Posts by Thought About IT

Lenovo splits to cover domestic, emerging markets

Back doors

I love my ThinkPad, but I feel uneasy about automatically updating its system software from China.

BBC botnet investigation turns hacks into hackers

Clearly a case where ...

... the law is an ass!

Such action is probably the only way to make some people aware that their PCs have been compromised. It's certainly the most efficient, and ISPs should be encouraged to take similar action, or at least notify their customers, when they detect suspicious activity on their networks.

Microsoft says it again - no second beta for Windows 7

Ubuntu

"Ubuntu is just as easy to use as Windoze"

So what. Most people use applications, rather than an operating system.

Yahoo! mocks Google Privacy Theatre

I'd like to make a donation to scroogle ...

... but then they'd know who I am!

BNP races to get membership list off the net

wikileaks is having problems

"Wikileaks servers are currently overloaded by extreme popularity".

I suppose a DDOS attack is one way to stop the list from falling into anyone else's hands.

MS kills off OneCare to introduce free security software

Resource hog

Either OneCare was using my computer, or I was, so it had to go. Mind you, most of the commercial AV products have a worse effect on PCs than the problem they purport to fix.

Google to ‘anonymize’ user IPs after 9 months

Alternative search

I use scroogle (be careful, that's scroogle.org, NOT scroogle.com!) for searches that I want to keep private. I don't trust google not to misuse the data they are storing on us all.

Engineer accidentally deletes cloud

Cloud deleted

Doesn't seem to have made the sun shine!

Nvidia throws itself under the bus with chip defect, delays and lost sales

They have driver problems as well

I've got an NVidia GeForce 7900 GTX in my tower system, and its fan screams at top speed whenever Vista awakes from sleep mode. The only way to shut it up is a reboot. NVidia have known about this problem for over 12 months, but don't seem capable of fixing it, so I'm not surprised they're in trouble.

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

NASA has no doubt

Uncredited wrote: "The 'standard climate change denier stuff' as you call it actually originates from the 'humans causing everything' group. How many 'deniers' have been accused to be on the payroll of oil companies or the car industry or other heavy industry? It's still standard stuff for most members of The Church of Al Gore. These relentless accusations actually made me start thinking that if this is the main argument for human-caused global warming then maybe this is just another 'the earth is flat' argument, if you believe otherwise then you are nothing more than a heathen and should swallow the 'truth' without thinking independently."

I really don't want climate change to be anthropomorphic, if only for the sake of my young daughter's generation, but what advantage is it to NASA to say that it is? They can see that the Earth is not flat, and state unequivocally that we are to blame:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/GlobalWarmingQandA/

Background info on The Heartland Institute

I see that the Heartland Institute, which is behind that report, also opposes tobacco control measures, and is funded by the tobacco and oil industries:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute

Underground tools foil generic virus detection

@ amanfromMars

'tis a pity that Google don't have a Martian to English translator!

Scientists warn on climatic 'tipping points'

Who needs evidence?

There seem to be a lot of people here who don't allow any amount of evidence to the contrary to affect their beliefs. A bit like religion, or more like the smoking lobby really. Perhaps our brains have been hardwired to self-destruct - a defect that wasn't spotted before release to manufacturing. Rendering the planet unfit for human habitation should do the trick.