* Posts by DropBear

4733 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013

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

DropBear
Trollface

Re: half humans fault

Nono, half-halfling. One quarter kobold, you know...

Pakistan URINE STORM: Google Maps chokes off user editing

DropBear

Re: The new 'improved' Google Maps

You might be interested in this URL: https://maps.google.co.uk/lochp - at least for the time being, it directs you to the old interface...

DEEPENING MYSTERY of BRIGHT LIGHTS on dwarf world Ceres

DropBear

Re: Ceres bright spots iluminate without sun light

"air your concerns about this obvious failing by NASA"

Frankly I'm not all that convinced that NASA's assessment regarding the origin of of the spots is based on anything more educated than "well what else could they be?" - which doesn't mean they're not exactly just that but isn't an exactly convincing argument either.

Massive police 'heavy equipment' robot drags out suspect who hid inside television

DropBear
WTF?

Huh?

Pardon me but since when does being inside a "TV cabinet" mean the same thing as being inside a "television"?!? Not the least because getting inside a modern flat TV would be nonsensical, while getting inside an old CRT-based one would require nothing short of a contortionist. Hiding in a piece of furniture is a lot more understandable, even if hardly any comfier.

Swedish Supreme Court keeps AssangeTM in Little Ecuador

DropBear

"Where does this £10m cost supposedly come from?"

It's simply cold, hard fact - much like the statement that 98.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

A loud, confusing, exciting jumble of the great and the gregarious

DropBear

Re: Kino-Mo

Tried to look it up but their entire page is nothing but a stinking blurb for brainless morons business executives...

Hordes spaff cash on Chip titchyputer to rival Pi (maybe)

DropBear
Unhappy

Re: Looks good, but...

"Lima or liar?"

That might actually matter were it not for the fact that the English translation of the "totally open source" bit is "we really intend to make it open source at some point in the future, honest! Please stop bugging us about any information until then!". Also, the fact that the "$9 computer" is actually $29 shipped and the crew is apparently intentionally ignoring the 10001 "at least let me buy several of them at once with that kind of shipping charge" cries does not bode well.

Traumatised Reg SPB team barely survives movie unwatchablathon

DropBear
Thumb Up

As a partially responsible party, I'd like to congratulate the team for their unwavering resolve and bravery in the face of such an odious ordeal. Your sacrifice shall never be forgotten.

Even Uncle Sam admits: US patent law is whack

DropBear
Mushroom

Re: Intelligent Design

"originally the founders intended for patents to encourage innovation and people building on each other's ideas"

I have a very hard time trying to imagine how any such disclosure is supposed to encourage people building on it, considering all it tells you is "this is how you're NOT ALLOWED to do this - unless you're willing to pay me" - which, as we well know, nobody ever is prepared to unless there's absolutely positively no other way to do "this".

All a patent does is artificially exclude everyone but the first to arrive from the low-hanging fruit, regardless of whether or not any number of them would have been quite able to reach it on their own. Forcing them to either pay up simply for not being the first or try for the higher-hanging fruit is certainly not "efficient" either way, not to mention that fruit might not even be there at all - rest assured, if it is, and it's so damn incredibly compelling, it will be reached without artificial prodding.too.

This has nothing to do with innovation, it has everything to do with a mad dash to stuff as much fruit in your pocket as fast as you can to scurry it away from everyone else. I feel no obligation to assist you with that - I'd rather eat some of it myself instead, especially considering that without a patent me eating that fruit still leaves it there for everyone else.

Just kill it with fire. From orbit.

Facebook 'fesses up to running an ideological echo chamber

DropBear

Well, when one considers that 99.99999999999999% of the chat in any forum anywhere on the internet is either about how absolutely wrong everyone else is or how right the previous poster is, this is hardly a surprise.

... oh wait. ...dang it.

Why MakerBot failed – but 3D printing is far from dead

DropBear

MakerBot moved too fast with untested technology thought they could just keep selling at a price an order of magnitude higher than the market norm without offering any obvious advantages and that's why it was forced to cut 20 per cent of its staff. FTFY.

"...making it possible to develop finished products straight from a printer..."

3D printing as we know it today will never, ever be able to compete in actual production simply because of the ginormous slowness of the process. One-offs are a different thing, but that's hardly the same as a "finished product".

FOUND: NASA's stray balloon located in the middle of nowhere

DropBear
Trollface

Well, yes, but that's the time it takes for the Zeppelin the NASA guys are travelling on to get to Australia all the way from America and return...

Crowdfunded ZX Spectrum revival just days from shipment

DropBear
Happy

Re: I don't get the point of this thing

Right - that's not how you retro-game with style! The proper way is digging up an actual Speccy then jacking the tape input to your smartphone's headphone output and have it play back whatever you want to load at crystal crisp quality - "tape loading error" is not invited to the party...

Spooks BUSTED: 27,000 profiles reveal new intel ops, home addresses

DropBear
Trollface

Re: MASTERSHAKE?

That's nothing - did you see the guy also knows how to use PUTTY...?!? We're DOOMED! DOOMED, I tell you!

Systemd hee hee: Jessie Debian gallops (slowly) into view

DropBear
WTF?

To be fair, if I had a penny for every time I wished Windows would just stop executing any process that hasn't terminated within 5 seconds from shutdown I'd be filthy rich. As it is, I never get to see my laptop actually power off (eventually) when I leave - not even an angel could stick around for that long, even if seemingly nothing at all is open anymore. Anyway, I find the concept of relying on system shutdown to save one's otherwise unsaved work exceedingly curious to say the least. No program, ever, should wait until it's terminated to save anything it has to save - nor should any human ever rely on that.

Calamity cargo capsule DOOMED: Space station pod in fireball re-entry

DropBear
Trollface

Re: But what's in the cargo?

Naaah, it's square pigs killer robots...

DropBear
Joke

Re: Hang on...

Da, we not control Progress, komrade. We target, we turn Earth under it...!

Why the US government reckons it should keep phone network kill-switches a secret

DropBear
Mushroom

Tell you what...

I look forward to the first trial where a legal whiz-kid asks the gubmit-org-of-the-day to prove beyond any doubt that by keeping the secret-mcguffin-of-the-day secret, they can ensure that NO lives are in ANY danger anywhere. Yes, that includes bricks falling from rooftops and the Vogons showing up to disintegrate Earth, no matter how remote the possibility. And if they CAN'T do that, get the case (and any future similar ones) summarily throw out with extreme prejudice.

SpaceX in MONEY RING shot, no spare juice for tail backdown this time

DropBear
FAIL

Re: Elon's Tweet...

That's a two-way highway and what you're trying to do is ride the dividers in the middle of it.

On the one hand, anything is mundane and trivial for someone who has lived with it all his/her life, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no reason one should be expected to spend one's life busy being awestruck by the sheer genius of the wheel, running water, lightbulbs or indeed airplanes or mobile communication. Appreciating that they're all thoroughly remarkable is one thing, continuously acting as if they're pure witchcraft is another (and thoroughly dumb). Fear not, people will still be appropriately awestruck when they see the first teleporter, replicator or warp-capable spaceship.

On the other hand, anyone can play at the "wondering at the marvels of whatever" game if we get down to it, we don't even need any technology (or indeed humans at all) for that - it's easy enough to be awestruck by the way clorophyll works, or DNA does, or how a few numbers with specific values result in all that incredible stuff forming and twirling around in space, the mere proportions of which justify getting wonderstruck all on their own.

But to simply lament that people don't walk around perpetually baffled by stuff that may have been interesting or new at one time for YOU but has been in existence for most or all of their lives is farcical at best. Maybe next time you'll get hauled around half the world instead of the direct route by a greedy cabbie you'll be busy admiring the wonders of the internal combustion engine instead of raising a stink - but somehow I doubt it. In the mean time, I'll be complaining about my drink, thankyouverymuch.

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Watched the launch...

"It's when the cowled man looks like he's carrying a scythe that you really, really need to start worrying"

I suppose even that depends a lot on the specific circumstances...

DropBear
Mushroom

Re: "Elon Musk's SpaceX in space race breakthrough"

"Anyone else feeling clickbaited?"

That's the understatement of the week...

Acer: 'We will be the last man standing in the PC industry'

DropBear
Joke

Re: Free upgrade

Hold on... you gave it some chicken once and it still gives a shit about you? That must be a seriously one-of-a-kind cat... all the ones I know only do that as long as I'm holding the food.

Romanian rozzers round up alleged $15 MILLION ATM cybercrim gang

DropBear

To be honest, in specific Romanian context, all my cards are chip-based - every bank around here decided at some point in the last few years they definitely want us to carry new chipped ones (they still do have the mag-stripe of course...). Still, I'm wondering how secure all that is considering all one needs to empty any of those cards online is the card number (printed on the card) and the CVV2 code (printed on the card)...

'Use 1 capital' password prompts make them too predictable – study

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Password generators

"A hash should just work on a string no matter its size or even its contents."

Well, yes, but the dev defined the 8-letter password input buffer as char[8] (well, char[9], if you're lucky)...

DropBear
Trollface

Re: "...What would help is if more sites would let you use Unicode..."

Awesome idea. Now please access the same system from a smartphone keyboard. I'll even let you install Cyrillic support on it! Just hold on until I fetch the popcorn...

DropBear
Facepalm

Re: What's the real issue?

I got uneasy and started racking my brain where else did I see this "have one more than the last N values the system checks and denies" scheme, then I remembered - certain printers refuse to use the last (chipped) toner cartridge even if you refill it / reset it / whatever successfully, because they store its read-only serial number (and that's stored in the printer not in the cartridge so you can't just reset it) - so obviously, people just use TWO sets of cartridges because only the last serial is remembered. Yeah, life is strange...

MONSTROUS iPhone sales are CANNIBALIZING iPads, gabbles Apple CEO

DropBear

Re: Showoffs

"The rest of us just want the best that the market has to offer."

Exactly. Which is precisely why I would never think of buying any of their kit.

Hawking hologram comforts One Direction fans with Zayny parallel universe claim

DropBear
Joke

Re: Steven Hawkins greatest hit

"running over Dr. Brian Cox whilst sinning"

...need mind bleach, stat! I SAID STAT!

Tesla Twitter account and website hijacked, Elon Musk pwned

DropBear

"Redirecting surfers to a website under hacker control is rather more serious, because this sort of thing can easily be used to spread malware."

I don't see how "merely" defacing a website is "rather less serious" in terms of risk, considering once one has the ability to upload his own index.html, there's nothing preventing one to also attach some malware to it, whether that too gets uploaded the same way or hosted somewhere else.

Top Spanish minister shows citizens are thick as tortillas de ballenas

DropBear

Re: Einstein told us "everything is relative"

"He was wrong about quantum mechanics, so he wasn't infallible"

Lucky for us then that science isn't based on the belief that anybody in particular is infallible.

Business plans, good ideas, and 8 other myths about startups – by Indiegogo's CEO

DropBear
WTF?

Idea? Business plan? Nah. That's myth no. 11 right there for you. What you actually need to succeed is the combination of a tech-savvy geek nerd STEM aficionado and a people-savvy vicious sociopath college dropout business professional (at least in the tech biz) - oh, and a s##tload of luck and just the right circumstances. After all, quite obviously not everyone can deliver all that raw talent and back-breaking hard work that it takes to succeed, like, say, Justin Bieber can...

Stuff your RFID card, just let me through the damn door!

DropBear
Holmes

Re: Ceterum censeo!

"Meanwhile I will help you out with some Internet"

Much obliged, although to be fair all I've found there is a fellow awfully enamoured of the sound of his own voice - desperately trying to appear knowledgeable recounting a bunch of security trivia any interested party would be aware of by now - who's entire point (if he has one at all, still can't quite tell) seems to be that there's no such thing as perfect security. Well, d'oh, mate... -->

DropBear

Re: Ceterum censeo!

I keep telling myself that if only I read that bucket'o'words many enough times, I'll be enlightened at some point about WHY RFID is supposed to be so full of fail even in principle (practice is a different matter). That didn't happen yet though, gotta keep reading...

Hubble hits 25th anniversary IN SPAAACE – time for telescope to come home

DropBear

"This huge device will be parked 1.5 million kilometers from Earth – so no servicing missions will be possible"

Considering that's about four times as far as the moon, I'm not surprised. I get eyelid twitch just thinking about it...

SUPERVOLCANIC MAGMA reservoir BUBBLING under Yellowstone Park

DropBear
Headmaster

Re: Time to develop a good exit strategy

"one of those pesky civil war things"

I reckon an interplanetary war would be as far from the meaning of the word "civil war" as one possibly can get though...

Looking for laxatives, miss? Shoppers stalked via smartphone Wi-Fi

DropBear
Trollface

Re: So everybody could also set up these wifi spying stations?

"in front of every porn venue, mistress's home, bookie shop, dope joint"

I'm hereby filing a FOIA request for that list to be publicly released forthwith because... ummm... reasons. Purely academic interest, of course.

DropBear
Happy

Re: What Stores....

"Mine's the one with the 386DX-40 in the pocket..."

Yeah, but does it come with a "Turbo" button and jumpered LED display to show the clock frequency...?

EU’s Timmermans: You can have our ear, lobbyists – just don't lie

DropBear
Trollface

You can have our ear

aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAA! OMG, WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!? You think you're Tyson or something?!?

Disk drive shipment numbers set to spin down

DropBear

So, um, does that mean I'll finally get to replace my 90% full, continuously-running-for-over-six-years media box HDD with a slightly larger one at a decent price, or will they rather dump the milk bury heaps of drives under some thrash in an undisclosed location to keep the price up...?

Microsoft: Profit DECIMATED because you people aren't buying PCs

DropBear
Joke

Re: Death March

Nonsense! They have this whiz-bang new market strategist at the helm who will certainly sort things out - granted, the bloke is freakishly short of stature and there are rumours he has been stealing underpants in the past for some unknown reason but that is surely just malicious gossip...

Google: We're not mad, our mobes-in-sky Project Loon is FINE

DropBear
WTF?

Indeed - to those people who think there's some mythical, rigid order of "hunting-gathering -> inventing fire -> learning to read/write -> flushing toilets -> library of Alexandria -> walking on the moon -> congrats, you're now qualified to use a cell phone" I have only this to say: "You know nothing, Jon Snow..."

DropBear
WTF?

Re: Iridium

"These days the only people who use it (Iridium) are on the US government payroll"

...or indeed anyone not living constantly within a city/town and/or straying off the major highways who still values being able to contact other people when needed. I've seen even lowly boiler technicians carry these as even only a few miles from a major city it is exceedingly easy to wind up in a remote-ish village without usable GSM coverage, needing some tech detail about a specific boiler you're trying to coax back into service (and for the record, the firm wasn't paying the bill - it was a personal device bought out of necessity)...

The huge flaw in Moore’s Law? It's NOT a law after all

DropBear

Except the part that no real-life process follows exponential law for more than a transitory phase - Moore's law is probably the most enduring example, but it's not exempt of hitting a brick wall at some point either (arguably already has). You simply never get anywhere near the point where "all of land gets covered with railway tracks" and he seems to have a problem grokking that.

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Spelling Police

"Black is not a colour" - Right, and octarine isn't one either. Suuuure...

What is the REAL value of your precious, precious data?

DropBear
FAIL

NO.

Data may not have intrinsic value, but it certainly does have a value one is prepared to pay to acquire it and another value one is prepared to sell it for. And the millisecond I assert my price of selling my private data to you is exactly infinity dollars that data becomes priceless - and that's as fucking REAL a price as any other, considering you can't have that data unless you're prepared to pay that price. Simples.

What's broken in this week's Windows 10 build? Try the Start Menu, for one

DropBear
Trollface

Re: known issue that causes every typed letter to appear twice

"Shouldn't there be FOUR S's in the middle?"

Well, yes, but the spell checker isn't working either...

Fed-up Colorado man takes 9mm PISTOL to vexing Dell PC

DropBear
Trollface

Re: Err...

This lack of justice is disgusting - so Elvis had the right to shoot his TV whenever he wanted, but the ordinary folk may not do that?!? Outrageous! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!

DropBear
Joke

Re: @ Dazed Come on guys

But I agree I have wanted to kill hardware because that is what presents the results of faulty software

There is a definition according to which "Hardware is all the parts of your computer that you can kick"...

Google pulls plug on YouTube for older iPads, iPhones, smart TVs

DropBear
Devil

Re: Its pass the book time.

The smarts here are provided by MythTV.

...which will probably stop working with YouTube equally promptly at the switch-off, and may or may not start working again (real geeks don't watch YouTube since you can't do it on the command line prompt, therefore the number denoting its priority in the 'fix it' queue probably has over a hundred digits, Beetlejuice style). Even if it does, it will likely require an upgrade to the latest MythTv which will promptly break the rest of the things that were still kinda-sorta working on my box after half of the functionality I managed to get up and running got nuked by the previous two upgrades.

DropBear
Mushroom

Re: Roll Your Own

I found that a good Logitech Harmony Remote (When properly setup, which IS a bit trickier then they make it out to be!), is generally MORE THAN capable of taking on that lot

Too bad it tends to cost an arm, a leg and two dozen kidneys while still not having any way to configure it that doesn't involve "the cloud". Oh, and then the "Activities" button flakes out on you, which is the only one you can't reassign and also absolutely CAN'T use the bloody remote without (integrated metal dome switch under a piece of flexible PCB - lemme see you DIY fix that one!). That dust periodically gathers _under_ the LCD cover is just the icing on the cake I suppose. Yay, from a "satisfied customer"...