* Posts by Martin Owens

428 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2006

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Microsoft makes another Linux friend in Xandros

Martin Owens

Rest in peace

Bye bye Xandros, such a shame but you know how these things go.

Online games turn British man into hero

Martin Owens

Course

Remind me but isn't the best action to get out of sight and phone the police. and then maybe let down the tires of the get away car. something like that.

I can't remember the last 'hero' lessons I had back in the 80s.

Vista upgrade revisited

Martin Owens

Software Problems

I'm not sure I understand, your saying there are technical problems with windows vista? I never even got to that point the moral problems of supporting a convicted monopolist always seem to get in the way.

Do principles not count any more? pity.

NASA blows whistle on Antarctic Y2K (+5) meltdown

Martin Owens

Warming? GW?

Global Warming is a rather throw away phrase. Climate change is more accurate since we have no idea how things will work out.

Now above there are some comments to the effect that we don't know if it's human caused or just a natural variation. scientists are 99% confident it's human caused and not just because they have some weird bias, these are scientists not eco nuts. the main evidence for human intervention in climate models is without human factors the weather we see currently doesn't fit the models, factor in CO2, Methane and they get closer. factor in particulate pollution and they get even closer.

To my mind, humans are shifting variables in the climate, no question about that. the real problem is finding out what this will do to the weather before it happens.

Sun may never set on British Empire's pint

Martin Owens

Billions

I agree, we should protect the billion (Tera not Giga) and trillions (Yotta not Tera), after all shouldn't a trillion be a billion, billion?

If anyone starts swanking around with a trillion dollar deficit we can truly laugh at their Yottaloss.

Downing Street rejects Vista petition

Martin Owens

The windows question

Rupert Roker I don't think you've used Mac or Linux, or not for very long. you're also repeating a lot of the linux desktop myths. for instance most hardware that you swap out or upgrade 'just works' drivers aren't a britch they're don't exist, none are required for most things. as for games well well, I like playing games as much as the next chump but I buy and play Linux games, I don't pretend that DirectX fan boy studio products can be made to work in wine, I simply don't buy their games.

The truth is that the industry is warped around Microsoft and the only way out it is if you, the consumers make sacrifices so it can realign around a none locked in, forced upgrade, genuinely disadvantaged software product.

But lets face it, most of you see this as a technical problem when in the end it's a political and industry problem so your helpless.

Moduslink blames OEMs for Vista upgrade delays

Martin Owens

At least...

With Ubuntu ship-it CDs they give you a cardboard cover and cover the cost of shipping. ok so it might take 8 weeks to get to the people in outer Mongolia but at least you wouldn't have to pay for it.

Judge in MP3 case to Microsoft: time to pay up

Martin Owens

Grey world

You win some you loose some, while I'm not a fan of Microsoft's business or technologies I'd march with them against software patents.

Digg buried by users in piracy face-down

Martin Owens

Corrections

The Register would be subject to the EUCD not the DCMA.

> What am i missing?

Your not a linux user you wouldn't understand, the only way we can legitimately play our paid for dvds is to break the DCMA/EUCD and run libdvdcss; there are plenty of people concerned that Linux users will once again be left out in the cold by a Blue-Ray and HD-DVD controlling body that wants load'sa money for licensed keys. Interestingly how an encryption mechanism were you give every user a key is supposed to work, I'm not sure. But the people in the media industry needed a placebo and that is what they got because none of these will protect you from pirates just stop peoples fair use and property rights.

Dell Linux is go

Martin Owens

Support for bits?

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&l=en&s=gen&docid=2F0A15EB21C7E5DDE040A68F5B285AAE

Interesting this is dated yesterday, according to Mark there would be two big news events this week, one which will dominate the media (my guess this one) so now I'm wondering what the other one will be.

HP: 'IT, as we know it, is over'

Martin Owens

Slogan problem?

BT'ing the hand that feeds IT?

High level Night Elf druid saves PC gaming

Martin Owens

Aggrieved

I gave up a long time ago on PC/Windows games, even my Mac with it's petty copies of windows games has been muted.

These games they are making are boring; I've been into Game and WHSmiths, looked around for anything interesting for the last few years; and there just isn't. I finally just gave up on the boxed game arena and will now stick to Linux puzzle games, downloadable subscriber games (such as atitd) and perhaps one or two physical card games if I can stand to get up from my computer.

They killed the market with their incompetence.

BOFH: Geeks on heat

Martin Owens

Great Stuff

Re Above, fantastic stuff; Now if only she was also into installing Gentoo from stage 1 tarballs and perhaps a little beer brewing you'd get my wife.

Beeb extends download trial to Macs

Martin Owens

What about Linux

Oh come on Apple Macs arn't good enough; it's like supporting Labour and Tories and telling the Lib Dems that their not big enough so not worth writing any news about.

I thought the BBC had rules about not being discriminatory.

'Cops help kill 32 Students', claims furious blogger

Martin Owens

You leave us alone

It's the social view of guns, not the laws that help reduce gun use. it's not ok to own a gun and show it to your mates in the UK; even some of the more dubious and stupid members of my extended family would freak out if someone started showing off a simple firearm. It's true that you can't take the guns away from criminals with laws, but at least they don't have the bare arsed cheek to wield them in public like toys.

>> Maybe if we closed our borders and kicked everyone the hell out

>> that wasn't born here, we could get back to the "You leave us alone,

>> We'll leave you alone" attitude from our early history. We could pull

>> out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and worry about protecting our own

>> soil. Let the rest of the world deal with their own mess for a change

>> and let them live with the consequences.

This is a bit off topic, but it needs to be said: America is a coward, they will only stand up when they have superior fire power and can sit nice and cozzy in their bunker while they attempt to kill the enemy with WMD. Even their films show off all those heros and principles that they all know they don't have. I dare say there are still a few good men in the USA but you must hide them away in the hills. After every illegal and immoral war the country as a whole crawls away to lick it's hurt feelings and looks inwards, at it's own ego for comfort and support because it's the only place you ever find it.

What a sad culture you have created for yourselves, I pity your country and hope you all don't follow the above attitude.

Oh and hating the rest of the world and the people in it will not win you friends.

BT forgets to bill for internet access

Martin Owens

Law

There should be an Ops Law which applies to both government and business in which a customer or member of public is not deemed to face excessive charging and stacked bills which may lead to bankruptcy and hardships.

The level of blame in the fault should determine how much the business or government must cancel out the debt. So your computers glitch 100% your fault, 100% lost money; if the customer found a way to get free calls or was keeping information from the org then it's over the other way. for big cases like this I'd like to see rulings.

All of this though must be mediated so that bills can not spike, even the tax system is designed to try and prevent tax spikes why can't the laws apply to businesses of services too?

Wanna copy of Windows XP next year? Forget it

Martin Owens

Boating

I see lots of comments about Linux, some quite misinformed but oh well. It's just this os you know; does what it's told to, is what you want it to be and that's it. people find is nice to have an os that does what you want. obviously you now have the responsibility of looking after your own support and the problems of not running games built for windows, but to be honest you were daft enough to buy windows games in the first place so there's no helping some people.

As for Windows Vista, I haven't used windows since windows 98 about 5 years ago, Windows XP was the last straw and I'm glad there are others that see that the windows world is not as great as purported.

Re: Cedgea, based on the old bsd licensed version of wine, a rather hurtful story.

Government predicts one third of people will resist ID checks

Martin Owens

Prision

>> What is the difference, in practical terms, between

>> (1) having to carry an identity card in the street at all times and

>> (2) being in prison?

you get free food, lodgings and plenty of support programs in prison.

I'll personally demand to be arrested when the time comes, I want to see the look on their faces when I have to point out that my society has turned my freedom into a crime.

Freedom or death anyone?

WoW players learn value of Windows updates

Martin Owens

Proc Run?

Ash, even if you were running linux and are foolish enough to run something in your home directory it'd have a chance at hacking into WoW; the fact is that WoW uses normal widgets which don't encode passwords as their typed and they don't use protected process inputs to stop key logging (although I have no idea if windows api in general offers this feature).

the point is that Blizzard are doing the bare minimum to secure their users through technical means, and it's not helped by the rather lax security offered by the standard windows xp operating system.

I'm playing ATITD on Linux, so there.

Microsoft and Cisco eye Iceland for green server farms

Martin Owens

Now for the crunch

Can we get tech firms to build more geothermal power plants in the US and more wind turbines in the UK?

I fear a deed to good even for the likes of Bill.

Cracked HD-DVD and Blu-Ray app keys revoked

Martin Owens

Thy without

So what are linux people supposed to do? we can develop drivers for the HD Optical drives but what's the point if we can't play any of the media on the discs?

So long as there are programmers that can't play their own media they legally bought on the operating system they so choose to use the film industry is doom9ed to loose the battle.

Adobe takes UK price hikes to new level with CS3

Martin Owens

Translations?

I agree, why bother buying this? most artists don't use nearly all the features and have it to make them selves feel good.

Since Inkscape and Gimp both have en_GB translations brought to you by the rossetta project with colour and everything. I can't see how a volenteer effort can translate software correctly and yet adobe still has en_US as their English 'intonational' version (lets not barf at the fact that en_US is only used in the WTO and USA while en_GB is the official english of the rest of the world bar Canada)

The whole thing stinks of abusive capitalism; it ain't right and I won't stand for it.

Buddhist video game aims to teach morals

Martin Owens

I knew it!

I knew learning to read and speak Thai would come in handy!

good job it works on linux or I'd be stuffed.

Star Trek XI logged for Xmas 2008 launch

Martin Owens

If the BBC can do it!

Hey if the BBC can do it with Doctor Who and bring a classic SF seiries from the grave then bringing back Star Trek should be too hard right?

I wonder if they're going to have some kind of transformational energy beam thingy ba bob that changes their looks like Doctor Who.

What in the world is there left to do with the Star Trek universe? surly it's only role now is for futurama gags.

If whales can communicate by telepathy, why can't humans?

Martin Owens

March

It's worth not getting involved in dogma (esp doesn't exist) and sticking to open minded candidness (there is no proof that esp exists, but I don't really care so I won't attempt to prove it)

Nothing wrong with no giving a rats about a subject, but saying something so definitively requires some proof. like the ultimate theory of everything would be nice.

Why is the human face hairless?

Martin Owens

Thought body hair loss was

I always thought the size and density of human body hair was due to the fact that our ancestors wanted to be able to swim. the facial hair could be the same.

Or, and I know this might sound odd but perhaps there was more than one reason; it's not as if evolution has a clip-board saying 'Remove hair for body heat [check]' it's more likely that multiple environmental/social factors can push for the same evolutionary advantages at the same time.

Intel vs AMD - integrated graphics shoot-out

Martin Owens

Intel have advantages

It's nice that windows vista gets lots of nice press, but I'm more concerned with the fact that AMd have yet to offer anything in the way of secure drivers to me as a linux user. intel on the other hand are co-operative and have developers in there doing their thing.

The support difference means I could never buy the amd/nvidia anyway. it'd be too risky.

Why do women have smaller feet?

Martin Owens

Role of estrogen

An interesting feature of estrogen in early life is that it apears to reduce and halt bone growth in both males and females. being exposed earlier to large amounts of estrogen may produce the smaller bones, but it also seems to act with other chemicals to make the hips bigger. all rather a puzzel.

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