Posts by asdf

Oof! Acer suffers 25 per cent hit to PC sales in turbulent Q1

Re: An amazing amount of excuses

Damned if it isn't the most user friendly spyware ever invented. The OS itself is easily Microsoft's best but that whole trying to out spy Google means no dice.

Acer = Taiwan first (and often only) = Fail

Acer is what happens when nationalism comes before making money. Acer actually had a CEO (Italian I believe) with a good plan to grow them in mobile but they pushed him out when he dared to think about hiring non Taiwanese engineers. The market tends to punish such stupidity as this headline (and many before it) shows.

Linux command line mistake 'nukes web boss'S biz'

Re: rm -rf /usr/bin/bash

I don't mind downvotes when there are no refuting comments. Means I am simply offending the only nix I have ever seen is Linux sheep.

Re: rm -rf /usr/bin/bash

> in most commercial POSIX systems by default, outside Linux world.

Most as in the number of other unique systems not total unit sales as Mac OS X does include bash if I remember right (missed edit period).

Re: rm -rf /usr/bin/bash

Really? Find me anything approaching the severity of the bash shellshock family of fail from ksh (88 or 93) in the last decade. Defects that serious seldom are one offs (see OpenSSL).

rm -rf /usr/bin/bash

Won't save you from stupid (ie this problem) but will make your system more secure. That shell is a hairball tire fire code wise and is not included in most commercial POSIX systems by default, outside Linux world.

Ad slinger Phorm ceases trading

Re: Worry not!

Sociopaths usually do take care of number one. Funny that.

Google sucks but ...

>Yes, we can certainly sleep safer in our beds knowing that there's not massive instrusive profiling of Internet users going on can't we?

Granted I am no fan of Google but at least they have to give away some free or reduced cost shiny (ala trojan horse business model) to get people to hand over the data (flagship phone unlocked for 300 bucks, Chrome, Gmail etc). Phorm wanted to force it on all broadband customers with the dosh going only to them and the ISP shareholders.

Memory-based storage? Yes, please

Re: Only Violin?

HP bet the farm (R&D wise) on the memristor and the Machine though and that is a significantly bigger farm than most of the other players. Ironic that the Machine if it ever does become anything but vaporware will only do so because of these other technologies. We will get another Duke Nukem game before we get memristors at consumer prices.

What no mention of the memristor? Sorry can't resist taking pot shots at HP on this topic.

Full Linux-on-PS4 hits Github

Re: PS3 at launch

>Sony also advertised that it had a PS2 emulator, something that was also silently dropped in later iterations.

From what I understand that was actually a hardware emulator which was basically a PS2 built into the fatty launch PS3s which is part of why they were so expensive on launch and so well fat. Later cheaper console releases dropped the hardware to reduce cost. There is a whole lot to hold Sony's feet to the fire on over the years (like they have invented just about every one of the most draconian DRM systems on media ever) but this one may get a pass as the market spoke.

> it wasn't a bait and switch

yes it was after the EU wouldn't give them them the lower PC tariff rate which was the only reason they did it in the first place.

> Linux users lambasting AMD on forums for not releasing great graphics drivers

Maybe so but considering their main hardware competition in the open source world is nouveau their drivers could be a whole lot worse.

Just how close are Obama and Google? You won’t believe the answer

Not to feed the "thanks Obama" crowd but it was pretty obvious his people knew and included some serious nerds and PM gods when they got that POS healthcare insurance website the government ruined, up and running in just weeks.

Did hacktivists really just expose half of Turkey's entire population to ID theft?

Re: Nothing to hide, nothing to fear

Or said even more simply none of us is as dumb as all of us. So sayeth the herd.

SEC chair blasts Silicon Valley for its hokey valuations

Re: Sure, jump on the tech stocks

No way somebody as respectable as Mr. Madoff would be up to something dodgy. Besides we have had several junior regulators who will go work for Wall St. in a few months look into it, so nothing to see here. Fsck the SEC. Whenever the spotlight gets hot on them for their ineptness they go fiind some low hanging Indian American analyst to charge with insider trading to show they are getting tough on their white collar buddies.

Bash on Windows. Repeat, Microsoft demos Bash on Windows

Bring on the downvotes

Great just what windows needs another spaghetti code base program increasing it's already huge attack surface(see Shellshock bug family). Easy way to tell if you got yourself a real UNIX is if it ships with ksh but not bash. Oh well Red Hat has already buried POSIX and took a dump on its grave so bring on the hairballs.

Teen tricks leaky Valve into publishing hot new Steam game: Watching Paint Dry

The ultimate showdown (for someone else you hate)

Desert Bus vs Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.

Microsoft's bigoted teen bot flirts with illegali-Tay in brief comeback

Re: Initial start condition error

As long as we are posting links of youtube videos and talking about Edward Scissorhands this one will always win.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WqCj_3U0Lc

Former FBI spy hunter: Don’t trust China on ‘no hack’ pact

Re: Pot - kettle

Well every local yokel police department Barney Fife around the US now is begging the FBI for how to get into the iPhone (who probably got it from the NSA, outside company lies aside). One time my ass.

Re: "Former" - Exactly!

> F-35, they could fix it and make it work.

Nobody can make that not be the albatross it is. I feel safe to say if the Chinese eventually have something that matches the F-22 though it will be a drone at that point in the fairly distant future.

Ever wondered what the worst TV show in the world would be? Apple just commissioned it

Re: Apple's version of "The Internship" (aka "Google goes auto-fellatio")

Was waiting for the one apologist. Yes yes but Google is always worse.

yep

Had to check my calendar to make sure April hadn't come early. This is going to be dog shit on your shoes enjoyable.

MH-370 search loses sharpest-eyed robot deep beneath the waves

Re: At least they know where THAT is

>Given that the sea floor is vast, I'd say the sub is now resting on top of the plane.

And both are resting on top of Cthulhu.

Water treatment plant hacked, chemical mix changed for tap supplies

Re: no prizes for good guess

Well considering the SCOTUS pitched a fit and overturned the one time the government actually convicted a large corporation (Arthur Anderson) of outright fraud #2 is a pipe dream. At least they can still go after executives for bad behavior you know like they did after the mortgage meltdown. Funny how that works when your whole culture is based around corporatism.

Oracle fights Russian software policy with Postgres smear

Re: NATO adware

The US is spending 15 billion a year on our military in Afghanistan alone. Other than some Special Forces they are mostly there to train and equip the locals. That is probably nearly the GDP of the entire country minus the poppy. Few tens of millions of dollars would be the cost just for the CIA to come in and liaison the way the US government operates. If USAID gets involved millions becomes billions (all down the corruption rabbit hole).

Re: Are Russian government institutions aware

>that in some scenarios Oracle is way much better than alternatives ?

The question is often are they six and seven figures better and depending on those scenarios the answer may not always be yes. In addition with Oracle you better plan just how far past inflation (hint think higher education past) they will raise your costs over the lifetime of a project.

elephant in the room pretty obvious

Oracle the database single biggest flaw by far is they are owned by Oracle the company. That is one bullet point you have to put in the con list in bold 72pt. If that fact wasn't true, the Postgres user base would probably be significantly smaller.

Khronos releases Vulkan 1.0 open graphics specification

>You realise Android is made by Google and slurps everything you and targets adverts based on that by design?

Well technically AOSP doesn't until you go and add that google account sign in (with gapps) which you can go without with F-Droid (but granted most people can't).

>At least Microsoft pretend to ask first.

Only because they are late to the game but they are making up for it with increased invasiveness nicely. Trust neither company with your data but at least with Android you can cut Google out of the equation if you no longer care about the warranty.

FCC boss: Oh look, net neutrality didn't end the world after all. Surprise!

Re: It's not Friday

Common sense probably means he won't be around long after the next administration take office (even if not officially a political appointee, too lazy to look if he is) as that is not how DC works.

US Supremes to hear Samsung's gripes about the patent system after Apple billed it $550m

Re: Won't be 4-4

If you want common sense, you have to not let the lawyers write the laws.

FIFY. Vested interest in billable hours and all.

Re: Won't be 4-4

Yeah the SCOTUS is saving the 4 to 4 for the next Gore v Bush this election (if the Repubs can somehow get rid of Trump as their nominee).

How Microsoft copied malware techniques to make Get Windows 10 the world's PC pest

Re: Enough is enough!

If I was you then I would pray Win7 end of support doesn't get suddenly pushed up as the next slap to the users.

Re: Plain and simple

They also have a significantly smaller market cap than Apple. Their days of the rest of the industry doing what they say have come and gone.

Re: Enough is enough!

>Mint with the Cinnamon desktop seems to have a nice shallow learning curve. LibreOffice does everything I need.

Yep got gifted a PC with Win10 on it on a SSD (have to admit it's nearly instant on during boot) and even after a fair amount of work cleansing it of the Microsoft spyware (including even blocking at the router level) I now run pretty much exclusively on LMDE on separate spinning rust drive with a smallish partition (300 gig or so lol), I originally meant more as a secondary boot. Win10 is wicked fast and actually really good for a Microsoft OS but I just can't trust Microsoft to be a OS software vendor first anymore (instead of a Google data mining wannabe) as this article shows. Steam now being viable on Linux cinched it. It just too bad I eventually will fully eat the systemd shit sandwich but so be it. Guess then might move Linux onto the SSD.

'Millions' of Android mobes vulnerable to new Stagefright exploit

Re: @ TheVogon

meant attack surface or number of attack vectors.

Re: @ TheVogon

Well one way to drastically reduce the attack vector is to discourage users from installing software by being unable to find any.

in their defense.

Well problems like this get patched very quickly on newish Nexus devices. The Google spying well that is a very basic design feature.

Re: Millions of unpatched Android mobes vulnerable to Stagefright exploit

I would actually be surprised if the worldwide percent of all android devices patched even today is double digit.

Re: Pretty easy to get people to visit a 'hacker' website

or install privoxy on your router and get ad blocking on any browser on any unrooted phone or computer.

Apple iPhone GPU designers Imagination axes 20 per cent of staff

hmm

They can spin it however they want but when your CEO quits and his interim replacement lays off 1/5 of the staff things are not rosy. Big Apple supplier as the past has shown doesn't always mean making bank.

NASA's mighty SLS to burn 1.215 Olympic-sized pools

Re: Family sized swimming pools...

Lakes (and hotsprings) here stateside especially in the south can contain that brain eating amoeba (among other nasties) though. Bring on the pool chemicals I say.

Re: Puny....

Yeah I remember seeing the enormous engines of the Queen Mary which also total put out six digit horsepower which was mindblowing but don't think she only had five pumps reliably pumping over a ton of fuel a second like the Saturn V.

golf clap for today's NASA

Yep congratulations to NASA in many ways for getting to where they were 50 years ago. As Neil deGrasse Tyson said our space program looks more impressive if you change the flow of time backwards (to Apollo).

IBM to erase 14,000 people from the payroll – Wall St analyst

Re: "lower labour cost countries"

As low performing rural shitholes yes. Ghettos where you get murdered in 15 minutes not as much. Parts of St. Louis for example are far more dangerous than any anywhere in either of those states. Just depends on your definition of hell hole I guess. Wouldn't take out a mortgage in any area mentioned so far though.

Re: "lower labour cost countries"

Leave Arkansas alone. Where else you going to put the industrial size chicken coups and rice paddies in the US (yep the US actually grows rice)? Honestly though as anybody can tell you how has gone east on I40 across the US, Arkansas is actually quite nice compared to the asspit of Oklahoma you pass through before and the 3rd world city of Memphis you go through after.

Microsoft has crafted a switch OS on Debian Linux. Repeat, a switch OS on Debian Linux

Re: Well,.. That explains systemd...

Why I said majority and not all. They are famous for stealing quite a bit (see Lotus 123) but the kind of shit Red Hat has pulled to get around at least the spirit of the GPL is at least that level of asshatery.

Stop whining, America: Your LTE makes Europe look slow

I tend to get voted down by the Euros when I say this but if the US was GSM only (forget LTE voice argument for now) it would be far worse in the sticks. There is a reason why Verizon tends to have the best network in the boonies. CDMA requires fewer base stations to cover a given area. GSM works well in western Europe where the population density is significantly higher.