Posts by vincent himpe

Cassini to surf Enceladus's icy plumes

it's ice..

so no problem for the electronics.

Water is conductive , ice is not ...

Vatican updates list of mortal sins

god himself...

is an atheist .... otherwise he would be a narcissist

IBM clubs nano noise with graphene sandwich

hmm

looks more like a capacitive effect between equal charges ...

if one electron tris to get out of line it's buddies now push it back where it needs to be ( like charges repel each other ) nois is the 'wrong' charge ... so it get's whacked in the head so to speak if it tries goign the wrong way

Police raid CeBIT stands

but meanwhile ...

- they can continue selling toys with lead in it ( hey, after the mandatory lead-free requirement for electronics they have to get rid of their lead somehow ... just stuffing it in toys seemed a brilliant idea ... )

- use glycol as a toothpaste filler

- sell steel to europe that is radioactive ... ( they bought boatloads of scrap for russia , melted it , made steel bars, and sell these to europe . Customs even found radioactive music instruments ....

don't believe me ? google for 'radioactive steel'.

Whole ship loads were confiscated 3 days ago in Italian and Belgium harbours. All coming from the same chinese outfit....

next thing you'll hear is that that silk shirt you bought 'made in china' is actually made of recycled toiletpaper...

The least we can do is raid some geek funfair and confiscate some mp3 players...

DAB: A very British failure

I don;t get it

why do they keep pumping money in obsolete , cumbersome technology ?

DAB was dead from the start ...

The problem is 1) getting the infrastructure in place , 2) getting people to buy units (They were outrageously expensive.:things from Pure were like 200 euros for a stupid receiver ... or the tivoli cigarbox radio ... ) and especially 3) getting content providers to sign up and start braodcasting if you can't guarantee listeners because problems 1 and 2 ...

We have a bunch of satellites over europe ( Astra 1 2 3 4 5 6 abcde f.... how many are there now ? 8 ? 9 ? in total ... and hotbird , also 3 or 4 ). these guys for sure have a couple of spare transponders. simply allocate 1 or 2 of these transponders. Instant full european coverage and you can easily send 100 radio channels over one of these transponders.

Look at what XM and Sirius are doing in the USA. 200 channels. CD quality, with 4 satellites to cover the entire continent. And they are wildly popular. The recievers are cheap ( some as low as 20 $ ) and the content providers ( the broadcast stations ) were fighting to get a slot because of the potential audience.

And it wasn't even a dramatic switch-on. They simply re-used an existing transponder in a bird that was already up there ...

For 10 $ a month you listen to anything like

So stop this DAB nonsense. Time to pull the plug.

Tool makes mincemeat of Windows passwords

Harvard architecture

You know what is the really bad thing ? ALL intel processors are HARVARD machines by design !. it's that concoction that IBM called 'PC' that did a lot of kludging to get around the 'harvard' architecture.

The annoying part with harvard is you have to split your memory up front. this much for code, that much for data. and dynamically loading a program becomes difficult... especially with modern systems that can remap ...

I too like harvard machines , especially for embedded applications that are mission criticla. There is NO possibility for a runaway progrma to corrupt its own code. Also the I/O space is separate on a good harvard machine.

That , and it makes debugging code easier. if you look at a hexdump you know what you are looking at this is code , that is data , that is i/o.

and who's to blame for this ?

APPLE ! they invented the bloody thing in the first place..

Now that the flaming is over

I am a heavy user of firewire (in windows) . It beats the snot out of usb anytime.

I have external harddisks on firewire , my High Def (1080i) camcorder uses firewire, i even have 2 DVD burners on firwire. No drivers needed. Plug it in and it works.

For a time (when gigabit lan didn't exist or was outrageously expensive ; 5 years ago ... ) i even had 4 (windows) computers interconnected with firewire ( you can run tcp/ip over firewire you know ? 400 Mb / s instead of 100 Mb /s ...

Big improvement !

And with ieee1394b you can go 3 Gb/s and beyond !

NASA captures Martian avalanche

Let's go snowboarding

Carbonised drinks are free. just bring your own fave drink and drop in some of that 'dry ice'. there's plenty after all...

Vote now for your fave sci-fi movie quote

forgot what this one is from

In the beginning there was nothing , and even that exploded...

I'm from a different planet. Wanna see my spaceship ?

Here i am , brain the size of a planet , and they ask me to go fetch prisoners.

It'll all end in tears.

Number one, i order you to go make a number two. ( Beavis and butthead in the star trek dream episode... )

Fire futon torpedos , blast the retrorockets and make us like .. uh .. go that way ( als B&B )

Elvis isn't dead , he just went home. ( MIB )

My sixt grade teacher must have been from venus or something. Actually she was from jupiter kid. ( MIB )

here's a couple

from spaceballs...

Scotty beamed me three times last night, it was heaven...

My god , his schwartz is bigger then yours.

President scroob: Why didn;t anyone tell me my a.. was so big ...

Dark helmet : Who are you ?

gunner : I'm an a..hole sir

dark helmet : Who made you a gunner ?

officer : That would be me sir ..

Dark helmet : And who are you ?

Officer Luitenant first class big a..hole sir..

Dark helmet : how many a..holes do we have on this ship ?

( half the crew stands up ) Yo ...

Dark helmet . My god.. we're surrounded by a..holes ....

My name is Barf , I'm a mog , half man half dog. I'm my own best friend...

Please ,please I'm just plain yoghurt.

He did it ( when during a laser saber fight one of the actors kills one of the cameraman )

Raspberry... Only one man uses raspberry to jam the radar...

Prepare for ludicrous speed.

huuuuh. I can;t breathe in this thing. who designed this thing.

And what do we have on this ship ? A Quisinart ?

and the last one and best one ( from the opening scene, sets the right tone for the rest of the film ) We brake for nobody

forgot this one

You built a timemachine out of a delorean ?

The way i see it marty, I'f you're gonna build a timemachine you might as well do it in style ..

Pioneer to stop producing plasma panels

plasma is dead

ok, i'm talking from a purely technical perspective here. I'm not talking about the fuzzy warm feeling and color temperature and other subjective stuff.

Manufacturers of the panels HATE plasma.

- the tube is expensive to make ( yes it is still a TUBE ! . its got gas in it)

- the tube is heavy.

- needs high excitation voltages ( 80 to 140 volts )

- the driving electronics for such voltages produces a lot of heat.

the overall bill of material is a lot higher.

LCD is cheap. these days they 'print' lcd panels wth an injet like tehcnology. Two sheets of glass. seam weld them , add a drop of LC fluid , close entry point. attach row and column drivers , attach reflector / diffuser / attach light source ( LED's these days. CCFL is on its way out ) control electronics is 1 LSI chip that doesnt even get warm.

very easy to produce at a BOM cost ( Bill of material) that is 1/3 of a plasma ...

Plasma will stay for a while , but only for the very large displays.

Apple's Time Capsule: is its HDD really 'server grade'?

server drives and server grade drives

server drives spin at 10K RPM + ... because of throughput speed and access time (seek time). It's hard ot find these beasties larger than 130 GB ... they invariably use 1.8 , 2 inch or 2.5 inch platters.

Server grade drives are drives that can be used for non-Throughput critical applications, such as archiving and long term storage. So apple can indeed claim this is a 'server grade' drive. Hitachi markets this thing as 'server grade' after all..

EC jacks up Microsoft fine by €899m

By Andraž Levstik

wine is not a solution. i have tried it. most programs i use on a daily basis do not run on it.

The problem is that most of these programs i mentioned either

- use a lot of functions in windows that is not avaialble in wine

- use custom hardware ( like a RTx2 graphics board ) for which there are no linux drivers.

- slow down to the point of unusable when running in wine

.

Native recompiling is the only way to go. For me, the biggest problem with linux , Osx, freeBSD and all these othere PC based os' ( i'm not talking about sun / solaris because that is different hardware.. although lately they became intel afficionados too ) is that there simply is no software for it. Yes yes yes there is ton's of 'free' software. But if you walk into a store or talk to a tool vendor and want to BUY software .. nada , noppes, zilch ,niente ,niks, nothing, except some very specialistic tools like chip design ( cadence,mentor,synopsys ) and some niche products.

But mainstream tools that are in use by hundreds of thousands ( if not milions) on a day to day basis like Autocad , Photoshop, Premiere , Dreamweaver, TurboTax , Ulead videoeditor , Paintshop Pro , and many many many others, don't exist for linux.

So this monoply is not only the fault ( if you can claim 'fault') of microsoft , but also becasue of the thousands of other companies that only make software for windows. It's a business world. Software manufacturers make tools for the platforms where there is a market.

Semiconductor design tools used to be only avaialble for Calma , Computergraphics, Apollo, and a few dedicated machines. Then VAX became popular and very soon all software was running on VMS ... Calma and Apollo went out of business. Then Sun came alon and all this stuff moved to Solaris ...

Ten years ago linux came along and because pc's with linux were cheaper and equally , if not more , performatn then a sun workstations the tool vendors started making linux versions. Why ? because there was a MARKET to SELL their tools.

Free software is cool but not liveable. With the exception of a few 'free' tools ( Eclipse , GCC ) , that are backed by some big corporation because they see return on investment , none of this free software find a foothold in business.

Lack of support, lack of centrialized contact in case of problems. And free meas you can;'t write it off as investment ...

As for the writers of free ( as in 'gratis' , you also get the source and do as you please ) software...at the end of the day what will they eat ?

We all ( individuals companies ) need money to thrive and survive. I have lots of development work that needs to be done. I can offer a lot of people a cubicle, top notch computer, all the water/soda/coffee they can drink and they can code to their hearts delight.

I will decide what coding tools to use , what platform is targeted, you get a a deadline and it HAS to work. I won't pay a dime, but i promise , in writing, i will give the results away for free, including the source. This is a multi-year project.

How many will sign up tomorrow ? That's what you get with 'free' stuff.

As a company you can not run on the goodwill of people alone.

Imagine you have a product to push out the door . Due to a bug in a piece of software you use to doe the production you can not deliver. If this software is bought you go to the vendor and say : fix this ( or else ... )

If its 'free' you can post the question on some bulletin board and hope someone will give you an answer other then 'try this', you need kernel pack so and so , grep this and edit that script' or plain gibberish. For commercial packages there are support contracts , helplines of you can have a person on site within a day.

try that for 'free' stuff.. Granted Red hat is successfull , but it costs more then dealing with Sun these days ...

Again the penguin. Because it says Linux Os to the gods..

Even if there was a god , he's either an atheist or a narcissist.

Whats better ?

A software monopolist who has a platform billions of people use to run programs on? or government institutionalized theft ?

I'm not a pro/con microsoft/linux/OSx/Solaris advocate.And this is not a Pro/COn posting. I try to give a different perspective :

I find that i install the OS required to run the applications i need on a daily basis. Right now thats 99% windows and 1% linux.

If you think about it : you are using the Os to run APPLICATIONS. you don't use the 'OS'. There is nobody with a sane mind that sits down behind the screen and says : today i am going to use kernel.dll. You use SOFTWARE that runs on the Os.

The EU should go after all the software companies that make software that only runs on Windows !. Why can't we have things like photoshop , Adobe Premiere , After effects ,Encore ,Designer, Paintshop Pro, Autocad , Solidworks , IAR C crosscompilers , Keil , J-trace, and tons of other commercial programs, on other operating systems ? Most of these programs are written in C/ C++ anyway. yank them through a compiler for the target platform and get it over with.

The answer is simple : these guys write software for what is popular as OS. And right now that is MS. They compile for the market where they expect the most sales.

And don't start the argument : "but there is equivalent software for linux/macos".

I don''t want 'equivalent' i want THAT software. You can't ask someone who has invested years of time in learning and using a software tool to switch. it will take at least a year until you are comfortable at the same productivity level using a different tool ( i'm not talking about a text editor but very high end graphics / cad / design software that has steep and long learning curves )

Besides, most of the stuff thats out there for linux seems to be in a perpetual state of 'half finished , recompile it yourself for your distro , or -we haven't got that 10 year old feature yet, but you can do this elaborate process to get an almost similar result- . And don't whine. It's free and if you don't like it :you have the source ....

We seem to forget that 99.99 % of people that use a computer, use APPLICATIONS. Maybe 0.01 % actually writes programs ( and i'm not alking about writing a script or excel macro, but writing a real finished application that would be commercially viable.

It's the software you use that decides which OS you run !.

If i was MS it would be 'lights-off' for europe. We don't force people in the EU to use our OS. So fine, europe, here you go: we will no longer sell microsoft products in europe. Have fun using your own OS / software now.. Oh, wait that's right ... you haven't got anything ... can i offer you pen and paper ? You can now sue all the other software manufacturers because they don''t have the tools you use today available for whatever OS you will use now.

The penguin because he looks cuddly but could poke your eyes out with that sharp beak...

Hard drive replacement sparks singed disk situation

thats not solder

but carbonised chip packaging resin.

Judging from where on the chip this occurred this looks like the destruction of one of the pole drivers for the motor.

Most likely the motor shorted a phase short to ground . Harddisk motors are 3 phase brushless motors. The powercombo chip generates three pseudo-sinewaves using a pulse width mdulation technique ( it's not a real sinewave but a specific shape to yank as much current as possible through the coils , without too much power dissipation in the driver ) that are 120 degrees out of phase to drive the motor.

Even a phase short would not cause such a catastrophic failure. ( the three phases are a star configuration. so even a phase short would still leave you with one coil in the loop ( there are always 2 of the coils in the loop. So a single phase short would not cause catastrophic failure. The chances of two phases shorting out are very small.

Premature death. Send it back for an exchange. It's under warranty. Stuff happens. Always have 2 (yes TWO , not one but TWO) backups of critical data on DIFFERENT media / different hardware.

US, EU seize counterfeit computer goods

semiconductors

Counterfeiting semiconducters is biiiiiig business.

There are multiple mechanisms : relabeling parts to a higher clockspeed ( especially memories ! and of course cpu's )

Parts that were destined to be scrapped ( out of spec devices. for instance a procsoor in idle is supposed to draw no more then 60 mA. due to process variations some draw 100 mA. these are rejected. even though they work normally they are 'borderline and prone to early failures . manufacturers dont; want these out on the streets becaue they will come back as returns under warranty !. whole truckloads of such things get stolen .labeled and sold ( such devices are not labeled )

rebranding parts. selling cheapass memories from vendor x , and labeleing them with the name of a premium vendor.. instant $$$ ...

And then plain counterfeits. 4gb flash chips that only contain 2 gb ...

this happens with parts that are in short supply. all fo a sudden 'someone' ( mostly in the far east' has a lot of a couple of thousand parts that he 'no longer will use' becasue the product he used them in has been cancelled. so they end up on auction sites ...

Assembly houses that need parts and can;t get them in time may be tempted to buy whatever they can get to keep production flowing.. and sometimes get royally shafted by such 'brokers'. by the time yiou want to file a complain the broker has dissappeared. company closed , office turned out to be a answering machine tied to a cell phone in a trainstation locker somewhere ...

sometimes its parts that are sold as leadfree but actually are relabelled parts with lead in them !. someone had a huge stock of a certain part that is in high demand . unfortunately its a part that is not RoHS compliant. simply relabel them and sell them as RoHS compliant !. buy cheap . sell at full price. instant $$$

if you want to know more : here are some websites with examples of counterfeit chips.

http://www.designchainassociates.com/counterfeit.html

this webpage has pictures and real examples of counterfeit parts :

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201201791

its a real plague, both for buyers (they get wrong parts or altered parts with lower reliability or unusable parts like not rohs compliant parts) and manufacturers becasue they get a bad name or have to deal with stuff that returns under warranty ....

So there you go, now you know. I am working in the semiconductor business and have personally seen 2 different counterfeits.

Mine's the Class-i Cleanroom Suit.

Microhoo! or YahSoft!? The! people! must! decide!

Mihoo !!

that is the tibetean name for what westerners call the 'terrible snowman !'

Mobile subscribers showered with spam

just give me 1 option:

to turn off the SMS service comletely on my phone. No incoming , No outgoing. I don't need it and don't want it.

I've had my cellphone for 15 years and have NEVER sent an SMS in my life !

What's the point of typing barely readable tekst on a fingercramp inducing numerical keyboard, if you can simply call the person and talk to him/her? I can talk waaaaay faster then i can type. (and thats the case for almost everyone). And if the other person doesnt pick up : leave a voice message , or call back later !

People complain they don't have enough time and are feeling rushed and stressfull.

if you can spend 5 minutes to punch in an SMS message that can be said in 20 seconds, send it, and then wait for the other party to text you back, then you have waaaay to much time on your hands!

GCap reaches for DAB off switch

every 10 years ..

some piece of technology comes along that take so long to gain momentum that it is outdated outmoded and obsolete before it ever has a chance.

the seventies saw the advent of ISDN ... ( yes ! invented in 1978 by the way ! . its deathknell has lasted for 30 years ...)

In the eighties there was video2000 ( some oddball video system that only philips had ), in the nineties there was .. euh .. euh .. well lots of stuff, and now we have DaB.

while the underlying technology is ok the introduction is totally and utterly executed bass ackwards !

first of all :

- no equipment besides some outrageously overpriced and UGLY receivers with no connectivity to your existing equipment ( tivoli anyone ? )

- no stations ( besides a few national stations and a couple of commercial ones.)

- very short transmission range. Move 50 miles and you lose access to your station ...

- needs new transmitters all over the country. costing a lot of money , and requiring often new towers.

- crappy audio quality , overcompressed , bandwidth limited

Why don't they just install something like XM or Sirius radio in europe ? With 1 sattelite transponder ( they don't even need a complete sattelite! One of its 16 to 32 transponders is enough . I'm sure Astra or Hotbird have a few spare transponders that are itching to become 'hot') they can transmit 150 to 200 chanels in cd quality. And the stations would be accessible all over europe !

- lots and lots of stations

- cheap receiver ( 30 to 50 $ ) that you can take everywhere. home,car,office

- time shift programs , record them for later playback

- millions of subscribers.

- low cost subscription

So ? what are we waiting for ?

Seabed cables will be fixed by next week

it was Dr Evil !

Why else did he need 'sharks with friggin laser beams attached to their heads' ???

The asbestos coat and lead pants are mine ...

Commuter jetpacks offered: $100k, August delivery

too much trouble

Any decent human being knows that the secret to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss it completely. This is easily achieved by getting distracted just before impact.

fro more information. read the douglas adams books. it's all explained in detail.

The 'blem wit' error messages

my favorite

On apollo Workstations when dealing with the tape drive :

- unit will not fit thru 25" hatch

they dried selling these drives to the navy for use on submarines. Contract was turned down because they were too big to go throught the entrance hatch of the submarine. They would have had to cut a hole in the hull ( might as well have installed that screendoor in the mean time ... ). Someone coded this as a permanent error in the tapemanager ...

My other favorite thing is an HP54645D oscilloscope ( i am using on right now ) Hit Print/Utility. the bottom menu ( the softkey functions ) will show sofkeys 2,3 and 4 as blank.

Hit 3 &4 to see a nice vector drawing of a badger ( no it's NOT a skunk !!! ) and a namelist of the coders of the scopes firmware.

and if you hit softkey 2 and 3 you can play a kind of space wars .

If you have installed the latest firmware to be able to use extension packs these features are lost. You get the nice message : Sorry There was not enough space in the ROM.

Another cool one is a TEK 2245 oscilloscope. if you browse the built in help and actually read the entry on how to use the help on the functions controls, at the very last page there is this line :

Go ahead Push a button, make my day ...

go to www.eeggs.com for tons more of these hidden and funny items

DRM in latest QuickTime cripples Adobe video editing code

MAc's only or also PC ?

Doe sthis only affect Mac machines , or also Windows based Premiere ?

I run Premiere CS2 on windows for editing ( in combination with a matrox RTX2 to do HD) .

Time to change the name from quicktime to quit-time i guess ...

Mystery web infection grows, but cause remains elusive

could this be a two prong attack ?

users computer is already infected with something harmless that thus goes undetected. some smaal thing that injects a 'magic packet' in any outpgoing http request.

an infected server 'trips' on this request and injects the 'payload' in its output stream. this payload then disables the user side 'magic packet' mechanism.

that could explain why it only happens once per ip address.

although if you are behind a router ..h mmmm maybe not.

anyway . the question remains. how do all these lamp installations become infected in the first place , and where is it hiding ...

US boffins create darkest material ever

i'm only wearing black until they make something darker

time for the t-shirt manufacturers to jump on this...

Caught on camera: the Downfall of HD DVD

just buy an LG GGC-H20L

it plays both bluray and HD-DVD.

The pc drive can be had for 259 at fry's and it also doubles as a cd/dvd reader / burner .

standalone unit runs 450 i believe.

game over , nothing to see here , moving on to the next questrion : when are we going to see bloody-ray recorders at affordable prices!

Apple to charge $20 for iPod Touch update

@Charges for features

so all they have to do is always release bugfixes in combination with 'features' and they have a cash cow.

it's not a bug ... it's a feature !

bugfixes should be available for download free ( without added features. ) if you want new features then pay for them.

Brighton professor bans Google

so...

She prefers using outdated obscure tree-ware instead of recent and current information. Maybe the problem is that she just doesn't want to have to go over all these handed in assignments. If they are based on her reading list she knows what the distilled work will look like. Lazy git.

Warner Bros gives all its hi-def loving to Blu-ray

The war is over

Lg electronics has a blu-ray / HD DVd drive on sale at fry's, newegg, amazon for 239 $ . pop it in the computer and you can play BOTH formats.

If you want a box to hook up to the TV : that will set you back 451 $.

The drives exist and are on the shelves. The war is over. It doesn't matter anymore who seels what opn which format. Just make sure you have a dual format drive.

Exactly the same story happened with DVD-R and DVD+R. they will never learn.

French government decides mobiles 'may not be safe'

ah well...

If you take everything into account the conclusion is that: life is a disease to which 100% of the patient eventually succumb.

I'd rather use the cell phone once a week next to my ear, than look like a deranged person talking to his self with a 2.4 GHz microwave cooker plugged in his ear ... ( with optional blue flashing light )

coat , please , i'm going back to the outside of the asylum...

Nigerian firm demands $20m from OLPC

@anton ivanov and others

apparently the whole point is in the keyboard driver. That nigerian keyboard need sa specific driver. they 2 additional keys are nut just 'relabeled' shift keys but transmit a unique key code that is not present in other keyboards.

The driver reacts to that to form the special characters. ( similar to when they started adding the menu and windows key on keyboards. the nigerian keyboard has 2 additional keys specific for the typing functions of the keyboard.

It's a combination of the hardware ( 2 keys sending a unique keycode transmission over the connection between keyboard and pc )

and the software ( the keyboard driver on the Pc side )

Apparently the problem is that both the unique keycode and part of the driver code ended up in the OLPC ...

They relabeled the keys but the functionality is the same. there is a technical analysis somewhere ( slashdot , groklaw.. i forget where i read it) that details very deep on how that nigerian keyboard works ( both hardware and software wise. )

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Nigeria_Keyboard

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071226210020415

groklaw has the full claim text.

some more info on the keyboard case

http://www.olpcnews.com/hardware/keyboard/olpc_patent_infringement_scam.html

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=796745

www.konyin.com

Evesham Technology goes into liquidation

apparently their webiste is still up !

so beware : you might never see your stuff 1

AOL tosses Netscape into the dustbin of history

has it really been that long ....

[ quivery voice mode on ] I remember when i was a kid i had to walk 2 hours to get to the intenet... And in wintertime that was even through drizzle and snow !. Tsss. young folk these days. They take it all for granted. One click and bazillions of bytes are under their command. Time for my strained peas ... [ quivery voice mode off]

RIP netscape. Time to move it to my write-only memory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_Only_Memory )

Dell's laptop customisation options not very customisable

pebcak problem

Dell XPS ... that a performance tuned machine. So why do you shell out money for that thing, to cripple it then by running it an assymetrical memory mode.

By using only one dimm you are cutting mempory bandwidth down drastically ( no more interleaving ... )

The buyer might as well have insisted to install a 320x200pixel CGA compatible monochrome plasma display ( the red/amber ones ) , a 20 Megabyte 4200 RPM drive laptop drive , yank out the ethernet and wifi and downgrade the built in modem to a 75/1200 baud one. And while they are at it , insist on having an original 8088 at 4.77 MHz installed and no , leave the coprocessor blank as well..

As for the optical drive ; a 5 1/4 single sided 360 K floppy drive would fit nicely there....And why coulnt he opt to have CP/M86 installed ?

Its like going to buy a Ferrari and insisting they install a smaller hoses for the fuel distribution ... sorry bub. there's no such option.

Typical case of PEBKAC if you ask me... and not on dell's side.

The art of software murder

@jumc

jep. plus latley i get more 'updates' for ubuntu server' than i get for windows XP .... i wonder why.. must be an awfull olot of bugs in that ubuntu that it nees that mny kernel patches and other module patche. lloks they are handing it out before its completely debugged ...

what's next lin$x ??? ( red hat is on the right track to become a lin$x. they charge an arm and leg for install .. )

if only there was a 'gun aiming at pengiun' icon ....

so true

Paintshop Pro was the best up until version 8. Version 9 saw a first shift because they ware adapting for a buyout by Corel. That company has a penchant to destroy software....

Ever since it is in the corel stall it has gone down the drain. the installer throws all kinds of stuff on your machine like installshield update manager and tons of other stuff. furthermore they broke compatibility with a number of file formats. PSP7 reads a WMF or EMF file correctly. 9 doesn't.

Another program that went down the drain : Micrografx Designer. I used that under windows 2.0 and 3.0 . Was a dream to work with... until it got borged by Corel... They still sell it albeit under a different name. I actually played with the downloadable demo. i immediately recognised it as Micrografx Designer.. throw a couple fo old files against it: opencorrectly. but the shortcuts have changed , and nothing works as it was.

why paris ? ah we'' there someone you can build on. she'll always remain unreachable.

Warner Bros to remake Clash of the Titans

weren't the writers on strike ?

i seem to remeber a couple of weeks ago the hollywood writers went on strike...

so all that is left is to remake ol stuff that was already written.

and paris ? well since nobody writes anymore she doesnt know what to say i guess..

Opera hits Microsoft with EC complaint

whats next ? also ask microsoft to provide an alternate operating system

like having a button that says : click here to boot linux ... and then the battle begins. one button for fedore , one for linux , one for ubunti one for this one for that.

And then the next step would be when you have paid for the computer you can pick up one of the models. ( sun , pc , mac , whatever ) run whatever os on it you like ( os/2 on a mac .yeah baby... ) and whatever software you want on top of it. ( irix software running in a linux window on o2s/ running on a mac ... that would be like totally cool.

so all computers would cost the same amount of money and would be able to run any operating system and any software ... then you would have a new problem. essentially all coumputers would be the same. talk about a monopoly ...

i'll ho back to my stick and continue making drawings in my sandbox 1.0. at least that hardware never fails. occasionally some rains comes along which makes the drawings a bit blurry , but that's ok ...

CompUSA goes titsup

duh

even at the last day the memory cards at compusa were more expensive then Fry's ... The only good thing was : they were throwing out the microsoft Zune stuff for 50% off ... and still noone bought it.

Campaign to name US street after Douglas Adams

All of you forgot the most important thing ..

a man's gotta know where his towel is !!

Vista provokes user synaptic collapse

@ Geoff

alas... i do.And every friggin time there is an update to some software i need to tinker with the system to get it (the software) to work. For this revision you need kernel so and so with patch so and so applied. Except if you install that kernel version or some other patch that some other program stops working. And these are -very- expensive programs. (silicon design) It's now at the point that we simply install a box with the right OS and all the modules needed and the software that needs to run on it.. And then open a remote terminal from another machine into it (PC's running XP) ... So far we have 3 different 'linux installations' to run the various programs we need ... all because none is compatible with another.

And Steven interprets the message correctly.

What the message says is : You tried seeing the permissions for item A. Unfortunately your permissions ( permissions 'B') don't allow that. You can change your permissions (B) to allow seeing the permissions on item 'A'.

Some Warped (pun intended) minds may interpret the message as : you can't read permissions for 'A' but you can 'write' them...

Reminds me of the WOM that fairchild made in 1972 .. write only memory. Specifically made for safekeeping of sensitive data .. there is a pdf still out there of the actual datasheet...

if you can't handle such a simple message..

maybe you shouldn't be using Windows. Go play with loonix ... then you can knock your brains out on the keyboard when it comes whining that some script bombs out on something and that you need to install patch so and so , recompile the kernel , change the filesystem, install another patch and then recompile again. And after that youll find out that you have the wrong distro and should be running Ubutu instead of Redhat and that all your other stuff stopped working because the patches broke the system, and that you can do more patching and messing with the system.

The user message is simple no ?

You tried changing permissions. EY your current privilige level is not high enough to do that. So, you need to first change your own permissions so you get the privilege to do whatever you wanted to do.

Orange to offer unlocked iPhones for €749

749 and you can't ...

even use it as a modem , can't access newsgroups , can't do voip and can't do a plethora of other things ... can you at least call with it or are you supposed to just stare at it ?

Intel's 4004 microprocessor calc code brought back to life

i4004

A couple of months ago intel has made the schematics of the 4004 avaialble.

you can download the schematics from intels website as a pdf file. they are scans of the original drawings in chinese-ink on chalk paper.

really interesting to see how the adorable thing was built.

i believe there is a german website that has a verilog or vhdl implementation of not only the 4004 but the support chips as well. They even have it running some game. implemented in an FPGA ...

Crypto guru warns over random number backdoor

tin foil hat

asbestos underwear , lead coat , stainless steel door ... and forget the taxi .. i'll walk from now on...

World of Warcraft spykit gets encrypted

just like in real life.

if you are playing WOW expect to be cheated on. happens all the time in real life.

i dont know Wow ar any other online game but would'nt it be simpler to put 10 WOW playing friends in a room. and have these 10 together ambush whoever passes by. and grab all they can Far more efficient and no Warden would be able to stop that. but then again .. most of these WOW players probably don't have 10 friends ( unless you read that '10' as a binary number .. )

Euro HD DVD camp clams up on format sales figures

hd-dvd

toshiba hd-dvd player on sale at costco 169 $ ...

sony blueray player on sale at costco 449 $.

gues which one will get bought for christmas ...

Chinese Trojan on Maxtor HDDs spooks Taiwan

another reason

to turn of AUTORUN on your machine and ALWAYS perform a full FORMAT when you buy external media like memory sticks and Hardddrives.