KGB won't pay you anymore?
Thinking about it, this is probably an attempt to get some dosh to pay off the conscription officers, so that he won't have to go to Ukraine to meet his maker.
I couldn't care less.
Posts by Janko Hrasko
48 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Nov 2007
Core-JS chief complains open source is broken, no one will pay for it
Asteroid mining and a post-scarcity economy
Windows 8: Is Microsoft's new OS too odd to handle?
What happened to the 'Most Read/Commented' list of articles on the front page?
'The new iPad' revealed: Full specs, rumor scorecard
Microsoft's Azure cloud down and out for 8 hours
Gov CloudStore opens for business
Use iBooks Author, only Apple can ever publish the result
Samsung rakes in record profits as HTC sales dive
Saturday 7th January 2012 05:04 GMT 
The answer its simple
Having had the experience of owning two HTC phones I can tell you that the downfall of this brand its in using far too little RAM and system storage, causing the handset to misbehave less than there months of heavy app usage.
I have also seen a lot of other users with these issues. None of them will buy HTC again. They now use either Samsung or iPhone.
Cloud box does virtualization sans SAN
VMware taxes your virtual memory
Seven... SSD sizzlers
Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future
Samsung SH-B123 internal 12x BD-Rom drive
Forget SETI, this is how you find aliens: Hefty prof speaks
Obama to scrap Moon, Mars expeditions - report
Friday 29th January 2010 14:27 GMT
correction
We had the technology for getting to Mars in 1960, it is called NERVA.
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/NERVA.html
But what we still don't have is a clear benefit for going there. If there was a profit to be made from going to space, we would have done it long time ago. Without it, it is all FAR TOO EXPENSIVE.
Friday 29th January 2010 00:19 GMT 
very pragmatic
"Unless there is a clear profit, human race is going nowhere in space."
A hard lesson that Mr. Zuppero (nuclear steam rocket scientist) had learned is still prettty valid.
So no surprise there.
Don't worry though, the third option Augustine commission proposed was going after asteroids and readying some refueling orbital stations for possible commercial haulage.
If there is any value beyond LEO for us at this stage, it's just asteroids.
"We are the wrong species for space."
A. Zuppero
Let's just have pint...
The return of the Psion-sized PC
Monday 14th December 2009 11:47 GMT 
XP? You must be kidding...
As a former 5mx owner, THERE IS NO REPLACEMENT YET!
Read it again, and again.
Sharp SL-C760 came close, but was let down by poor quality office software AND usability.
Nokia N810 fares a much better in usability with Abiword and Gnumeric, and of course the hardware.
(s)iPhone (that I don't and won't have) usability is awesome, but the software flexibility is still a let down compared to 5mx where all was included AND FREE OF CHARGE.
Nokia N900 is getting very close, as all high quality software is freely available - let's see about its not yet announced successor (give us smaller and more energy efficient device please!).
The biggest let down of all the contenders above is that my old 5MX lasted two weeks on a pair of AA batteries. TWO WEEKS and used daily and pretty heavily.
IMHO, the key to success is a sustained effort to develop a free high quality and heavily integrated software that works just as smoothly and effortlessly as 5mx.
Until that happens, we just going to have to bare witnessing fanbois squabbles with their 21st century equivalents of mirrors and trinkets.
Collisions at LHC! Tevatron record to be broken soon?
IGF censors for China
KDE 4.3 promises polish, polish, polish
Buzz Aldrin weighs into NASA
Opera CEO: Unite not a security risk
Microsoft promises no patent prosecution of open-source .NET
Plasma rocket in new test with Brit supermagnet fitted
Why would anyone run their own base station?
Friday 26th June 2009 18:55 GMT 
EM exposure
Wonder when we'll start growing cauliflowers on our heads due to all the EM in the air. I don't think that day is too far off.
I think that there will be enough energy "in the air" to charge all my devices' batteries!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_charging
I am sure someone somewhere has thought of this...
Nokia to develop Intel-based pocket internet gadgets
Wednesday 24th June 2009 11:39 GMT 
@{iPhone-tards}
Because iPhones (in smartphone sense) are:
- not smart enough
- rubbish on battery - even worse if you need 3G on 24/7
- locked in to operators
- illegal to hack
- not enough decent software (I don't need it to calculate how to split the bill :-P)
- WAY too expensive
... etc, etc.
n810 can now be picked up for around £160, so there is no point having "netbook" or eBook reader for that matter.
Palm to out-iPod Apple with CEO pick
Google boss claims no sting from Bing - yet
Take-Two sues over death of Duke Nukem Forever
Google's email goes titsup (again)
Google Chocolate Factory patents Data Center Navy
Amazon's Kindle goes soft with iPhone app
Thursday 5th March 2009 14:13 GMT 
@FFS
Totally agree. I love books and read a lot. I use good old Zaurus for that, because paper books hurt my eyes as they are not back-lit.
I am more than happy to purchase books, but if they are not compatible with my readers that I can get hold of, what can I do?? Find it somewhere on the web?
I think that in the end it will all end up like any other media, torrented to oblivion. Why? Because of the apparent lack of compatibility and availability of legal sources.
Why Paris? Because she has to wear glasses too when reading paper books... ;-)
DARPA seeks Hitchhikers Deep Thought program
Thursday 4th December 2008 13:14 GMT 
@ben
I remember reading some sci-fi, where all future wars were fought between military computers, reacting to one another's models. In the real world , there were no wars at all.
As for this article, I'm a big fan of DARPA. I think that unless humanity can make reasonably working models of itself, we'll be forever doomed in the chaos. It was A. C. Clarke that mentioned in one of his novels that in the future all political theories were first thoroughly tried and tested against their virtual models before anything got implemented.
That's where I think this is all going in the long run. There is far too much data out there for anyone to even attempt to make the sense of. We need working models.
@All hail Reason - the perfect weapon :-D
There was a report released lately about the most likely shape of the future warfare. Rings any bells?
Ubuntu 8.10 - All Hail new Network Manager
Tuesday 4th November 2008 10:30 GMT
WAIT, don't upgrade yet
I upgraded to 8.10 from 8.04 and due to multitude of bugs I did a clean install thinking it should work better. It didn't, it had the same issues - namely graphics vsync issues, gnome X issues, crashing applets... YUCK
I had to downgrade in the end. Jeez, this is the worst distro for me. I used to be a Mandrake fan, then PCOS when Mandriva started to ignore its bugs.
Ubuntu 8.04 is the only distro that recognises all my laptop's hardware out of the box and is very stable.
Amazon UK downplays Kindle Christmas
Linux at 17 - What Windows promised to be
Vista SP2 beta could land within next four weeks
Tuesday 21st October 2008 10:05 GMT 
Far too late M$!
Bought Vostro 1400 laptop with 3GB of RAM and dedicated NVidia graphics. I thought, as an IT professional, I have to learn about mainstream OS. Yes it works but so do vacuum cleaners, but when you switch them off they do so as opposed to the mainstream OS - it starts installing patches and the process can't be interrupted.
This is just tip of the iceberg. SP1 broke my wifi catcher button functionality. Tried to setup net profiles? Ever renamed user and then found out that it didn't rename user directories, and you can't do it either without worrying you will break 50+ pieces of software you needed to install in order to have environment you are used to? Cooling fan blowing crazy most of the time? Etc, etc.
>>> It does what _it_ wants, not what _I_ want. <<<
Once I realised the the fact that I have no longer control over MY system, I knew I learned enough about the mainstream OS and installed guess Ubuntu 8.04 - all worked out of the box.
However, hats of to M$ campaign, that can be defined as "it just works", very clever. If linux community wasn't so diversified and fragmented, maybe we'd have a real alternative ready for an average industry office user and we'd also have software tools of equivalent or better than .Net.
Lehman Excel snafu could cost Barclays dear
Thursday 16th October 2008 10:37 GMT
good article
Just one thing to say, those few hours to spare should have been used to proof reading. Especially for multi-million dollar deal. The amount of rows/cells is irrelevant, given Barclays' resources.
And to be honest, having used spreadsheets for years and being IT professional, I wasn't aware of such awful bug. PDF has always been presented as a digital print and that's what it should be.
Barclays with all their might should give a long thought to their deal making first and then choices of their software. It would be interesting if Barclays will do something about making sure that Macromedia will fix this bug.
:-)
Sony PRS-505 Reader e-book
Friday 12th September 2008 13:50 GMT
rubbish
1. FAR too expensive
This kind of device should be £50 at most. You can buy very decent laptop for that money these days.
2. No backlight (!)
I regularly read ebooks on my Zaurus SL-C3100. The main reason I love reading my books on it is because it doesn't hurt my eyes because of the backlight. I don't read paper books anymore for only this reason alone.
3. Too slow
Don't know what processor is in it, but it takes 1-2 seconds for a page to turn !!! Tried this in Sony shop.
4. DRM
Nuff said. Apparently you can't even backup this device - I read it somewhere on the net, so if your reader breaks, say goodbye to your books.
On the other hand I do understand the need for slow CPU and no backlight, keeps the battery going for very long time (in this case). But, and that is a big mama but(t), why sacrifice this for usability? Surely there must be a middle ground...?
I think there will be more devices like this to come in the near future. And I can't wait!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
