* Posts by GottaBeKidding

46 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Aug 2007

When open source eats itself, we win

GottaBeKidding
FAIL

Re: What the...?

Uhm?

NCSA httpd, Lighttpd, nginx are all over 10 years old.

GottaBeKidding
FAIL

What the...?

"But web servers? That's a market that Apache won ages ago, with no open-source competition to speak of."

Uhm, hate to break it to you, but Apache IS open source.

It's name is based on the fact that it was originally NCSA HTTPd, but had patches applied to it. Journalism, please!

Asteroid miners hunt for platinum, leave all common sense in glovebox

GottaBeKidding

Uhm... No.

There's two sides to the supply / demand curves, as you have said. However, you are making the assumption that everything has to come back to the marble for it to be useful / paid for. Once you have mining outside of the big suck, the cheapest place to use whatever you are mining is not here, it's on low-gravity moons etc. Sci-fi? Yes. But at the moment, there are very finite limits to the resources available here, not to mention the environmental cost of mining / processing it all. In space, no-one cares about your big amorphous blob of toxic by-product, since it can sit and wait for someone to find a use for it - without being eaten by various biological / environmental processes.

Microsoft preparing for diskless Windows 8 PCs

GottaBeKidding

Can't be partitioned...?

"“USBs report themselves as fixed disk,” Niehaus told the crowd in his session, and therefore cannot be partitioned."

What is this guy smoking?

Mozilla to Firefox users: Ditch crashtastic McAfee plugin

GottaBeKidding

McAfee themselves used to tell you to turn it off!

In corporate environments, where scripts are run as part of a monitoring infrastructure (MOM, etc) McAfee would advise that scriptscan is disabled. Otherwise you would get nasty issues when two scripts ran concurrently, memory consumption issues, etc.

Amazon accepts Kindle Fire will be rooted

GottaBeKidding

Currency conversion again!

$199 (£199)

Please! :)

Sony to ship VR-style 3D headset in November

GottaBeKidding

Currency conversion again!

Buyers should expect to pay $600 (£600). We all know how this works by now.

Nintendo takes control with next-gen games console

GottaBeKidding

Less gimmick?

The only way I can see to make it more gimmicky would be to put a set of flashing blue LEDs on it.

If I'm playing a game, I like to be immersed in it - Not glancing down to my "controller" to see what button I'm going to be mashing next on the "wonderful" touchscreen.

It makes sense in a small platform, like the DS + friends, but on a full-sized console? No thanks!

MS now issuing security advisories about third-party Windows bugs

GottaBeKidding
Gates Horns

"bolster the security of the Windows ecosystem"

Or, as it's otherwise known, point fingers to the fact that other browsers have security vulnerabilities too. The patches were issued 5 months ago and you get notification now? Wow! What a wonderful service.

DfE spent £113.8m with Capita last year

GottaBeKidding
Unhappy

WS Atkins?

Atkins is an architecture / design / build company. Yes, it's "infrastructure", but no the kind you're thinking of.

F1 2010

GottaBeKidding
Thumb Up

Don't be too hard on the game

Yep. There are definitely faults with it - But at least some of them are faults caused by cramming 24 cars * 60 laps into 10 laps. This means that pit stops are almost always "full" - all the teams pit at the same time.

You can get around this by pitting later (just ignore your team orders and don't come in).

I do have to say that it's a blast. I started off yesterday very frustrated and not even able to complete one valid lap. Today I finished 14th on a poor 20th qualification.

Sure - It's not a sim. It also feels to me that when the car spins, it has a certain canned action, but the same as most of the audience of the game, I've not driven a real F1 car, therefore can't realistically comment as to it's fidelity.

One thing that _does_ grate, at least on the PS3, is the supposed hyper-realistic rendering. I run in cockpit mode. This makes the car bodywork reflections bigger. Which means you get to see them in their reduced-resolution, low framerate glory. I would prefer to turn them off, since they really detract from the immersion. Add to that that the wing mirrors are _also_ low-priority rendering, makes it rather hard to see where you should be positioning yourself.

The other annoyance is the "look left" and "look right" buttons. They move the drivers view by about 10 degrees to the side. After. About. 2. seconds. Releasing the buttons does not give instantaneous return to front either. This makes them somewhat useless.

All that said - Get it, get a driving force GT wheel, have a blast!

Think tank rages at NHS' £700 bill for fertility clinic porn

GottaBeKidding
Unhappy

I would like to have a discussion with this woman.

I have just talked to a "researcher" at 2020. This report was unfunded - Essentially, all it encompasses is a single freedom of information request followed by an opinion piece.

I have taken part in fertility treatment myself. I feel that the authors of this report have no respect for me as a person. Putting me into a room with 4 blank walls and the sounds of ill people round me is _not_ a place where I personally can perform 'easily'. This is even worse than asking a woman to relax while this ice cold speculum is inserted.

Also, the suggestion that this can be done "at home" is stupid. The _reason_ for these "samples" is not so the doctor can have a good peer at it. It's so that the sample can be used to inseminate an egg.

The egg or the sperm are not of good quality - Otherwise the patient would not be there.

I would suggest that the report author sticks to eyes in the future. Or gets some more input from both the patients and the practitioners of a field before sticking her oar in.

Open source PS3 hack code posted

GottaBeKidding

Not a USB flash drive

The code needs to be loaded into an AVR - A microprocessor. You can't take a normal memory stick and make a jailbreak from it.

Xbox Live billing site snubs Firefox

GottaBeKidding

Microsoft Root Authority trust

What's this, then, from a default install of IE:

KeyID=5b d0 70 ef 69 72 9e 23 51 7e 14 b2 4d 8e ff cb

Certificate Issuer:

CN=Microsoft Root Authority

OU=Microsoft Corporation

OU=Copyright (c) 1997 Microsoft Corp.

Certificate SerialNumber=00 c1 00 8b 3c 3c 88 11 d1 3e f6 63 ec df 40

Oooh, look - Microsoft trusts itsself, therefore we should trust Microsoft.

GottaBeKidding
FAIL

Microsoft self-signed certificate

The security 'expert' is an idiot. The cert is issued by Microsoft directly - There is no 'globally' trusted CA involved. The real news here is that Microsoft browsers have a non-trusted CA with unknown issuance policies in their certificate trust list.

Exciting company seeks Linux engineer

GottaBeKidding

Hmm.

You also have to work with their sewers. I'm just guessing it's supposed to be 'shift' and 'servers'.

PARIS hacked Canon test (almost) runs on rails

GottaBeKidding

I have one of these.

The A560 has very poor "low battery" performance. It pretty much doesn't work with rechargables, normal AAs are also not particularly great. Highly recommend high performance lithium non-rechargables or getting a less braindead camera.

UK net 'more resilient' than other EU states

GottaBeKidding

Telehouse.

Won't allow single word posts? Aww.

Virtualisation for Beginners

GottaBeKidding
Stop

Scene release file name?

Once again, using a scene release filename is _not_ a good idea. It makes people think that everyone at thereg has an eyepatch.

Scientist proposes quantum über-battery

GottaBeKidding

Link

Are you sure you have the correct link? That issue of Complexity does not seem to contain the mentioned article.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/a-hubler/www/digitalquantumbatteries.pdf

Is a link to a paper.

GottaBeKidding

... Capacity is not the main point here.

Essentially, these are far, far better ultracaps. They take 1/10th (or far less) of the time to charge compared to electrochemical cells. They have no electrolyte - The dielectric is actually an insulating vacuum. This means very low self-discharge and essentially limitless charge cycles.

The only downside I can see is that it's fairly difficult to contain a vacuum for a significant period - Which will probably be where the built-in obsolescence is added. A battery manufacturers worst nightmare is a battery that does not need replaced.

Microsoft boots modders off Xbox Live

GottaBeKidding

No PS3 bans?

The reason there have been no PS3 bans is that the PS3 is still unhacked. There is essentially no method to play copied games on the console.

To be honest, I find this quite amazing, given the length of time it has been available for.

NASA to irradiate monkeys for science

GottaBeKidding

Like Gangbusters?

Either you yourself or a group of you on thereg are using the above phrase way too much. Please make it stop.

For anyone that's interested in the etymology -

http://curmudgeonmanifesto.blogspot.com/2007/01/coming-on-like-gangbusters-by-dana.html

Cheers,

Allan.

Google Reader burrows deeper into your web-addled brain

GottaBeKidding

Sheeple?

Yay! Now we don't even have to go through the hassle of waiting for the inevitable "watch this" email from every single one of our online aquaintances. We can now follow the groupthink in realtime.

Conspiracy theories fly around Norton forum 'Pifts' purge

GottaBeKidding
Thumb Down

existent

The file is not in a "non-existent" folder. It's in a hidden folder.

Conficker call-backs threaten to swamp legit domains

GottaBeKidding

@So update it then

It's not possible to update the worm without having the author's / herder's private key. The worm checks the validity of control messages before it executes them.

Apple laptop ignites marketing department

GottaBeKidding
Flame

Fire Extinguisher

You're unlikely to be put in this situation, however...

Be *very* *very* careful before thinking of using a normal fire extinguisher on a lithium battery fire.

Most fire extinguishers, throwing water over it, throwing soil over it will make matters worse. If possible, leave it to burn out (after having called the relevant authorities). Essentially, it's like a chip pan fire but with a lot more energy.

Geekerati brace for Unix timestamp milestone

GottaBeKidding
Gates Halo

Not Windows

Interestingly, this does not apply to Windows.

Well, for geeky values of interesting.

For the real geeks: The epoch in Windows is 1/1/1601. Windows uses a representation of time which measures nanoseconds since the epoch. This is stored as a 64 bit value.

As anyone who has tried will know, the most popular language for scripting Windows stuff (vbscript) doesn't handle 64 bit arithmetic. So, if you *want* to do date calculations in script, you have to do some really hacky stuff (which is documented).

Anyway. That's your useless bit of information for the day.

Flab-fighting EV powered by pizza

GottaBeKidding

Output power

170w is probably the biological power used. Since you're talking <30% efficiency, that's probably about 50w "output power". Then if you subtract generator / storage efficiency, you're probably down to 40w usable.

'Faith-based' investment firm fingers holiday's most sinful games

GottaBeKidding
Thumb Up

Errr... Pasties?

You NEED to read the PDF.

"If (or when) you enter a strip club, there are usually two platforms with a stripper in a skimpy bikini, or bikini bottoms and pasties."

Now that's some pastry based action that we can ALL get down with.

Michael Dell says: If I could do it all again...

GottaBeKidding
Stop

For The Love Of All That Is Holy!

Please remove this... Image... from the frontpage soon. It's creepy!

88% of IT admins would steal data if fired

GottaBeKidding

@What an unprincipled lot

You've obviously never seen a real Windows admin. With larger accounts, "Code and go" is exactly how it's done - By the admin. All major tasks are (or should be!) scripted. Checking checkboxes is for chumps.

Thanks to vbscript & friends, a lot of the UI is exposed to script - Cradle to grave user managment is possible, for example.

But on the original topic, I find this claim disturbing. The most valuable thing I'll take with me when I leave will be my skills and experience - 8 years of Active Directory in a large environment. I don't need my employers data to be able to sell that.

Crooks charge premium for filter-evading Trojan

GottaBeKidding

Borrowing from the real software industry?

How, exactly? The only guarantee I've seen with any software package is that it slightly resembles the picture on the box. Guarantees are not exactly commonplace.

Baptist church in assault rifle giveaway

GottaBeKidding

Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!

As the widely misattributed quote goes.

Samsung fires up 128GB SSD massive attack

GottaBeKidding

Power requirements

And for those actually not reading the article properly, the entire power consumption for the device is:

Idle - 12.8w

Active - Maximum 32w

Which compares less than favorably with rust based storage.

This all assumes that the device has no 'true' idle mode.

RFID could kill you

GottaBeKidding
Thumb Down

READER not TAG

The tag by itsself is inert. It is only when it's near a reader that it transmits a very very small signal. The issue here is with the readers, not the tags.

Online payment standards fall on deaf websites

GottaBeKidding

https

I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be more concerned that this is not a https connection. These details are going out in plaintext, unless the frame is secure, of course.

UK Office of Government Commerce cracks one off

GottaBeKidding

To understand the issue

Rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise. Bow legged man, standing up, "having some me-time".

HSBC forgets to renew its digital certificate

GottaBeKidding
Alert

Stupid, stupid banks.

"there were no security risks associated with the certificate expiring" - Apart from training their users that bad certificates are OK. Therefore there's really no point in having certificates at all.

This is the same line of thought that brings the "unexpected purchase on a credit card" call. If you make a purchase on a card that doesn't fit with the bank's idea of your profile, it's red-flagged. An automated call is made to your home telephone number, asking you to confirm the purchase.

That's all well and good, but there is *no* form of identification given by the bank. And the first thing in the call is to ask for address, postcode and mother's maiden name.

So, it's OK for the bank to train the users that giving out their personal information is a Good Idea, but when there is fraud caused by a revelation, It's The Customer's Fault.

Brit firm levitates floating chair

GottaBeKidding
Boffin

Acrylic? You're kidding, right?

That's a nasty abuse of the phrase 'engineered'. Acrylic is strong (ish) in compression. It does not cope well with "pinch" type loadings.

This chair may work well enough for a specific user, due to the magnets being specified with various strengths at the four different supporting points. However, with a different user (due to differing center of gravity), the "sliding" column will probably not in fact slide due to off-axis loading. This may cause the column to be the only thing supporting the user.

Also, getting on and off will not be a fun exercise.

To me, it looks like it's been designed by the sales team :(

Dismantling a Religion: The EFF's Faith-Based Internet

GottaBeKidding

No.

I'm afraid I have to call bull once again on this article. Cable modems for the past 8 or so years they have been around have implemented traffic shaping _on the router itsself_.

This is trivially demonstrable by the ability of users to upload a fake configuration file to the router to "uncap" their bandwidth restriction.

US woman launches 'Taserware' parties

GottaBeKidding
Pirate

Americans.

She said: "I feel like I'm 6 feet tall and 250 pounds. I'm going to buy one for my mom. It's going to be her 81st birthday present."

This is _not a good thing_. Feeling invulnerable because you have a weapon tends to make people take risks that are foolish and unnecessary. This is compounded by the fact that tazers are single-shot weapons. More than one assailant and you're buggered. Literally.

The balkanization of Storm Worm botnets

GottaBeKidding
Thumb Down

Not A Worm

Once again. It's bloody well not a worm. It's a trojan. Ever since this outbreak of sillyness started it's always been a trojan.

Mobile wallet opens

GottaBeKidding

Mobile?

Don't know about the rest of you, but my wallet is _already_ mobile. Carry it with me most places I go out, in fact.

Storm Worm descends on Blogger.com

GottaBeKidding

Still Not A Worm

The malware formerly known as "The Storm Worm" is nothing of the sort. It is "Powered by Stupid People (tm)" and is therefore a trojan. Specifically, it requires an end user running Windows to click on an executable attachment.

Welch on renewables deal, UK government told

GottaBeKidding

Wind turbines

I live in Dundee. Here, there was a local *outcry* when a factory wanted (and obtained) planning permission for two "massive" wind turbines on it's site.

The site is located in the middle of a number of housing estates, offset by some parkland.

All of the normal concerns were raised - But the possibility of the area losing 1000 jobs was too much to allow even the most vocal complainants a chance of influencing the planning application.

So, now we have two majestic turbines. They're not unsightly - Almost everyone comments on their positive impact on the skyline.

Property prices?

No effect. Some people are turned off by the turbines, some are enthusiastic about them. You can sit and just watch them for hours.

Wildlife?

No effect. The blades on these things are *large*. Which means they move slowly - Birds are actually quite good at avoiding flying into things, surprisingly.

Noise?

Minimal. The generator housing is sound isolated and 400 feet away from the ground. The blade noise is less than the noise caused by wind resistance an electricity pylon causes.

And these are turbines that are _almost literally_ in people's back yards.

The NIMBY nature of environmentalists does really get my blood boiling.