Posts by Stuart Duel

Microsoft names the day for iPhone come-back punch

@ Dustin 1

I don't see, hear or read of Macintosh users/converts/evangelists/fans crying for an end to competition? We love competition and it's coming from the bright young things, not that old thieving dinosaur you so admire.

On the subject of Apple's App Store, a cursory look would reveal a plethora of highly useful and powerful applications for medical, scientific, business and personal development. There's also stuff ranging from pointless and trivial to recreational and educational. So far from having "50K stupid, timewasting apps", there's a probably more really useful tools available to install than could fit on a score of iPhones.

Finally, regarding "How many markets has microsoft forced its way into and taken over market share?". The answer to that is simple: None for a good few years. And we can thank more honest competition for that.

How to run Mac OS X on a generic PC

If Apple did not exist...

...you definitely would notice a world without them.

Apple have always been pioneers in the computer industry.

They introduced the GUI to the mainstream (which they PAID Xerox for the rights to use, as opposed to Microsoft which STOLE the code from Apple to write their half-arsed attempt at a Mac rip-off, Windows).

They lead the industry by ditching pointless, outdated hardware such as floppy drives and legacy ports (which you still find on most PCs to this day) which take up valuable space on the motherboard and back-pane, consuming resources and power for no good reason.

They make excellent hardware from quality components with such astonishing attention to detail, right down to balancing the weight of Macbook Pros and iPhones.

They have created technology which everyone takes for granted such as Firewire, and introduced technology that everyone now uses, such as mice, and wireless networking to name a few.

With the introduction of the original Bondi blue iMac, they made USB actually useful by inspiring an avalanche of USB products when before the iMac, there were very few.

They have created codecs and protocols which are now industry standards and contributed greatly to many others.

The list goes on and on as to why an innovative Apple is so important to the entire computer industry. They have positively touched every facet of computing.

How much longer would we have had to wait for these things, if they had happened at all, without Apple?

So absolutely yes, you would indeed notice - and greatly regret - a world without Apple.

Oh yeah, and OS X totally rocks!

Three-way fight for Real's iPhone-Rhapsody application

What a nerve!

".. you can almost hear the arguments emanating from Apple('s) galactic nerve center at One Infinite Loop..."

That's "Apple's inter-galactic, pan-dimensional nerve centre", thank you very much.

Microsoft's Windows 7 price gamble - and why it's flawed

Price comparison flawed

The article needs to compare the price of Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 to Windows 7 Professional Ultimate, not the top home version, as OS X comes with absolutely everything, whilst every version of W7 except Pro Ult is hobbled.

Do that and the price differences becomes even more and more ugly for Microsoft.

As others have pointed out, Apple hold 1/9th the market share of Windows, although Apple are rapidly gaining traction in the market, yet Microsoft can't seem to stop thinking, bitching and talking about Apple.

Despite all the huff and puff, Balmer is shit scared of an Apple firing on all cylinders and executing perfectly. Meanwhile, Microsoft is floundering about, searching for a direction, and the latest shiny thing it can attach its flag to. Just don't looking behind you at the massive pile of other shiny things Microsoft has played with, spent billions on and then discarded like a child with ADD.

@ Matt 53: So you thank Apple for doing the R&D and innovation work for MS. Then why stick with the second rate, derivative imitator, when you can have the real thing from Apple?

Final word: Apple hardware isn't massively overpriced or stuffed with the same crap parts as other cheap-arse crap computers. Apple uses quality parts and workmanship, which explains the astonishingly low return rates and the industry's highest user satisfaction rates. Apple also use innovative manufacturing processes, such as the unibody macbook design, cableless, screwless MacPro internals and industry leading materials. Yeah, so a Macbook Pro has a higher price than an equivalent Dell - but you get what you pay for.

Apple says jailbroken iPhones endanger cell towers

Get the popcorn...

...because I love a far fetched horror story.

All we need now is the Pixar animated feature complete with head-spinning drug lords and fire breathing mutant Steve Jobs.

MP asks UK.gov: Why are you still using IE6?

too lazy, too busy or too brittle?

There are three possibilities as to why I(dio)T Departments don't deploy a more modern browser.

The first is that they are too lazy to do it.

The second is that perhaps they are way too busy putting out Windows spot-fires.

The most likely reason, however, is that Windows is so brittle, they dare not mess with the SOE (standard operating environment) for fear of breaking all sorts of things.

When our office upgraded to XP from Win2K, plus whatever version of Office that went with that and all sorts of back end stuff, files in user accounts became corrupted or simply vanished into thin air. When staff attempted to retrieve their documents from backups, they too became corrupted or did the vanishing act.

You should have seen all the staff jumping up and down like frogs on a hot plate. I endeared myself to management by laughing my head off, saying it served them right for trusting Microsoft with their data.

Whoops!

Orange UK exiles Firefox from call centres

Dumb and dumber

So rather than spend a penny to save a dime, Orange has decided to spend a dime to waste 9 pennies.

Unfortunately, it is the same at my work - only IE6 is permitted which lacks modern features such as tabbed browsing, security and compatibility with more and more of the net. Try looking at the Adobe site using IE6.

We also have a multitude of browser based applications, which would be much more efficient spread over just a few windows each with multiple tabs. Instead, you spend an inordinate amount of time hunting for the window you need, re-launching IE6 and every web-app because it crashes and takes it all down and then having to lie to the customer about why everything takes so bloody long. Telling the customer the truth that it's an incompetent, ignorant IT department/management that is the problem doesn't seem to go down very well with Dear Leaders.

SuperSpeed USB PCs to ship by year-end

I'm waiting for....

...Firewire S1600 and S3200 running at 1.6 Gbit/s and 3.2 Gbit/s. Typically you get almost 100% of that throughput reliably with a good amount of juice if you need it. The next version of Firewire will use the same 9-circuit beta connectors as the existing FireWire 800 and will be fully compatible with existing S400 and S800 devices.

I hate USB for anything other than connecting peripherals. I've lost count of the copy fails and data corruption I've suffered at the hands of USB. That has taught me when data matters, use Firewire.

Given the overhead that USB extracts from a computer, typically delivering at best half the theoretical throughput, its unreliability and its anaemic power supply, Firewire once again will kick its arse.

Hackintosh maker rises from the dead

Then again..

@Psymon Posted Friday 3rd July 2009 10:47 GMT

"Apple have an unethical monopoly over supplying the hardware."

No they don't - they are a hardware company who also make and sell the OS and software to run on it. Apple's business model is to make "the whole widget". This is not illegal, unethical and certainly not a monopoly.

"What they are actually supplying now is a customised flavour of Linux..."

Wrong again, it is a modified version of BSD (Darwin) and related support applications with Apple's own GUI (Aqua). Apple take onboard improvements made by the open source community and fold their own improvements back into the community's work. Apple take but they also give back.

"...Once upon a time, an Apple computer was made by er, Apple..."

And Apple computers are still made by Apple, in so much as IBMs are made by IBM, Dells are made by Dell and HPs are made by HP.

"...running on the same hardware that that every other PC compatible maker uses...

No, wrong again. Outward appearances show a similarity to generic computers. But it is the attention to detail, build quality, materials used, selection of quality components, and minimalist, stylish aesthetics which sets Apple hardware apart from the crowd. People who don't get this need to check their prejudice at the door and actually inspect a Mac in detail.

"...And charging the earth for it."

Spec a Dell or HP to match a Mac and that argument completely falls apart. And only Apple can offer OS X. So you get a better built machine with an OS which is light-years ahead of the competition. In the end, you get what you pay for. I'd rather pay for quality and usability.

"We had a member of staff here that demanded she work only on Macs, so I looked up the specs. I specced up a very mediocre system, and then saw the price!

After I'd finished laughing, I picked myself up off the floor, dried my eyes, and told her in no uncertain terms to take a long walk off a short peer."

Referring to my previous remark, I doubt you seriously made an honest comparison. You certainly were approaching it with a prejudiced attitude. Staff should be given the most appropriate tools for the job to extract the most productivity from a person. But it is amazing the number of companies, well IT Departments, which will cut off their nose to spite their face.

"Perhaps if one of Psystars offerings were around at the time, I might have considered it."

And perhaps your IT department would have had a BLIND FIT that you bought an unsupported computer with unsupported OS from a fly-by-night company of dubious reputation and heritage which is engaged in highly questionable legal shenanigans and has a very uncertain future. Yes, that would certainly endear you to the IT Department.

SuperSpeed USB to be 'successful', enthuses analyst

Firewire is better

Give me Firewire any day over USB - it's faster, more reliable and more versatile. FireWire S1600/S3200, which should appear first, will absolutely crush USB 3.0.

.

Apple wins right to continue Hackintosh beating

Bitter Apple

Wrong Mark Jonson. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Apple took the open source BSD Unix, made enhancements and created their OWN GUI (Aqua) and associated applications to run on top - the whole box and dice being referred to as OS X. Apple have also folded back into the open source community improvements to BSD and numerous other projects, FoC, NSA. There is a lot of cross-fertilisation happening here. Apple have never pretended that BSD is their own.

Now contrast this with Microsoft, which generally buy, borrow or steal other people's work, slap the MS logo on it and peddle it as their own. That includes Windows which MS reverse engineered from the Mac OS. And MS give absolutely nothing back to the open source community.

I imagine MS wouldn't take too kindly to someone reverse engineering Office and then flogging it off as their own, so you can imagine why Jobs was so upset with Gates.

And Apple did pay Xerox for access to their GUI research before you go accusing them of theft.

Oh yeah, getting back on topic kind of, apart from a near disastrous flirtation under a clueless CEO with licensing the Mac OS in the '90s, it has always been Apple's business model to make 'the whole widget'. That is why the only people who can legally make a Mac is Apple. It's not illegal, it's not anti-competitive and it's not a monopoly. It is simply a legitimate business model that many other companies in other industries successfully follow.

Psystar were thoroughly delusional in thinking they could get away with making (dodgy) Mac clones.

Apple's big week: the good, the bad, the ugly

on PPC

The beauty of owning Macs is their longevity. BTW, Leopard only dropped support for all G3 and G4 processors below about 900MHz. Prior to that, it was any PPC processor lower than 500MHz that was dropped.

Leopard runs beautifully on 1.33GHz G4 Powerbook and is a screams on a Quicksilver PM with upgraded dual 1.7GHz G4s, SATA and graphics. So you can't tell me that Snow Leopard is SO radically different that they couldn't optimise the PPC code further to give us at least one more OS upgrade for owners of systems with 1GHz+?? Some features wouldn't be supported, but some would and everything else updated and optimised.

Besides, I thought Apple were telling us how Green they are?

Inside USB 3.0

Firewire forever

Give me Firewire any day over USB and twice on Sundays.

The number of times I've been backing up to a USB external drive (or copying data from it to the host PC) only to have the USB device stop responding has made me give up on USB for anything apart from connecting mice, keyboards, drawing tablets, cameras, printers, scanners and the like. For mass data transfer and storage, only Firewire is completely reliable in my experience, and certainly much faster.

Apple may have removed Firewire from their new 'unibody' Macbooks, but you may recall that FW800 was briefly dropped from the 17" Macbook Pro when it first appeared, but came back soon after. Apart from that one machine for which Firewire is forsaken, Apple has FW across the board, including the unlikely Mac Mini which recently had FW800 added. I would almost guarantee that FW800 will reappear across the line soon enough. So I think it is premature to declare Apple and Firewire in the divorce court.

The new 1.6 Gbit/s and 3.2 Gbit/s FW standard, using the same Beta connectors found in FW800, is ready to hit mainstream with an enhancement approved for 6.4Gbit/s over fibre also using the same connector and much faster speeds are proposed for FW using optical cable going forward.

I think it is safe to bet that FW will continue to be the transfer method of choice for video, audio and moving data both reliably and quickly, and USB for moving other less critical 'bits'.

Apple seeks specialist for iPhone ARM upgrade

But what is really curious...

...is the desire for someone with PowerPC AltiVec experience. I can certainly understand the need for Intel SSE experience, a bit of flexibility is always welcome especially since Intel is the CPU of choice for the larger brethren in the Mac family these days.

There still no idea what Apple will use the acquisition of PA Semi silicon design house will be used for, vague musings of Mr Jobs notwithstanding, but this mob design high performance, energy-sipping PowerPC chips which use AltiVec.

Hopefully the higher end PPC computers many of which are less than 3 years old, will be supported at least with Snow Leopard and perhaps beyond with any luck. The fact that Rosetta will remain a part of OS X Snow Leopard indicates that Apple will continue to support 'legacy' PPC applications on the new Intel iron, so if the PPC code is still supported...

This all seems to indicate that the assumed death of and support for PowerPC devices from Apple was somewhat premature. There's life in the old girl yet! Fingers crossed!!

Speaking of which, I just did a modest upgrade of the original 80GB 4200RPM HDD in my PPC 1.33GHz 17" Powerbook to speedier 5400RPM 250GB drive which turned my 'book from a laggard into a speed demon once again, going from unusable to highly usable. Can't wait for the price of high performance (and just as importantly, low heat!) SSDs with a ATA interface (which thankfully are being manufactured) to drop so the old girl can get another lease on life. I wouldn't be surprised if she's still putting in good, reliable and speedy service after 10 years. Try that with a Windows laptop.

Zen and the Art of Laptop Battery Maintenance

High heat kills batteries...

...and is a particular problem if you own an Apple laptop which seem to be made for climates with an average temperate of 15C or assume that everyone will be using their laptop in a (cold) airconditioned office.

I live in the sub-tropics and given Apple's unhealthy obsession with 'thin', there is simply no way to keep their batteries cool, even with a cooling pad, a bit cooler yes, but cool, not possible. In the sub-tropics, these batteries get super-hot.

My oldish 17" Powerbook (1.33GHz G4) will quickly build up so much heat it will freeze or shut down entirely if I don't have it sitting on a cooling pad. Even with the cooling pad it killed a new battery within 6 months.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else had this problem with this laptop model?

Apple: Time to seek treatment for anorexia nervosa.

Debbie Gibson battles Mega Shark and Giant Octopus

I had to look...

...and I'm glad I did. I haven't laughed so hard for quite some time.

If the trailer had shown any more of that awesomely b-grade action I would have wet myself! That movie is hysterically bad!!

When does it open?

iPhone at war in iRaq

@John Freeman

Well John, if you had any sense of history, you would know that us Westerners are regarded as the 'terrorists' by those in the Middle East because we are the ones, or at least our Governments are the ones, who have been subjugating, invading, enslaving, dividing, raping, pillaging and plundering and overthrowing the legitimate governments of their countries for the better part of a Century now. And when we make grandiose promises to free their people of despots (you know, the ones we installed in the first place) and invaders from foreign lands (USSR) and shower them with money for allowing us to bomb their civilisations into the stone age only to wash our hands of the whole mess we've created because, well... they didn't think we'd really help them, did they? You can forgive these people for being somewhat pissed at us.

But I'm guessing you are American, so you have no sense of any history outside your own borders, and probably only a very tentative grasp on your own.

Windows 7 gets built in XP mode

say what?

Someone said: "the windows OS has a place for everything."

No it bloody well doesn't. Windows just vomits data all over your hard drive when you install it (or anything on it).

So MS is going to virtualise their very old, no longer supported OS Win XP using software they bought in but didn't invent or write themselves which will run on top of the new Win 7 which will have hefty hardware requirements in itself even before you fire up XP mode.

What if you need to run other virtual boxes as well? Or will you have to run multiple virtualisation packages to achieve this?

MS would have been better off years ago building a modern, lean and mean OS from scratch which could run virtual machines of your choice invisibly as needed. But given so much of Windows (and MS software generally) is a kludge of bits and pieces bought, borrowed or stolen then thrown together in a big pot and stirred incessantly to the point where they don't know where one piece of spaghetti code ends and the next begins, I can't say I have much confidence in MS achieving anything efficiently - let alone elegantly.

So how much overhead will this XP mode require on the hardware? Slow as treacle on a cold day on 'average' aka "Windows 7 Ready" hardware perhaps? This should be interesting to watch.

XP mode is beginning to sound like a big bag of hurt. Talk about strangling the baby at birth!

Ireland scraps e-voting in favour of 'stupid old pencils'

E-Voting is...

...a solution to a problem which doesn't exist.

Congratulations for common sense prevailing in Ireland.

Of course the biggest pushers of e-voting systems, apart from the corrupt game players such Diebold, is Big Business which always, at every election, cry about 'lack of certainty' of the outcome which is 'bad for the economy and business' because they have to 'wait for the vote to be counted'.

Note to Big Business: Tough shit. You can just bloody well wait for the election result like everyone else. It's fun, it's exciting, sometimes excruciating and heart-breaking, especially if you're on the loosing side. But a paper vote count is reliable and accountable to the people and that has their trust and so have confidence in their democracy.

But if recounting paper ballots takes a week or two for the result to be decided, then so be it. I'd rather a result I can trust than one that can never be reliably examined - or examined at all with some of these dodgy e-voting systems.

Come on out, Power6+, you win

Actually...

Apple dropped the PPC Processor, not the Power Processor although both are based on the same architecture. Also, Nintendo along with Sony and Microsoft have adopted variants of the Cell Processor for their gaming consoles, which is based on the Power/PPC architecture but is not the Power Processor.

The processors being talked about in this story are for Big Iron servers.

Anyway, as Apple found out much to their very public and vocal annoyance, IBM let them down and proved they are thoroughly incapable of even getting close to achieving their grandiose roadmaps. Lots of promises but nothing ever delivered on time, on budget or on spec.

Jobless Apple pumps profits 15 per cent

Beam me up!

@ Stephen

I'm guessing David is a Star Trek fan and he's hankering for one of those nifty Pads that have with the processing power of a Star Ship at their disposal.

Blu-ray to boom despite downturn

expensive hobby

If I bought a blu ray player, I would also need to buy a new HDTV and stereo/amp system to take advantage of the improved picture and sound quality. Then there are the discs I need to buy to make the whole "investment" worthwhile.

Oh wait, we have region coding again? Even after the Australian competition regulator found region coding was anti-competitive and then did precisely nothing about it. It was a pain in the arse with DVDs - why the hell can I still not get "The House of the Spirits" for region 4 goddamnit you greedy movie studio c**ts?!?? Which is the other half of the reason I'm not going there.

And anyway, four or five years down the road there will be a new, faster, better, SuperDuperHD immersive 3D holographic something-or-other format requiring a new player, new media, new TV, new stereo system, new nuclear power station...

I've woken up to this game and I'm not playing it again.

Windows 7 Release Candidate coming 5 May

Mac: Secure by design

@ Anonymous Coward

1) Macs running OS X are secure by design, being based on BSD Unix. In spite of a number of proof-of-concept exploits being paraded over the years, there is still nothing out there to infect OS X without user permission (i.e. installing a program of unknown legitimacy). Nothing will protect a computer from a users stupidity. Don't steal software.

2) I switched from Windows to Macs (I run a small business totally Microsoft free) nine years ago when OS X first appeared and have never, ever looked back. Macs running OS X are the easiest and most powerful systems you could hope to run. There is a growing number of switchers around me who will affirm this and not one has been even remotely inclined to switch back.

3) Macs are not overpriced, it's just that Apple don't and won't make underpowered, cheap junk. You get what you pay for. What you pay for is a superbly crafted hardware + software package. You get elegant, aesthetically pleasing hardware and software. You get state of the art manufacturing and technology. What you won't get is crippled Celeron processors, cheap and flimsy plastic cases nor internals which resemble spaghetti.

4) If Windows is so fabulous, why does Microsoft spend its entire life copying everything Apple does? Microsoft's entire existence consists of being an Apple wannabe. Every Windows user out there is really a Mac user, even if they don't realise it. That's because Windows is just a poor copy of the Mac OS - always has been, always will be. Microsoft simply don't have an original bone in their body.

5) The copy is never going to be as good as the original. Stop being an ignorant tosser calling people names and approach computing with an open mind.

6) I have tried Windows 7 (Vista Take 2) which I installed under Parallels Desktop on my MBPro and will install the RC when it's available. Just because I can. Whilst W7 is an improvement over Vista and XP without a shred of doubt, it's still Windows and it still sucks.

Microsoft kills MSN Encarta

It's all good....

Wikipedia, Encarta, World-book, et-cetera are all valuable resources for finding answers and facts.

BUT...

As an individual YOU are not displaying the required intellectual rigour if YOU don't then go and check alternative sources to collaborate or contradict those answers and facts, sending you on an expanded but worthwhile journey in search of truth.

Any source could be biased or erroneous. Don't place absolute blind faith in any one of them.

Microsoft follows Google to Mars

Re: NASA's Planetary Data System website

"pictures and data available on NASA's Planetary Data Systems website, which as we mentioned above, will scare the pants of anyone not certifiably a geek."

Spot on, Reg.

Re: "and thank God. These people actually do serious work"

Snob.

You can present serious work in a more publicly accessible way without dumbing it down. The NASA site is a nightmare inducing, text bound labyrinth of sci-speak, which you need to know to use the search feature!

Microsoft's Silverlight for mobile to muscle iPhone

If it is so whiz bang...

...then developers will demand a version for iPhone.

Oh, the irony.

Apple plays catch-up with new iPhone features

Urgh!

Someone asked the question: Is there anyone out there that is just *indifferent* about apple?

Very few I would imagine. I don't buy Apple products because they look cool or I'm an iTard or iSheep and incapable of thinking for myself, as many here arrogantly and ignorantly state. I buy them and love them because they work as advertised, they make bloody awesome hardware and software which 'just works' and Apple have an eye for detail which no one - NO ONE - comes remotely close to matching. Anyone who hasn't used Apple products is hardly in a position to comment on them, let alone slag them or their users off.

My previous 3G phones were an SE and after that Motorola. I never used internet or email because it was so bloody hard to set up. From the impenetrable user manual to unhelpful/clueless telco to the indifferent manufacturer's support line it was always an exercise in futility. I almost never used the cameras because they took such shitty pictures. I rarely sent MMS messages because whether they arrived at their destination depended on the other person's carrier, their phone's implementation of MMS or indeed whether they could figure out how to even turn the feature on which once again required contacting the telco to set it up. UTTER - PAIN - IN - THE - ARSE. The other problems with MMS is there is no way of knowing which phones in your address book actually HAVE MMS support so bang goes a chunk of your messaging allowing for absolutely no benefit. I prefer sending images attached to emails.

Apple isn't perfect. They were the first to make USB useful, but were virtually the last to include USB2. I can't fathom how they took so bloody long to implement Cut, Copy, Paste - no doubt the result of some internal hissy-fits - but it looks like an elegant solution they have finally come up with. Beats the dicking around on the SE or Moto phone. The lack of landscape keyboard across all apps was an irritant but not a deal breaker. Why that wasn't implemented from the start is the bigger mystery here.

Tethering would be very useful, but see your data allowance quickly vanish if you're not careful! As stated by others and Apple, this function is dependant on your telco's attitude.

In the end, I knew the limitations the iPhone had at launch. I didn't get sucked into SJ's reality distortion field, I got fed up with crappy phones which had all the functions and none of the usability. I also knew that I could rely on Apple to release updates for free or at least very low cost, which gave me what was missing and much more, and wouldn't force me into an ever tightening spiral of totally unnecessary hardware upgrades. Just like owning a Mac actually.

So take your juvenile iTard insults back to the playground where they belong.

Behind IE 8's big incompatibility list

So if every other browser on the planet renders these sites perfectly...

What the hell are Microsoft up to this time?

They aren't up to their old tricks again by any chance?

So let me see if I have this straight. A whole host of websites, which render without any problem in any other browser available, don't render correctly on the IE 8 engine. And Microsoft is asking people to change their code so it will work on IE 8 to comply with these "standards" MS is adopting, which will do what to rendering on rival browsers? If they render perfectly on rival browsers which are genuinely standards compliant, why do these companies have to change their website coding to suite Microsoft again?

So somehow these websites break because Microsoft is now "embracing and adopting web standards"? Even though they render perfectly on rival browsers which are actually standards compliant...

Am I missing something here??

Which standards is the dinosaur adopting, it's own?

This isn't "embrace and extend" again, is it?

Sony demos ultra-expensive, ultra-thin OLED telly

OMG, how thin?, OMFG how much??

I wait impatiently and salivating at the thought of what the King of thin could do with those displays!

Yeah, I mean Apple.

Universal thaws out The Thing

Cruise ver. of WotW closer to da book?

How exactly? The book wasn't set in America, nor did it follow the misadventures of an annoying family and to top it all off, the book was set in post industrial revolution England.

If I had been the lead in that terrible, terrible Speilberg remake I would have killed the squealing bitch myself and told the mother the Martians did it.

Give War of the Worlds another go but actually set it in the time and place it is meant to be set. The musical version, artwork and all, would be a great place to start for inspiration. The machines and musical score were both very creepy, dark and ominous. But give the job to Peter Jackson of LotR fame. I have no doubt he's a fan, and would produce something to really knock your socks off!

As to a remake of The Thing, I'd be very surprised if someone could beat John Carpenter's fantastic effort in any way. But we'll see.

Prolific worm infects 3.5m Windows PCs

Mac OS X unaffected

Mac OS X unaffected by this, or any virus since March 2001.

Cardiff 'copter coppers give chase to UFO

Seriously massive

The universe is infinitely large. Astronomers increasingly have come to the conclusion that not only are Earth like planets out there, that they are almost certainly very common.

But then we are the centre of the universe and the Sun and planets orbit us, the Earth is flat, man will never fly, the moon is unreachable and nothing could or would fly light years to visit this pretty blue marble hanging in space on the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy - total fancy.

I think we alone have proven the impossible is possible and the improbable is likely. Our limited understanding of life, the universe and everything has grown in leaps and bounds and yet this knowledge is still infinitesimally small. Anything we take for granted to day - microwave ovens, mobile phones, microchips, space station, sky scrapers half a kilometre high, super-sonic aircraft - take it back 300, 200 or even 100 years and you'd be locked away for life in a loony bin or burnt at the stake for being a witch/heretic. Amazing how quickly things change. Less than a blink of an eye in geological time.

People who discount the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe with societies and technology millions of years more advanced than ours are the ones who are grasping at straws. Where will we be in 1 million years? (Assuming we don't blow ourselves off the face of the planet.)

Probability is well and truly on the side of a populated, intelligent universe.

Why would aliens visit Earth? Why do we climb a mountain - because we can! And I'm sure messing with people's heads is not a trait solely confined to this planet.

Apple to announce handheld games console at WWDC?

No Joke

@ Mectron • Monday 12th May 2008 19:29 GMT

I don't know how you can state that Apple is a "failure" at anything these days. They have market capitalisation approaching that of Microsoft and long ago surpassed Dell. The company is hugely profitable and getting more so every day.

Whilst the PC industry is stagnant, Apple is seeing an explosive growth in their Mac business. Why? Because they are the best damn computers available today running the best damn commercial OS available today - don't take it from me, take it from reviews on numerous PC-centric magazines and sites which also state the best, fastest and most reliable computer on which to run Windows is, ironically, a Mac, but go on to state that the best OS available is actually Mac OS X.

@ Kevin • Monday 12th May 2008 19:25 GMT

Macs last much longer than Windows boxes before needing to be replaced. Apple makes computers which simply refuse to die, mostly because they don't make stuff out of rubbish parts and cheap plastic like Dell, etc. Same goes for all their other devices past and present - iPods, iPhones, printers, scanners, monitors. You just can't kill the stuff with a big stick. And we don't junk our old Macs when we upgrade - they are either given new roles in the home/business, or are sold (at a very good price - Macs really do hold their value) or gifted to friends, relatives or other needy individuals requiring liberation from Windows. I'm yet to hear of anyone actually giving their Mac back and returning to Windows.

Plus my 2nd generation iPod from early 2002 is still going strong with the original battery.

My mother and several friends have 1999 model fruit coloured jelly-bean iMacs which are still going strong, running Tiger (OS X 10.4) at a decent clip and doing productive things on programs like MS Office, editing video and music, doing DTP and graphics work, and of course surfing the web, emailing, etc.

You find me a low end PC from that era which can run XP and Office that doesn't make you want to take an axe to Bill Gates head. Oh that's right, you can't!

Apple gets (slightly) less sneaky with Windows Safari play

cry babies

Ticked by default is what software installs, either from disk, disc or download, have generally always done.

Is it really that hard for people to figure out how to uncheck a box? Or to read for that matter.

The OS X Software Update periodically informs me that a new update is available (and by update, sometimes it really means new software) but it gives me the opportunity to read what it's all about, provides links to documents on the Apple website which tell me all the nitty gritty I generally don't want to know and to dismiss it all together if I can't be bothered/don't have time/in the middle of something and don't want to chew up CPU cycles or occasionally restart (and even that you can defer).

You're not being forced to install any update right this second, there is no gun to your head. It is one dialogue box this is actually telling you something potentially useful if you already have Apple software installed.

It's certainly not like the regularly irritating and pointless pop-up bubbles Windows interrupts you with "There are hidden icons in your task bar", "Take a tour of Windows XP", "Help Microsoft improve Microsoft Office", "You are no longer connected to the network" - that last one I find particularly perplexing considering I'm still connected to the internet, the intranet, our web based applications, shared directories, printers, etc, etc. Or that other task bar gem "new software is available" when in fact there is nothing new whatsoever. These are the pop-ups I can remember. Some of these appear whenever the computer is turned on, some appear periodically throughout the day and some take the focus away from the current application I'm using. ALL of them are annoying.

Whilst I'm on the subject of annoying UI issues with Windows, it would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that certain important things like my preferred screen resolution; quick launch bar location, size and toolbars; desktop icon arrangement; or IE shortcuts, aren't saved in my user profile to follow me around, but have to be set up on each individual PC I use. Urgh!

These things, along with malware, flakiness, system amnesia and periodic 30 second long system freezing I experience on a daily basis are the reasons at home, where I can actually exercise a choice, I switched from Windows to Mac and OS X in 2001. And I've never, ever looked back. Ever... Not once.

So to all you Windows champions, continue to fiddle, fix and tinker with your system and battle the fierce malware onslaught to your heart's content. But don't come crying to me when you can't figure out how to read a dialogue box or uncheck a check box. I've found a better way, as have a growing number of people around me who continue, even years after making the switch to Mac, to say with excitement "I LOVE my Mac".

This DVD will self-destruct in 48 hours

More useless junk to litter the planet

What a daft idea. As if there isn't enough rubbish generated by human activities and consumerism polluting the planet.

Surely the EU has a law which prohibits or restricts the manufacture of wasteful disposable things such as this? If not, there bloody well should be.

Assyrian clay tablet points to 'Sodom and Gomorrah' asteroid

God Squad

No, it's just that the rationally minded non-believers understand that the belief in the existence of a supernatural omnipotent entity generally known as God is simply absurd. It all stems from ancient man worshipping the Sun. And from one man's need/desire to control others.

There's certainly many good things, useful lessons and ripping yarns in these collection of 'holy' texts. They are also filled with some utter tripe. But to believe in a God? It's quite silly if you really put your mind to it.

Perhaps something becomes of our consciousness after death, becoming a part of something else, but that's an entirely different matter. Either we'll find out about that upon death or we won't. Either way, we won't be able to tell the tale.

People who believe in God are seriously in need of a mental health evaluation.

Mac is the first to fall in Pwn2Own hack contest

What would have been more interesting...

....would be to see if the same exploit worked on the other systems using the same browser. Or a different browser with the same engine (WebKit) or a different browser with a different engine. THAT would be more instructive regardless of the outcome of such tests.

To answer another guys question, the 'hacker' was able to access files on the Macbook Air, not execute code. Although we don't know what 'access' files means - does it mean get a file list, open a file, or something more? We don't know how critical these files were that he could access or whether any other actions could be taken such as changing permissions, deleting, moving, renaming, altering, overwriting or copying files nor who owned the files. Was it the system files or did he get right into the user accounts?

As to the suggestion that the guy went for the 'prettiest' laptop I think is quite silly - $10K is sweet no matter what hardware you nab, although the Air would have been icing on the cake. So next time have three Macs laptops so we can dispense with this silly 'pretty' argument.

The fact remains that there is an entire community pouring over the code of Darwin (the actual OS part of OS X) and WebKit (the core of Safari) being open source software and there is only one company looking at the code of the close source Windows - for everyone else it's secret sauce, or perhaps that should be spaghetti sauce.

As a result flaws are being found, reported and generally fixed quickly for open source and the only exploits we find out about in Windows and other Microsoft proprietary software are the ones that hit the headlines, not the stuff that Microsoft finds but keeps secret.

It still doesn't alter the fact that there are no exploits in the wild affecting OS X, no viruses, no spyware, no adware or any of those other annoyances and real world destructive nasties which exist and cause dramas day in, day out for Windows.

But perhaps this will teach Apple a lesson - firewall on by default. I'd also recommend AV software (such as clamXav), just in case and perhaps set up to run in stealth mode by default.

Mozilla CEO blasts Apple for putting security of the internet at risk

Yawn

So we have a site that is full of know-it-all geeks who love Firefox and hate Apple because, well, it makes them feel better I guess.

But the thing I find most funny is that they are too stupid/ignorant to figure out how to deselect the things they don't want to update/install.

Yeah, I'm a Mac user. I love it. I moved over from Windows around the turn of the Century and have never looked back. I love Safari now, although it's been a bit hit and miss in the past but is constantly getting better. I love my iPod shuffle. I love iTunes.

If 'deviously' installing Safari on a gazillion Windows boxes out there means moms and pops won't have to suffer the slow and butt-ugly MS Internet Explorer (any version) then all the better. If it means they're exposed to a better way of doing things, then fabulous!

Personally I don't see anything devious - Software Update updates you as to the availability of new software. Seems pretty straight forward to me. And certainly much more straight forward than Windows Update.

Firefox is okay as an alternative, but personally I prefer Camino as a backup browser when a site has a spasm and decides it doesn't like Safari anymore/today/this particular minute.

So suck on that Windows geeks - I couldn't give a toss. And neither could a rapidly growing number of people all around who have also made the switch to Mac.

Really, what a bunch of cry-babies!

Sequoia attack dogs kill review into e-voting discrepancies

Or they could....

Modernise their electoral system so that:

1) An Electoral Commissions staffed by professional, apolitical public servants (as occurs in Australia at the Federal and State level) performs all elections with one EC for National Elections and one in each state looking after State and Local (county) elections. This would ensure consistent ballot papers and processes across entire states and nationally for all elections;

2) Dispense with this complete nonsense of electronic voting - it's first past the post for heavens sake! You don't need some dodgy expensive equipment of dubious quality, reliability and veracity to count that!

Paper ballots can be very quickly counted by humans. Australia just did that at our Federal Election in December last year and our preferential voting system is much more complex by comparison. Australia has the most spread out, geographically isolated population on the planet and we still managed to returned a result by the end of counting on Election night without the aid of machines.

Australians have absolute trust in our electoral system as it's beyond manipulation by nefarious groups and individuals. Checks and balances people, checks and balances!

3) Reform your system of government so that the entire system isn't politicised by having to vote for every stupid little Government position. Is it really necessary to elect a school board? Is it really a good idea to elect a Sherif? If the past few U.S. elections are anything to go by, then electing the Electoral officials is a particularly BAD idea. Establish a professional, apolitical public service. You will get better government that way.

4) Keep different electoral cycles separate. In other words, at a Federal Election only vote for the Federal representatives - Senators, Congressmen (every two years is it?) with President every forth. And nothing else. Have your State and Local (County) elections on a different cycle so that those elections occur on different dates to the Federal ballot. For example, assuming you have fixed terms for everything, a Local (County) Election might occur mid Spring, Federal early Autumn and State late Autumn - oh sorry, Fall. It comes down to the K.I.S.S. principle really.

Not everything is bad about the U.S. system of government, for instance the Senate and Congressional committees system is brilliant with fantastically sharp teeth, keen eyes and probing tentacles. The Australian Parliament's and State based committees system is quite weak by comparison.

Australia's preferential system ensures that the candidate elected has at least 50% + 1 of the vote (i.e. a true majority). The U.S. system of First Past the Post means that a person elected has a minority of the overall vote (i.e. most people voted for candidates other than the one elected).

The proportional representation system in the Australian Senate ensures that a more balanced spread of parties are elected, rather than the duopoly that currently exists. (Greens get 10% of the vote, they get 10% of the seats) should be considered as part of the modernising process. Another option would be using the Haire-Clarke system from Tasmania with multi-member divisions elected on a proportional system, once again ensuring a more representative spread of parties in the House of Representatives or Congress in your parlance. You'll have a system that is more representative and responsive to the needs of the community.

The U.S. shouldn't believe for a minute that she possesses the absolute best system of Democracy in the world. Yes, there are some parts which are very good, but many parts with glaring weaknesses with corruption and political interference lurking in the shadows and as we've recently seen, boldy stepping into the light - and then threatening to sue.

If American citizens don't want to see their democracy privatised and corrupted further, you need to demand change.

*Devil Bill Gates because I'm sure he's all for privatised elections.

IPCC's 'evil twin' launches climate change sceptic's creed

Take a step back

For the sake of argument, lets just say that humans don't cause climate change. So how do we stand to benefit from reducing the burning of fossil fuels?

Carbon Dioxide is not the only thing produced with we burn fossil fuels and other carbon based fuels such as wood. There are a whole host of nasty chemicals which are released into the atmosphere which are toxic to life on Earth, not to mention the particulate pollution which cause respiratory diseases.

So by abandoning the burning of carbon based fuels and switching to cleaner energy sources, we are also reducing these other toxic substances which we know for a fact cause disease and death, acid rain and acid oceans. Even if there is no human caused global warming (and I tend to believe we do the overwhelming majority of scientists who agree than the handful who don't) we still benefit from having cleaner air to breath.

No matter which way you swing, we still win by switching to cleaner energy. Or are you skeptics telling me you WANT to breath that shit into your lungs?

Microsoft's data center offensive sounds offensive

Yawn

The reason that Microsoft is bashed so relentlessly is that they are selfish, ignorant, arrogant, greedy, incompetent criminals - CONVICTED criminals - who make mediocre at best and generally crap resource hogging bloatware and self-destructing game consoles.

Micro$oft deserve every kick in the arse they get, and then some.

@ Walter Brown

I seriously doubt your girlfriend uses a Mac at work or that you have a girlfriend at all (blow ups don't count). If this mythical creature can't figure out how to open a document on a Mac, then god knows how she could master any flavour of Windows.

And there is not a single virus for OS X of any flavour, regardless of all the wishful thinking of the brain-dead Windows drones. Most of the OS X Leopard installation problems existed between the computer and the chair. Follow the recommended advice - back-up, permissions repair, remove kernel hacks - and it's clear sailing.

The weak minded are those who are blind to Micro$oft's faults and Apple's virtues.

Treehuggers lose legal fight to solar-powered neighbour

The obvious solution...

...would be to mount the solar panels on the tree lovers more sunny rooftop.

Germans demand Nokia return funding

Give us a handout or we'll close the factory?

Is this like those automotive companies in Australia, such as Mitsubishi, which periodically - like every 4 years or so - threaten to close down their factory unless the Government gives them a mega-buck gift to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to stay open? The factory is still making money, just not ENOUGH money to make these greedy bastards happy.

I'm fed up with humongous multi-nationals which make squillions of dollars pulling this trick. Well that's fine, pull out of the country but the Government will take back your factory and all it's assets thank you very much.

Two can play at attaching strings.

'Crash tested' e-voting machines spread doubt on Super Tuesday

simplicity is the key

"It's been pointed out by more knowledgable people than me, but it's worth repeating that American elections are often so complex that paper ballots are impractical. A full blown November election may involve 1. President of the US, 2. US Senator, 3. US Representative, 4. state governor, 5. & 6. state-level equivalents to senator and representative, 7-N1. dog catcher, tax assessor, judges....."

The answer is simple - simplify the system! Have nationally consistent electoral systems, rules and ballot paper formats. Have separate ballot papers for different electoral contests, and don't hold elections for a gazillion completely different and totally unrelated things on the same day.

For national elections (President, VP, Federal Senate and Congress, national referenda) have one NATIONAL INDEPENDENT electoral commission run the whole show, so it doesn't matter which state you are in, it's works exactly the same where ever you go.

For State and local elections, have an INDEPENDENT STATE electoral commission which runs the whole shebang for the state and do this on a different day to a national election.

And what is this bullshit about electing Judges, sherifs and dog catchers anyway?

I mean really, how stupid are Americans? (That was a rhetorical question - the world already knows the answer).

Electronic voting is...

...A solution to a problem which doesn't exist.

With an voting system which couldn't possibly be much more basic - first past the post - why on earth do you need a machine or computer to do that???

Piece of paper with names and a box next to each + a pencil/pen + voter. Place mark next to one name, put ballot into locked box. At the end of voting empty locked box and counts names with marks next to them. Simple. Even a human could do that. And much more reliably.

Of course, the US doesn't have a proper democratic electoral system to begin with, unlike true democracies like Australia. In Australia, you have one electoral commission overseeing the entire election, national wide. The ballot paper format is identical regardless of which state or electorate you are in, only the names of the candidates are different depending on your electorate. That's democracy.

But in America, not only do different states have vastly different ballot papers and electoral rules for the same bloody election, they even differ from county to county within each state! Plus electoral commissions are partisan and not a truly independent, apolitical body.

US = Leaders of the free world?? Try leaders of stupidity!

Ballmer! explains! hostile! Yahoo! bid!

Dump then Flush then repeat

Of course the obvious question is why MS doesn't think Yahoo wouldn't haemorrhage clients and users once it has been tainted by icky tentacles of the Beast of Redmond?

Let MS blow $45 billion dollars on another pointless take-over. The sooner Ballmer flushes MS down the toilet the better for the technology sector.

Since MS isn't interested in Yahoo's technology, only their online presence, if Yahoo have any pride in their tech prowess, they'll sell or spin that off to ensure it lives and thrives.

Or does MS see something there that must be killed?

Microsoft rides PCs and Xboxen to rich Q2

Like watching the dying years of a star

@ DeFex

Well you can keep your overcooked spaghetti OS and chucked together boxes, which I said good bye to in 2001 and have never, ever had a reason to look back. Well, maybe occasionally for chuckles. Giggles. Some guffaws.

Vista sets 2007 land-speed record for copying and deleting

Get a Mac

Re: Andy's anti-Mac diatribe.

If all those Microsoft fanboys would remove their hand from below the desk for a minute, check out OS X and stop being so bloody narrow minded, they'd realise that:

1) Windows is and always has been an upside down, backwards and poor copy of the Mac OS;

2) OS X is BSD Unix - and therefore the most robust, reliable and stable desktop OS on the planet with an enormous library of available commercial, specialist and open source applications and at its Darwin core, is open source to boot;

3) Macs are the most beautiful and efficient combination of hardware and software money can buy, capable of running any OS your heart or head desires. Why buy an OS limited PC when you can have an OS unlimited Mac for the same money?

The vast majority of Mac users have to suffer Windows at work or are refugees from years of using Windows at home. I fit into both categories. Windows shits me no end - it's frustrating, stupid, counter-intuitive, clunky, slow and generally annoying to use.

That's the other thing that sets us Mac users apart from everyone else - we generally have recent experience with both Windows and OS X so we're in a position to make authoritative comments.

Oh, and calling the Mac a glorified crayola set? Sounds like a description of XP and Vista to me.

Now get out of the way you boring MS drone with your technological dead-end, whilst we Mac heads get some real work done on a real OS.

Martian pole capped by planet swamping ice sheet

Metric & other spacial anomolies

I found the use of imperial on a site which should be metric somewhat amusing and disturbing myself. But here's the rub - a 'foot', metricised as a 30cm ruler, is a metric measure of convenience these days. Using miles on the other hand is just plain stupid.

Now in relation to the Blue Sky on Mars scenario, ala Total Recall, someone mentioned, there's a few things going against the Red Planet for that to happen.

Firstly, the planet doesn't have a sufficient magnetic field for a dense atmosphere and hence liquid water to form. Being a smaller body with less mass and less gravity doesn't help matters either. At some time this wasn't the case and Mars had a more dynamic climate and atmosphere. But being a smaller planetary body, it cooled more quickly than the Earth resulting in the mechanisms which create the Mars' magetic field, believed to be the turning and churning of the inner cores, slowing down or stopping all together, resulting in the field disipating and much of the atmosphere and possibly a great deal of water being lost into space, carried away by the charged particles of the solar wind. What didn't rise, sunk into the crust.

Even if you could melt these frozen oceans (and it's believed a similarly large deposit of water sits under the north pole), it would gradually or rapidly (no one is quite sure) drift off into space. Without somehow re-establishing the magnetic field, a denser and warmer atmosphere cannot form. In a thin atmosphere, liquid water quickly evaporates.

But don't take my word for it, http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=31025 .