Posts by Gis Bun

Nortel begs for bankruptcy protection

Toss the CEO

What ever CEO & president Mike Zafirowski does seems to screw up companies. Motorola had major problems with him there. Now Nortel. Next?

BTW, one story said they'll probably sell off chunks of the company.

Linux: this year's silver lining?

Oh here we go again

Every year the same prediction: Linux will take over the world.... Or whatever. This will never happen. why? The Linux side is too fragmented. too many distros. You have internal bickering betweek Linux people. Some say Ubuntu is for neanderthals. Others say RedHat/Fedora is too bulky [a Windows Vista wanna bee].

G N' R blogger pleads guilty to copyright violation

Dumb and dumber

Well, I think the guy probably deserved something for for having probably no brains in streaming the music. At least he is in possession of stolen material.

The week when the album was released, it was third on the sales list with something like 275,000 copies [in the US?].

While it's not a great album, it's listenable at least.

Bumper MS patch batch spells client-side misery

errr

"Why does it seem like Microsoft insist on a restart for every bloody patch that comes down the tube." - Have you ever ran it through Windows Update or Automatic Update? One reboot.

Or manually download each EXE. Run each EXE [assuming WinXP] and use /q /z as parameters. This stops any reboot with minimal interaction. I'd run in a batch file. Works with 95% of the updates. [Suppost to use the utility "qchain.exe" after the last update. Qchain can be found on the MS website.]

We have a dozen Server 2003 servers and with this way, they weren't rebooted in 6 months.

Note: Some updates require a reboot to take effect - so there is a minor risk if your network isn't secure.

2008's top three MP3 players

Apple == Overpriced & Overhyped

Unless I got it as a nice present this month, I wouldn't touch anything from Apple with a 10 foot pole. Poke around and you can find many issues with their hardware [not just iTouch]. They shoved a graphics card with a known issue into their new laptop. iPhones with hairline cracks and bad transfer speeds. Need I say more. let alone their deceptive ads which I know Mac lovers find them to be pathetic.

Apple tells Mac users: Get anti-virus

Macs aren't immune

Just because the vast majority of malware/crapware/viruses run on Windows doesn't mean Macs will always be free of those critters.

Aside from the "REAL" people who buy Macs [for business, for audio and video editing] you will still have those morons [they always seem to be blonde, female and an IQ of Britney Spears or less ... if that's possible] who will click on some attachment or open up some web site and will get infected. As more morons will buy a super expensive surfing/email system, more and more crapsware will appear becausethese morons know nothing about computers.

Guns N' Roses blogger to walk

oh well .... wait another 15

Can you really call it a GnR when only Rose is left?

Thomas Jerome: Actually it will [unfortunaly] be available in Canada...

Net pharmacies raided in nine countries

Small potatoes...

Probably make just a small dent. But it's better than nothing.

Shaun: The crap they sell half of the time [or most] is not even legit. You buy something from those sites are low dosage versions of dtugs --- if they are drugs at all. And if they don't work good luck in returning it. The fact that most are using spamming tactics to advertise is another reason not to trust them. EVer go to those sites? They advertise that they are hacker proof, Better Business Bureau approved, Verisign certificate, state or provincial approved and yet can't show proof. [The BBB and Verisign links should point to their respective sites but instead point to the pharamacy's own site.] Oh ya. The article said nothing about the pharmacy industry being on the raids, just Interpol and various police organizations.

Shawshank thesp erased from NY voter rolls

Can't vote

There was a recent snafu where many found themselves off the lists. According to a law, nobody can be removed within 90 days of an election, but they were....

Motorola still losing money

Screwed up company

I had stock when it was worth $60US [after a 3-for-1 stock split]. Now a share can barely buy a very cheap trio meal at McDonalds. [$5.20US]

There is still a class action lawsuit against the company because of their shennanigans around the dot.com crash. And they are [last I heard] suppost to split off the handset stuff.

I own their razr and the Rokr T505 speakerphone. Both are excellent. But their recent handsets aren't. I think the Razr2 has died a slow death. Do people really need buttons on the outside specifically for playing [MP3] music when the battery life sucks?

Led Zeppelin plan Plant-free tour

Grrrr.

On behalf of those who were too young to see them live [original four] --- bummer!

Mike Portnoy of Dream theater assembled a tribute band for a few concerts a few years back. Plant's "duplicate", Daniel Gildenlow wasn't too bad actually.

That said it still won't be Led Zep.

Merchants and punters cry foul over Verified by Visa

uh huh

Well, aside from who takes responsibility, at least entering a password is better than a few years ago when there was no verification.

Circuit City mulls mass layoffs, store closures

Never bothered with them anymore

They closed 62 stores in Canada last year. Most of the Canadian stores are considered on the small side. Most closed were from the Radio Shack chain they bought a few years ago. Surprisingly, they still can cut out some of the dead stores left. There are just too many around.

I don't even bother going there anyways. A $8 female to female 3.5mm adapter could be bought at another place for $2. Looks exactly the same. Spend $25 on a 6 ft USB cable? No thanks.

Russian conmen punt iPhoneys

Oh ya

To me it sounds like an improvement on the iPhone 3G and it's cheaper!

Only those twinkies who want everything from Apple will buy this junk.

Dell offers XP option for £44k

Errrr

I guess you have to pay quite a bit to Microsoft to have your own tech support guy/gal waiting for you call 24/7. ;-)

Ad hoc malware police besiege net neutrality

It's about time...

As long as the agreement states when you register a domain that your site can get cut off for any illegal activity then I approve it. It's about time that they cracked down on fraud site. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans there were probably a few hundred sites that popped up out of no where looking for novices/idiots to take advantage of.

There were plenty of cases at for this past summer Olympics where people bought tickets from what they thought were legitimate sites only to get nothing or fake tickets.

Registers should be at least partially accountable for who they register. If some guy decides to register a site called hurrican-ike-relief-charity.com with no proof of any type of charity registration, who's at fault? Or maybe someone who registers vmwear.com, theregistrar.com, adobee.com, etc.

University offers one-day Jedi course

For the young kids?

I don't know but my nephew [born in 1996] seemed to like the recent SW trilogy more than the originals. Maybe the new ones are less campy. For him, you'd call up in the afternoon but he's busy watching one of the movies. Call back after supper and he's still watching them. Or playing one of the games....

Apple agrees to pay itself $14m

Only in America...

...Can a company [technically] gets taken to court by itself.

The real winner? The lawyers. Over $8 million in fees on a $14 million settlement. Now we know why people hate lawyers. i'm sure for an itemized bill about $500,000 is just in washroom breaks that after $500,000 in getting a cup of coffee [the coffee machine, beans, cups, stirrers, etc. were also billed].

Columbia set to resurrect Ghostbusters

Errr.....

I'm waiting for a Ben Hur sequel.

Intel adds cheap dual-core, quad-core chips

oh ya

Waiting for that first quad core Celeron D!

iTunes, and Sting, banned from China

What a joke China's government is

They know nothing about the Internet.

It won't stop the illegal copies from flowing in through torrents, web sites, newsgroups, etc. What a joke for trying to block iTunes.

Feds accuse bank insider of massive data heist

Equal jail time? Blame Macs

Noticed that the guy did the stealing could get 5 years but the buyer could get 15 years. Make sense.

Mentioned in the article that an un-protected PC (we'll assume Windows) let him grab the data. One thing I've noticed is that there is no company that sells USB/CD/DVD protection for Macs or linux [last i checked]. Major hole in any company. A Good reason to cut them off the network. :-)

Thailand bans GTA after video game style murder

Useless to ban a game...

... When it can be downloaded off the 'net.

China readies Blu-Ray competitor

A hit in China, elsewhere, probably not

The real advantage will be that the players for CH-DVD will be quite cheap [which will force BlueRay players to drop prices]. The Chinese government will definitely bach CH-DVD over the imperialist designed [but probably Chinese made] Blue Ray players.

Problem is that with no Hollywood or game company backing, what will they be used for? It is suppost to have better copy protection. But to protect what if you can't get a game or movie on it?

And remember - don't lick them!

iPhone 3G not compatible with existing accessories

Greedy

Apple is greedy. Plain and simple. You go into their Apple store and you'll see accessories up the wazoo. You go into an electronics store and you'll see a few iPhones and a couple rows full of accessories from apple, Belkin and others. It's a multi-million dollar industry. Why would Apple be stupid enough to have older accessories work with new ones?

Just like buying toner. Why do you think each manufacturer has what it seems like one toner cartiridge model per printer model. They could stardardize but they can make more money (and kill off any cheapo versions) by making each model just slightly different.

One of many reasons why I wouldn't by anything from Apple. Proprietary.

Microsoft kicks Ubuntu update in the hardy herons

Oh here they come

As soon as some company releases some testing on how Windows beats Linux [again and again], the Linux zealots find any bit of negative issue in the article saying that the author of the article, the company that did it or even the computer that the article was typed on was biased towards Windows. Maybe Microsoft paid the researchers!

You don't like the results, create your own fabrication.

Face the facts. To be down for anything more than an hour is definitely unacceptable.

MS DNS patch snuffs net connection for ZoneAlarm users

Oh well....

To ekimdam [a.k.a. MadMike]: Get a life!

To Mike: XP security updates will be around until 2014.

To Tim: Boo hoo. Microsoft tests their security fixes. But every PC is different. Fix has no problem [it seems] with ZA 6.1 but is a problem with 7.0.

All: Better off sticking with ZA and not touching the update until either one of them comes out with a fix.

Firefox 3 downloads hit 7m despite server FAIL

Ho Hum

As mentioned, world record my a_s. There has never been any record before - so how can you say it's a record?

Mozilla disabled 2.x users from using the update utility in 2.x to check allow downloading 3.0 because Mozilla wanted 2.x to download 3.0 and not get it from the browser's update. Almost cheating there.

Some are claiming that the 2+ hour outage was because too many people wanted to get a copy. But according to a site meter, the problems occured BEFORE the 10am PDT time. I can't see a whole bunch of requests that are just text and images bogging down a site unless the site can't handle the traffic.

Oh ya. Installed 3.0 over my 2.0.0.12. At the end of the install, kept the checkbox to run 3.0 after the installer finishes. Up comes the title bar saying 3.0 RC2. And release notes 3.0 RC2! I close it and re-open and now it shows the release 3.0. Huh?

'Untraceable' phone fraudsters eye your credit card

Latest scammers

Got this twice in one day - but they are stupid enough with their automated message to think that my voicemail message is actually me.

Before deleting the messages, the callback telephone numbers were all zeros.

Dell guilty of defrauding New York customers

Various

Lee: Put the blame on the delivery guy - unless you stipulated at the time of the order to ship elsewhere.

Anyone: Have had people buy Dells [partially on my recommendation]. First, you get what you paid for. If you are playing retail games, buying a PC with a cheap integrated video card or stereo audio card isn't the right thing to do.

That said, i hate when Dell limits things. I've seen PCs with memory limitations. Or when the mobo originally had an IDE controller but they removed the connector [so you can only use SATA].

Or why you can get immediate support on a corporate line but can wait 20 minutes to get some guy from India [sorry India but we can't understand half of your support people].

At a time when they could use the extra support, Dell decides to kill off 2000 support jobs in Canada - with one just after opening last year in a new building!

JPG hole cuts RAZR open

Ah typical Motorola

With the number of RAZRs around, better be fixed soon!

Microsoft slams OEMs over XP SP3 install cock-up

Something screwy with screwy systems...

To Dan Landiss: An AMD system installs IntelPPM? I truly doubt it. I have a dual boot AMD system at home and it's on neither. Installed SP3 on one of them and it installed beautifully. No issues whatsoever.

To Anyone: Unfortunately, what 95% of the XP users forget is that every system is different. Few have thought that the constant rebooting on a non-AMD system could be something else [malware, another screwy driver, etc.] ATI Catalyst drivers have a known issue with SP3 but ATI had the updated drivers ready to go. The lazy ass buggers at HP probably have known that the IntelPPM problem could be an issue and has done nothing and still have done nothings. MS support should ask the caller "HP system with an AMD CPU? Call HP."

When they mean "like" hardware for Sysprep, it's primarily not to mix processors of different brands but also don't use a Intel Quad Core image to image a Penium 3.