* Posts by Matt Piechota

301 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Aug 2006

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2nd-hand Popemobile, also used by Neil Armstrong, for sale

Matt Piechota

Wheelbase

Looking at the article, the wheelbase is 160", but that's not the width. The wheelbase is the distance between the axles.

We Americans have big cars, but even a 1965 Lincoln isn't *that* wide.

RunPee

Matt Piechota
Joke

@AudiGuy

"And just one more reason I have no desire to ever own a "smartphone"."

Don't worry, with that failure of logic you might not be able to use one. :)

(I kid! I kid!)

Apple eyes phallic iPhone, iPod charger

Matt Piechota

It's all tingly

""Note that the vibrations can be generated in a non-audible frequency range (less than 20 Hz or greater than 20K Hz) to prevent users from hearing the acoustic charging signal," the filing says, answering the question that we're sure was on your worried mind."

I dunno, what's on my mind is I don't really want ear buds producing more emag fields next to my brain.

HTC says smartphone bootloader unlock software out next month

Matt Piechota
Thumb Up

Hello Moto

So how do I forward this to Motorola et al. with a not so subtle hint that this puts HTC towards the top of my list for any future phone purchases? :)

Bloke pissing in reservoir prompts 8m gallon flush

Matt Piechota

Clearly

"I'm still so going once they've refilled it, filling up on the poor excuse for beer that they have, and taking a pee in the biggest flushing toilet in the world! :D"

You clearly haven't had Oregon beer, or frankly any of the other non-mainstream beer in the US.

http://www.rogue.com/awards/awards.php

http://www.calderabrewing.com/Page.asp?NavID=7

http://www.deschutesbrewery.com/brews/accolades

Samsung readies 'world's first' solar netbook

Matt Piechota

Egypt

Take a note from the egyptians and use a complex system of mirror to direct the sun's rays to the panel.

Insurance firm pushes out iPhone app that rates driving ability

Matt Piechota

Performance

I'm sure that cornering performance doesn't mean more are G's better, right? :) It would be rather fun to have a high score chart for particular parts of the road to see who made it thru the fastest though.

Coder Android tablet love on (a bit of a) wane

Matt Piechota

Second Angle

There's another way to read the results, since the company that did the survey is selling cross-platform tools. Perhaps they're seeing a downtick in interest in Android due to developers giving up on cross-platform and just coding for Android directly. Android is starting to pass everyone in market share, it could very much be that giving up on the other platforms.

Skype plugs Android privacy flaw

Matt Piechota

Pants

The 3G service on Verizon wasn't all that useful unless you were making international calls. It dialed a number (408 area code) and then did some Skype magic to connect the phone to the Internet user. What was really awful was you needed two apps, the 3G 'Skype Mobile' and regular 'Skype' if you wanted to use Skype on both Wifi and 3G.

Scientists reveal eight-legged Jurassic beast

Matt Piechota

Syfy

I'm sure the Syfy channel is firing up Movie Generator 8.7i as we speak.

A sample for the non-US folks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFfqMxjOZQU

Death threats against 'worst song ever' YouTube teen

Matt Piechota

Lift up your heart

Valid Autotune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW6jW9y59JY

And, the most legit cover:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW6jW9y59JY

WTF is... 4K x 2K?

Matt Piechota

RE: porn

"4k resolution porn..............................mmmmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......."

I happen to know someone who airbrushed still-picture porn for awhile, you really don't want to see porn actors in high detail.

("eww, herpes scars")

Windows 7 gets the Star Wars treatment

Matt Piechota

Even

Even slower day for comments if you need to comment on it.

George Lucas 'very happy' with 3D Phantom Menace

Matt Piechota

Tittle

"I'd say this is more of a challenge than what they did before; mathematically I don't see what they can come up with beyond the effect of a diorama filled with flat cardboard cutouts, so I'm intrigued if it's better than dire."

If the special '3D' version of Harry Potter 5 I saw in a theater is anything to go by, yes, it'll be a set of cardboard cut-outs in 3D.

BA jihadist relied on Jesus-era encryption

Matt Piechota

Spicy

"In South Africa you could be prosecuted for using the word "k*ffir" which is regarded as a racist and demeaning term."

There goes my dream of opening a Thai restaurant there.

http://www.amazon.com/Kaffir-Oz-grown-Organically-Natural-Pesticides/dp/B000MWKQRS

Virtual Facebook thief jailed for two years

Matt Piechota
Stop

Er...

"he should be offered a job, not a prison sentence! He'd be a great asset to have on board for security testing!"

So you're going to hire a convict with a gambling problem and just trust that he's not going to pull something on you when he has a string of bad luck?

HBGary's nemesis is a '16-year-old schoolgirl'

Matt Piechota
Paris Hilton

SD card?

What's the point of using an SD card, other than it being a bit easier to hide? I'd think to be leet[0] she'd use Live CDs.

[0] I use that word to demonstrate how un-leet I am.

Paris, because I'm trying to make some tenuous joke so the people on the internet think I'm cool, interesting, and/or funny.

Canonical pares Ubuntu down to 2 editions

Matt Piechota

Xubuntu, Kubuntu

"Kubuntu? Xubuntu? They are both extremely competent distros in their own right. what happens to them?"

Neither of those are, strictly-speaking, Ubuntu distributions. They're official side-project 'spins' that don't really come into this discussion. So I think the answer is, 'they stay the same'.

Portsmouth stretches the Olympic-sized swimming pool

Matt Piechota

Hm

So it's olympic-length, just not sized. Simple enough.

Gamers raise millions for charity

Matt Piechota

In a similar vein:

Child's Play set up by the guys at Penny Arcade.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

Why do we need SANs?

Matt Piechota
WTF?

Er, DAS

Are you running some sort of redundant cluster file system or something? With a SAN or filer, if one of my ESX servers dies another can just restart the VM within a minute or two. How do you do that with DAS?

Apple brands Intel 'Light Peak' as Thunderbolt

Matt Piechota

dongle

"Is there anyone who is in the market for a grand's worth of laptop who has any need for a permanently fitted DVD drive? What do people use these things for?"

I'm in the middle on this one: while I don't really use the drive in my laptop all that often, I'm pretty sure I don't want to carry around an external drive just in case. So I guess I'm saying I'd rather carry a little extra weight/size than a seperate item.

Free Android encryption comes to Egypt

Matt Piechota

A rose

That *has* to be an assumed name.

NASA snaps Sun in super STEREO

Matt Piechota
Flame

Old Hat

So when is the QUADROPHONIC mission scheduled to launch?

SAN vs NAS: Spelling out the differences

Matt Piechota
Alert

Reaction time

"Using iSCSI over IP is a much better solution. One of the reasons being that, unlike FCoE, it can be switched. It also as a lot of other advantages over FCoE. That allows for MUCH easier scalling of large SANs."

Unless you're doing something relatively deterministic since TCP (not to mention routing) can't guarantee delivery in a specified amount of time.

Mexican woman gets litigious on Top Gear's ass

Matt Piechota
Thumb Down

Irony, thy name is hamster

What I find genuinely funny is using a racial stereotype is the lazy, feckless, although not flatulent way to do humo(u)r. Come on, they can do better than that.

Speedlink goes gold for Competition Pro silver jubilee

Matt Piechota
Thumb Down

Bah

Wake me up when WICO makes a new ErgoStick. Now that was a true wonder of a device.

iPhone crashes car stereos, Toyota warns

Matt Piechota

Foo

"How long before a similar problem occurs that affects a more important system like stability control or abs?"

Really? Somehow I don't think there's much of a link between the stereo and vehicle management systems.

In defence of Comic Sans

Matt Piechota

Re: Cookie

"Can we have some sort of alternative CSS cookie that stores a preference which renders the site in Comic Sans or Default depending on our choice?"

Firefox -> Preferences, Content -> Fonts -> Advanced, Uncheck "Allow pages to set their own fonts".

IE -> Tools -> internet options -> general -> accessibility, ignore fonts

Fanboi king hails Apple 'love affair with open web'

Matt Piechota

Web Company!

By that definition, Redhat is also a web company. 99% of my interaction with them is via HTTP! There's a little SMTP and maybe FTP making up the other 1%.

Apple patents miracle combo mouse-keyboard

Matt Piechota
Welcome

Model M

Yep, Model M is where it's it. This one is old enough to vote. The one I have at home is old enough to rent a car (25 years).

Couple crash into church, curse satnav

Matt Piechota
Headmaster

Hey wait

I thought only Americans were idiots, based on comments on other articles. Say it ain't so!

NOVA 2 for iOS

Matt Piechota
Flame

Quake 2

Wow, that second shot looks straight out of Quake 2. Does no one have OSHA (aka Health and Safety over there) in the future?

Brazilian cult condemns USB

Matt Piechota
Stop

P

It was the best of tines, it was the worst of tines...

Yank fires up iPhone-controlled beer cannon

Matt Piechota
Thumb Down

Corrections

Just to correct some of the folks above: there's plenty of decent American beer from the smaller breweries; we just keep it for ourselves. I'd put a micro up against any of the English beer we commonly see on this side of the pond (Bass, Newcastle, and sometimes Boddington). But, I know there's better ales in England that don't make it here. See how that works?

And as for cans, they have their uses for things like camping and boating. The trick is find a micro that cans stuff. A local one here (Sly Fox) cans their Pale Ale, IPA, and Weiss for a contract with the local sports teams. You do NOT want to give Philly fans bottles to throw at people. Caldera IPA from Oregon is also a fantastic canned IPA.

http://www.slyfoxbeer.com/index.php/front/beer_packaged

http://www.calderabrewing.com/index.asp

Android's Gingerbread finagled onto iPhone

Matt Piechota

tripod

"Why is it that developers clever enough to hack the iPhone and install Android are always too thick to understand the purpose of a camera tripod?"

That's a hardware issue. These are software guys.

Disconsolate Spanish smokers driven out into blizzard

Matt Piechota
Thumb Down

pity the foo'

"So there to the language prigs, anyone would think you French insisting on an unchanging language."

Which dictionary, Urban? :)

I'll just complain that we should not be intentionally adding completely non-logical elements to the language. What next, 'ax' becomes a valid replacement for 'ask'?

Facebook stat flood gives hope to mateless, dateless

Matt Piechota

Heh.

It's funny, when having friends via computer (dial-up BBS, early internet) wasn't 'average' I seem to remember folks justifying how awesome it was because they interacted on intellect and whatnot. Now that everyone is doing it, it's lame and shallow and everyone is fake.

Here's a hint: most of the people on Facebook are, for better or worse, exactly who they appear to be. The few I know that use assumed names are teachers (avoiding school district snooping) or extreme privacy worriers. Of course, I have met every single person on my friends list, so maybe I'm not average.

Skype's mega-FAIL: exec cops to cause

Matt Piechota

Cloud 2

"Then it struck me. Those clever chaps had activated their own botnet of Skype clients and promoted thousands of ordinary customer peers to be mega supernodes"

Just go to Amazon (or another cloud provider) and ask for them? Or a non-cloud traditional hosting company.

Robo stealth bomber piggybacks on NASA's shuttle jumbo

Matt Piechota

@erase

"The only problem with that is the code that decides whether you have crashed in enemy teritory, or just taken a heavy landing on a carrier!"

Have it erase after it touches down every time, just to be safe. It's not like you couldn't just re-flash it down in the hanger before the next sortie. But, you could always have a GPS or proximity sensor flag. If ("on the deck within a mile of X" == FALSE) erase_memory; self-destruct;

Seagate takes a terabyte of the storage apple

Matt Piechota

7200

It's a first for 7200RPM. This is aimed more for Enterprise storage, not really a laptop drive. Unfortunate too, since internal encryption should be standard on all laptops.

PayPal banned WikiLeaks after US gov intervention

Matt Piechota
FAIL

Seems right

Wikileaks broke US law by releasing apparently classified documents. A US company suspended their service, just as they would for any illegal activity. How is this news?

Here's a hint: if you plan on pissing off *any* country and break its laws, don't rely on services based in that country. Duh.

Apple sells more mobile PCs than Dell

Matt Piechota
Boffin

Remember me on this computer

"Browser figures don't help either as Linux users may fake their user agent."

That may hav been true in the past, but I for one haven't bothered in years. Generally, web sites have woken up to Firefox so most sites work fine without bothering.

That said, I'm probably one of the only people (perhaps THE only person) I know who doesn't have a Windows or Mac machine at home. I *do* know more than 100 hundred people and only a couple have a Linux install, so the numbers probably aren't that far off. I do have a work XP laptop, but I'm very strict about not using XP for anything other than work.

Tehran conscripts Ninja masters to crush democracy

Matt Piechota
Thumb Up

Post anonymously

"I suspect I know more about snowballs and baseball than most people who spell the word "rumour"."

That's gold, right there. :)

US iPad to get BBC pay app - with 'handcrafted British feel'

Matt Piechota
Joke

Feel

How are they going to get the iPad to leave a little oil spot whenever I set it down?

97% of INTERNET NOW FULL UP, warn IPv4 shepherd boys

Matt Piechota
Thumb Down

M&Ms

IPv6 really annoys me in one way: the 'recommended' way that most of the guides use things like /64 for a subnet mask. Sure, addresses are plentiful *now*, but did you not learn? Really? I don't think I need to have exponentially more addresses that the entire internet on my home network.

iPAD, KINDLE, all tablets and slablets MADE OBSOLETE

Matt Piechota

Roll up

If it rolls up into something the size of a small flashlight (er, torch), water bottle, or a large pen, I'm game. That should give them room for the battery and chips...

Ford secrets thief caught red handed with stolen blueprints

Matt Piechota
FAIL

Watch list

*A* watch list. There's other lists, like for international art thieves, Nazis, escappees, etc.

Linux servers for Windows folk: go on, give it a bash

Matt Piechota

@Easy to use...

/That would be Apples OSX server. Go ahead burn me./

Nah, Apple already did that when they pulled support.

Apache threatens Oracle with Java exit

Matt Piechota

Re: Time for a Java Fork

Patent licenses. Without them, you're just inviting Oracle to sue.

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