Posts by frymaster 385 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Feb 2008
...you're holding it where the antenna is
this will also cause problems with the iphone4*, EVEN WITH the bumper - all the bumper does is prevent the extra signal loss caused by direct skin contact with the antenna. _That_'s the design flaw in the iphone 4 (that doesn't exist, according to Mr Jobs)
* and, yes, any other phone with its antenna there
"Now people can't open things and they are only doing this to try to force people to upgrade to the newer version, paying LOTS of dosh!"
all you need to be able to read the new formats on office 2003 is a download from microsoft. The fact that so many companies don't have this installed staggers me
that being said, _BECAUSE_ so many companies are inept, then yes, when sending stuff to other people I make use it's in the old format. but it's still an epic fail on their part
Microsoft's own viewpoint is that once the next version of IE comes out, comparing javascript performance will be essentially irrelevant since they're all basically really fast, in the same way that noone worries about the processor impact of playing back mp3s.
(for what it's worth, MS claim IE9 is faster than FF, but from their point of view, all that's important is that it's in the same ballpark as other browsers, as opposed to the fail that is every other IE)
"hover the mouse over an option — and before you know it the fucking option launches — before I have even had the chance to see what my choices might have been"
can you rephrase that, preferably with more specifics? I have absolutely no idea what you might be meaning. By which I don't mean, "it could be one of several things" or "he's probably meaning x but let's be pedantic", i literally have no clue what you might be referring to
waiting only 5 days before posting a previously-unseen exploit for software which you KNOW has a regular monthly patch cycle isn't responsible disclosure. Given the timing (pretty much immediately after a patch release), 2 months isn't an unreasonable time to wait (i.e. the August updates... if this had taken place a couple of weeks ago, I'd have said July)
it's not ok, but take a look at the level of paranoia and inanity in the comments surrounding yours ;)
and, at the end of the day, what went wrong? for 4 days, a security update will have updated an entire application, not just the shared component of said application that needed the security update. It's hardly the end of the world
if it hadn't been for the re-branding of the toolbar to Bing, this article could be rewritten as "MS update updates MS product"... it's a fail by microsoft, and I'm sitting here laughing at them, but I'm not about to get my tinfoil hat out just yet
... it'll be the large companies that do (microsoft or google)
Microsoft's been through this before - http://blog.mediacoderhq.com/microsoft-mugged-over-vc-1-codec-patent-terms/ so their reluctance is understandable... ditto apple, which leaves google out in the cold
but more importantly, it means it won't work on your portable media players and your set top boxes, and while it works in firefox just now, it's liable to disappear once the submarines start surfacing
like, for example, microsoft's own, ms-pl, which seems specifically designed for patent immunity
however, it's not especially designed for open source - in that it doesn't enforce derivatives to be open - so google rolling their own makes sense
let's say I'm a search engine company called Boogle. I release, on an open-source license, plans for a new vacuum cleaner called, let's say, Byson, which uses dual cyclone bagless technology. I tell everyone that this design is not encumbered by patents, and that any company at all should be free to implement this.
What would happen? Anyone putting a product on the market would get the pants sued off them, that's what. Why? Just because google is SAYING this codec isn't encumbered by patents doesn't mean it IS. They might believe it, but belief doesn't make it so.
while the right of people in the US to draw these pictures is protected free speech, there's nothing that says facebook has to host them
the whole idea of "let's intentionally mock, insult and abuse an entire culture because some pretty shitty people self-label themselves as representatives of that culture day" idea never appealed to me
"a few KB"?
seriously?
every post made in every newsgroup a server supports must be sent to that server, REGARDLESS of whether or not any users ever subscribe. with binary newsgroups, that's an astonishingly large amount of data every day
not to mention the disk cost involved in having a decent retention time
...the whole point I was making is this isn't something the provider controls or limits, if you've got a hero there's literally no difference between tethering and normal (unless you do DPI and start sniffing the user agent of the browser)
there are other networks that offer unlimited or pseudo-unlimited internet, though I'd imagine if you tried to use it as a replacement for your home broadband you'd get slapped around with their AUP pretty quickly
I have no idea how you'd add more bandwidth on orange though, which is a shame (but that's my provider failing, not the phone)
it's just an action movie. if they'd filmed it in 3d and coloured everyone blue it would have been avatar. It's a nice way to spend an afternoon with your mates before hitting the pubs, and it's fine for that
do I look back on it as one of the highlights of my cinema-going life? nope
do I look back on it as a disapointment? nope, it's exactly what everyone know it would be, and it's _fine_ like that
...they tend to assume that, because they're google, that means they can automatically do something better than people who've been doing it a while, just coz they're awesome.
Hence things like their browser being absolutely pants in terms of accessibility, because they've never really done desktop apps before and don't have the experience, even if the core functionality may be very good. Hence them totally not understanding how people buy phones. (though I'm inclined to believe the mobile phone market in the US is bonkers anyway)
on the flipside, sometimes they come out with things (like, for example, android :P ) that are pretty damn sweet.
he says it's better than theora, for example, and it seems to be better than h264 _used_ to be
it's the patent-encumbrance that's the real killer though.. there should be a law like with trademarks where if you see someone violating your patent, you can't just hide until a bigger target comes along, you have to take action
"But you also have to ask your steam daddy for permission everytime you want to install that game "
that's a bit of a skewed viewpoint... it's a digital download service, of COURSE it's going to contant their servers. where else does it get the game from? I will note that, unlike many other digital download services (*cough* itunes *cough*) there are no restrictions on redownloading. There's no restrictions on the number of computers you can play stuff on, save that you can only have steam in online mode in one place at a time (all single player and most multiplayer games work in offline mode, save those which use steam's intergrated multiplayer functionality)
"far from stimulating creativity or rewarding developers this will make competition virtually impossible, remove any incentive for creativity and make developers a sweat-shop employees"
you're saying where a service that allows developers of any size to sell games for any price, to a large market, and get a very impressive cut of the sales (i've never seen anything implying it's less than half; the usual figure mentioned is a 70/30 split for the developer... compare that to traditional publishing models) will _stifle_ creativity? So far the ability to mass-market niche games has led to an explosion in the casual/indie/non-AAA market. In bricks-and-mortar stores, you are competing for shelf space and so much strive to always be the biggest and most impressive to maximise your brief exposure.
by contrast, on steam there's unlimited shelf space, and you can make any kind of game you want... if it doesn't sell well, you don't make money, but since the publisher doesn't have a large up-front investment, you don't have to make a game just because the publisher wants it
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25595
I'm a total steam fanboi but an important clarification about cross-platform games needs to be made - some of the games which, when bought AS OF NOW will be available on both platforms, are ONLY available on the PC if you bought them previously i.e. just because you already own the PC version does NOT mean you own the mac version, if you purchased the game previously
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9439-QHKN-1308 has a list of games where you DO get this.
There's perfectly good reasons for that - many mac conversions are done by separate companies and I'm they want a cut of the sales - but it still potentially sucks. The only valve game so far to have a mac version IS on the cross-platform list, as are quite a lot of indy games and some of the old lucasarts stuff (which uses an emulator anyway) as well as Football Manager.
however, while new purchasers get to play civ4 on either platform, existing owners will have to buy a new copy.
again, there's valid reasoning behind it, but from a consumer point of view it's still something to be aware of
"This is a working draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time"
doesn't look like it's a standard yet.
or, given MS's approach to support and backwards compatability, are you SERIOUSLY advocating they support the current version, given that it'll then be frozen at that level for backwards compatability reasons for several years?
...there was an overwhelming backlash against vista, yet it turned out not to be shit (it was nothing like what it was hyped to be, yet it was better than XP, which is all that matters if you're choosing which to get
and yet idiots continue to say it's shit, just because the media tells them to ;)
...is that it's just another rebranded 7digital music store, and NOT something started from scratch for Ubuntu. The advantage is you have a ready-made library of music. The disadvantage is you have to use the formats that are already there
it could be worse, a few years ago almost all music on 7digital was wma+drm
very bad idea, that just sounds like blackmail to me... having said that, some sort of "code licence" sounds very intriguing, tho I suspect there's too much intertia for it to get anywhere
Consider this scenario:
- Researcher finds vulnerability.
- Researcher notifies company.
- Company determines it's valid, but that noone is exploiting it, and so schedules the fix for the next scheduled update*.
- Researcher thinks this is too far away, releases vuln. details, company releases fix faster.
In this situation, it can be argued the researcher has done harm, because now the details are out on the web. Sure, the fix is out too, but "fix available" doesn't equate to "user machines protected", especially if it's an out-of-band release.
*We do all agree that regular update cycles are a Good Thing, yes? Because by giving companies a chance to plan updates there's the possibility they might actually install them, rather than going "these might break something, we'd better play it safe" as they trickle in?
Yes, it's not the government's job to nanny private businesses. But neither is it private businesses' job to rearrange their business model because of people ripping them off. So I don't think that argument holds water.
Of course, a better one would be that it's in the businesses' best interests to live in the real world, maximise their profit by exploiting different payment modeals and stop antagonising their customers, but I don't see that's something you can _INSIST_ they do, whereas the government upholding the law kinda is.
the DSRs allow for express delivery NOT to be refunded.
You basically charge for the item and p&p, then have a separate charge for express delivery.
The item + standard p&p is refunded, the express delivery service is not (because it's a service)
basically, as long as there's a cheaper delivery method that isn't taking the piss included in the price, the express delivery service is counted as a non-refundable service
so now users can make a torrent seem to have fake peers as well as the tracker... if the companies are doing their jobs properly*, this shouldn't matter... a valid fragment of the file (i.e. not just random bytes) should be uploaded from the peer to the company before they record that IP as being infringeing
* pretty sure they _aren't_ this diligent... all this'll do is make them wise up quicker, though, rather it waiting until the comedy moment when someone's webcam gets sued
...is that when people protest in person - whether they just make themselves noticed or blockade entirely - all other visitors to that building get to see what they are protesting about. When you DDOS a website, all people get to know is that the site's been DDOS'd
seems pretty clear to me that it fits the technical definition of a DDOS, and the intent... you don't get a free pass just because you're claiming to be doing it for a better reason than "for the lulz"
as far as music goes, it appears as a USB mass storage device, so any media player written in the last 10 years should be fine
as regards contacts syncing... to my certain knowledge it can sync directly with desktop outlook on windows via an application, with an exchange server via internet or LAN, or with google's own online system. No idea about other methods.
"Developer warrants that the software shall not contain any code that does not support a software requirement and weakens the security of the application..."
Isn't that just saying "developer hasn't stuck in any easter eggs or back doors"? It says the software can't contain any code that DOES NOT SUPPORT A REQUIREMENT and weakens security. In your example, there's presumably a need to verify the password, so even if that code is going to bring down Western Civilisation With its Use of the String Type(!) it's supporting a software requirement, so that's OK.
This is why MS policy is now "no easter eggs" (they were famous for them back in the day)
http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/10/21/483608.aspx
ie6 was released in 2001 and still gets security updates. Conversely, FF2, released in 2006, does not. from that I conclude that IE is better and plugging vulnerabiities
...more seriously, I know what you mean, but there's more than one aspect to security. For example, IE's once-a-month update cycle means compulsive-updaters are less protected for up to a few weeks, but has the upside of being the difference between large corporations updating once a month, after testing, or large corporations not bothering at all because tracking and testing updates as they're drip-fed out is too much hassle
which is better? depends who you are, really
because icanhascheezburger.com is a well-known file sharing site</sarcasm>
though the guy a couple of comments up could be right - specifically one of the things blocked* was a wordpress server used for serving images - if the issue is blocks are being applied per-hostname or per-IP instead of per-URL, that could explain it. still nothing to do with traffic shaping though
*I used the work "block" because the symptoms were the webserver you tried to connect to appeared to return an "Error 500 internal server error" page... whether or not it was a misbehaving transparent proxy or filtering proxy or whatever, it's definately a blocking of the traffic rather than a simple misrouting / dropping-it-on-the-floor
quite often in the linux world, it's defined as "there is a kernel module for this" and userland programs to leverage said support aren't mentioned. The work ubuntu does is integration work i.e. ensuring that the nvidia drivers can be downloaded and auto-updated via the package management system, in sync with kernel updates, instead of having to manually recompile the kernel module with every update, which is what you have to do with the nvidia-supplied module
ubutnu are very obviously standing on the shoulders of others - almost all the software is written by other people, and even the package management owes everything to debian - but they are still adding value
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