Posts by DropBear

Re: I give up

To be honest, Firefox saved my bacon a couple of times after the underlying site lost my post - to my great amazement, hitting "back" as many times as necessary to land on the original "post comment" page yielded the comment box with my text still in it. This is by no means something to rely on (fails way more often than succeeds) but is definitely something to try if you forgot to hit "Ctrl+C" (or worse - you did, only to realize the clipboard still contains whatever it did _before_ simply because fuck web 2.0 and "copy" was disabled of something)

Re: VW's fines and costs...

"Prefuelled factory sealed reactors and off you go"

Will be following with much interest when the first one gets hijacked by pirates near some remote coast of Africa...

Re: Does this mean...

Of course they can!. And so can we (and everyone else reading the comments here). Now that you wrote it down.

"Do I have to ask who will pay for it?"

You will, if they ever come up with any standard that builds up any popularity - membership will either be compulsory in order to use it in a product, or they'll simply sell it to you for about a grand per chapter (with dozens upon dozens of chapters cross-referencing each other copiously). Alternatively, you'll pay for it buying any product of a manufacturer who had to go through said mugging. All that assuming of course they really do come up with something smart enough.

Re: El Reg editors, please note once and for all:

"So WTF does Green mean?????"

Don't be silly, every kid knows a green card means permanent resident status in the United States (just as a red card means you did something the referee seems to be frowning upon)...

Re: Thankyou for the facts

There IS NO copyright to be owned by anyone in the picture discussed, according to the "Compendium Of The U.S. Copyright Office Practices", Third Edition, Section 313.2. Any more questions? No? Next...!

"Seems to me that History has quite a few examples of the weaker standing up to their oppressors and winning"

Please name one where the weaker one wasn't all-out no-punches-pulled back-against-the-wall bitterly fighting for his mere existence. As we well know, it's not impossible to give a bully a black eye under such conditions; however, until you're prepared to use any means necessary and potentially get beaten to a pulp the bully wins every time no exceptions - I've never heard of an oppressor voluntarily yielding to diplomatic saber-rattling if it thought it can get away with it (unless you had something they highly valued but couldn't simply take and you were prepared to offer it in exchange - but that's exceedingly rare).

Re: It's all about the complexity of OS software...

"not who writes it" [Citation needed]

Not being able to complex write software that is completely free of obscure bugs is one thing; using what must be the equivalent of yellow "police line - do not cross" tape to "block" a front gate instead of an actual proper door and lock is just ludicrous and predictably results in all the headaches you can expect from such a rinky-dink solution. And no, it doesn't get any more excusable because most of the usual suspects idiots seem to be doing it. It just highlights that NO ONE actually gives a damn about any level of security (except the hackers, natch).

Re: The one they know...

"not be a malware unless you're not on a google server"

This MO is proof positive. It was clearly coded by Volkswagen staff...

Re: Evolution is a myth

Well not exactly, but the backup image restored 6000 years ago apparently retains the original timestamps...

Re: You wanna talk about fair?

"But you had IP rights in whatever it is you create, and apparently bargained them away"

Yeah, lemme see you "keep your copyright" in having installed a kitchen sink. Oh, you mean only enlightened people like "artists" deserve to be eternally paid for the work they once did, but not the proles...? Way cool, bro...

Speaking of which - wanna bet there's someone right now sitting at an NSA snoop terminal going "Awww crap Jack, we have to flush the hit queue for "bomb" - 4235623412546 results and keeps growing..."

Re: Disable copy/paste on the lockscreen

Please stop perverting the language and use the grammatically correct form: "moar betterer"!

"That could only be a good thing, right?"

Yes, and if we'd just stopped selling gas and discontinued public transport, more people would start jogging to work. It's win-win!

"Having been arrested for something completely unrelated to me in a similar (but not bomb related) knee-jerk reaction, I can tell you this child will not have a positive view of the police/authorities as he grows up."

Having never been arrested for anything I can telly you there's practically nothing I can think of that police could possibly do that could make my view of them any more negative. And yes, that includes them actually growing horns and a forked tail and starting to eat babies.

Re: "But theft is still theft"

Hey, we might as well just get this over with - why bother restraining oneself calling copyright infringement "piracy", ad-blocking "theft" - I propose we just go the Full Monty: call anything anyone doesn't like to see done on the interwebs MURDEROUS GENOCIDE, agree that the minimum punishment is a hundred consecutive life sentences and be done with it! Wouldn't that be so much simpler...?

Re: " and patches should be kept up-to-date"

I will settle for nothing less than mud wrestling - female category, natch.

Re: "We banged our way to the moon"

"If someone spills (spill, as in, pour a liquid) hydrogen over you, it's fair to say that they've ruined your whole day."

I have absolutely no idea why would you make such a ridiculous claim?!? Granted, hydrogen would be a bit colder but at that point I just don't think it would fundamentally change the outcome...

Re: I suspect a lot of us did this back in the day...

"the virus that made random letters slide down and off the screen"

Oh, we did that too - except we were using the disassembled Real Thing with its infecting parts removed. We left it running in memory only and retreated slightly. Well, you have not seen proper horror until you've watched the guy who sat down after us noticing the falling letters in his Borland IDE, starting the text-mode McAfee scanner then flip out once that too started to "fall" mid-scanning. Of course, the modded code was not spotted and it went "poof" as soon as they turned off the machine... good times.

Re: The chances of anything coming from earth are a million to one he said.

"ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE"

Hey, have you ever seen the effect a big red button clearly labelled "DO NOT PUSH" has on people...? Just wondering...

Re: You don't own the air above your ground

"On the privacy issue..."

Yes, well, that fancy new privacy-protecting invention called CURTAINS is still mostly unknown leaving the general populace woefully defenceless in their own home against anyone with a pair of eyeballs...

Re: 3D Touch... finally

Ehhh, you don't need pressure sensitivity for that, it can all be done with existing tech. You just wait for the brief "wildly spinning" reading from the accelerometer followed by the "50G shock spike" one then fire off the "f*** off" message - if the phone still seems to be roughly in working condition...

I can never watch them either... thanks for the link!