Posts by asdf 6570 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Apr 2007
You knew this was coming when EA threw Microsoft under the bus (smartly as EA can't afford to burn the tiny amount of goodwill they have left with anyone). You just knew EA and Ubisoft were pushing Microsoft to do this and when the poop hit the fan they were like well we have no plans to use Microsoft's built in limitations and to limit customer choice in the future. LMAO.
Plus my guess is a majority of that data wasn't authorized by the copyright holder so its hardly Dotcom or his user's data. Not to defend the corrupt evil practices of the Sony's of the world but as in anything its best to pick your battles wisely and there isn't much about Dotcom that is wise.
>Cretins unable to appreciate what is stored on hard disks
Again its all in how the contract was written. Things get dicey when you are leasing somebody else's computer for a set time period. The real world equivalent is that show storage wars where after a set amount of time they sell your shit if quit paying for your storage unit.
Granted I hate the media companies more than Dotcom because unlike him they own senators but he is hardly some paragon and as usual what he says is full of spin. After all didn't megaupload tend to delete user data not heavily downloaded rather quickly anyway? It always seems as more a get the latest hot pirated thing today instead of store your crap for years kind of a service. Still this case is another glaring example of how when it comes to being a copyright pimp Obama is even more extreme than W Bush was. Even Bush didn't use Homeland Security to go after domains just for copyright violations.
I prefer silane gas myself (not to be around of course). Anything with a flash point lower than room temperature is be scared and awed. The only other material I was more afraid of in my former career was Hydrofluoric acid. You get a drop on your skin and not know it, you will 12 hours later when you are screaming in agony as it eats your bones from the inside.
All you need to know is many forms of unbreakable encryption will be able to be brute forced in a matter of seconds and that we are a decade away from the technology. Of course that is also what they said five years ago and been saying about fusion as a controllable energy source for decades. My guess is the technology is so disruptive that if someone does get it working for general problems their national government will confiscate the thing immediately.
Will agree thats it true most of the violence and true evil in the world are actually done by males under the age of 40 (often even 30). Sure older leaders are often to blame as well but generally they don't depend on packs of old guys to do their killing for them. Hell look the age of the prison population in the West as well.
For the record I am not saying colonialism was good just that I don't believe Africa is the worst continent on Earth totally because of it. If you look at what Japan and then Mao did to China (Great starve forward and no culture just revolution) and see where they are today you have a modern success story of a country coming through hell to be nearly developed in a only a little more than a generation.
Most of Africa's problems are summed up in two words. Tribe first. The cellphones just allow the tribes to organize and kill each other more effectively. When the tribe comes always before the state and the rule of law then guess what your state is going to be weak and your society is going to be ass backwards and poor.
>Shit that works, works.
Yes and I am sure the guy that loved vacuum tubes and core memory said the same thing the generation before (or mercury tube memory the generation before that although that wasn't reliable at all). At some point it no longer is economical to build old shit. Yes you can even keep your 1950's Chevy's running for 60 years like Cuba if you have to, but that is not always the best long term plan.
Yes Java can be a useful tool in many instances (RAD and all that, security in the vm not so much) but people would be stupid to limit themselves only to it. Personally I like a language powerful enough to do system programming at the OS level as well as being able to do higher level stuff. Right tools for the job and all that but imho somebody can't call themselves a professional developer if they only can develop managed code or web crap. Its like only being able to drive an automatic transmission car and calling yourself a race car driver.
If I had to give advice to any comp sci student it would be learn C++ early. If you can use C++ effectively (main features and patterns) you will have no other problems learning the technology du jour of the month that won't be around in decade (cough Ruby on Rails, etc). Even though I first learned the language decades ago in school when templates weren't even standardized yet I will probably still have gainful employment a few decades from now due to that knowledge. I have worked with many other languages/technologies over the years but still find myself writing psuedo code with curly brackets and STL functions.
Here in the west many don't know just what an amazing accomplishment Burj Khalifa is. Nearly 700 ft taller than any other man made structure including radio towers which don't even have fancy elevators and fire extinguishers and all that jazz. Yes many western companies help build it and yes it a screaming example of just how carried away Dubai got with the checkbook which it will be paying off for generations. Still the only the thing more amazing to me than this building is the fact Alain Robert has already climbed it.
OtherOS sadly was only put in the first place so Sony could claim the PS3 was a computer instead of a console and get the lower tariffs. When this failed pretty much worldwide they suddenly lost interest in the "feature". Still goodwill does matter. Its why Sony is 1/5 the size they were a bit over a decade ago. Why they have lost tens of billions total and have been in the red for five years straight. Sony badly needs the PS4 to sell much more like the PS2 than the fail Vita or the hardware side is done (evil media studo side that destroyed the hardware side will live on regardless as spin off etc).
If true then Intel succeed in spite big time of x86 not because of it. It would be hard to come up with a worse instruction set for milliwatt mobile computing than x86. Intel had to throw a whole lot of money, engineering talent, and most important of all being a generation ahead in fab technology to compete. That is assuming this is all true in general usage. A big question not answered by this article is how much more the Intel part costs than the multiple sourced mass produced ARM part.
>We are just talking about the superstitious and irrational paranoia of the Greens towards anything nuclear
Just as easy to talk about all the Jesus freak right wingers who look at this world only as a test of their irrational beliefs and as a Limbo to be exploited at all opportunities for personal gain until they get to leave to their magical place where they will see their zombie savior and their sky fairy. Plenty of delusion to be found on either side.
Nokia is likely to announce a profit warning to investors within the next few weeks, the Royal Bank of Canada has suggested, after worse than expected sales in Q2 2013. Lumia shipments haven’t met with Nokia’s predictions, the RBC claimed in a note to investors today, Finnish paper Taloussanomat reports, with operating margin for the smart devices division tipped to be around -3%.
Nokia had forecast a strong growth in Windows Phone sales back when it announced its Q1 2013 figures, suggesting that sequential growth in unit volumes would be “higher than the 27% sequential growth in the first quarter.” However, it still expected its Devices & Services operating margin to be around -2% (+/- 4-points).
According to the bank’s numbers, Nokia is estimated to sell 30m smartphones – down 2m from the previous estimates – while regular phone sales will drop from 218m to 193m, it’s suggested. The claimed reason for the shortfall is one we’ve heard many times before: cheap Android phones eating into the entry-level segment.
It’s not been a good few months for Nokia. Earlier this week, it was suggested that even in the company’s own home territory, Finland, Samsung was now outselling Nokia phones.
>Let me know if you ever find anywhere that ISN'T like that as I never have. Except for the small software house (~30 employees) I worked at a LONG time ago.
Yeah and half the time the mom and pop shops don't have the resources (try asking for a $1000 software tool haha) to be anything but startups for years. Damn if you do ...
Yes because Chrome is engineered how any sane person would do a web browser as userland with a clean separation between the OS networking code. (Chrome is actually engineered very slick with the sandboxes and such) IE is getting that way these days I believe, but in the early IE days the marketing droids at MS thought it would be a great idea to embed browser code deep in the OS itself. Some of the IE fixes therefore result in OS files changing and thus a reboot.
IMHO industrial espionage might be possible but more likely is the government misusing the information to get more tax revenues (ie finding cheaters) because ultimately that is what government cares about. Also probably archiving the information to blackmail current and future politicians that might shut things down.
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