* Posts by Martin Owens

428 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2006

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Mono delivers Foundation-free open .NET alternative

Martin Owens

RE: AC

>> Oh no we can't cos it's evil M$ and not oh so wonderful open source.

Actually I'd rather they didn't bother, a bloated, incredulous platform that speaks more of it's designers and supporters attitudes than good solid engineering. I'd put up with python dist-utils rather than sully my mind with Mono.

Now that my friend, is real bias.

Apple royalty skirmish ends in stalemate

Martin Owens

What's that I hear?

Does it amuse me that the people who actually create the music are getting less than 10% of the money? No.

I know some good friends who are in the music business, they may make albums, they may make music videos. Never shall their pen grace the legal paper of the Recording Ass.

Ballmer on banking crisis: No one is safe

Martin Owens

Re: Closed Minded

>>It's obvious that the Open Saucers who already posted have no concept of business or how it works,

I think you confusing "Modern Authoritarian Feudalism" with "Idealistic Capitalist Business";

> otherwise they would have just kept their mouths shut. The Commune is giving too many peasants the idea that their opinion matters and they can speak their mind - it'll be nice when these fools all go away.

Ah but then who would make your plush, lavish solid gold potty. Who would give you the 24 hours of care needed by the obviously brain dead arrogance?

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY:"The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate". "

Symbian: Linux unfit for mobile phones

Martin Owens

Linux on Mobiles

the problem is _not_ fragmentation, it's lack of standardisation and lack of trust in the FOSS development process.

Stop farting about and dedicate the resources needed to get IEEE, W3C, RFC and ISO standards which allow everyone to pick and choose which components they want for their phones.

No they wouldn't dare do that, that would be too much like the right thing to do(tm)

HP inching away from Vista's bad rep?

Martin Owens

Taken so long?

What's with these guys? HP, Dell, Asus, Toshiba. they could be pushing the Linux desktop in the direction they want with their own controls over their respective destinies. Instead their still treating the FOSS world like some giant amorphous vendor with the same farcical results.

I think Dell are getting it, their experiences dealing with the Ubuntu community seemed to have made their development more interactive. Instead of just using ubuntu they seem more willing to develop with it for their own needs.

Still, took them long enough. HP on the other hand have been out right hostile. they might have the best working linux printers but their still bottom of the list for laptop support.

Freelancers might be taxed as employees after High Court ruling

Martin Owens

Suprised Support from HMRC

People should pay their tax, if they didn't want to have a tax system organised the way it is then perhaps they should vote for someone other than the blue and red sections of the authoritarian party.

Someone mentioned Liberty? the UK isn't ready for Liberty, we don't have the mind set for freedom and we certainly don't care about free speech. Why are we surprised when we get shafted? it's us that are doing the shafting.

Ubuntu zoo preps for new arrival

Martin Owens

Other fixes

>> I really wish they'd stop with this stupid naming scheme.

What 'Ubuntu 8.10' is too hard? the 'Intrepid Ibex' name is not an offical release name, it's a developer nick name and unless your involved in development you need not use it. Although I see a lot of people do like these names as their more fun than 'Vista' or 'Tiger'.

>> what happened to 'I'

It was used for 8.10 out next month aka 'Intrepid Ibex'; Can't wait to see all the new features.

World goes mad as Bill and Jerry eat churros

Martin Owens

Para

It kind of reminds me of the main problem with Microsoft, like a lot of western governments they've gotten into the habbit of telling people/cusomters/voters that everything is jam butties, fantastic, so amazing that we don't know what anyone is talking about.

It reeks of such a high disconnect or untruthful attitude and I suspect that is one of the things these ads are meant to help with.

It would be _better_ if Bill Gates just came on and apologised for Vista, xp, and a whole bunch of other stuff. At least it would be a start.

Kids may benefit from mobiles in class

Martin Owens
IT Angle

Truft

Meh, I think one of the previous commentators got to one of the main problems. Teachers and Adults don't trust children, they way their treated is really surreal compared to how adults treat other adults or how children treat each other.

Intel buys up UK Linux lab

Martin Owens

Dandy

"I would be more tempted to choose a non GPL" >> Rationale Required. None GPL code doesn't have the protections for the _original_ developers. Might be fine and dandy for the thieves though.

Hackintosh maker bites back at Apple

Martin Owens

Not Allowed

<SARCASM>

Section 4. User Requirement, You may buy a copy of my white software in it's white box from my white store; but you must be white to use it. Blacks, Arabs, Africans and Asians are here by banned from our lovely software.

</SARCASM>

As above, you can't just invent your own privilege (private law); All copyright and licensing restrictions are artificially granted by society and if your use of these restrictions hurts society then your ability to restrict will be forfeit.

Apple are clearly selling a product which they artificially limit to their own products.

gOS - a Google good OS for your Mum

Martin Owens

Re: Don Mitchell

If you want a principles fight Mr Mitchell, I'm quite willing to give you one.

Watching a market of people constantly manipulated into consuming a single capitalist system busting product should be enough to raise the heckles of any true blood capitalist. How the free hand of the market has been tied down by a lack of market regulation of monopoly power is a travesty worth political introspection. See Adam Smith on monopolies.

The fact that the product in question is an information and production tool involved in business, industry, government and social organisation makes it a social and political problem as much as it is an economic drain.

Now, those who are cheerleaders for the Free Software world are doing so for social and political reasons as much as for technical excellence rationale. Those who are promoting Microsoft and Apple do so because of their emotional attachment to certain brands and products. Very rarely have I ever heard a logical reason for using Windows that wasn't because someone's freedoms were already stolen.

As to your general point about politics replacing substance, well you know I think I read somewhere that practicalism is much like masturbation, some say it causes blindness.

Microsoft slaps another $100m on Novell interop pile

Martin Owens

More money

Interesting.... that's all I can say. Novell have some good programmers and do a lot of important work. Why do they have to go and spoil it with these political fartings?

Microsoft Silverlight: 10 reasons to love it, 10 reasons to hate it

Martin Owens

Hard Pressed?

Your bias is showing there AC.

I'm just no impressed from a standards stand point; A pointless endeavour that is both sickly in it's intent and vacuous in it's benefits to users. Bring on more development in SVG and ogg media playing I say.

Linux risks netbooks defeat to Microsoft

Martin Owens

A problem

The real problem is the lack of law enforcement against Microsoft's illegal business practices. The fact that Linux can make any headway is like watching one of those hero guys from Japanese cartoons that seem to never be defeated against super, giant, ultra fighting things from space.

People will move to Linux, now we can push ubuntu I'm confident that it'll win out in the end. It's not like we could die of irrelevance when the mac and windows worlds are so poor at giving people ownership.

Carbon Trust: Rooftop windmills are eco own-goal

Martin Owens

It doesn't much please

me that the problems with cooperate energy is that some other bugger controls your lights.

Bill Gates exposed as closet Yorkshireman

Martin Owens

Save space

in the comments for us Cheshire cats to poke fun at the Yorkshirites.

Vista 'perfection' dream over for iPhone?

Martin Owens

It's the little things

Lots of little things fixed or made easier than other platforms will make ubuntu more attractive. Get the devs and managers at Intuit and Adobe drooling for the ubuntu desktop experience and they'll port :-P

the only problem is that if apps makers make linux apps, they'll probably still be proprietary and thus not available in the repository and thus not really safe to install.

Microsoft slams 'sensationalist' Vista analysis

Martin Owens
Flame

The Linux Users...

I see there were some comments about linux users bashing Vista and hailing XP as the best thing since sliced bread. As a Linux user and programmer I can refute that, I've never had the inclination to use either XP or Vista and won't bother commenting on the tech.

No I'll just point out that Vista is not being bought by people who receive fresh new blank machines. It's being forced on people in a quite immoral and market distorting way. Thus windows users are not in control of their own computers and I would always recommend that such users regain control with the use of linux, regardless of how great windows actually is.

Tory leader's stolen bicycle surfaces on eBay

Martin Owens

Cracking

And who said comedy was only for the pros. Pravo.

Re-jigged Intel mobile Linux stack dumps Ubuntu

Martin Owens
Stop

RPM

The problem with RPM is that it's not well architected. and they have to stick with what they have because of all those proprietary rpm packages out there.

Have created packages in both RPM and DEB I'd go with DEB any day of the week; for developer ease, for sanity's sake and for user ease.

Asus Eee Box UK desktop debut delayed?

Martin Owens
Flame

Dealings

Meh, they won't get my business so long as they're so blatantly corruptible. Although it may backfire in the market place if people see that the linux version comes with office and a sac of other tools and sees Windows as the ALDI version.

Dell's Ubuntu love-in expands to new laptops

Martin Owens
Alert

Re: Contrary

If someone bought a CMOT Dibbler sausage in a bun, would I be offended that they don't want a slightly more pleasant (and not to mention clean) rat on a stick?

No my friend, I'm not offended. I'd just feel pity for the pour sod and move on.

Patent violation, prosecution, acquisition: pick your top open-source project

Martin Owens

In every list

That XMCB media centre is in _every_ list it seems.

Microsoft: Yes! We're! talking! to! Icahn!

Martin Owens
Paris Hilton

@Capitalist AC

I'm not very fond of the deregulated capitalism we seem to have gotten our selves into. It's getting so bad that I can see serfdom for the masses.

I dislike Microsoft because they have no ethics; a business is made of men and for those men to be unethical is wrong. If it's because of capitalism then that is wrong and must be replaced. but I doubt that is the case, it's more likely that capitalism isn't a silver bullet for society, business and the market place but rather yet another imperfect mechanism that needs to have guidance and caveats brought in to keep it from running away. In fact I rather think it's several mechanisms some of which could be dispensed with.

Just look at the Fed/Banking situation in the USA and think about weather anarchistic capitalism is really what Milton Friedman and Adam Smith had in mind.

Microsoft criticizes EU's 'unreasonable' judgement

Martin Owens

Satire from Kwac?

It must be! why the hell would American courts be anti-American. it's it more likely that Bush is anti American having actually broken several rather important laws? (see DK's Impeachment articles)

Who will be the next Doctor?

Martin Owens

Be better

If they just started from scratch. The original black and white ones were actually interesting and differed from the current job lot in that they tried to explore interesting science with the Doctor acting as that bloody know it all.

Now it's just "that bloody know it all who doesn't know very much at all about science and a great deal about _people_ and _emotions_" It's not sci-fi any more, it's drama with sci-fi as the back drop.

I blame science GCSEs

AVG disguises fake traffic as IE6

Martin Owens

It's simple

Just redirect IE6 requests to /dev/null, come on guys anyone using IE6 needs a big banner saying "Stop using the computer"

HP throws Tru64 code to Linux fanciers

Martin Owens
IT Angle

the Linux Foundation

Linux is good so long as it's _only_ used for the server, GOD forbid should HP ever have to sell Linux on any of their laptops or desktop machines.

The Linux Foundation really shows it's colours here, basically it's an industry mouth piece with not so much detachment from the community as being completely different community. when they start interacting on more levels than just the server I'll put my trust in them.

Mandriva's Linux on a stick will wow all the ladies this Summer

Martin Owens

@Craig

> Umm, you selected Gates, not Jobs

I can't tell the difference to be honest. Both don't have beards vis must not be in the free software community, and only ghosts are outside the foss walls. ;-)

Asus Eee Box to debut in UK... minus Linux

Martin Owens

Re: Linux != Modern OS

You know what I meant, I didn't mean that it was an OS using POSIX and there for 'modern' I mean it's an OS that comes with the advanced tools, uses a package manager and was released within this year. I.E it has been worked on through time rather than simply festering through it.

Although your point was rather pedantic.

Martin Owens

Sane?

These guys are obviously bonkers mad, "lets ship a discontinued 7 year old operating system with no useful software which costs money instead of that horribly functional, secure modern operating system that comes with a boat load of tools"

The only reason asus would do this is either they have lost the presence of mind, are sadistic and love to see their customers suffer or they've been heavily bribed by Microsoft to shove windows extra pathetic down peoples throats (once again)

MySQL quits Torvalds' former BitKeeper love interest

Martin Owens

I don't

feel sorry for BitKeeper, that's what happens when you fail to understand the development practices.

Ultimately you can't have certain people or businesses lording over your project. Why do we think Richard Stallmen went to all the trouble of replacing _every_ single tool in the toolchain to create a platform to develop on. I'm sure gcc wasn't easy to develop but it needed to be done.

Now we see an elegant proof why.

UK developer trio accused of game plagiarism

Martin Owens

Elements

So much work goes into making game elements, I'm surprised there isn't more collaboration to create a repository of cool looking tree models and that sheep model that everyone uses.

Seriously, these copy and paste wizzards are going to jail. But the games industry is burning money recreating the same basic objects as everyone else and could do a better job and encouraging new talent by releasing some of the more mundane stuff with a reasonable CC license.

British Columbia stray foot tally hits six

Martin Owens
IT Angle

Where does

the register find it's reader that comment? some of those jokes were dreadful. Footage indeed!

Blu-ray ramp beats DVD up-take in Europe

Martin Owens

Out by a year

The graph looks out by a year, no way did BluRay pick up so quickly. These numbers have surely been altered to show the view of the consortium.

Koreans develop smelly, blushing penguin-droid

Martin Owens

Let me be the first to ask

Does it run linux?

Bill Gates cried to make the world a better place

Martin Owens

Probably

The only time when I'd back Big Red's Bill on issues.

Becta schools deal stuns British open-istas

Martin Owens

Are they any good?

I can't say anything against this firm that won the bid, I don't know what their positions is.

So wait and see.

Firefox record breaker sets the date

Martin Owens

Who let the tards out

The critards are out in force in this thread. I wish El Reg would keep them locked in their cage watching One Foot in the Grave.

Look you don't have to like firefox technically, but at least they're not trying to own the internet like Microsoft, Adobe or any of the other bastards.

Sometimes people should be celibrated because They Do The Right Thing in the face of stupid idiots like the posted above.

OpenOffice update completes bumper patch crop

Martin Owens

Run Slower

Did it run software on all platforms? what did you try it on?

Boffins build self-replicating replicating machine

Martin Owens

Formats

I'm interested to see what software formats they used, there is a move in the Free hardware community to get software designs and machine instructions in an open format thus making sure it'll work for who ever wants to do it.

Yahoo! bitchslapped Ballmer's $40 a share offer

Martin Owens

Credit

Yang gets my pat on the back award. Any person willing to stand up to share holders and stick it to the Microsoft man deserves three cheers.

Now if only he hadn't made Yahoo go public in the first place there wouldn't be a problem.

I don't think share holders are a good financial business plan.

Windows experiment meets the bottom line

Martin Owens

But

If you happy and you know it, clunk your chains.

Japanese woman moves into bloke's closet

Martin Owens

Well there are

120 million people in Japan, and it's not a big place either... lots of mountains in the way.

KDE 4.1 beta 1 released

Martin Owens

KDE-PIM WTF

Those guys spent months delaying their work on akonadi just so they could port their poor excuse for user data services to kde4. Need I remind them that such data services should not be even dependant on any desktop being installed. It's no use trying to get through to them though so many developers are wedded to copying bad windows designs. And these guys are worse because their wedded to KDE and won't hear development of anything else. I'm surprised dbus managed to get anywhere.

UK gov waves white flag on secret lobbying ruling

Martin Owens
Thumb Up

@Steve

Agreed, those misbegotten fools think they own the country and it's people. It's time we showed them where to kiss our boots when bowing before their public, the masters on this gig.

International copyright talks seek BitTorrent-killer laws

Martin Owens

Tick tock

how long before we're ditching mass media anyway? Most of the stuff I see is text because I so bored and annoyed with the films and tv shows being shoved at me at such high prices.

Windows XP bests OS X in RIA test on Intel

Martin Owens

in other news

I'm sorry but that was one of the most useless an scientific tests, I shall no belive any results until I a) see them for myself and b) the test is open source and able to be run on other platforms and browsers.

Man barred from posting crimes on YouTube

Martin Owens

File this under

Is this really the best way to deal with criminals? prevent them from giving you evidence so you don't have to investigate their crimes.

Do we have a bunch of Fred Colons and Nobby Nobbies running that police force? do they stand on street corners making sure not to see anything too alarming?

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