Posts by ratfox

OMG noes

When I send a postcard to someone, the postman actually scans the postcard to find the address of the person I am sending it to!

Good luck to them

Maybe they just could not get Microsoft to accept them, so it's that or the garbage dump...

I wouldn't want to be the salesman in charge of selling that. It really looks like a moving yard sale, and yet the price are not that attractive...

Big deal

Whenever I look for something that looks like a place, e.g. "san diego ca", I always get a Google Maps link in top position, never a Mapquest link or whatever equivalent Bing has.

My assumption always has been that the Google engine forcibly adds a Google Maps link, not that by some incredible chance, the best link was always that one...

Hurk hurk

He said... hurk hurk

Viruses in Apple

I recently had my MacBook Pro repaired under warranty (hardware problems exclusively). It came back with Symantec Antivirus installed! Who would've thunk it?

By curiosity, I looked at virus definitions:

- 12 Hypercard Viruses

- 34 Macinotsh File Infectors

- 19 Macintosh Trojan Horses

- 2 Macintosh Worms

follow ~6'000 Macro Viruses essentially affecting Microsoft Office software, and ~30'000 PC Viruses.

I haven't seen a conspiracy alert yet so...

Are we SURE that Google did not put a backdoor in this code that everybody will install on their server?

Infinity %

Last year, that is by how much Android sales went up: Infinity %. From zero to more than zero.

This year, sales of Windows 7 phones will go up by infinity %. with only 1,309%, Android phones are clearly beaten.

@regviewer: learn statistics.

Children in the schoolyard

Did not! Did too!

Talking through his head

Watch me, researcher in an investment company, shooting numbers randomly on the dartboard. It's way too early to tell. Some people call that a job.

And it works?

I mean, the efficacy of spam is usually counted in 0.01%, is that enough to have an influence on the market??

Bow to Apple

Nevertheless, even if they did not leak the information, the information got out...

I'm in awe. Whether it was on purpose or not, Apple is getting publicity at the smallest flap of a butterfly.

Who is this guy?

Not that I approve of Climate politics, but who is this guy and why is he worth an article?

He is a retired professor in physics at UCSB, true. But unless his specialty was in climatology, it is likely he has as much to say on the subject as a computer scientist. From what I was able to find, his specialty was advising the government. He does mention in his resignation letter that he joined the APS sixty-seven years ago. So maybe he is some grand researcher in physics, still active in retirement? Does not look like it. His name does not really jump up on the Internet, apart from his resignation letter. No recent articles, no web page, no Wikipedia article.

So this guy just got around to reading the Climategate e-mails, and he was disgusted by what he saw. Well yeah, it is fairly disgusting. But we do not need an old geezer who never researched the subject to tell us that. I understand his anger, I believe he over-estimates Climategate, I may understand that he resigns in protest from the APS.

What I do not understand is why articles are written about him. His move is similar to somebody like Steve Wozniak protesting against the use of 3D in movies.

Calm down, iFanboy...

Really, I believe it is possible to write an article about the problems of Android without such nastiness, and without a somewhat irrelevant apology of the iPhone. True, the Reg spares no one, but this is still severely biased reporting. I do not recall reading such vitriol during the antennaGate thing.

And I say that as a happy iPhone 4 user.

Amen!

I'll drink to that. Good Riddance!

Call Blake and Mortimer

They know how to defend the strait of Hormuz

Who and what is a Kobo?

Why did RIM install junk on my tablet? Delete!

Now to install Kindle. Wonder what that Kobo app was for anyway.

The prize

"I'm the attorney. I have the $350,000 house. I have the six-figure career. You may be the tall, young, hot nymph, but I am the prize."

Well, not an attorney any more, and no six-figure career anymore. Still has the house, though...

Hope Apple loses this one

These lawyers are earning too bloody much money as it is.

I thought common words could not get protected?

People who organize sting

This does nothing to raise my opinion of people who try to entrap others, whatever the crime is.

There is a fine line between trying to catch predators by posing as a victim, and encouraging people to break the law so you can snitch on them.

Confusing

Let me see if I got the story straight:

- CIA wants a targeting software as precise as possible, but ended up accepting an imprecision of up to 13 meters, hoping it is precise enough in most case

- Netezza did whatever it could to make the CIA happy, including ripping imperfect code from IISi

- IISi... was not willing to deliver an imperfect solution? Is complaining about the code grab? They are also complaining that the CIA is using a solution that might kill innocents?

I would have thought that the ordinance is powerful enough that 13 meters is an insignificant error... And it is unlikely that the CIA is going to say "OMG we might kill innocent people with such an imprecision, we have to wait until the boffins get it down to 1 meter"

Mobile stand??

What is the point? Once it is on a stand, using it becomes awkward... Is it not more comfortable in your hands, even while sitting at a desk?

What will they say

When they find NINJA STARS embedded in the poles?

Why so complicated?

"We hold today that a software user is a licensee rather than an owner of a copy where the copyright owner (1) specifies that the user is granted a license; (2) significantly restricts the user’s ability to transfer the software; and (3) imposes notable use restrictions"

Considering (2) and (3) depend entirely on the copyright owner, why not stop at (1)? Does the copyright owner have to add (2) and (3) to the contract just so that (1) holds?

Yeah right

Because it is SO hard to find porn on the net, with these damn merkins censoring everything.

If you want a version of Facebook that lets you post nudie pics of yourself, you can find one in 5 seconds flat. Of course, it will not have as many users, but that is because most people do not want to see your nudie pics, and stay on Facebook. And that is true whether on the web or in real life.

You might as well complain that the supermarket wants you to wear clothes. If it let naked people in, they would lose most of their customers.