* Posts by JLV

2252 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2013

‘Insufficient evidence’ makes Brit cops drop revenge porn probes

JLV

Re: MAD

Oh, I don't doubt. But common sense will tell you that guys are less at risk of being ridiculized, at least in humdrum straight sex acts. Blackmail cases involving married folks, closets and pros aside.

The other bit I don't get is this lack of evidence. In many cases wouldn't forensics pick up picture traces on the ex's phone? Or computers? Also, if posted on FB or the like, there would need to be some initial linkage of even an anonymous account to the victim - posting "Sally is a slut and here are the pics" doesnt work so well if Sally's account and friends aren't connected to that post.

I am wondering if cops take this seriously enough. Debrief here in Canada, after a teen's rape and subsequent internet humiliation and suicide, showed a number of procedural mistakes. Among other things they failed to aggressively go after schoolmates reposting pics. Interview procedures were insensitive. There was a lot of hesitancy about a successful prosecution.

Look, let's not get hysterical about it, but this is a serious crime in possible victim impact and merits serious resources. Maybe now that the plods are off the Ecuadorian embassies, the $ can be repurposed. And in our case maybe savings is when our PM can stop making a big fuss about niqabs and losing cases about it.

JLV

Re: MAD

A guy doing the dirty gets bragging rights. Woman, not so much. Except for strategically placed cucumbers, perhaps.

JLV

Re: Doing this far too often

I understand the sentiment but beg to differ somewhat. Like rape, esp in older times, there is the risk that a crime where nothing much is done goes unreported because why report something like that if there is no enforcement and you risking embarassment?

Now, it is not rape, but there can be severe consequences - we've had several teen suicides in Canada. I'd go for a shortish prison term, massive financial damages proportionate to income, levied by garnishments, and highly publicized convictions to serve as deterrent.

Not throwing up hands because that's just gonna tell both the perps, and victims, there is little to fear, and hope, from justice. Which will not deter anything except the victim coming forward.

Websites should also be massively penalized if actively complicit.

Mostly, educate that almost 50% of folks that they are, very stupidly, putting themselves at risk. Do what you want, but never allow an electronic record of it.

Google and pals launch Accelerated Mobile Pages project

JLV

Re: Some Actual Numbers

Agree, except...

In a perfect world, the CDN would report that jquery-3.1.4.js, which El Reg just requested, is the same as jquery-3.1.4.js for wikipedia and return a code 304 or whatever spec says is best. And if it was a different CDN, it should report equivalence as well and sig-check that the js contents were indeed the same, security-wise.

The whole ...for mobile...--css...--js...++<our_new_spec_> twaddle from FB or Google seems rather self-serving, rather than addressing core concerns with web. css is, from a dev, not designer, perspective, an amazingly powerful way to separate presentation from deeper, business/data layers in a text format.

And everytime a better .js has been cooked up it's floundered, the asm stuff aside.

Regardless, as, stated by thames, we have way too many moving pieces that scrape against each other.

JLV

Re: Some Actual Numbers

Not to mention that if you use NoScript, a typical website doesn't leave you with just the need to assess the trust to grant to their domain.

No, you have to decide on the javascript of all those other domains. Some of which, like CDN-hosted jquery, are delivering core page-rendering or processing functionality for that site.

JLV
Headmaster

Re: Janky

our side of the pond.

janky

(adjective) inferior quality; held in low social regard; old and delapidated; refers almost exclusively to inanimate material objects, not to people

Urban Dictionary. 3000+ votes on first entry, so likely not a word made up by some basement dweller looking to improve his score on UD.

Ad-slinging rootkit nasty permanently drills into Android mobes, tabs

JLV

confused

Now, the full-on malware phase I get, but I've never quite understood what massive ad injections are supposed to achieve in cases like this.

What kinda muppet is gonna be like:

"Oh, sweet, lots of popup ads all of a sudden"

"I know let's click on one of, they must be reputable"

The mark's already infected, so there is no use for javascript drive-by pownage. Are these guys really hoping for a sell???

Alleged Anonymous-aiding journo's brief tells jury nowt's been proven

JLV

maximum penalty of 25 years' imprisonment

Again, we have totally disproportionate potential punishments for a pretty petty crime.

I don't condone this guy's stuff at all. But, really, give him a criminal record and a suspended sentence or 6 months to a year. As a result, his life will be way more effed up than the amount of damage he did and it won't cost the taxpayer a dime past the court costs.

Now, if you catch someone doing major damage or especially with the intent to steal large amounts then throw the book at them. 1M$+ plus potential hauls do need hefty, 25 yr type sentencing as deterrents.

Petty, low impact, vandalism does not. Just like it doesn't in the real world. That should be on the books rather than at judge and prosecutor's whims.

Miss Brittany dethroned for posting 'nude' Facebook pics

JLV

Re: Actual Nudity Present

>visible, if dimly-lit

Been reviewing those pics quite carefully, haven't we? ;-)

JLV

That exposure might just get her a Vanessa Williams out of it. She's probably been the most successful Miss America ever, much better for her career than keeping the crown.

JLV

Re: Not normally one to complain about it, but...

I am not sure I agree.

El Reg, maybe some more, from a different angle, would help us decide?

Five things that doomed the big and brilliant BlackBerry 10

JLV

Big I ain't sure about. We used to sell industrial PCs with QNX late 80s. 4MB RAM, admittedly 4x that of a DOS box.

Price? Spot on. That $500 Z10 I got unlocked for $200 in January. Nice phone, bargain. But at $500 hardly enticing for the masses to jump ecosystems.

Alicia Keys? Spot on too. Wrong message, wrong emphasis. Coulda been worse - Kimmy Kardashian worse.

Rightly or wrongly, what I prefer with the z10 is precisely it not being Android. It's rock solid, never jitters, works fine wo replacing half the apps, runs long and recharges quickly. Predictive keyboard is amazing. Upgrades let you use the phone all the way to the final 2 minutes of reboot. Phone & batteries first, apps second.

Those qualities likely won't be there (my perception) on a BBDroid, so not holding my breath.

You can pick up cheap Lumia 1020 with the 41mp cameras now. Unfortunately they might be stuck on WP 8.1, not sure if 10 is being ported. Oh well that z10 can last a while yet.

Slander-as-a-service: Peeple app wants people to rate and review you – whether you like it or not

JLV
Megaphone

Yo, Apple

Here's one app you'd get kudos for ToSing out of existence.

Woman makes app that lets people rate and review you, Yelp-style. Now SHE'S upset people are 'reviewing' her

JLV
Headmaster

Re: only one suitable comment

complimenting ;-)

Good call though.

Tear teardown down, roars Apple: iFixit app yanked from store

JLV

You know, every so often you wonder why Apple has such a nasty rep for being pointlessly petty and control-freakish.

This is a reminder.

I may prefer some of their products to some of their competitors' wares (my choice), but as a company they quite often go out of their way to leave a bad taste. And I often wonder why. Is being nicer so hard?

Shame on you, Apple.

Is Windows 10 slurping too much data? No, says Microsoft. Nuh-uh. Nope

JLV

"deliver a delightful and personalized Windows experience to " me

Yeah, totally on board with that, Terry. Great idea. ++vote

So let's start personalization by un-telemetry-fying my machine, in a simple way, when I ask for it. Pretty basic, innit? Seems like a personalization option requested by a fair bitta folks and not just the enterpriseys.

So why don't you walk the talk?

BlackBerry emits Android mobe as biz goes down the Priv

JLV

Re: Took me hours to copy photos off my phone on a Mac

To be honest, I am prepared to assume that things would have worked better had I had iPhoto on my Mac. Without it it was a mess.

>Just mount it as generic storage.

I know, that's what the thread was stating as well. Trouble is, Finder would not let me open the drive for some reason. With or without mass/usb storage. Although I could cd to it in bash. Why? No idea. Finder kept the volume in "connecting..." status. Mac problem? Probably.

Then there was the part where the pictures were on the device, and not on the SD. That's what the other user in the thread had problems with. I eventually figured it out:

- unmount USB/generic storage

- fire up File Manager on the Z10.

- move files from device to SD, via File Manager. if you don't unmount first, no SD visibility.

- remount as USB

- bash to USB drive, again.

Hey, what I am saying is when you google "bb10 copy photos mac" you tend to end up with very old threads, like:

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-q10-f272/copying-pictures-mac-805769/

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-q10-f272/getting-images-off-bb-onto-mac-877737/

Now, I like my Z10 and I like BB10. I am just saying that the forums are not very lively on what seems to be fairly basic troubleshooting questions. That has been much more of a problem for me than the lack of apps because I avoid installing too many, regardless of the phone OS. Your mileage may vary but someone considering a BB10 phone as a newbie needs to be aware that answers are harder to come by than googling the 500th time an iPhone/Android user has asked how to do something.

Of course, if you are a frequent forum contributor yourself, then the forums you are posting in or reading are alive. But try coming in from the other end, being a script kiddy and googling for answers, perhaps to obscure questions. Well, there is a distinct lack of up to date answers. At least compared to iOS/Android.

JLV

One unexpectedly annoying bit of owning BB10 devices is how little user lore is around on the net. Crackberry's forums are mostly frozen in 2013.

Took me hours to copy photos off my phone on a Mac (I don't have iPhoto, long story). BB Link didn't do it - flaky software. This has happened to others too.

Threads were totally useless and I ended up just doing it with bash. Anything on iOS or Android would have tons of workarounds listed, quite likely in their respective StackOverflow offshoots.

MemSQL makes it easier to hook up to Apache Spark

JLV

Wassup?

he's still trying to make sense. A modern day Eadon, though at least he changed his rants.

Break from the future: Hold the new stuff and fix the web first

JLV

Re: >Geolocation API, possibly the most useful HTML API out there

So 2 nags per site then. 1 to install their app, 1 to allow GPS.

Might head elsewhere. It's really not that useful, to me.

JLV
Thumb Down

>Geolocation API, possibly the most useful HTML API out there

Errr... am I the only one finding this "most useful of all APIs" creepy? What business is it of a website where I am? I can tell them where I am searching if I need to.

I would much rather install the Uber app and allow it location access on its lonesome. Along with my nav apps who need it.

SAUCY INCEST and brutal VIOLENCE boosts UK space sector

JLV

Re: Soft Porn with a reasonable plot

I'll re-bother reading the books once Martin re-bothers writing them. 5 yr gaps, with plot advancement decreasing and page count going up between them, not good.

It does bring the interesting question of how to manage the plotting of a very popular TV series ahead of the very popular books it is based on. I don't remember seeing that happen often, except for the, before Empire Strikes Back, runs of Marvel comics. Also incestuous, where Leia and Luke are an item.

I suspect HBO has contingency plans up the wazoo for their baby and a pretty tight contract with Martin.

Me? I like Martin's writing enough that I wish the series would conclude and he would go back to writing self-contained novels at a more normal pace. He's never written anything as big as GoT, mostly a lot of short stories, really and nothing as successful. It seems to be burning him out and paralyzing him.

More BlackBerry layoffs: 200 Venice devs binned amid Android shift

JLV
Unhappy

Sad

iPhone 3, 4

Nexus 5

Z10

what's my next phone's OS gonna be? running out of them.

well there is always Winpho. More sad face. But seriously... cheap, few apps and long batteries, who knows?

Robber loses heist case after 'evil twin' defence, gets 60 years

JLV

Re: Ten victims

>taking revenge has no useful purpose.

not true. The position of Prosecutor is often a stepping stone to launch a US political career.

Honestly, there are some crimes here in Canada where punishment should be a bit harsher. Murder, rape, high end white collar (a $1m+ gain type of crime needs to deterred against). I don't see a good case for less than 8-10 years actual time for murder. Someone who serially gets convicted (ie multiple times in front of a judge) should also be assessed to see if it's not just cheaper to keep them locked up for longer periods. Thinking petty B&E, 50-60 times.

Short of those there has been little evidence to date that high incarceration rates result in much lower crime rates. Not least because a nice harsh prison stay tends to harden criminals and make reinsertion difficult. Try to keep room in prisons for those who really deserve it. I know this sucks to victims, but two wrongs don't make a right and society doesn't have unlimited resources, nor gets very good results from extreme tough on crime attitudes. Operate by results, not by selective reading of the Old Testament while ignoring the New.

For example, I wonder how generous the support for trauma therapy will be for the victims of this loon. I wouldn't be surprised if it was quite stingy, budgetary constraints oblige.

JLV

Re: Sixty years sounds about right...

Hmm, Phil, "thick" means stupid and my remark was addressed at cornz 1. I think you and I are broadly in agreement that the death penalty is not the answer. And that 60 years for robbery with a non-lethal weapon is over the top and well into 'revenge', rather than 'justice' range.

To which I'll also add that, with all the spending on automatic appeals for folks on death row, the death penalty is hardly a way to "spend money on something better". Or maybe cornz1 thinks death row appeals should also be dropped as well?

JLV

Re: Sixty years sounds about right...

I live in a world where sending someone to jail for 60 years for robbery (using a pellet gun) is a massive waste of taxpayer money. Hard to find folks as thick as you.

Techie finds 1.5 million US medical records exposed on Amazon's AWS

JLV
Black Helicopters

Details needed

Are they saying the s3 entries were those of a cracker, storing his loot? Or were they somehow uploaded by one of the health companies or their providers?

Shouldn't it be easy to see under whose AWS account the S3 bucket was created? After all, Amazon will be billing someone for it.

New Tizen version drops, World+Dog yawns

JLV
Thumb Up

Re: Samsung, Samsung, Samsung...

Oh, nice!

Thanks for warning.

JLV

Samsung, Samsung, Samsung...

Why don't you release a decent, ad-free, performant TV remote app for your TVs instead of faffing around?

On iOS they had a good app with full control up to V2. Much better than using the hard remote. V3 lobotomized it down to pretty much only changing channels and volume. No official replacement and pretty much crudware/adware from devs.

On Google Play, Samsung has dozens of TV apps. Very hard to tell which one does what. At least one of them turns out to be a catalog of sorts to ... choose a Samsung TV. No app with anywhere near the level of capability of that defunct iOS app. I might have missed the right one, but why not make it more obvious then?

Is it better on the Samsung app store? Maybe my problem is that I committed a mortal sin and did not buy a Samsung phone, instead preferring a Nexus 5?

Next TV? LG, most likely. Done with Samsung.

p.s. Oh, and patch Android on your phones too, Samsung.

Ad-blocking super-weapon axed by maker for being TOO effective

JLV

question about ad-blocking in IOS9

If it is now easier to install ad-blockers in Safari, does that extend to Chrome as well? All naivety about ad-blocking and Chrome being put the same sentence aside, Chrome is built on top of IOS's Webkit, because those are the rules on IOS.

So does that mean I can use ad blockers on Chrome as well?

I remain deeply allergic to Safari on all platforms, sorry. Firefox is my preference, Chrome next and IE/Spartan would probably come next, before Safari.

SPACED OUT: NASA's manned Orion podule pushed back to 2023

JLV

F35 in spaaaaaaace

>massive advantage that it keeps the bulk of the established, heavily politically connected Shuttle-era manned space workforce employed

Dont take this as an anti space rant per se but what I would like to see, on same or augmented budget, is:

- better funding for pure science missions: planetary probes, deep space telescopes, earth monitoring sats, killer asteroid prevention

- much more blue sky, core re-engineering rethinking: ion drives, heck nuke drives, asteroid capture w autofabs to avoid gravity well-ing heavy metals, Von Neumann machinery, non-Earth O2 H2 and reaction mass sourcing. IMHO we are at heroic binary/assembly coding levels of effort in space. We need to up our tech to support more productive space approaches, like happened when we started using w cobol and fortran. Facilitation tech, not just more throwing $$$ at old tech and lobbyists. Even space elevator thinking would more useful than this crud ;-)

- way more support for private sector innovation a la X prize

- no Orion, ISS and moon mission without long term goals or any of the other money wasting crap. It's holding us back from doing space.

SPOOKY new Pluto snaps will make the HAIR RISE on the back of your neck

JLV

Re: One Way Mission to Dwarf Planet X

Me I keep on expecting CGI flames to come sweeping in from over that horizon.

Smartmobe app claimed it will improve your eyesight. Now its maker is coughing up $150k

JLV
Joke

Re: FTC?

maybe FDAs stewardship of big pharma was unconvincing enough to hand lil apps' oversight over to it as well?

Need an "only half joking" icon.

Android 5 lock-screens can be bypassed by typing in a reeeeally long password. In 2015

JLV

Re: where as android needs months to bring all their users to that update

>It's time Google did the same for the underlying OS

Why blame Google for the shortcomings of your phone manufacturer? I think the poster who recommended getting a Nexus nailed it, at least for Android. Time to vote with your wallet and abandon manufacturers who can't be bothered to issue patches in due time. Or get cyanogen phones if the manufacturers commit to patching quickly.

Much as Google deserves some criticism, seems they can't win. If they are pushy, then they are Apple-bad control freaks. If they allow the vendors too much leeway, then it's their fault, not Samsung's (just to take an example).

For the techies at least, it seems obvious that having a non-patching vendor is not a good thing. Buy somewhere else, don't throw money at the lazybone patch-by-buying-new-phone vendors.

Microsoft's 'anti-malware Device Guard' in Windows 10: How it works, what you need

JLV

>as epitomized by the Gnu Hurd

one would hope that microkernel OSs have better showcases than a perenially late, never-ready OS ;)

QNX has a fairly realistic and robust implementation, as I understand it.

Yeah, and before you think thats an anti-Linux rant, I rather think the folks who used to rag on Linux because it wasnt micro-kernel totally missed the point. Shipping code over vaporware.

Pro tip: Servers belong in dry server rooms, not wet cloakrooms

JLV

Re: £300 per hour for starters

Howzat different from the average big firm IT consultancy, again?

USA, China find common cyber-enemy within

JLV

plausible deniability? building trust? open comm channels?

What would motivate Chinese government infosec to frown on Chinese-origin hacks of US DoD assets? What kind of non-state criminals would plausibly have normal, no-state reasons, to target US DoD targets?

Perhaps if the same hackers were hacking PLA assets? Surely also if they were badmouthing Communist Ruling Party of China.

I mean, I am all for de-escalation but how is China, or the US for that matter, going to convince each other that non-state hackers, operating on their turf (no, not territory, that makes 0 sense) are not sponsored by said state. How much is the US seeking in budget slice for CyberCommand? How much is China? Who's written Stuxnet and who is running the Great Firewall?

How are they going to trust but verify that they are indeed benign towards each at any given point in time? They might not be 10 minutes from now, but for now, demonstrate credibly that they are not launching on each other? This might be more relevant to a full on attack, rather than low level espionage, but who'd want to be on the receiving end of an Estonia-style attack, if it breached actual DoD command and control? What would be the temptation to order retaliation before network went down? What's the equivalent of the no-first strike doctrine that was semi-agreed upon from 60s to 90s?

I dunno, next you know, maybe we'll be thinking fondly of good ol' nukes and red phones. No, I don't think it's that bad, but the red phones were hugely important in averting WW3. Better learn from that.

p.s.

I think Obama has a fair point, but he shouldn't have used a Sept 11 speech to make it. Unless he wants to burnish the Dem presidential race a bit. Gets Americans all riled up.

p.p.s.

Personal opinion aside, how the US and China manage their respective dominant status transition is going to be the real next test of diplomacy for next 30 years. Having them talk to each other is always a good thing.

Well, what d'you know: Raising e-book prices doesn't raise sales

JLV

Re: Sample of 1

"Holiday in Cambodia", perhaps?

JLV

Re: Cars?

>Furthermore, who decided what climate was optimal?

Errr, I would say that most plants and animals species, having had evolution optimize them for the climate in their particular habitat, would consider the current climatic conditions optimal.

>When in all history has the climate ever been static?

Aside from transient phenomena like the Little Ice Age in the 14th c? Probably all the time. Unless you really meant to talk about longer timeframes than say the last 10000 years? Then the term is pre-history.

JLV

Re: Shift to paper?

>l'll take the paper one

Why?

Honest question. I've moved far distances a number of times and have left behind some books each time. I've bought Jack Vance's Cugel several times because of that, ditto others. Even if I get fed up with Amazon, I can always rip all my kindle books with Calibre.

Ebooks are searchable and are great on trips. No clutter. No wear and tear. Read anything from your collection at any time, especially if you use your phone. Camping.

Just loss of loanability, could be fixed with Calibre. Oh, and loss of am I-not-clever shelf displays.

Granted, at $10 for both I might feel miffed that I don't get a cut of ebook distribution efficiencies and buy neither. Is that your reason?

Not to say you need to hold my opinion, but valueing the paper one more highly is not a foregone conclusion for me.

JLV

Re: It's really simple

You can borrow it from a library. You can also get it from used bookstores. I have few authors I feel I need to buy and those I have mostly already done so.

Since moving to an apartment, I have cut back on buying dead trees because I don't want the clutter. Ebooks are great, but are very fungible, even in a limited field like scifi. New authors are always a risk but less so at $2-3 on discount, something Amazon does frequently, than at $12+. And established authors' output often declines as time goes on.

Kinda the reason my Kobo is way emptier than my Kindle - those guys rarely do deep discounts.

Et voilà: Violated Versailles vagina might stay violated

JLV

Why f*** up Versailles with what is at best a sculpture that few would care about were it not made by a famous artist? Besides, there is a place for modern art but it is not obviously next to important pre-existing pieces that have nothing in common, style-wise.

Ditto Colonnes de Burenne in the 80s Paris.

Too bad about the anti-semitism, both because hating on Jews sucks and because it detracts from criticizing the crap art and its placement. A non-racial vandalism would have been justified.

Files on Seagate wireless disks can be poisoned, purloined – thanks to hidden login

JLV

Re: That's it!

>Blame marketing.

“undocumented Telnet services”

Much as blaming marketing is often spot on re sec flaws, if these features are undocumented (in the sense of not being mentioned to customers), then they have no marketing value. So blame devs, management and QA for allowing debug code out in production. Not marketing.

But yeah, otherwise agree with you.

Sorry, Californians, you can't have this: Asus to build WATER COOLED notebook

JLV
Coat

Re: grill...

In a pinch it will also work wonders to enlive an airport security check.

Yeah, yeah, my coat as well.

JLV
Flame

Re: Just why.

Don't be an ass.

Water heating is not a totally unreasonable solution to getting heat out of a GPU and/or CPU. ASUS gear is solid. I use an ROG laptop for dev work - few "business" laptops will go up to 32GB RAM/17" at 1920 screen for that price and I need multiple large VMs. This thing will only heat under load, efficiency is likely quite good at low revs.

If you don't like gaming hardware or their price, that's totally OK.

If you think gaming contributes significantly to emissions, as opposed to cars, planes and other inherently high-emission items, then you need lotsa basic remedial math.

(Flames, because)

US to stage F-35-versus-Warthog bake-off in 2018

JLV

Re: @LDS -- versus?

Agree with general post but calling an F104 Widowmaker a fighter bomber is a stretch. F4, perhaps?

Isn't the F111 an example of a failed design-to-mission match, followed by role reassignment? I thought it was originally meant to be much more of a heavy standoff fighter than it ended up being - which is mainly a tactical/deep penetration attack/bomber. Ditto Tornado.

Hard to tell, most online resources focus way more on the current use than the intended use at program initiation time so I am going from memory.

Btw, you can tell this ain't a Canadian forum. Nobody's yet waxed lyrical about our cherished Avro Arrow. You'd have at least half a dozen posts about it here, even in an A-10 thread ;-)

JLV

Re: Multi-Role Aircraft

F16 comes pretty close. Decent air to air, ground attack, platform for Wild Weasel SAM suppression missions.

Daddy of F16 rags on F35: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-designer-of-the-f-16-explains-why-the-f-35-is-such-1591828468. See rebuttal link as well.

Biased, for sure, but F35 has already failed on 3 metrics: timely availability (which is pushing up average age of Air Force planes), its original promised low unit cost and projected deployment volumes.

Laughable, really, that it needs 3 more years to go against the A10. Looks like metric #4, doing what it's supposed to do, is also outta reach.

We've had design by committee, multi-master fighter planes before. We've had mis-designed planes. When they've failed, they've usually managed to eke out a living in a secondary peripheral role for one nation. We've never had a case where they've been the only dice roll available, the only plane for way too many Western countries is likely to be fatally flawed and it's absorbed so much $ as to be irreplaceable.

That's precisely what the one size fits all, low cost premise of the F35 combined with Air Force nostalgia and political support for the military industrial complex (i.e. job for the boys over effective weapons) has led us.

Putin and China couldn't have designed it better for us.

Farewell to Borland C++: Embarcadero releases Delphi and C++ Builder 10

JLV

Re: We miss Borland..

>business applications ... MS Access ... better database backend

8-)

Stand-alone app, yes. Possibly very useful.

Anything accessed from outside a desktop or laptop, using Access thinking it's a proper multi-user database?

Hahahahahahahahaha

JLV

Ironic, innit? IIRC Turbo Pacal was one of the first cheap IDEs on DOS, at a time when the MS counterpart (its C compiler?) was going for $500, a fair bit of dough in 1990 money.

$3000+ freezes out any beginner/hobbyist use. It might be worth it for a pro shop, if it made your guys massively productive - which you say ain't the case. But it will also severely restrict your hiring pool of young programmers if the language/framework is exotically unusual.

FBI collars exec who allegedly tried to nick secrets of game fronted by babe Kate Upton

JLV

Re: Not innuendo

Be realistic. Ms Upton's line of work is being objectified and she is quite good at it. Her appearance in objectifying mags like Maxim and SI's swimsuit issue makes me think she is OK with it and it's her body. In fact, I suspect she would think it was good publicity to be called a babe.

Now if this was an article where the female subject was the lead dev for the game and El Reg called her a babe, then yes, that would be more than a tad sexist.