* Posts by Matt Piechota

301 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Aug 2006

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Samsung touching up ROUNDED, CURVY plastic enhanced MODEL

Matt Piechota

Re: Glad to see this useless product is finally out

"I'm sure there is probably a market for this, not a big one but Samsung likes to fill every niche so they probably don't need to sell a million of them to meet the goals they have for it."

Shame on them for offering different models to suit different people. The nerve of Samsung!

Matt Piechota

Curves

The screen on my Galaxy Nexus (US Verizon) is slightly curved, so I'm not sure where first is coming from. This is only maybe 1-2mm over the length of the phone though.

I think it's us hammy dudes here that don't see the use of this. If you're a tiny little thing (wee little lass, for you UKers*), it'll fit in the front pocket of a pair of jeans a lot better.

* Yes, I know that's really Scotland, settle down.

Space boffins boycott Kepler 'scope talks after US bans Chinese guests

Matt Piechota

Re: Open Kepler conference?

" the excuse for kicking the Chinese delegates is "national security", but the information to be presented at the conference is ALREADY PUBLIC."

Not for nothing, but have you been to a conference before? Most of the useful information is exchanged over drinks each night. It'd be kinda naive to think that a country wouldn't at least consider sending "spies" to liquor up some scientists that are working on other projects than what they're presenting.

Official crackdown on Apple fanboi 'shanty town' ahead of London iPhone launch

Matt Piechota

"When they look back on their lives, will this be their crowning achievement?"

Probably not, it'll just be a great memory. "Remember when we queued for the iPhone? Ah to be young. I'd give anything to do it ."

A lot of you guys are grumpy about other people pasttimes.

Ubuntu 13.10: Meet the Linux distro with a bizarre Britney Spears fixation

Matt Piechota
Flame

Re: MEH

"Does anybody outside of a few hardcore techies care? It's a minority DE/Distro of a minority OS. The rest of us in the real world will carry on using our Windows or OS X machines and ignore Ubuntu and Desktop Linux"

What an exciting new idea! I can't believe no one ever thought to post it before.

Bill Gates: Yes, Ctrl-Alt-Del salute was a MISTAKE

Matt Piechota

Meow.

I'm guessing Bill Gates has never owned a cat.

British Gas robo home remote gets itself into hot water

Matt Piechota

Re: Why fiddle with a thermostat?

"If the thermostat is working properly it will maintain a constant temperature in the house. I get really annoyed with people who believe they can increase the speed with which something heats up by turning the thermostat up."

The idea (for me), is that I don't want the house to be a same temperature all the time. I want it cool to sleep and comfortable when I'm there. And to save a bit of money, let it get warm/cold (depending on season) when I'm not around. My current thermostat does this, but I have to push a bunch of not very intuitive buttons to program it. It would be nice to program it from a better interface. The remote control would be nice, but I'm not of an age where I fail to make it home very often now. And when I was that age, I certainly wasn't thinking about heating bills. ;-)

Stylus counsel: The rise and fall of the Apple Newton MessagePad

Matt Piechota

Re: Bah!

"As a cell phone user in metropolitan New York, I can say from first hand knowledge that this ain't so. About half the people who could afford to use them had cell phones in '95, all analog, and the coverage map was still pathetic outside of cities no matter who you signed with. There were digital phone offerings by '96, but they were so expensive that only corporate show-offs were using them and the coverage map was even worse than the analog one was."

Just to reinforce, yeah that sounds right. In Western New York (Buffalo), I had an analog phone in 1997 (and it drew stares, especially on my college campus). Other than a handful of people no one had them. It was a motorola with a 10-digit 7-segment LED display. The next year I had a Sprint PCS phone (1998, for sure) which was a wonder. Phone book dialing, text on a 30x4 character LCD screen, and you could send it email and it would show up as text! I'd imagine you could text message with it in some fashion, but no one else had one so that was rather useless.

Give us a break: Next Android version to be called 'KitKat'

Matt Piechota

Confectionary Perfection

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OKOrkLxOBoY

Samsung sets Sept 4 for Galaxy Gear smartwatch showoff

Matt Piechota

Maybe

Maybe. I do sometimes wear a watch, and it would be nice to be able to check phone dings and bloops thru it. But it *has* to be something that I only need to think about charging once or twice a week. I rather like the Pebble, if it had a higher DPI eInk screen so the watch faces looked better.

Although who am I kidding, I'm not going to buy one unless they're really cheap.

Pulsars: the GPS beacons of the cosmos

Matt Piechota

Re: Another Eureka moment - Independence Day.

"Ah ha, now we know why Jeff Goldblum was able to get a virus from a Mac into the invading alien's computers."

I always figured it was emacs running on Mac. M-x alien-virus-mode.

'BLING BLING, BLING BLING' 'Hello, yes, my iPhone is made of GOLD'

Matt Piechota

polish

Keep up, you can polish a turd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ9fy1qSFI\

Gold iPhone? Eh, if you like that kind of thing. Most people will cover it up with a cover anyway.

Legal bible Groklaw pulls plug in wake of Lavabit shutdown, NSA firestorm

Matt Piechota

Re: I' not buying the Groklaw arguments - see the evidence..

"Okay so maybe I'm being dumb but what the hell are you on about?"

Essentially, if you didn't know about PRISM-like or other schemes (ECHELON, etc.) before Snowden, you weren't paying attention. And if you didn't think Google (who's hosting Groklaw's email based on the MX records) would happily comply with any legal email snooping order, you weren't paying attention.

Essentially, if Groklaw was *that* worried about privacy they'd have been using a smaller, more security-conscious email provider, or self-hosting mail, requiring PGP keys, or at least having a submission-by-web option.

Now I don't know any inside info, but it wouldn't surprise me if PJ was bored with it, and this gives a good way to get out while making a statement. There are plenty of ways to continue on if she wanted to.

Japan's largest mobe operator to snub Samsung this winter

Matt Piechota

Re: This can't be true??

"All we hear is that Samsung is God, Samsung can do no wrong, Samsung is so cool. Yet apparently in Japan, they aren't so formidable."

Yeah, I mean the Japanese usually *love* Korean stuff. :-)

I remember reading a great article many moons ago about people that got really invested in the 3DFX vs. Nvidia graphics wars (I did say it was many moons), the point was users that showed brand loyalty to 3DFX only did a disservice to themselves by being loyal to one company. In this case, in 9 months when I can upgrade my phone, I'll simply pick out the best phone that fits my needs. The label on the front may hold a little sway, but not enough that Samsung will keep me as a customer if they drop the ball.

Samsung Mega 6.3: Enter the PHONDLESLAB

Matt Piechota

"Anyone using the word phablet in my earshot will be getting a punch on the hooter."

That covers the ladies, what happens when men say it?

(What exactly does "hooter" mean in the UK?)

No distro diva drama here: Penguinista favourite Debian turns 20

Matt Piechota

Advanced

Seems I made the opposite progression is the author would imply. I started out customizing kernels and hand selecting packages. Of course, in 1995 and Slackware (from floppies!) you kinda had to. Gentoo and several others along the way, I got to Ubuntu and ran that for quite awhile (2008-2012 or so). I got to the point that I didn't want to bother with all that any more. Why, when it just works? I moved to Mint after getting fed up with Unity, but I could see going with plain GNOME3 after using it for awhile on a few project systems. Work is almost entirely RHEL/CentOS.

I'd say an Advanced User is the one that knows how to spend time wisely. :)

NSA-proof email encryption? Cobblers, sniff German hackers

Matt Piechota

Re: Another possibly secure-ish system?

"I haven't seen any discussion of peer-to-peer e-mail. I know less about the vulnerabilities and risks involved, but it would seem on the face of it to be a solution to many of the issues using services owned by someone else. What are the drawbacks to such an approach? Would they outweigh the advantages of doing away with an untrusted e-mail provider?"

Email already is peer-to-peer (at least for Linux/UNIX systems) in theory. If your local machine can speak SMTP and is smart enough to look up the destination's MX record, it can talk directly to the destination (there's no "routing" above the IP level). If you and I both run email servers on our local networks, the only way the spooks will see if is if they're logging all 25/tcp traffic thru the internet (they may well be doing this, I haven't followed this in-depth). The solution to this is to use IPSEC or SSL between the mail systems, which works for a few systems but isn't really a solution for general email-anyone usage because you have to negotiate and trust keys. The other wrinkle is due to spam (or so they say), consumer ISPs started blocking outgoing 25/tcp long ago so you have to send mail thru their SMTP gateway.

Realistically, it's fairly easy to set up a system where you can communicate with a few people rather securely (think https (with the right options) web forum, SSH to a single Linux system, SSL/IPSEC mail as mentioned above, etc.)), but a secure system to communicate with anyone is really difficult.

Android approaches 80% smartphone share as Apple's iPhone grows old

Matt Piechota

Re: Why do they produce this bull??

"You can have 80% of a market , but if that only makes you 10p , while the other guy with 20% is earning £400 on every handset sold, then market share may not mean profit!"

Being that I don't produce phones myself, I couldn't care less who is and isn't making a profit on the hardware.

Matt Piechota

Re: Instead

"Instead of looking at it as Android v Apple v Blackberry v Windows it should be broken down into Manufacturer v Manufacturer v Manufacturer v Manufacturer."

I see it the opposite way. Manufacturers may come and go, but the platform is the important part. That's where the developers and (unfortunately) advertisers are going to look.

If I had to guess, I'd say you're an Apple fan and would rather see Apple's much-higher market share vs. manufacturers. Don't worry, next quarter the 5S will be out and IOS will tick up for awhile.

Manning's max sentence cut, may only spend up to 90 years in the cooler

Matt Piechota

Re: 136 years to 90 years...

"It makes me deeply uneasy at how the U.S. judicial system works. I.e. stacking up charge after charge so that even if the dedendant has a good lawyer who can whittle those down, the defendant is still likely to spend a deeply unreasonable amount of time behind bars with little hope of getting out. The sentencing is so off kitler that it beggars belief and it still surprises me that no one has managed to change it. Also the pressure to plea bargain is so intense that I'm sure innocent people do time as well as the guilty."

While I get what you're saying, if it didn't work that way what would be the reasoning for committing one crime vs. many? "If I murder one person, I might as well murder 10."

Xerox copier flaw changes numbers in scanned docs

Matt Piechota

Why do you need to compress *copy* data? Scan, OCR, etc. makes sense, but copies? They're just getting spit back out.

Limbaugh: If you hate Apple then you're a lefty blog-o-twat hipster

Matt Piechota

Re: Bah!

"*Is* Rush Limberger "the most popular talk show host in America"?"

He may well be, but I'd just chalk it up to:

- Not many people in the US listen to talk radio

- He has the market cornered on morons, whereas the sane people spread their listening over lots of other options.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_radio_programs

It's worth noting that 14 million people represents but 5% of the US. Sure that's a lot, but I'm sure there's 5% of the UK population that you're all rather embarrassed if too.

Secret ROYAL BABY birth VIDEO leaked! (And other malware scams)

Matt Piechota

US

It was being covered on the news networks in the US fairly heavily, but summer is pretty slow for news and Snowden isn't doing much right now.

FWIW: I saw almost nothing of it on Facebook, other than one or two friends posting, "so, the baby is born, can we move on now?" I chalk that up as having fine taste in friends.

Ubuntu boss: I want to make a Linux hybrid mobe SO GIVE ME $32m

Matt Piechota

Re: This whole crowdfunding thing?..

"(Now don't get belligerent like, it's just a question). In the days of yor, you would give money to a company with an expected return on investment based on your initial funding. So how does this whole fund crowdfunding work? Is it basically 17th century patronage by people with excessive dosh, (which generally didn't apply to established companies), or is there a deeper philosophy to it?"

Think of it as a slightly different direct version of capitalism. Instead of the consumer looking at the options that are available and choosing the best for them, they're influencing what options are available. It's just a different way of buying something, perhaps with a bit more choice for the consumer.

Tablets? Check. Mobes? Check. What's next, Apple? Fondlable CARS

Matt Piechota

Re: Great, so instead of.......

"I have tried new cars when renting and to me it is the worst feeling possible that the steering wheel is connected the the rest of the steering rack by a piece of code, going over a lump in the road that pulls the wheel to the left in other cars I have owned and doesn't in the newer ones makes me distrust them even more. The latest Astra was the worst for this, I got better feedback on Pole Position for the Atari 2600."

Judging modern cars by driving rentals is like judging the internet solely by looking at Yahoo!. Rentals are (generally) the basest, balndest transportation appliances that can be found.

Tweet like escaping Hell depends on it, Twitter Catholics told

Matt Piechota

"'True' religion is practiced everyday by millions of people, just not in an institutionalized way. Institutionalized religion implies that God has an ego and is one hell of a pendant. Seems a bit off for an all powerful super being to be interested in any of those things."

I've always wondered why God would want people grovelling around and singing dreary songs at him all the time.

How the clammy claws of Novell NetWare were torn from today's networks

Matt Piechota

Re: Incredible..

"That "ABEND" needs to be explained on El Reg..."

Considering the Software Devs I go to lunch with were 6 years old when Netware 4 was released, I don't think it's that incredible. I'd imagine there are a few IT folks here that have never seen Netware, no?

Favorite memory of Netware: Coming into the server room and only seeing:

C:\>

on the server console.

Nokia tears wrapper off Lumia 1020 monster imaging mobe

Matt Piechota

EOS, eh?

I wonder if Canon might have something to say about EOS, given that it's billed as a camera.

Chromebooks now the fastest-growing segment of PC market

Matt Piechota
FAIL

Re: Statistics, and damned statistics!

Perhaps you should read the article:

"Baker says that in the past eight months, Google's browser-based devices have managed to capture 20 to 25 per cent of the US market for laptops that cost less than $300."

Pirate Bay bod and pals bag $100k to craft NSA-proof mobe yammer app

Matt Piechota

So...

XMPP with Diffe-Helman turned on in SSL?

Jelly Bean finally overtakes Gingerbread in Android share

Matt Piechota

Old version == second devices?

There's no way to quantify this I'd guess, but I wonder how many of these old devices are people's "second" devices? I have an Android 2.2 phone (Motorola Droid) that does nothing but sit in it's dock and stream Pandora to the speakers in my living room.

British lord sets new world electric vehicle speed record

Matt Piechota

Oil

I'm looking forward to this brave new world where British cars only leak oil from the drive train.

Mint 15 freshens Ubuntu's bad bits

Matt Piechota
Thumb Up

Re: advice before trying mint

That's good advice for any laptop and any Linux, really. Although sticking with more "Business" laptops tends to be a lot easier than "consumer" models, generally speaking.

Obama says US won't scramble jets or twist arms for Snowden

Matt Piechota
Devil

Obvious?

Even my non-techie wife said to me this morning, "did anyone think the NSA wasn't doing this?". I get that "public proof" is a big deal, but I just kinda figured the Chinese are trying to hack the US, the US is trying to hack the Chinese, and both are keeping tabs on traffic on their networks.

Jailed LulzSec hacker Cleary coughs to child porn images, will be freed soon

Matt Piechota

Re: What a laugh

"The only thing Assnonymous and Lulsec members regret is getting caught."

I hope you're not implying you never did anything in your teens that you regretted later. Kid makes stupid mistake, pays his dues in jail. I think he's allowed to regret it.

(I don't much about this particular case, just folks that get up on their high horse)

MacBook Air now uses PCIe flash... but who'd Apple buy it from?

Matt Piechota

90%s

I'm guessing Apple's research went something like this:

For 90% of Mac Pro buyers, an iMac or laptop was sufficient but they wanted the shiny box.

For 90% of the remaining 10%, they only have a Mac Pro to drive extra monitors.

The remaining 1% are actually using the Mac Pro as a high-power workstation, and those people have real work to do and aren't too worried about cable-blight.

Asus FonePad: You may feel a bit of a spanner

Matt Piechota

Re: Does anyone make a bluetooth handset?

Sorry, out of stock. I have the black model, but I so would have bought the red had it been available when I bought it!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/8928/

Sony sucker-punches Xbox on price, specs, DRM-free gaming

Matt Piechota

Not yet

I still haven't forgiven Sony for disabling Linux support on the PS3. My device had it, and I used it (although it wasn't *that* great). Made a decent platform for MAME though.

I got the PS3 as a lapsed gamer (Dreamcast and PC), and frankly I'm still lapsed. I guess I have other ways to entertain myself these days.

Boffins hide cute kitty behind invisibility shield

Matt Piechota

Re: Shopped!

Ah, but the object appears to be a box, which as you know a cat can't resist.

Amazon yoinks Dora and SpongeBob from Netflix for MEELLLIONS

Matt Piechota

UK?

So are we talking UK rights or worldwide? Maybe Dora will pop up on Amazon Instant video (or whatever they call it here in the US).

Anonymous 'plonks' names, addresses of far-right EDL types on web

Matt Piechota

"I'm one of the 130,000 of the EDL facebook likes and know quite a few members.

I've never been arrested for any violent crime, i've never been to a football match, I don't drink smoke or take drugs and I'm as far from racist as possible. I am not in the slightest bit racist, I don't care what colour your skin is as that is not what defines a person.

I am sick of the liberal left wing nonsense that the EDL is a far right organisation, what exactly makes it far right, read the mission statement there is nothing far right about it. Now when you look at Islam it ticks all the boxes to be classed as far right but no one seems to point this out."

So what you're saying is the EDL is being unfairly labelled based the actions of a few of your members and the media is going along with it? Please, do go on.

Hammond pleads guilty to Stratfor hack: 'It's a relief'

Matt Piechota

Re: Stories on May and Hammond

"Where's Clarkson?"

I was thinking the exact same thing.

YouTube Trends Map pokes tacky underbelly of American psyche

Matt Piechota

Re: WTF?

"Californians, much like New Yorkers, think they are the entire country."

And yet, the middle folks most often use the phrase "Real Americans".

Attention large Linux workloads

Matt Piechota

Binaries

I've run Linux on POWER, and it always seems like my damn users always come up with some piece of software that isn't available on anything other than x86.

Good news: Debian 7 is rock solid. Bad news: It's called Wheezy

Matt Piechota

Re: What do people do on these OS's?

"As along time and mostly happy windows user I read these Linux articles with interest. Not wanting to start a war but genuinely curious.

What do people do on these OS's?"

My normal computing. Mail, Web, streaming TV, etc. The rare occasions I need to edit audio or video, there are tools that work fine. I don't know how to use Photoshop, so it would be lost on me. Plus, I can't really draw.

Of course, I've never been someone that learns a tool, but concepts. I think in terms of what task I need to accomplish, not what buttons I have to hit. This way has it's pros and cons, but I can generally move between different tools and accomplish the same tasks relatively easily. I'm not going to say that I'm not more comfortable in Excel than LibOffice's Calc, but if I had to use calc at work I'd be comfortable pretty quick.

Bill Gates offends Koreans after sticking hand down trousers

Matt Piechota

Re: manners

"Simple things too, when I am wearing sunglasses I take them off when I am talking to someone (this can be bent a little if it is bloody sunny out, but I used to keep them on when in a store and grabbing a couple of things all through checkout, I realized it is actually quite rude, and adds a nice personal touch to the interaction)"

You wear sunglasses indoors? Hmm, that's... rude.

Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow

Matt Piechota

Re: Wonder if it will fit in an altoids tin?

The tin I have here appears to be wide enough, at 2 3/16 and long enough at 3 1/2. With the rounded corners of the tin and the board, I'm guessing that's not an accident.

Hardware hacker unifies 15 retro consoles in format frenzy

Matt Piechota

GF

"I am betting he doesnt have a girlfriend."

I think (hope) the knick-knacks would say differently.

German boffins turn ALCOHOL into hydrogen at low temp

Matt Piechota

"All I know is I can turn beer into water, sodium, and potassium at room temp at a rate of 16oz per 1/2 hour."

That rate seems a bit slow, slacker.

That Firefox OS mobe: The sorta phone left behind after a mugging

Matt Piechota
FAIL

Re: This article is missing something...

"Some people want smartphones, but don't need all the app-gumph that comes with it (and the requirement to spend, spend, spend on apps)."

I must have missed that part of my phone contract; I have yet to spend a penny at the Google store. I generally find plenty of free options that are suitable for my relatively light phone usage (email, social media, restaurants, maps, etc.).

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