was around before that

'Pox' referred to smallpox, chicken pox, measles, gonnorhea, sure, a generic word used for many other diseases. Even bad acne.

Not flu or colds, not mumps, not whooping cough.

The symptoms of syphilis would never have led to it being called a 'pox', because they are invisible.

Bleu

Re: It was around before that

The article and most comments are total bullshit. The socio-political aim as disinformation is very clear 'disease in trans-continental contact was exclusively in one direction'.

Calling bs on that.

Hillary Clinton: Stop helping terrorists, Silicon Valley – weaken your encryption

Bleu

Re: "News"

I can see that you are saying something in an elliptical way, but it is still too elliptical for me.

An up from moi, anyway.

Bleu

Re: "News"

Don't forget the real estate dealings, Obama also made it from 'community activist' to multimillionaire off the back of illicit real-estate dealings. Interesting that the US press is long silent about both the Clinton's and the Obama's real-estate dealings.

Hilary's triumph as a younger lawyer in having a rapist acquitted, then admitting that she knew the girl had been raped, and boasting about how clever she had been to get the rapist acquitted, says a lot about her mentality.

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