Posts by Stevie

Lehman Brothers sues Intel over a billion dollar deal

How does Lehman even still exist?

Two words : "Official Receiver".

Thousands rally behind teen girl cuffed, expelled in harmless 'explosion'

Re: Sounds like Kiera Wilmot was doing science!

Not American School, *Floridian School*.

Your thesis will never be taken seriously until you understand that each state is like unto a small country, with its own rules and its own "national" character.

It's like you never even *saw* Deliverance.

Tch!

Hmm...

And yet, in that very state one can shoot an unarmed person and get off scot-free if one can make a convincing claim that they felt the now-dead completely unarmed "assailant" was threatening one's life.

Of course it helps if various stereotypes are at work reinforcing one's claim in people's minds.

I took a mental walk along this fetid towpath and concluded that the (female) kid should have shot the (older male) assistant principal. A brief investigation, some witchhunt-style innuendo and no more would have been said.

Apple designer Sir Jony Ive holding up iOS 7 development: Report

Bah!

Three dimensional gestures?

Magic. Now not only will my commute be riddled with oblivious fucktards playing tinny music at full volume but I'll stand a chance of having an eye put out by someone playing Angry Birds.

Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

Bah!

What needles me most about trial crapware is that it isn't smart enough to figure out you already have a fully licensed version of whatever it is running and installs it anyway, causing all sorts of trouble with the thing you actually paid for long before Adobe (et al) decided to direct your attention forcibly to whatever it is.

Actually, not-smart-enough software in general is making me mad right now, from the fucking Bonjour service (which I didn't want) iTunes (which I was forced to use) installed silently and which ISN'T designed with a double-the-wait backoff algorithm so that my log fills with hundreds of fucking Bonjour errors whenever I'm not on a network (the majority of my laptop use is network-free) to "free" wifi service from my cable provider that takes so long to connect and whose nodes are positioned so stupidly that its use on my branch of the Long Island Rail Road is all but doomed to failure.

And don't get me started about those fucktarded program traces java developers think are suitable for run-time user error messages. A till roll of mindless gibberjabber and if you are lucky the reason why whatever dimwit applet it is has crashed is anywhere to be found before the IO module truncates it (no, I don't allow java on my machine but I work in a Snoracle enterprise). Fucking new paradigm indeed.

The new fad for loading crapware because the option to *not* load it is hidden amongst the boilerplate contract for your soul should earn for its inventor a special place in hell after a long and painful demise suffered because the paperwork to waive hospital liability was so long he (or she) died before they found the "just do it" checkbox.

Where's the Tylenol?

Re: Fireworks Anyone

" The bundling of bundles of cr*pw*re with updating updates should be outlawed by law."

Fixed it for you.

Climate change forces women into prostitution - US politicians

Gah!

Just to prove that the GOP doesn't have a lock on Congressional Fucktards.

Branson's SpaceShipTwo succeeds in first rocket-powered flight

Wow

All this negativity.

a) No-one is forcing anyone to ride the thing.

2) It's none of your business if someone puts their kids on this thing, even if it then runs into a fireball or pancakes. One thing we don't have in this world is a shortage of kids. You want to keep your kids away from it, fine, you have my full support. You want to stop your next-door neighbour from letting his kids ride it, you need to be quiet and find something useful to do.

I'm 62 & I wanna go NOW!

I'm with Bob. Chocks away.

Surprise! Republican bill adds politics to science funding

Bah!

Republican...ignorant of how science works. Spot the redundancy.

These idiots won't be satisfied until they have built Iran in the homeland. What a shame, in retrospect, that the CSE wasn't allowed to go their own way and take their crazy-ass people with them. Darn you, Honest Abe!

It occurs to me that members of Congress get fat checks from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and that if the government stops funding independent research ("We're not cutting back on science, just on wasted taxpayer money") the only people who will be able to afford to do this stuff will be the mega corps, who may dictate the agenda and thus protect markets.

This must just be my paranoia gland misfiring owing to all the coffee I drank today. It couldn't happen in the real world.

Object Storage: A solution in search of a problem?

Re: Object storage...not so problematic

@cloudguy: I should take heed of someone who tries to explain a modern technology but has no grasp of the old-school concept of readability?

Ever hear of a paragraph break, cloudguy?

Continued lack of women in tech bemoaned by ex-techie lady MP

Hmm

I have fond memories of my first job where the head of the punch room *and* the chief programmer were women. Extremely demanding and forceful women, who pushed for and got lockstep compliance and total obedience from the staff and who were extremely strict with juniors.

It was the best job I ever had.

Bah!

The entire argument is so blatantly sexist this politician should be censured. Tell her to reword her sentiments in more politically neutral terms.

Also: English supermarket tills don't work?

Canadian TV station wails: NFC bonking... it's not SAFE

Re: Theft is easy

"You do relise that it's your card issuer you should be calling,"

Really? Coo, never thought of that. I just called the toll-free number on the back of my Visa card. I guess I just didn't think it through.

Re: Theft is easy

"They have, and do use, considerable resources to track down and punish abuse of their payment processing cartel."

Not in my experience. Recently a vendor called me from California to ask if a transaction was valid. It wasn't. The vendor then kindly offered to give the police all the information the buyer had supplied, including the bogus address that had triggered the phone call.

I thanked them and called Visa, who were supremely uninterested in following up on that, there apparently being no procedural path to get that information to anyone who cared. I, as a resident in a state thousands of miles from California was unable to initiate a police procedure over the phone, and the crime was committed there so my local police couldn't care less.

End result: I got my money back ( the thief had gone shopping with a vengeance but made a mistake on that last purchase), the thief got some of the stuff and Visa's fraud fund were out a few hundred dollars.

Bah!

Speaking as someone who has had his credit card "borrowed" on many occasions, starting on New Years Eve 1984 (I am absolutely sure of the location and date the initial crime occurred) when someone duped my Access card by the simple act of having access to the onion skin and took it to Atlantic City (unaware of the pathetic credit limit it had), and continuing through the internet store era where my card has taken trips to Queens and California sans my permission, can I just say that assuming that having the number and name is *not* enough for a fraud to take place is delightfully naive?

I'm sure the homeland security bods in both the USA and the UK are *sure* that one cannot gain enough information from a slurp of a biometric passport to do any harm, yet in these very pages I've read about the wisdom of carrying those documents in a Faraday cage wallet. So why the double standard? Wait - I see the mention of a smartphone there. Nothing bad can come of <insert favourite brand of smartphone> use can it?

As you were.

UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now

Re: Fine

"Well, as I say, there's not much chance of getting compensation as you won't be able to prove malice and if they've sold 10,000 copies of the image by the time you find them then not only will you not get compensated but you'll have 10,000 other people who think they own a legitimate copy and no way to tell a court any different."

But who would *buy* an image if it is as ridiculously easy to steal it as you seem to believe? This resaler -from-hell scenario would seem to be an unlikely development.

I'm just a little confused as to what the photographers want done about the situation. As another commentator has said, putting stuff on the internet is handing it out free.

It occurs to me that one might use the same technique as used by encyclopedias - that of adding artifacts to the image that act in place of a signature. Kind of like what Cuneo used to do with the mouse, only in a way that is completely transparent to someone viewing the picture for its own sake (rather than trying to find the signature).

Metadata in a picture can be lost by the simple act of CTRL-PRINTSCREEN, and a determined thief would have far more sophisticated methods at his or her disposal, seems to me.

Texan stitches stratosphere into stunning panoramas

Hehhehheh

Breathtaking. V. droll.

Mosaic turns 20: Let's fire up the old girl, show her the web today

Re: Trumpet Winsock

"And my kids still don't believe me when I say that when I was their age (30-odd years ago) we had neither mobile phones, satellite TV nor the internet/www/text messaging/Facebook/Twitter (at least in common use by Joe Public for the first and last)."

LUXURY! etc etc etc.

CURSE you, EINSTEIN! Humanity still chained in relativistic PRISON

Um...

When Haldeman wrote The Forever War the term "collapsar" was what they were using for what we now routinely call a Black Hole. I remember Patrick Moore giving a presentation on this then-new postulated phenomenon on The Sky at Night.

Now if you want a good story about neutron stars, Larry Niven is your man, though his classic "Neutron Star" cannot work as written for reasons Niven goes into in Known Space (I think) and which I won't spoil because it is still a rip-roaring adventure that takes classic hard SF into the world of 70s cutting edge astrophysics. Niven's star drive in that universe is more entertaining too.

I recommend Forever War to everyone as a classic of rational hard SF and also as an answer to the then not-so distant Starship Troopers. If you want to know why, read Troopers first, then TFW.

Student falsely IDed by Reddit as Boston bomber found dead

Bah!

I think what the reddit fiasco shows most clearly that crowdsourcing is piss-poor at processing information as emotional response and opinion swamp the data.

Virgin Media: SO SORRY we fined your dead dad £10 for unpaid bill

Bah!

So they have a team who intercede in these cases?

Bah!

In my day we used to code Cobol programs wi' conditional clause t' spot that sort o' thing an' deal wi' it proper like. This is what you get when y'use languages intended fer writin systems software in instead o' a proper data processin' wun.

Kids! Tch!

Reddit: So very sorry for naming innocent man as Boston bomber

Re: Call me sceptical if you will, but...

Are you saying you *want* a lawsuit starting? Because, you know, there's this other canard tossed about Americans - that they sue at the drop of a hat.

Or would you rather no apology at all was forthcoming, like when that nice Mr Murdoch splashed two innocent faces on the front page of the New York Post and identified them incorrectly as "the bombers"?

Or are you looking for the sort of true heartfelt contriteness felt over the voicemail hacking nonsense that was all over the UK press last year? Yes I'm being ironic there. The only people feeling at all sorry there were the ones about to be slung in chokey.

You obviously feel that the people behind the Reddit cock-up do not feel any sort of genuine contriteness over their reprehensible stuff-up. Do you have a source for that suspicion or are you working to the same game-plan they were: state the "facts" first then be ready to back away if you can't get an independent source to confirm?

Bill Gates offends Koreans after sticking hand down trousers

Bah!

Not "regretful", "regrettable" .

if you are going to lecture us ignorant western capitalist running dogs you have to get the language right.

Or you just look like a git.

787 battery fix approved

Re: Thank you, FAA...

Yes, but in this case the failure was contained within a little room that also contained the electronic make-it-go boxes for all the computerized whizzbanggery that makes the aeroplane fly.

*I'd* be happier if said batteries were contained in slide mounts that allowed them to be individually ejected when they start fizzing, like they do with a Federation Starship's Fizzy Warp Core.

British bookworms deem Amazon 'evil'

Re: What sort of cretin buys a Amazon Swindle anyway?

Me. My 200 dollar Kindle Fire was a gift, but a welcome one. I occasionally like to read something that is still within copyright, though and I buy most of my paper books from Amazon anyway.

I don't like DRM any more than the next person but in all honesty the unrealistically high price of most E-Books means I don't buy many of them for that reason alone. 12 dollars for the latest Game of Thrones e-book? Or a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Teh Stoopid.

I could get some of those e-books from *my* library WITHOUT farting around with software to do the borrowing of course.

Yes, I can get Kindle DRM'ed books from my local library, a process that requires I enter the library with the kindle and let it connect to their network. But then, I don't want to mess with the tablet just for messing's sake. I want it in my life as an appliance, not a hobby. My hobby time is all spoken for.

I used to think licensing was a rip-off (the library must buy x copy licenses, each of which permits y lendings), but I realized that many library books get sold off for a dollar after a very short time to make space on the shelves, so it sort of follows the philosophy they've always used.

And when I use my Kindle I'm reading, right now the Best of Lucius Shepard, last week A Tale of Two Cities, week before that a James Blaylock collection. I bought them while at work and they were delivered seamlessly to my device when I got home (no wifi here). The screen is best for novels, not well suited to technical stuff or columnar mark-up, but that is down to the screen footprint. I imagine an iPad or similar device would provide a better experience.

When I look at what people are doing with their iPads and iPhones during my commute I'm seeing mostly games, and not really nifty modern games but stuff like hearts and solitaire. I can't judge the worth of how one uses an electronic reader, but personally I've always thought reading was *not* a mindless waste of time and expensive iKit.

Manual override: Raspberry Pi beginners' books

Re: Soldering on

Except the French, who don't put the "L" in in the first place (according to your link). Probably explains the variant pronunciation in the first place.

It's hard for me to maintain the proper air of British superiority in here New York when British people freak out over stupid minutiae like this every five minutes.

Well done for once again giving lie to the mythic British stiff-upper lip, Captain Link The Bleeding Obvious.

Next up : OMG Fahrenheit???!!11!!

Foxconn must pay Microsoft for EVERY Android thing it makes

Re: …And we still have no idea what these patents are

I think the word you were looking for was "infringing".

'Charge memory' boffins: Hungover Li-Ion batts tell fat whoppers

Re: The widespread belief that lithium-ion batteries don't suffer from “charge memory”

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries

NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

Re: Vaporware

"This has the advantage that it is known and well-tested technology."

It has the disadvantage that it is horribly inefficient, requires precision manufacturing of the implosion shell and explosive coating and precision positioning (and activation) of the detonators or nothing happens.

What you are describing is "Orion".

Re: Vaporware

"[more complicated] than just injecting fluids like in traditional rockets..."

That turns out to be a damn sight more complicated that just about anyone believes. In most cases a small internal rocket is used to drive the turbines that drive the pumps in order to get the incredible volume flow needed.

This is why multi-engined rockets sometimes fall over instead of soaring majestically skyward, or change their mind and decide to make for the center of the earth instead of LEO. It is ever so easy for something to go wrong and shut an engine down (or quite often just remove it from the universe in a bloody great fireball).

Science and engineering are hard at the sharp end of spaceflight. One should revere those who get it right as much as one reviles those who get it wrong.

Bah!

It will work because it has the word "fusion" in it!

Wait...as you were. I think I have that wrong. Ah. I see the problem. Let's have another go:

It will eat vast amounts of cash for no discernible result because it has the word "fusion" in it!

Antarctic ice sheet melt 'not that unusual', latest ice core shows

Re: This article is lies, isn't it?

" It is up to you to find other sources ..."

Or in this case, the same source.

Er...

All the maps I've seen for periods where the ice sheet is in retreat have large areas of where we now live or crow crops depicted as "shallow seas". Coventry, Leamington, Alberta. All under a few feet of water for a very long time.

Which was normal for then.

Windows 7 'security' patch knocks out PCs, knackers antivirus tools

Er...

Do you have actual figures to back up that statement? It would fly in the face of the Windows 7 nagware which suggests you turn on automatic updates. Indeed, if you got you machine from Dell, it is in all likelihood turned on for you before it leaves the shop.

P2P badboys The Pirate Bay kicked out of Greenland: Took under 48 hours

Bah!

Does anyone have hard figures on the legal/illegal content flow that are trustworthy?

'cause if not, my anecdotal first-hand experience (from others: I've never visited The Pirate Bay) is that 100% of the torrent usage is copyright infringing, and that will inform my views on the matter.

I venture to guess that downloads of <insert free operating system> are far outweighed by downloads of, say, Avatar.

Hell, I'll bet more people download copyrighted Wizards of the Coast Dungeons and Dragons material than legitimate stuff if it comes to that.

Bah!

Suggestion: Change name to Absolutely Legal Stuff Bay.

ANCIENT CURSED RING known to TOLKIEN goes on display

Re: "The only similarity is that both rings are round!"

"and only in the LotR does it become sinister."

Depends on which hand one wears it, surely?

ACLU documents shows free access to emails for IRS tax police

Er...

I believe that's a million billion trillion years.

Hold on! Degrees for all doesn't mean great jobs for all, say profs

abh!

teh inglish arent needed i dont no why peepl even bother with it nobody cares anyway about punctuashun or othre shite lik that peepl shud just lern computers stuff lik me

Norkoshop: How Pyongyang well and truly forked Adobe

Heh!

Drollery. Ur doin it rite.

Microsoft to slap 9 patches on Windows junkies on Tuesday

Bah!

I've come to the conclusion that half the misconceptions parroted back as reasons MS Windows sucks boil down to "I did Unix in college and don't understand the security model on anything else, nor am I prepared to learn".

For all it's other failings failings, Windows designers at least understood that a proper approach to workstation computing does not require a user to switch security credentials every five minutes to get a job done. I might note in passing that it was only after the advent of Windows NT 4 and above that Unix and its clones began to encompass the idea that a person might have a role that cannot be described in the naive academic "person, group, world" model, despite all the years the Unix community had to understand and implement the idea.

No, I'm not especially pro Wndows. I just cut my IT teeth outside of the tunnel-vision that is IT today, where OS's are grouped into Unix-like and Windows (and God Forbid the Twain should Meet).

Federal lawyers, MIT threatened following Aaron Swartz' death

Finally, a Sane Voice.

Well said David.

The problem, it seems to me, is that far too many "activists" don't know the process for getting change enacted in the laws of their own land/state, and believe that just because they can get 3 dozen "likes" online this carries weight in the real world.

But then, it is easier to grab a library of scripts and start bullying from you mother's cellar than to actually learn the civics involved and start working for real change. Has any one of these photoshoppers written to their representatives in congress or the senate to press their views?

Silly me. You have to sign such writings with your name. Then they'd know who you are and a Black Helicopter would come to take you away.

Re: They make...

Are you seriously comparing the prosecution of Aaron Swartz for illegal downloading with the Quaker suppression?

Re: Oh the irony!

"Yes, JSTOR decided not to press the charges further. But the prosecution decided to do so anyway, especially Ortiz; *those* are the guys who are actually being pilloried."

And at least one person who had nothing whatsoever to do with it. You aren't forgetting him, are you?

Man's 'I own half of Facebook' claim branded 'fabrication' by judge

Er...

But what if he says he has Aspergers? That gives him a free pass, dunnit?

Bah!

*I* wrote Facebook. I am also Spartacus and Keyser Söze.

Giant solar-powered aircraft to begin cross-country flight

Bah!

So no-one told NASA that July is a season of sudden torrential rain in New York, (as it is in Atlanta, Georgia)?

Or is the phrase "delicate aircraft" some sort of clever euphemism for "extremely robust aircraft"?

Patent shark‘s copyright claim could bite all Unix

Bah!

You had me on the hook but lost me at "nsfw demon".

Ellison aims his first Oracle 'mainframe' at Big Blue

Hurrah!

Now he'll finally be able to concentrate on getting Java fixed so software will run properly and Trojans won't seep in.