Posts by Svein Skogen

Apple appeals Samsung patent getaway in Tokyo

Re: Not yet a win

It should more precisely be referred to as a loss for consumers and common sense.

//Svein

Apple wins EU-wide Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 ban

Re: This has to stop.

How many companies are Apple suing again?

And, quite frankly, given Apple's behaviour, I'm open for ANY SOLUTION that puts that company out of business. Permanently.

//Svein

This has to stop.

It's time to start protesting this by picketing the Apple-stores with leaflets explaining why handing money to Apple is financing abuses towards the customers.

People willingly handing money to this monster, should be hospitalized, same as any other Stockholm-syndrome sufferer.

Apple as a company must be stopped, preferably by sending any Apple-employees to North Korean KZ-camps manning quarries.

//Svein

'Amazon can't do what we do': Twitter-miner's BYO data centre heresy

Infrastructure. Rent vs Own

That's what the cloud is about. Do you want to rent the infrastructure you use, or do you want to own it.

For short term use, renting makes more sense, since you don't have the added cost of buying the stuff, and training the staff.

For long term, and permanent, use, you want stuff inhouse.

//Svein

EU lurches behind copyright free-for-all landgrab

This means we need more legislation

Corporations doing attribution-stripping (i.e. orphan-creation) should hereby automatically be put down. Organizations doing industrial attribution-stripping should be treated like the criminal cartels they are, and the leaders put behind bars (with fortunes confiscated.)

Just my personal €0.02 on this issue.

iPads seized from shelves by Chinese officials

Hopefully they will go further

Hopefully they will start confiscating at the foxconn plant, products and parts-for-products for infringing fruit-ware. ;)

Ten... inkjet photo printers

Products Missing?

Your article seems to be sadly missing the Pixma Pro 9x00 printers, while containing some Hopeless Products. This is an oversight, isn't it?

//Svein

It's the ALL NEW FUTURISTIC WEAPONS Black Friday Roundup!

Not VAL.

It's almost the same gun, but what you're looking for is the Vintorez ("Bolt Cutter"). Slightly smaller clip, longer barrel, a tad more accurate (and comfy). But mostly the same parts.

//Svein

UN set to dump GMT for tech-friendly Atomic Time

British Summer Time

"One positive outcome for Brits distressed by the loss of our Victorian superpower status is that the end of GMT as an international standard could accelerate the move to keep British Summer Time into the winter, letting us have lighter evenings."

So ... you want to be UTC+1 at winters....

How about going CET/CEST and ditching GMT once and for all?

Sony asks for 1.6m LCD TVs to be returned

IBM Should sue.

Sony has successfully implemented the rumored system/360 HCF instruction.

//Svein

Wales says no to outing Wikipedia users on Facebook

Facebook (and their ilk) and blocking

seriously. Are there ANY sane people out there who HASN'T added facebook (and all their other junk domains) to their adblock setup?

//Svien

MS denies secure boot will exclude Linux

It's WORSE than just locking out Linux

All of us know that most of the not-so-serious pc manufacturers, preload a lot of crapware (and track-the-user-for-advertisement-ware!) software onto their products. Even a lot of blackmail-ware (such as symantec's CoinOpped virii).

With this "enforce signature" setup, the MFG can protect against users removing all this crapware with a "real windows" installation-disc. They can FORCE you to remain the recipient of targeted spamvertizement.

Now, what would be their motivation for allowing users to reinstall a non-infected OS again?

After hack nightmare, Sony bars lawsuits with new TOS

Hmmmm....

Maybe it's time we start by attaching EULAs to our money? Something akin to this:

BY ACCEPTING THIS MONETARY UNIT AS PAYMENT FOR SERVICES OR PRODUCTS RENDERED, YOU REVOKE YOUR PROTECTION FROM VIOLENCE OR DEATH UNDER THE LAW, SHOULD YOUR SERVICE OR PRODUCT BE OF UNSATISFACTORY QUALITY

should do it, methinks.

Note that I'm in general skeptical of all corporations headquartered in the USA, since they usually have the moral backbone of damp gingerbread.

//Svein

HTC hurls more patent spew on Apple

Not so strange

That's not so strange. MS was smart enough to leave the cost of licensing the patents, at a point lower than the cost of spending years in court. I suspect something like $0.02 cheaper, but that's just the cynical me.

Apple doesn't want to license. They want all competitors to die a horrible death, so they can have a total monopoly, in which they can _ENFORCE_ their walled-garden-approach (earning them a nice 30%) on all users to ensure their "experience". They want this bad enough to show up in courtrooms with doctored "evidence". That company needs to go away, along with all of their cultists. Period.

//Svein

LightSquared blasts GPS naysayers in FCC letter

Let them build their GROUND BASED kit

Let them build the ground-based kit. And stop there. This ground-based kit will only affect stupid rednecks and hillbillies, and leave us civilized Europeans alone. A satellite deployment by these oafs would affect civilized areas as well. ;)

Bring it on, I'm wearing my asbestos long-johns anyways. ;)

//Svein

Spamford Wallace charged for hacking 500,000 Facebookers

Something is missing here

He redirected each "clickee" onto a phishing-site. Something in the 10K numbers of them. Why isn't each of these listed as one instance of computing trespass (10 000 * 6 months still is sufficient to make sure he's never freed)?

//Svein

Game graphics could be 100,000 times better

Possible solution

Couldn't you, say, accelerate the voxels using (for instance) OpenCL running on the GPGPU, and then use the output of that, and still have the benefit of a massive number of very simple processing cores on the GPU?

//Svein

Hackers dump secret info for thousands of cops

Their Reasoning

Disclaimer: I do not make statements to either acknowledge or deny agreement with the hackers in this case. If you think I agree, or think I disagree, please read this disclaimer again until it makes sense.

I believe the logical reasoning behind the hackers releasing all they could find on law-enforcement, is that they've seen the law-enforcement becoming profit-enforcement for those with deep pockets, and not law-enforcement for all citizens. I suspect that as long as they continue to see law-enforcement being abused as the private enforcement arm of Corporate States of America, the hackers WILL consider all law-enforcement officers, and affiliates, legal targets for their vendetta.

I can understand their logic on this one, even if I neither agree nor disagree.

//Svein

New Sony hack exposes more consumer passwords

That'll teach 'em

I haven't willingly touched a sony product since their rootkit fiasco (I had the fortune of cleaning up someones pc after that one). And I've seen the stuff they've done since. The only reaction you get from me over people being hurt over this barrage against sony is "That'll teach 'em the cost of doing business with the mafia".

//Svein

Japanese gov makes Fukushima evac zone compulsory

For comparison

Modern X-Ray equipment yields 1mGy/S (milligray/second). I'll leave looking up Gray -> Sievert calculations for ionizing radiation to those skilled in googlefoo.

//Svein

Brussels threatens to name ISPs with 'doubtful' market practices

You're forgetting something.

Skype has already paid for their connection to the internet. So has the user. If the service providers inbetween can't provide the bandwidth they are selling., they're not pricing it correctly, or they're selling stuff they have no intention of delivering (isn't that a con job?)

//Svein

Virtual Server backup software ranked

Uhm ... Right

So, they forgot that modern virtual servers are usually stored on iSCSI or FC backend, and people have the luxury of connecting their autoloaders directly to the storage pool, for scheduled diskimage snapshots, in addition to file-by-file backups from the guest OS?

//Svein

Tape backup could be binned soon

I suggest a head-to-head test..

I suggest the following head-to-head test:

-Backup the same data to one RDX and one LTO cartridge.

-Bring both cartridges to a second floor window over a concrete pavement.

-Drop both cartridges.

-Verify that both are readable.

//Svein

Novell punts cloud control tool

Literally Vaporware

Since clouds by their very definition is vapor, this MUST be vaporware...

//Svein

OpenSolaris board commits ritual suicide

Darth Ellison again

What other option did they have?

They had Oracle employees banning all dissenting people from the mailinglist (asking questions about the future of OpenSolaris was "abusive behavior"), fanbois filling up the rest so that the signal-to-noise ratio of those list were ... problematic.

Then they had leaks proving that the radio-silence from official Oracle standpoint was proven to be accurate. Exactly zero output from Oracle to OpenSolaris was the actual statement.

In the end, the OGB were basically hostages of Oracle Corporation Greediness and nothing more.

Let this be a warning to any business stupid enough to let Oracle people inside their premises.

//Svein

RIM, Juniper, and VMware on Oracle's Borg 14 list

Attention: Darth Ellison

Stay away from VMWare. Leave them alone. They do not need your destruction, even if they DO compete with "Virtual Iron" and "VirtualBox".

//Svein

New code-execution bug found in Windows and 40 apps

Enabled by default?

Uhm ... The default setting for the Web Client service is "manual" not "autostart" or "autostart(delayed)".

This means that until you actually NEED the service, it's not started.

Of course, this doesn't block real-stupid-users from shooting their own foot and webdav-mount the "pictures of <celebrity> naked" they received a link to in their mail, from someone in russia with bad memory for recipient addresses. The best malware-protection still needs to be installed in wetware.

//Svein

Intel's SSD roadmap leaked

SATA/SAS

Then use a suitable backplane for the disks. Use smarter backplanes in your rack, don't depend on the disk itself being smart (the failure might just as well be the disk logic board, not the software or silicon on your server)

//Svein

Airline ejects passenger for being hungry

Well, that makes two...

Given that Ryanair recently had a guy fetched by three police officers for complaining that the food they served was inedible, I'm not THAT surprised.

http://www.vg.no/reise/artikkel.php?artid=10079995

Article in Norwegian, sorry.

//Svein

Leica Pinmaster rangefinder

Didn't you mean

You've rated it a bogey, or a double-bogey?

//Svein

UK small firms better get used to Dell's 65-day payment terms

Well, it's Dell

Given Dell's track record of honesty, and quality-controlled equipment, I suggest that companies simply avoid dealing with Dell at all costs. Both having Dell as a supplier, and supplying anything to Dell.

Total isolation is the best practice here.

//Svein

Google risks OEM wrath for unified Android UI plan

I'll maybe consider android

I'll maybe consider android. When it doesn't upload everything in my messages, call-history, contacts, calendar, whatnot, kitchen and sink, to google.

If an android device comes along that understand that I don't want google to have copies of all my information, I'll consider the device. Until then, it's just as irrelevant as the cupertino trash.

//Svein

Apple reels as Steve Jobs Flashturbates

The correct solution would be...

The correct solution would be for all ISVs to leave Apple. All of them. Let Apple alone develop for OSX and iWhatnot. This time he's after Adobe. Not because it's Adobe, but because they have a product that's in the way of apple-domination. Who's next?

Get out of their products while you can. Simply tell the Apple customers that "If you want our applications, or drivers for that gadget of yours? Ditch the fruitcase."

Apple has, again, and again, shown that they will stop at nothing to break compatibility, sabotage vendors who are "in their way", etc. It's time the independent software vendors simply cut their losses, and left all things Apple behind and never looked back.

//Svein

Google backs open codec against patent trolls

And that's exactly why.

And that's exactly why it should be BSD licensed, and _NOT_ GPL.

Do you thing it, for instance, could be statically linked inside the bootflash of a mobile device if it was GPL? Seriously? You fanatic penguinistas (or other herds of GNUs) wouldn't be chasing that manufacturer down with pitchforks requiring them to abide by the GPL and open source all the rest of their software?

BSD unlike GPL is _NOT_ a viral license. And in this case (if you want the commercial backers), GPL would be a _STUPID family of licenses to use. Sorry. Thanks for playing.

Shock! Facebook cycle-slut smutvid is adware front

Facebook. Malware. News?

So, a site that makes a living by exposing peoples private information to more and more spamvertizers, now has a malware link? And this is news how, again?

//Svein

'Beauty with antimatter bottom' created out of pure energy

Mix up things properly!

If you're going to mix up top/bottom and truth/beauty in the antimatter setting, wouldn't this be an anti-top (topless) beauty?

//Svein

Adobe clutches chance to bury Steve Jobs 'hog' insult

Better solution than to stop CS5 from Apple

A better solution than to stop CS5 for OSX would be to reduce the price of CS5 for windows. It would mean more sales (enthusiasts that would be able to use a legal copy), and at the same time it would give management suits in companies the choice of spending less for placing their graphic creators on windows, or spend more, AND GAIN NOTHING by keeping them on fruit-cases.

An even cuter solution would include making CS6 for OpenSolaris. ;)

//Svein

Mystic Met closed Europe with computer model

Maybe ...

Maybe it's time someone made a BOINC-application (preferrably one that utilize CAL, OpenCL or DirectCompute) so we "end users" can help?

//Svein

Adobe to sue Apple 'within weeks,' says report

A cute solution would be

If Adobe cut the price for the Windows version of CS5 in half, and increased the Apple version by a third. That would make a few beancounters calculate, and come back with the result "apple users are too expensive to employ" and give those who now are on the creative suite the option of tossing out their fruit-cases or getting tossed out ALONG with the fruit-cases. ;)

Making apple-customers lose their income would solve a lot of the problems. ;)

//Svein

'Switch to Century Gothic to save the planet'

re: "Windows-only"?

Well, it's (as far as I can recall) in opentype format on the Font Folio CD (I'm not sitting near it now, so I can't verify).

I prefer the Schoolbook variant (I prefer antiqua-fonts over grotesque), and both have the ability to be readable at a full two points smaller size than their "windowsified" variants (arial and times), even of you use a very tight pair-kerning.

//Svein

Desktop Colour Laser Printers: Best Buys

Missing Printer in test

The Xerox tested here is the 612x ... winprinter. Wouldn't it have been fairer to use the 618x postscript printer int this comparison?

//Svein

Photographers rue Mandy's copyright landgrab

The problem with this

Is that such a common repository would only be done by someone interested in the commercial aspect. Perhaps someone wanting to aggregate all pictures for sale to media et all. I can see such a service being used by the likes of Murdoch to send invoices to all sites containing an image he has (unlawfully) grabbed hold of.

//Svein

Correct response to this

For photographers is to plaster a huge watermark "Not Licensed for UK Use until XXX is revoked" on all their work.

Being a photographer myself, I'm very wary of all the new legislation that without exception shifts rights AWAY from individual photographers and into the hands of corporations. But then again, we have no reason to trust politicians NOT being ... owned by those corporations.

//Svein

OpenSolaris devs 'ignored' by Oracle

Let's hope my gut feeling about this is wrong

Let's hope my gut feeling about this (created by years of being exposed to corporations) is wrong. The gut feeling is that "Oracle's main customer base is big corporations and government contracts, and they have no interest in any product making it easy for small operations to compete with their big customers", and as such they want products like OpenSolaris to die a horrible death.

Which is sad, really. Opensolaris properly polished could really give Linux, OSX, *BSD some proper competititon, both at server and workstation ends, and with a little extra spitshine even compete on end-user desktops.

However, doing so would give Oracles main customers competition. Given Oracles track record, I have a bad feeling.

//Svein

p.s. I'm a FreeBSD enthusiast myself, but admit OpenSolaris is better at a lot of things.

Chinese tablet maven threatens iPad suit

Yet another marketing disaster

Why on earth would he claim those to be identical? That's the most stupid thing to say, when HIS PRODUCT is CLEARLY the superior one.

The iPad (how long will that name last, since it's a registered trademark of another corp?) should be named the "iSucker" with the tagline "now everyone can see what you are".

Sheesh!

--anon (to avoid the rabid iCultists)

Apple 'games' NAND flash market

It's worse than that

By first ordering, and creating a shortage, they're increasing costs for their competitors. Then, by only buying a small amount, they add a loss to their suppliers as well (by creating a huge surplus of chips).

Maybe it's time those suppliers told Apple exactly what to do with their order? I imagine Apple won't be doing this "forever" before their suppliers decide never again to do business with the Cupertino Rotten Fruit Distributor.

//Svein

FreeBSD version 8.0 lands

@Cazzo Enorme

Look up "USL vs BSDi". The BSDs are Unix. ;)

//Svein

VTOL gyro-copter flying car mates with killer robot

Problem is

This version of an autogyro needs the most expensive parts of a helicopter.

The blades themselves

The mixing mechanics (including the washout)

The swashplate.

and it lacks a lot of the capabilities the full-blown heli would have, such as self-balancing rotor (that can be folded over the tailboom), independent tail control, etc..

//Svein

Anti-filesharing laws are go

How about another three-strike

How about we get a rule that the third time a lobby-organization makes claims based on dodgy evidence, the organization is forcefully disbanded, and the board of directors placed in custody until we can find the time to prosecute them for their lies on legal matters?

//Svein

HP, Dell punters furious over Windows 7 upgrade delays

And ... this time it's NOT MS'es fault

I built a new computer right before the launch, bought an OEM-license for Vista with upgrade offer, registered the offer, and had Win7 a few days after the launch. Surgically free from shipping and handling costs...

So it's not MS'es fault.

//Svein