Posts by Pascal Monett 18991 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
Gotta admit I rather agree. Frankly it is tiring to be titillated by the NSFW tag, only to see tiny plastic bosoms worth nothing to oogle over.
Please, could El Reg change that tag to something more appropriate, like NSFL, and keep the NSFW for real, honest-to-goodness bulgarian airbags (inflated or not) ?
Your figures demonstrate that China is getting there. I think that, in the next 20 years, it will be first in line.
The US, what with $120 billion of war debt, will be hard-pressed to keep up.
And it's not anonymous cowards who fling useless insults with ease that will do anything about it.
It's really interesting to follow the evolution of the industry in this domain. The impressiveness of the adaptability and ingenuity of the malware writers is only outdone by the sadness of their quest : to infect even more PCs with spam-sending filth.
It's kind of like meeting a psychopathic serial killer who is on the verge of discovering faster-than-light travel. You know he's good, but you have to kill him anyway.
Pity.
"exposing creative people to unjustified ridicule"
I daresay what with all the bull these "creative people" have been subjecting us to for the last quarter of a century, this little bit is hardly going to leave a dent in their hides which, by now, must be thicker than an elephant's.
And besides, I don't see that the version you report is any better. I think I'd actually prefer a dwarf star. Since they already take us for fools, they might as well go the whole nine yards.
I find it quite curious to see just how the perception of size has changed in the eye of the market. One is arguing about the "purity" of decimal, the other is bringing forth a difference between MB and MiB (a fan of Will Smith, perchance ?).
That's all nice and cute, but the facts are these :
At the beginning of the hard disk, manufacturers did indeed represent size in its proper power-of-2 base. 1024 is a kilobyte whether you like it or not, and a megabyte (MB, not MiB, which is term that came into being around Y2K and was probably invented to placate those who do not comprehend what MB actually stands for) is 1024 kilobytes (or KB, not KiB either).
One might argue that giving sizes in their proper base-2 format was confusing for the layman, but given the amount of hooplah that has been going on for the past eight years (and continues unabated) in the graphics arena around shaders, texels and megahertz, I seriously doubt the validity of that argument. Besides, the layman doesn't actually need to understand what the exact size of his storage is, all he needs to know is that he's getting more every year for less money.
Occam's razor states that the truth is much more simple : Seagate & Co discovered that they could twist the truth a bit and label their disk sizes in megabits or somesuch, thus implementing that wonderful "decimal purity" and, more importantly, cheating us out of an ever-growing proportion of what we should be getting.
And when you were buying the megabyte (so that there's no confusion) at over $10, the sensation of being cheated was a particularly expensive one.
Of course, given the price of storage today, I don't really mind any more. But I won't forget either.
Having a soldier transmitting all the time is akin to giving the enemy a location fix. Find enough in a given area and you're just begging for an artillery strike.
As for the glory of the Camerone battle, it is not because they lost - it's because they stuck together and resisted in spite of impossible odds. It's because they stood their ground and never gave up, never surrendered.
Yes, they knew they were going to die. They knew they were doomed. But they did not kneel and wait for the slaughter. They made the enemy pay dearly for the victory, and to a man, they fought to their last breath.
It is the heroic display of resistance and combat brotherhood that is celebrated, and rightly so. Because if you can remain trustworthy and steadfast when all is lost, then you can do so anywhere, anytime, under any conditions.
I would think that any soldier would understand that, and appreciate it.
OS numbers change, but the basic, hard-coded, fact-of-life reboot requirement has been there since Win95 and seems there to stay - even in 64-bit versions.
Methinks that, 200 years from now, Windows Eon 4 will be 4096-bit capable, manage 256 discreet processing units and 4 petabytes of RAM (forget disk space - everything will be RAM by that time), and still, every now and then, a popup will center on the screen, asking "Windows needs to reboot now. Please confirm." with a lonely OK button underneath.
And if you don't confirm in 25 seconds, it will anyway.
The oversized head that he has gained in no way makes him a businessman, much less a successful one.
He could conceivably qualify himself as a successful lobbyist, though.
But where culture is concerned, he needs quite a lot of educating before being able to tout himself as culturally knowledgeable. And given his stance on moderating, along with his penchant to change the odds in whatever way suits him, I seriously doubt that any forum presided by His Wackyness and buddies will have anything to bring to the public as far as Knowledge is concerned.
We will certainly find out what misguided female is accompanying him, but he needn't preside a forum for that - I'm sure there are a few rags available who'd be happy to publish a line on that subject. Maybe even a picture.
Like I care.
Wonderful justification, Google.
Based on my analysis, my IP is like my home address. I'll give it to you if I have to, but I expect you to be well-behaved enough to not come knocking without an invitation
Especially if you come to sell me something.
But this is all irrelevant anyway. In my hosts file, I have the major ad servers redirected to 127.0.0.1, and I use Firefox with Adblock.
Ads ? I used to see them.
Have fun with your cookies, Google.
Was undoubtedly obtained by making sure that every single bit variation of a given virus was counted as another threat. Which is a great idea when there are programs out there that can package you a malware suite based on one or a few selected virii and automagically include some minor variations - some of which can probably be parameter-based.
Ah, the wonderful value of the security market - you can pull any number out of thin air, nobody is going to take you to task to prove your figures, and nobody really knows what is going on anyway.
Except the criminals. They most likely know exactly how many virii of what kind they have sent out, and what the impact is.
Pity that they're never the ones answering the surveys.
Um, does that mean that, next time the fleet commander gives an order, the first thing that the empowered sailors will do is blog about it on the intra-fleet Wiki ?
I can see it now :
"Ooh, we've been ordered into battle !"
"OMG no !"
"FIRST POST !"
"Do you think we're going to still get Doctor House at sea ?"
"Yeah man, did you see last week's episode where he totally pwned that cop ?"
"That was great ! DrHouse rules !"
....
And I always thought that "empowering" sailors was done by giving them a mop and a bucket.
So American military send confidential, top-secret, highly-sensitive data to the first mail address that happens to vaguely sound like a legit one, and now we find that they also send classified nuclear hardware to non-approved destinations.
Sheesh, Patton would have a stroke over all these shenanigans, but before he'd personally hang the idiots responsible.
These things still happen today because :
1) managers view IT as a cost center, and any cost must be stamped on as hard as possible
2) managers today deem themselves able to program because they've written a few Excel macros, thus validating the "simply magical" idea Joe Public has ever had on how computers work, ergo whatever programming needed should be done by tomorrow morning because it's easy
3) security is a word that managers have never lookup up in a dictionary - along with maintainable, resilient and long-term
4) because of the three previous points, developers are always on a shoestring budget with very, very short deadlines, and testing is just confirming that the code you wrote does what you think it is supposed to do with the generic data you prepared for it
5) not to mention that not all developers have been properly trained on the language they are to use for the project (if at all)
6) the maintenance budget and the bug fixing budget are not the same as the development budget - sometimes even the managers are different (that should be referred to as "passing the buck beforehand")
I hope that clears that argument up. :-)
And it says it all. Twitter is not for important stuff that is worthy of a mail or a phone call to people you care for (and, hopefully, who care for you).
No, Twitter is the place you go to to tell everyone who can possibly be interested that you're going to have lunch/a coffee/take a dump.
How charming to think that there are people who have enough time on their hands to alert others to all these little things in their lives. And there are others with nothing better to do than read it.
Thank goodness they did say that "real life is what happens between email and phone calls".
Not to mention inane babbling about nothing interesting at all.
For the life of me, I cannot fathom why it is so important to some people to "document" their lives on this kind of stupidity.
I'll pass.
"A hallmark of what should be seen as a reasonable business practice is certainly whether or not the people engaging in that practice are willing to describe it publicly,"
I believe this declaration should go down in history as a textbook example of The Right Thing.
Especially now and especially in the USA, it is good to see that public officials can state things simply and clearly.
Now, of course, it remains to be seen whether or not this beautiful gem is going to actually be followed by proper action.
But hey, it's a politician that has SAID the right thing. It's a start !
Oh gosh, another multinational company accepting subsidies, then scampering off when there's none left. Like that never happened before.
Personally, I think there should be a, EU ban on subsidizing factory installations. The money is wasted anyway, since Nokia is only the last in a very long line of companies to have done this sort of thing. It's SOP now, people, for Pete's sake, they ALL do it.
So just stop giving them the money. If they say "Well we'll go elsewhere" then we can just answer "You will anyway, so get lost".
Besides, the whole thing really smacks of bribery to me, or maybe extortion is a more appropriate term. It's as if some guys in Armani suits cornered the mayor in the boardroom and beat the stuffing out of him until he "accepted" to pay them to install a factory. And, on leaving, one of them smiles and says "Nice to do business with you" while crushing the mayor's fingers under his heel.
Can't people understand that jobs "created" in such ways are nothing more than temp jobs ? That the state/region/city is simply paying unemployment fees under a different guise ?
How long are we going to continue putting up with this ?
The state should simply step in and say "Okay, you want to leave ? Fine, go. But the factory is seized and everything in it now belongs to the State. We'll use it as we see fit."
Okay, I've got to stop smoking the carpet now.
Yeah, that'll be really useful. Not.
The only solution to immigration issues is first, enforcing existing laws - which are never properly enforced due to political pussy-footing and lack of manpower, and second, putting enough manpower into the effort to make it work.
No amount of technology is going to miraculously solve illegal immigration. Footwork and experience are the only things that will.
Plus, as far as biometrics go, I don't see why I should give up all my details to some unsecure, unguaranteed foreign entity just because I decide to go there and spend part of my holidays.
Any country that requires my DNA before letting me in is going on my personal black list and will be removed from possible holiday destinations. They have no right or use to profile me, and I resent in advance any hassle that will arise because there is a mistake in their bloody database.
And mistakes there will be, given the track record of just about any government security process or IT project.
Why should my life be ruined because some stupid git mistakenly decided that my DNA somewhere was a security threat ? What defense do I have in a Gitmo cell ?
I frankly see no benefit to innocent people, and hardly a threat to terrorists.
Name me one terrorist that got caught because of his mobile phone.
Just one.
"they would be better off without our disgraceful american crap anyway"
Umm, if I'm not mistaken, they're the ones that make a fair share of that american crap. Them, Taiwan and soon India.
I'll be interested in your argument the day they decide to stop making american crap for america, and start making their own crap for themselves. The Northern hemisphere has been teaching the Southern one to make their stuff for decades, it's only a matter of time before the South starts going it alone.
There is going to be a big shift in the coming years, where our current, well-known monopolists are going to find their feet cut out from under them by new and upcoming monopolists in a foreign tongue. And that has already started in the automobile industry.
As it always has.
The more I hear of Ebay, the less I feel like checking it out.
And Paypal doesn't make me feel better about the whole deal.
Now, sellers can't criticize scam buyers any more, and small-time sellers are being pushed out.
Once upon a time, Ebay held some interest in that it was a place for Joe Anybody to buy and sell stuff from other Joes. Now Ebay is just another white-collar Wallmart outlet. No interest here, people, move along.
I live in Europe, where I have been often told that anyone can have my bank account number - the only thing they can do with it is give me money.
I understand that the sorry situation in the Land Of The Formerly Known As Free makes it so that if the Social Security Number, or the bank account number, fall into the wrong hands, the person is up the creek without a paddle, but do I risk the same thing in Europe ?
Especially given the fact that the notion of credit rating has nothing to do with what is practiced in the US, what are my risks ? Because I have been noticing that spam has increasingly been present in my native language in my mailbox. It used to be that anything in English not from a friend I knew I could confidently delete without a thought - all the important stuff I got was normally not in English.
But now my mail is polluted with spam that is not in English. Heck, I have been receiving spam in four languages now ! And that makes it a bit more tricky (not much, though) to get rid of the stuff easily.
I know this will get worse before it gets better (hmm, will it ever actually get better ?), so I am wondering : what is the risk to me ?
From a PC-centric standpoint, that is certainly the truth. Unfortunately, Microsoft is not helping this with its attempt to interface PC and Xbox users on the same server.
Take Universe At War, for example. I was interested in this game, despite the faults it outlines for the single-player version. Unfortunately for Petroglyph and Microsoft, I learned that, in order to play it online, I had to subscribe to the Live service at the tune of $50 a month.
Say what ? Me, a PC user, is supposed to PAY to play a game online ? What on Earth are they smoking in Redmondia ?
Too bad for Petroglyph, I won't buy their game in these conditions.
Free Internet gaming is the founding cornerstone of multiplayer gaming nowadays, there is strictly no reason for me to go pay to play for an average, if interesting, RTS, when I can play Supreme Commander or a host of other good ones online for nothing.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
I understand that Microsoft wants to have its Live service pay for itself, but once again it is simply demonstrating that it understands nothing about the Internet.
Not a thing.
Personally I don't go telling everyone to install XP because I use Windows. I understand that there are other choices and I am fine with that. If I had a use for one of the other choices, I would certainly give it a try.
I use what I use by choice (at home) or obligation (at work). If you don't like it, tough.
You use whatever you want and I sincerely hope it works for you.
Now, this thread was initially about SP3 for XP, and not the imaginary benefits of anything else. So, getting back on the subject, does anyone know what MS has broken in it in order to get the sheeple moving to Vista ?
Because SP2 broke the Network browsing ability on my home network. I'd like to know if it's going to get worse.
Indeed, there aren't all that many that can take advantage of two anyway.
Although I am led to believe that any game based on the Quake III engine is supposed to benefit a bit, which would mean that Quake IV games should do so as well.
Crysis is a game that stands to get help from just about ay improvement since it is so resource-hungry, but apart from that the only other game I can think of that would gain anything would be Supreme Commander.
In my own experience, I had SupComm running on a Core 2 Duo and switched over to a Quad 6600 and it ran a lot smoother. Not really a big boost on framerate, but a lot less dips and the dips were shallower as well. All in all, the Quad Core made the game perform more consistently the same, at quite a playable level.
But apart from the above, I can't say that double-quad core gaming is going to be anything to write home about.
And given the trouble the current graphic chip moguls have with putting 2 cards together, I shudder to think of the issues of having to deal with 4 cards is going to be.
Who knows ? Maybe we'll see proper drivers for those monsters once there are actually games that can benefit from it all ?
Like when Duke Nukem Forever comes out.
Whatever century that is.
Umm, does the embedded DRM in all these new formats allow for that ? I've read that, in order to get the normal HD-size on your screen, all the components had to have the proper, certified, nanny chip in, otherwise it would be downgraded to VHS-quality or even not displayed at all.
That's what put me off either formats, that and the fact that my hardware could apparently be remotely shut off by the Central License Coordination Agency if they thought I had pirate hardware, or if my hardware phoned home to tell the CLCA that I was reading pirate content.
I don't condone piracy, but I'll be damned if I accept that my hard-earned money can be blown off by some jerk with a kill button without my having a say.
Sorry, but if there is lossy compression, there will be degradation. If the compression is lossless, and only if, then the transcription will be good - until somebody comes and rips it to MP3 with high compression.
Personally, I have long ripped all my CD collection to MP3 at the very highest quality I could. I preserve my investment and still listen as often as I like to my personal music store in a quality that is - to me - the same as the "original" CD.
I do not P2P, though. Fair use is for me, within my collection.
That said, I'd like once and for all this DRM and copy-protection racket to take its responsibilities. If I am not the owner of the CDs and simply a renter of license, then RIAA et al. have the legal obligation to replace the physical support of my license free of charge for the rest of my life. Also, RIAA et al have the obligation of providing me with the music I have the license to in any format I see fit to use. After all, the license concerns the music itself, not the medium unto which it is written.
If that is not the case, then it follows that I am the owner of my CD. In that case, as the owner, I have the legal right to do whatever the heck I want with it and should not be constrained in any way, shape, or form.
Don't you think ?
Any takers ?
Not a Sadville user, I have better things to do with my time. That also means that Quicktime was removed from all computers I use since I discovered that there is a first-rate alternative that works fine, takes almost no resources, loads real quick and, cherry on top, is free.
So, whether you prefer putting the blame on Quicktime or Linden Labs, for me they are both to be put in a sack with a rock and thrown overboard in the middle of the Pacific.
Just wait until RIAA & Co. finds a way to bite them in the ass with it, like the DCRM has been totally denatured to fit the whims of any checkbook-wielding aspiring monopolist.
If said advocates are not up in arms, I suspect it is because they have not yet found the flaw that has been (un)intentionally sewed in the lining.
"the pic's gross potential is greater as a summer tentpole"
actually means :
"it doesn't stand a chance at Xmas, so we're releasing it when the heat waves have totally dulled everyone's brains and they won't notice how bad it is until it's too late"
Really, the total disregard of logic, plot and canon whenever Paramount has produced a Trek film has me quite skeptical that this one will be any better than the previous heaps of doo that litter the franchise' landscape.
A shame, really. I prefer TOS.
Yeah, I'm sure the thing will work fine while half-submerged in a puddle of mud, or encased in the sands of some desert country. Another fine gadget for soldiers to cuss about.
Then again, the ruggedized version just might save some young man's kneecap when walking past an IED.
The US government has been telling lies since at least 1953 to cover its ass, and the rights of its victims - the very citizens it is supposed to protect - can be damned.
Hmm, now why does that not surprise me ? Why do I feel that absolutely no government has told the truth unless it was tracked into a corner and had no other choice ?
Forget images. Just send a flash-based animation that requires the user to click in a specific are at a specific moment in time. The area to click in will be a color box moving on a white background, and the box goes a different color for the half-second you have to click in it.
The click has to be made with the mouse, and the color should change at every reload.
Click at the wrong time, you're out. Click in the wrong place, you're out.
You know, when there was so much Freedom around no one even noticed ? When you could go buy a CD or a game and your only worry was whether it was compatible with your hardware ?
When you could pick up your phone and had zero-minus chance of the DHS listening in on your conversation with your brother/wife/cousin/aunt ?
When companies were actually thankful that you gave them your hard-earned money for something ?
When you could decide to catch a plane half an hour before take-off, and actually be on it in time for the trip ?
When life was normal ?
Ahh, the good old days.
I miss them.
First they say "AdSense for domains allows domain name registrars ... to provide valuable and relevant content on their parked pages,"
Then they say "Parked domain pages generally have no content.."
Sorry, but logic commands those two sentences to be mutually exclusive.
That's like me telling you I only dress in red while wearing white sneakers, black pants and a white shirt.
Will you believe me if I smile ?
I am utterly floored by the continuing insistance of so-called "intelligence" gatherers to give to "terrorists" the intent of using mobile phones, internet and other eminently traceable mediums.
Because yes, if you think you are anonymous from government agencies who want to find you, you are sadly mistaken.
So tell me again why true terrorists, intent on wreaking mayhem and causing havoc, would so casually conduct their meetings via an ISP or a phone line, which practically guarantees that they will be overheard, traced and caught ?
Nowadays, using the Post to send a mail to a P.O. box is far safer - there is no way the CIA can read every letter !
I really would appreciate it if these people that are supposed to be in charge of our security could wisen up to the fact that we KNOW this is bull.
A terrorist that uses a mobile phone in enemy territory, or the Internet to post critical operating info, is a dumb terrorist. We need not fear him because he WILL be caught even by semi-competent police forces.
What we need to fear is the professional, competent terrorist that leaves no electronic trail to trace, uses only cash to pay anything needed, does not rent a car and contacts his agents face-to-face in remote or private areas.
Fear those, because we will have a devil of a time catching them without placing a camera in every street, every house, every basement, and putting an agent behind every camera.
Oh wait . .
I'll bet there will be, and it will be so complex that there will be a number of ways to go around them perfectly "legally" and still have the "evidence" presented to the court.
As for doctoring a sound recording, I think it is quite a bit more difficult than fixing pixels on a picture. It has something to do with harmonics, and I'm sure an expert of proper qualifications could tell in an instant if the recording had been tampered with.
And, given the poor performance of the doctored pictures we have been presented with, I have no doubt that changing a recording in a believable manner will be far beyond the abilities of the plod charged with the tweak.
On the other hand, faking a recording entirely might be a lot easier to do, and more difficult to spot.
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