Posts by Daniel B.

Governator in acrostic 'f**k you' outrage

I was totally expecting...

the message to spell out "Fuck you, Asshole!". Arnie, you need to get more corny words for those letters!!!

Microsoft drops Family Guy like a hot deaf guy joke

I'm not surprised...

I would expect Family Guy to do the same as the Simpsons, as both usually rip the shit out of Fox. I'd actually expect Seth to pull a "Wayne's World", that is make fun of Windows 7 in the show. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what actually happened and Microsoft's PR people used the incest/holocaust jokes as their 'reason' to pull out.

Windows 95 to Windows 7: How Microsoft lost its vision

Real jump was Win9x to Win2k/XP

As pointed out by others, this was when the DOS-based "OS" was dropped. The Win9x and pre-win95 "Windows" were nothing more than a glorified DOS-Shell with eye-candy; in fact the Windows 3.x line shared the basic DOSShell Program Manager concept. (The DOSShell menus were basically the same as the Program Manager.) The gigantic Win95 "jump" was basically MS copying Mac System 7's look & feel, much like Vista was copying Mac OS X's look & feel. My, things never change!

However, when XP was touted as the "replacement" for Win98 (WinME is something everyone, even MS, tries to forget it even existed), the desktop users were actually upgraded to a real technological jump. Of course, I say desktop users, because come corporate users were already using NT Workstation 4, which is basically the same as win2k sans Active Directory.

I think that it is really hard to do anything else to the current GUI as it stands without big hardware improvements; the only revolutionary concept I've seen is the Compiz/Beryl "3d desktop" or similar stuff around that concept. And they're still based on the basic windowed desktop! I'd rather see improvements on the backend-side of the OS... but I think Windows has also found itself on a dead-end there.

Stallman calls on EU to set MySQL free

Postgres

Well, just switch to PostgreSQL then. It's all MySQL has always wanted to be, but has only recently approached to.

I've always been amazed by the way MySQL suddenly took over as lead "free DB" when Postgres had the leading edge in most things, including those basic RDBMS things like "Transactions". Which, by the way, MyISAM tables can't handle thanks to Monty. Sheesh.

Oracle didn't kill InnoDB, I doubt it'll kill MySQL. After all, killing InnoDB would've taken out the transactional capabilities from MySQL (except for the BDB engine hack, but I haven't seen that in years) and no sane DBA would use a transaction-less DB.

iPhones and social networking add to IT security headaches

Simple solution on the device stuff

Ban iPhones from the enterprise network. Mobiles should be using their 3G uplink anyway, not freeloading on the company's net!

Anything other than a secure smartphone should be either banned from the enterprise network, or given access to a "insecure, internet access only" network ... secured by WPA2 (so nobody sniffs out the packets.) Geeze ... I think that leaves only BES-enabled Blackberries in the enterprise network ...

But seriously. If your network infrastructure is having trouble with gadgets using it, you're having a serious security problem; gadgets notwithstanding.

Ares I-X trundles to launchpad

@Nigel 11

Hell yeah! I just can't believe we're still depending on *rockets* to lift stuff up; especially big-ass rockets that aren't fully reusable! I wonder why are we re-inventing the Apollo when we should take the Space Shuttle example and do a fully-reusable spaceplane. We could even follow the SpaceShipTwo example and do a hybrid launch mechanism; flying the craft high enough to make the "launch" easier. Added benefit would be having an actual spacecraft, and not some tin-can that barely has space to stretch your legs!

Astronomers spy 32 new exoplanets

This could be fun...

If we actually find an Earth-like planet ... what are the odds of finding one that has the exact same conditions our own planet has? (or at least a breatheable atmosphere, drinkable water and land suitable for earth agriculture)

Even better, the chance of finding some kind of Homo Sapiens-ish race?

Apple Time Capsule catches plague

That Deja Vu Feeling...

It seems that Apple's problem is the guy who thinks he's God doing the designing. Overheating isn't a new thing for Apple ... hell, the problem goes waaaay back to the 1980's! Anyone who had a Mac Plus knows what I'm talking about. Those had no fans, and the guy who specifically asked for the Mac+ to have no fan was. ... you guessed it, Steve Jobs.

In fact, I think the Macs that came out after he was given the boot had fans. They were actually reliable, at least up to Jobs' "second coming", which would be marked by the switch to the iMac, iEverything ... and suddenly all Apple hardware started heating up again.

I see Apple hardware overheatind and/or popping its capacitors, while my 1996 Performa still soldiers on...

SCO boots boss McBride

Small detail

"SCO" never bought the Unix stuff. That was the "real" SCO, the ones that changed their name to Tarantella, and are now part of Sun.

Current "SCO" is what used to be Caldera, which bought SCO (the OS) and the trademark; they switch to "The SCO Group" when they decided to play the FUD game. Thanks to them, the SCO trademark will live in infamy for decades to come.

Flames, 'coz that's how "SCO" is going down.

Oracle and Sun fingered for Sidekick fiasco

@Matt Bryant

M$ was still responsible for this data. If they thought the platform was "unstable", well, they were under a contractual obligation to make it stable. Also, any "critical" IT infrastructure change requires a full backup, especially one like this one. Do they think it was bad, and that the MS Windows platform was better? Then they should've migrated to that. They had more than a year to do it.

If I did this at a bank, I'm pretty sure I would no longer have my job.

I'm also pretty sure any OS or RDBMS will crash and burn if your storage goes poof, which has been the MS argument all along.

Danger lurks in the clouds

It's already happened!

"MobileMe, MyPhone and Ovi could all disappear in a flurry of commercial short-termism and no one would be as inconvenienced as those poor Sidekick users."

Erm ... MobileMe also ate users data ... those who cancelled their account after the free trial got their data eaten up at the next sync. Geeze, you'd think something like that would only give a "Sync Error: Login failure" but things seem to work differently in the Appleverse.

In fact, it seems kinda rich that Apple worshippers claim it wouldn't happen with the iPhone, when it has in fact happened *under normal conditions*, without any weird server failure, with or without sabotage being involved.

Of course, the possibility of "losing data" due to a technical fault is an unfortunate reality, as I've had this happen to myself a couple of times now.

- Formatting a < 500Mb HDD with the "big HD" thingy needed to see > 512Mb HDs on old motherboards made it remove precisely that boot-up translator (I think it did something weird like turning CHS requests to LBA or something like that). I was thus unable to see my big HDD until I reformatted.

- RAIDs great... except when the one you got is a fakeraid, and it is on board your motherboard. ESPECIALLY when said motherboard dies and you're left with a RAID array that can't be read without the specific controller ... which I've been unable to find.

- Filesystem massacre: Let's see how you find your files when the FAT goes down and there's no way to know what your files were. Older DOS virii did this, and I did suffer from data loss back in those days.

There are a bunch of possible accidents that can result in total data loss, but these are the ones that I've personally suffered.

Apple unbans banned 3G TV app

Thanks Apple...

... for reminding me why I don't buy an iPhone. I do understand this is a case of AT&T not wanting users to acutally *USE* their 3G datalink, but it is Apple the one that's applying the stupid restrictions anyway.

I wonder if they actually did appkill the "3G streaming" version... would they refund the affected customers? I think not.

MS says so sorry to Sidekick users

Re: Shame on you *nix, shame!

I'd find it hilarious if they had actually *switched* to MS platforms by now. After a year, I'd expect them to do it; they did so with Hotmail, didn't they?

In fact, one MS technology I have to use gives me the creeps because of this lack of backup capability: Active Directory. If I use any other LDAP, I can just dump everything into an LDIF, and load it up on another LDAP server... possibly even one from another vendor. MS will let me dump the LDIF all right, but all passwords will go poof, and you got a big fat chance your data won't be able to be loaded on the other AD!!!!

Apple breaks jailbreakers' hearts with iPhone 3GS patch

@Robert Hill

Erm, what's your definition of "freetard"? If I develop a piece of software for my iPhone (assuming I bought one, of course), jailbreak it and install it, *who* am I freeloading from? Is this self-piracy? No it isn't. It's RETARDED to call this "piracy" or "freetardery". In fact, the AppStore came into existance because of these jailbreakers, as you will remember that Apple originally said "nope, no apps on the iPhone!"

What's the difference between the AppStore and, say, Handango? Well, I can buy software for my Blackberry at Handango, or somewhere else ... or hell, download some open-source software for it. Or even roll out my own software for the thing! The only "restriction" RIM has on this software is when the app uses certain libraries; and even then, you only need to pay a one-time fee to get your "sensitive" code checked and signed by RIM. This restriction is for security purposes, so that you don't release a Blackberry virus. This is understandable.

Those who downplay the effect of jailbreaking and the AppStore lock-in haven't factored in that many iPhone users are either Apple Fans, fashion users who buy the phone just to show it off, or casual users that don't care much about apps. Those who do care, and especially those who have used other smartphones are being irked by the restrictions in place.

By the way, I own a Blackberry, and I've only seen THREE guys with an iPhone. The rest carry either regular phones, WinMo phones, or Blackberries.

T-Mobile takes on patsy role in Microsoft Sidekick fallout

Microsoft is responsible

Even though I think it's good that T-Mobile gave customers the $100 voucher, I do think that the blame must be placed squarely on Microsoft. T-Mobile has no way to make sure if Danger/Microsoft is doing regular backups on their managed data; the same applies with the Blackberry handsets. All the Blackberry-specific stuff is stored on RIM's servers, and it doesn't matter at all who's your actual carrier. Fortunately, the Blackberry doesn't run on the Sidekick's concept.

Microsoft sees no silver lining in Sidekick server snafu

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

This seems to be a funny name to give a company that's supposed to keep your data. At least this incident is much, much better than the MobileMe incident Apple had. Losing my backups might be ugly, but getting my data wiped during a sync would truly piss me off!!

This incident is going to hit MS, even if it wasn't because of MS stuff failing, which I wouldn't be surprised if it were the case. I've recently discovered that there is no real way to backup Active Directory or ADAM other than Microsoft Backup. No shit...

Hitachi Data Systems fingered in Sidekick disaster

Wait, DRAM?

You're telling me those Sidekick smartphones *don't* use Flash memory?

I'd never use a phone like that. I've lost too many contact lists on older phones, and I definitely don't want that to happen again.

IE, Chrome, Safari duped by bogus PayPal SSL cert

@Neal 5

Dude, are you just trolling or are you really not understanding the issue?

Have you actually worked with SSL?

FQDN checking is done at the CryptoAPI's level, *not* the browser level. SSL connections are usually initiated with some open_connection("blah.site.com", 443); call, and the Crypto Provider does the rest. It is that API the one wrongly validating the null-prefixed certs. This is basic validation, the kind you learn in basic programming courses!!

Of course, the CAs should also be at fault, as they were stupid enough to sign a cert like this; however, these certs shouldn't be passing through something as sensitive as the SSL FQDN check!

Microsoft wraps Project 2010 parcel in Ribbon

Ribbon!

That means I'm not touching it either, unless they have a big red "switch on menus" button on it. Live Messenger still has a button to open up the original menus, Office should have it as well.

Inmate 'fesses to prison computer hack

Re: Observations

I'd think that said HR systems must be running on Microsopht platforms. And knowing how lazy some underpaid IT workers are, the "system" might just be an Access mdb ... which a few minutes with Cain & Abel will easily crack.

You'd be amazed how many LANs aren't subdivided into "public" and "sensitive" areas...

Flames, coz the firewall should be stopping these "hacks". Now that I think of it, maybe this is the true meaning of "jailbreaking" systems...

Facebook acquires 300 millionth user

Facebook ain't vital.

I still wonder why some people claim that FB has turned into something you need for communication.

Messaging? I have MSN/Live Messenger for that.

Social networking? MSN Spaces, hi5 and Tagged seem to cover like 80% of those in my contact list; and most of the rest are people I don't even talk to anymore.

Pics? Again, those who matter upload their stuff on hi5 or MSN Spaces; the latter has more pics as it is easier to bulk upload pics there.

I'm honestly surprised that FB is actually turning into a positive cashflow. I also expect it to be pure BS as well.

Don't call me Ishmael

LOTR Names

Geeze ... that "No JRR Tolkien" rule would slam most of my older campus server farm.

They did show good taste for those names, though. SAURON was where all the sysadmins logged on, MORDOR was the dark land where the NFS server lived; most of the students used the BOLSON or GANDALF workstations. ("bolson" is a lame translation of "baggins" to spanish.)

Not every server followed LOTR though; I distinctly remember seeing "falkor", "luke", "bobafett" and "chewbacca" so it seems that some of the IT staff were into Star Wars and The Neverending Story as well.

Oh well.. it also seems I've violated one of these rules, as my PS3 is called hal9000. Eep...

Yahoo! shuts! failed! social! networking! site!!

Yahoo screws up again?

Why am I not surprised? When they bought Flickr, they decided to kill their own Yahoo Photos and not give a direct migration path for those who actually used Yahoo Photos other than "move 'em all by yourself.

Recently, they wiped away every single frickin' profile for their "new profile", which combined with a weird login error with the BlackBerry Yahoo Messenger client, made me believe someone had 0wned my acct. Nope, it was only Yahoo being stupid.

Now they're killing 360, which means that whatever profiles survived the wipe (because they had migrated to 360) are also getting wiped. Stupid!

Oh, and as they're killing Geocities too, where am I going to host any kind of page with Yahoo???

Paris loses her BlackBerry in Cannes hotel

@Chris

That is assuming that PH set up a password on her BlackBerry, as device encryption requires this. Highly unlikely, and even if it has a password, its doomed to be something like ... um... her favorite pet's name, which was how they 0wn3d her 2005 Sidekick in the first place!!!

Hey, at least there's Remote Wipe ... of course, PH has to ask RIM or her mobile operator for that; and it would require the BB to be up and running. I'm pretty sure whoever got it has shut down the mobile access and is now dumping the whole Address Book contents to the net.

YouTube flooded with porn

Hannah Montana?

Oh, that's easy then; just delete EVERYTHING with "Hannah Montana" references. You're doing your kids a favor.

Geeks make least selfish lovers: Official

It isn't really far-fetched.

If you don't get much sex, you'll try to be good when you do get it. Braindead fitness studs get so many girls, they don't care if they don't come back. They'll just get another one.

Anyway, I do remember hearing a girl saying that in her experience, the ones that actually have been best lovers have been either scientist-oriented dudes, or IT folks. It seems that the "Hmm, what if we tweak this thing over here" associated with these areas also applies to sex...

FTC drops Rambus 'patent ambush' claims

@Chris C

It seems like the FTC just got tired of this case, which looks like a bad decision. But oh well... I do hope JEDEC doesn't bring in Rambus for the next RAM spec.

As for RIM ... that case was a different thing; NTP is clearly a patent troll, and if anything, they're losing their stupid patents anyway. Rambus can't really get its patents reversed, because they actually did the thing, it isn't a "chip that stores bytes" kind of patent. Ugh.

Oracle reels in Sun Microsystems with $7.4bn buy

MySQL's arse was already Oracle's since some time ago...

Some commenters forget that Oracle has already owned InnoDB and BDB for some time now. Thanks to Monty's stubborness, the standard MyISAM tables don't support transactions or referential integrity, and even for some time, their own documentation dissed the transactional paradigm! So it had to be a BDB plugin hack, and then InnoDB the ones that took on their hands to implement the missing functionality.

If Oracle had wanted MySQL dead, they would've killed it already. Without InnoDB, MySQL would've crashed down hard thanks to that "we don't need no steeeeenkin' transactions" attitude from their early days.

I worry more about Sparc ... I'd rather have more RISC stuff on my server side than Intel crap...

Sadville transports shaggers to porncentration camp

"Mature" parcels?

I thought the "flagging" option has been there since at least 2006. I don't see why geographical separation is necessary. If anything, those who don't want to see "adult" content should be able to put some option for that, and SL would automatically lock them out from the "Mature" areas.

Meh.

Child offered for sale on Xbox Live

Prank?

What if the kid was the one pulling off the prank?

However, I'd have to say that those callers are idiots. Who in their right mind would believe someone would actually sell a kid in something like XBox Live? It is obvious that such a post is a joke.

AOL starts swinging the axe

Re: AOL?

I always wondered how many people were stupid enough to pay $20/month for *dialup* when broadband was around that price tag. Fortunately, their venture into Mexico failed miserably, as Telmex (basically, the Mexican equivalent of BT) already owned the home dialup market. Another contributing factor is that Mexicans are wary of giving away their credit card number, so most AOL retaining tactics fail on either capturing or retaining users.

The only thing I'll be sad to lose is ICQ.

Homosexuality does for UK blue duck population

That secondary school principal...

Back in secondary school, the vice principal gave us a "lecture" about sexuality, and told us about how homosexuality was unnatural, because there are no homosexual animals. He also told us that the day he ever watched two animals engaging in homosexual sex, would be the day that he would accept gays.

Seems like he's gonna have to accept it then...

Eric Schmidt reanimates el cheapo PC zombie

Web2.0 is *financially* dead

Geeze, it looks like Dzuiba's articles always attract flames. Anyway, it seems that some commenters forget the whole point about the "Web2.0 is dead" statement.

The only "Web2.0" company actually making a profit is Google.

There are plenty of other Web2.0 sites that are very popular like Twitter or Facebook, but these guys *aren't* making any profits, and are in fact on life support. I'd even go as far as saying that the only "web2.0" sites I've seen at least breaking even would be the "web MMO's" like ogame and such, which give "special powers" to those who convert to paid subscriptions.

The funniest thing about Web2.0 is no one even agrees on what "Web2.0" is! It used to mean "social networking" but it now has another meaning for some people: crappy flash, AJAX and JavaScript-based sites using "clever" CSS to look like a MACOSX wannabe app.

@Moore's Law - I've seen "Moore's Law" used as "doubling processing power" for at least 10 years; Dzuiba's probably referencing this kind of misuse common in the IT and Web2.0 world.

@Jason - Users don't give up cars for public transport: Depends on where you live. Even the car-hugging US residents will give up their cars for daily commutes if they happen to live in big, congested cities like New York or Boston.

Metallica's Lars Ulrich illegally downloads own album

Remember the 2000 VMA's?

That Ulrich sketch was stupid in comparing *physical* theft with p2p downloading. I suppose that now the other band members will proceed to take away all of Lars' personal belongings then!

Mine's the one with the "NAPSTER! BAD!" sticker.

Diebold e-voting software includes delete audit logs button

Pencil and paper isn't flawless, either.

Based on our own Mexican 2006 voting sham, I can personally attest that paper voting doesn't guarantee a clean vote. The tabulating software was allegedly tampered by the contractor, which was owned by the current President's brother-in-law, and had an obvious conflict of interest.

Add to that some "recount restrictions" that sound very similar to the 2000 Florida sham, and you've got a veeery suspicious "election" on your hands.

Nude Apple iMac pics leaked to web

@raving angry loony

"I have not used the keypad on a keyboard in over 20 years, yet I'm still stuck having the fucking useless thing stick out, without a choice."

I'd reckon you're not an accountant, or have a job that doesn't require extensive number entering. Because I use it very frequently, and most of my colleagues use it as well.

Polish Spitfire shoots down BNP

Re: Talking of idiots...

"Look at all the poor spelling in the posts slagging the BNP.

The mugs have also swallowed the BBC/ dead tree press line that they are "right wing".

They are in fact national socialists."

Sam, do you remember what NSDAP (Nazi Party) stands for?

Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei = *National Socialist* German Worker's Party. Pretty much every organization using the "National Socialist" flag has some degree of racism and/or fascism ingrained in their ideology.

Neil Young posts angry YouTube missive

Can we say 'payola'?

"The Canadian rock star described YouTube as "the new radio" but claimed that unlike the wireless* days of yore, Google's video sharing website fails to equally compensate for every artist and record label."

It seems Young forgets about all that "payola" stuff, and how most radio stations put crap music on the radio if the record companies pump enough money to them. Those who pay more get more radio coverage; and that has been the rule for at least 20 years.

Expedition to probe cavern lake 3km beneath Antarctic ice

Mind the giant penguins

If they find those, CLOSE the tunnel! It might be too late when you see the shoggoths...

Hollywood to totally recall Total Recall

Get your ass to Mars

While I do think it might benefit with new FX stuff... I doubt it would be even half as good as the original one.

Funnily, I frequently pass through one of the filming locations (Mexico City's Chabacano Subway Station) and I've sometimes joked on that topic, like hitting the ground if you ever see Arnie running up the long escalators (which I also frequently use). Wonder if they'll use it again this time...

Boffins: Send robot lawn tractors to the Moon

Re: Why not just detonate a clean tactical nuke?

You *did* watch the Time Machine remake, did you?

Mine's the one with the crumbling moon...

Harry Potter hangs up wand in 2011

Re: Same Length

IIRC, Half-Blood Prince was shorter than book 7. Of course, if "608 pages" is to be the reasoning to split book 7, well, they should've split book 5 as well!

Agreed with some commenters though, J.K. Rowling did seem a little ... tired in the last books; book 6 was kind of a sleep-through in a lot of parts, and well a good chunk of book 7 was kind of dull as well.

Gadget-buying Taliban 5th column in Blighty - shock!

Re: Silly

You missed the article's point: the Telegraph article is upping the "terrorist buying cheap electronics for terrorism in the UK!" when the "electronics" can be bought anywhere, and are the easiest part to acquire anyway.

Unisys threatens Itanium with death

The problem is one: "Intel Inside".

I'd rather use PA-RISC (even when its nearing its end-of-life) than use anything made by Intel.

Too bad that most desktop systems have been saddled with the x86 arch. RISC is much much better.

Hacker pokes new hole in secure sockets layer

Re: Seems IE might not be vulnerable to the "homographic" attack

Nice. So it seems like the retarded idea of enabling unicode characters in DNS registries is the cause for homographic attacks. Great!

I just don't understand why is it so important to have non-Latin characters in URLs. It only opened a new avenue for phishing.

As for users not noticing the difference between http:// and https:// ... they *deserve* to get phished. FF3 shows a nice yellow URL bar when using https, IE7 does something similar. Even if still using IE6, you can always check the https stuff yourself, or the "lock" icon. Come on!

Airline pilots told to switch off mobile phones

Flying while talking

If using your mobile phone while driving causes an accident, I wonder how dangerous it might be for the pilot to answer his phone:

- "Hello? Oh yes, I'm about to land this .... OH SHIT! >CRASH<"

Also, while inflight mobiles are supposed to be too weak to interfere with the airplane instruments, a phone right inside the cockpit *can* interfere with them!

Flames because the pilot was talking on his mobile while flying...

Rail workers get shirty with see-through blouses

Increase Ridership!

Of course, that is the goal they're pushing for!

Apple sued over iPhone smooth scrolling

Re: patent '626

I'd be very careful with that patent. Don't give it coffee unless you want to unleash real mayhem!

Mine's the one with the blue Elvis impersonating "dog".

Satellite-hacking boffin sees the unseeable

Feeds for free

My oh my ... is this article for those born after 1990? Satellite dishes were very very common back in the 80's, and the first half of the 90's over here in Mexico. Most of them had motorized solutions, and were programmed with the preset coords for the good satellites. It was only a matter of having two remotes; but then again, SKY subscribers these days have the same problem.

@AC 14:10 - Hmm... I see you read your Bruce Schneier well. ;)

Mine's the one with the geostationary orbit satellite coords in the pocket...

Connecticut cop forced to shoot chimp

28 days later

Hey, isn't this how 28 Days Later begins? Watch out for that woman, she might have the Rage!

Then again, maybe the chimp found someone's Coke stash and just went ape ;)