Posts by J

Macs seized by porn Trojan

Re: Decline and fall of the English language

That's OK, I borrowed the language anyway, it's not mine. I'll return it as soon as I'm done here in the US and go elsewhere -- but it might take a while, mind you. Have been using it for almost 6 years now, and even getting to like it a tad by now.

But, anyway, I feel that "hippopomorphised" has got one too many "pos" there (no German jokes now, please).

"Think you're confusing your Latin and Greek there - would it not be hippomorphised?"

Sure, but since I'm of mixed Latin stock I guess I'll make up words in mixed etymology to keep things interesting. Just in case.

Too bad we haven't got an icon for "grammar/spelling/language" related stuff here... Maybe one big tongue would do it.

Re: Relax

What a Windiot... (TM)

Re: What's that I hear?

"(yes, anthropomorphised, irony is a horse)"

But then it would be "equomorphised", surely...

Re: the article, I am not part of that user base you refer to, but... It seems like you didn't read the article. Not even the title? I mean, a Trojan (title says it is one, and article confirms) is a program that needs user intervention to act, tricking you into thinking the program does something you want but etc., kinda like the Greek story. Therefore, no hole here (I'm sure there must be holes elsewhere). Just stupid people running something they shouldn't -- can happen anywhere, as already pointed out. It's not like this is a Windows worm that gets automatically installed in your machine within minutes of you getting online unless you spend hours armoring it... I suspect we are still waiting for that type of treat for Macs. (or is it here already too?)

Cops coax half-naked Czech wolfman from Cardiff tree

Re: Misread the title

Same here, damn...

World's most gullible supermarket chain falls victim to online scam

Well...

"It has been suggested that we remove ALL the warning labels and let the awarding of Darwin awards begin."

And who said Darwin award contenders/winners read warning labels to begin with?

Prince's anti-YouTube crusade halted by American mommy

How ridiculous...

Prince? Is he going the way of the Michael Jackson? I mean, hasn't done anything really useful since the 80's as far as I can tell... Now desperately after attention no matter what. Please, just retire (not effectively like now, but for real) and make the world a better place...

Whois database targeted for destruction

Hmm...

I don't know about this, maybe the privacy guys are right.

But I find it quite useful to be able to check a suspicious email header for the IP (which, I know, can be forged) and do a quick whois to see whether it at least came from where it was supposed to have come. I mean, my people down there in Brazil don't have IP's registered in Shanghai, right?

Same for the weblogs...

Or do I misunderstand the issue?

Dreaded Blue Screen of Death mars some Leopard installs

Java 6 dead, now this...

That's it! The Mac is not ready for the desktop! Command line, gee... :-)

"and multiple desktops (i forget what they are called!)"

Depends on the distro, I guess... On mine I think it's been called virtual desktops for, uh, something like four or five years... :-)

"These days it seems like they really don't care any more. Just push out any old crap, preferably reskinning or changing it in some non-standard way."

Well, if it worked so marvelously for the other guys further up North, why not give it a try?

California teen offers GPS challenge to speeding rap

Title

"Euhh, dude 'triangulation' has nothing to do with 3d positioning."

That's why 3D would be called 'pyramidation' instead, methinks.

Swede with UK betting licence held in Amsterdam for 'breaking' ancient French law

Sarcasm icon missing, surely

"Because we are a free country without the biased socialist nationalist crap that the French exude ... we would never uphold such politically motivated arrests."

Surely it is missing here.

Dead dog floors 68 Namibian villagers

Re: what right do the "activists" have?

Anonymous Coward is an idiot.

(I know that goes without saying, but I always like to reinforce the obvious)

Ubuntu's latest OS not so Gutsy

Bad...

Yeah, that's bad...

On the other hand, I switched from OpenSuSE 10.2 to Kubuntu 7.10 on my old 1.2 GHz, 1 Gb RAM computer (with cable Internet) and had no problem myself. It is much faster now, I even experimented with running Windows 2000 inside VirtualBox and it performs perfectly. And I had no trouble with anything in my hardware. I wonder what is the problem with the other machines, maybe newer ones are not as well supported...

Jailed terror student 'hid' files in the wrong Windows folder

Title

"the My Movies folder (you'll find it right next to My Warez)"

No, no... right next to My Porn. It seems like you don't have a regular Windows system over there -- did you buy it legally? WGA wants to know.

TV-Links man was arrested under trademark laws

Great...

"The man has not been charged with any offence, and has been released pending further investigation."

Welcome to a fascist state! I hope you enjoy being arrested whenever some (rich) private party so wishes, even if you committed no offense.

This is just like the IRS does in the US, going after people who committed no crime -- the income tax is voluntary (except in case of for profit activities), according to the code, or so I've heard...

Sheet music site forced offline

In summary...

Bloody parasites (I mean this Feldmahler and friends).

We need a "damn pigopolists" icon (sorry, Joe).

L1NUX number plate roars onto eBay

Actually...

"Of course, were V1STA ever to become available, Windows apologistas would be falling over themselves"

No, no... They would be being sued for trademark violation or something.

Cops pull plugs on TV-links, claim 'facilitation of infringement'

Title

"We don't have a simple offence of facilitating infringement in the UK"

Er...so why was the guy arrested then? Ah, the beauties of a third world country...

"People are quite willingly trying to circumvent the law."

Duh... I wonder how many people would obey the speed limit (and other traffic laws) if they knew for sure there were no cops, speed cameras, etc. around...

Watson suspended by research lab after race row

Title

@Chris G

Nope, that does not work. Life is really hard in the "warm places" too. Read "Guns, Germs and Steel" for and interesting analysis on this myth of "the Northern people had it hard, so they must have developed (and gotten smart) because of that".

Now, this Watson thing reminds me of the Harvard (ex)president mess, when he got in trouble by suggesting women are less capable in the sciences. Yes, political correctness is annoying. People jump at the throat of whomever merely suggests a theoretical possibility that disagrees with the PC-way, no matter what. And while I agree with Watson that the truth should be a priority, no matter whether the conclusions are not what you'd have liked, I also think you should not step away from the most certain conclusions we've got so far. Specially when you are talking about such polemic issues. The thing is that he says Africans have less intelligence than "us", but he does not say why directly -- so is it because of the way they were raised in misery, or is it genetics? (later he seems to indicate it's genetic) As far as I know, whenever people measure these things and appropriately correct for non-biological factors (to the extent it can be done), the conclusion is that there is no real difference in intelligence among people so far. Now, was this conclusion "forced" by the desire/obligation to be PC? I can't tell, that is not my area of research. It's possible, but I doubt everybody would do the same "forcing" and all that. More study (and less politics) is clearly needed... ;-)

Bad hair day for alternative browser users

Ah...

Now I know why Firefox updated *yesterday*, thanks. And yes, it would be interesting to know how long it took them between hearing of the flaws and fixing them, since they had it fixed before I heard of them...

Met's de Menezes photo 'manipulated', says prosecution

To be fair... and @Graham Dawson

"To confuse a Brazilian with a member of an entirely different ethnic grouping implies you are not looking past the skin colour."

Well, to be entirely fair here, there is nothing outlandish in confusing a Brazilian with a middle-Eastern (not that I think it was the case here). First of all, there is no "Brazilian ethnic grouping". Our (Brazilian) passport is allegedly one of the most valued in the world for counterfeiters exactly because of that. We can look like ANYTHING, almost, and have any family name. Get a Braz. passport and put a Japanese pic? Fine, we've got the biggest Japanese population outside of Japan. A middle Eastern pic? Even better, we've got more Lebanese descendants there than there are people in Lebanon! Not to mention lots of Turks, Arabs, Africans, Germans, whatever. And so far and so forth. We do have our own "common, usual mix" which makes up most of the population, which is Mediterranean people (mostly Portuguese, Spanish, Italian) plus black, and maybe a bit of indigenous, in some regions. And many of these CAN look pretty at home in parts of the Middle East.

"Our current foreign policy is based on the idea that Islam is, as it claims to be, a religion of peace. It isn't. It's a highly aggressive, tribal religion based on conquest and subjugation."

Oh, no! Not that old BS again! Don't start blaming their religion for what is obviously a socio-political problem. Islam is not any more violent than Christianity, if you are to be fair. Both "holy" books are equally horrible as guides of morality or whatever -- and both can have good, righteous parts too. Just ask any atheist, since we seem to be versed on these things much better then the "faithful". But just because a SMALL part of the Muslim world decides to use their book to justify their crimes, it does not mean they couldn't use the Bible or the Torah to do the same. They definitely could, given the right environment. I think any religion can be used to manipulate people in order to reach a socio-political objective, and it sure helps when people are delusional enough to think the big daddy in the sky wants them to do what the powerful guys tell them. But to say it's primarily the religion's fault is ignoring your own history.

Cisco Brazil hit by massive police raid

Another Brazilian 2c

Even if some fellow Brazilian mentioned above that this is multiple years + fine + etc., it would not surprise me if the $833 million were indeed just taxes...

Mind you, a bit less than a couple years ago I went there to visit my family as usual, and brought a 4 Gig iPod nano for my sister. There at the time, the ONE Gig nano was priced at about the equivalent of $400 (yes, American dollars) at the time. I didn't even have the nerve to look up the price of the 4Gig one... Laptops usually cost two to three times the US price, easily, more if it is more of a top pf the line machine. No wonder the grey (and pirate, for software) market flourishes like mushrooms down there (even if mushrooms don't really have flowers...).

Ex-Linspire chief defects to Ubuntu

Weird...

I suppose they are in their rights to ban him from running through there, but... what the hell? Why would someone care if some guy happens to run through the parking lot for a minute or two every once in a while? I don't see a reason why, and would appreciate if someone could enlighten me to a reasonable motive... Maybe they are afraid that he'd sue them if he got hurt there (twist an ankle in a hole, hit by a car, whatever)? (not that I think that's a reasonable motive, but this is America...)

Anyway, nothing to say about the real substance of the article. :-)

Apple to roll out Mac OS X 10.5 next week

Price?

Too much either way...

Ubuntu goes 3-D

a tool...

"a tool dubbed AppArmor"

I suppose that's Novell's AppArmor, surely?

Met used 'dum-dum' ammo on de Menezes

Huh?

"This was fairly stupid, as the expanding bullets represented no more than a return to the type of trauma inflicted by the previous generation of weapons."

Oh, so that's fine then. It's just a return to previous... Hey, so having slavery back would be OK too, I suppose? Who'd have imagined? After all, being no more than a return to the type of trauma inflicted by the previous generations, it would be fairly stupid to be against it. Really...

And am I the only one here who thinks it's pretty weird (and indicative of sick minds) to hear people discussing how best, most efficiently or whatever to destroy human tissue? People seem to even enjoy this discussion -- come on, I can feel your excitement emanating from the tubes of the internets... :O)

Dino-boffins unearth another new gigantic species

Re: a rose by any other name ....

(skull & bones in honor of the fossil)

You ain't seen nothing yet, as they used to sing... Imagine what this fungus has to put up with: "Botryotinia fuckeliana" -- a real species name, I kid you not. Came across this gem yesterday while analyzing a genome... :-)

Regarding the naming conventions, nothing is wrong there, at least as far as names actually go. It's a binomial and it's Latinized. It does not matter where the words came from. "Orientia tsutsugamushi","Hyla japonica" or "Trypanosoma cruzi"

are far from pure Latin names, no?

Plan for 20mph urban speed-cam zones touted

Ironic...

A naughty loaded question? I guess you're not exactly qualified to talk about "loaded questions" after shamelessly writing:

"Is it better to be rich, free, and at some risk of getting killed by an idiot crashlanding his nuclear-powered flying car; or poor, downtrodden, spied upon - but sure of living long enough to die luxuriously of cancer or Alzheimer's?"

"At some point, when you insist on ultimate levels of safety, you start to pay more and more for each life saved: perhaps not just in money either."

True, although people who think money is not more important than lives might disagree, no? (and the other things you mentioned are just different words for money, except for the freedom bit, which is mandatory to mention, I suppose, any time people don't like something).

AI egghead: Human-robot humping, marriage by 2050

Nothing new then...

"I wouldn't mind a realistically animated RealDoll or something, but she'd still be very simple-minded."

There it is!

HPA outlines plans to measure Wi-Fi exposure

@Neil

No, it's probably a joke but he got the wrong icon. Only irony could make someone write "dyslectia", no?

Microsoft claims more pirate scalps

Title

"Or like a grammer checker."

Or like a spell checker...

Dutch Consumer Association declares war on Vista

Interesting...

"If you went out and bought Vista to install on something else, and it didn't work, tough shit, what did you expect ? Obviously the box you are trying to run it on is not compatible with the Vista spec, or your hardware is unsupported."

Two or three people have advanced that "defense" here already. Fine and fair, let's say. I just want to see how many of them will say the same reasoning next time someone complains that the copy of some Linux distro they downloaded (for free) does not recognize the multimedia buttons in their laptop, or that they need to go to the command line to make their XYZ card work... For some reason, I don't see that happening. And by now everyone knows you can buy computers with Linux on them. Oh well, I guess people feel more inclined to defend a crappy product they've paid a small fortune for than they do for a crappy product they've got for free...

By the way, the latest Ubuntu runs faster on a >2 year old laptop than XP (not mine, a friend's), so nobody should be afraid of the newer distros.

Hackers unlock iPhone - again

Dammit!

Who would buy the stoopid iPhone!? It does not even have a can opener, a measuring tape and/or a DVD player! I won't buy it until it offers all that essential functionality, period.

Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize

Title

"It gets out of the geopolitical issues of depending on particular regions for massive amounts of energy"

Only if Australia remains docile...

Student suspended in gun rights email row

Wow...

Well, I supposed the folks at Hamline must be relieved this particular nutcase is not allowed to take his gun (!!!) to school...

I went to check what MAPA stands for: master of arts in public administration. Because I was wondering he could not be an English master student. Man, it's not my language (5.5 years at it now) and I can spell better than him...

Anyway, I think the school has overreacted there -- unless this was the "straw that broke..." as someone pointed out above. We have seem just a little bit of the story.

But to me he does seem pretty borderline on hate "crimes" there, what with the "atheist professors, jewish and other non-Christian staff" part, among other things (dirty bums sounded great too...). So he thinks these people shouldn't be employed there because of their beliefs or lack thereof? Well, then he is doing exactly what he criticizes, no? I would go as far as saying he probably tried to restrain himself in those messages, and didn't say everything he *really* thinks and would like to do... But that's just speculating, of course.

His obsession with the swastika is also weird... As is his "interpretation" of hate crime -- the Asian guy hated the people he killed... Stupid or what?

Catholic dating sites exchange rings

No, no...

Fraser, you did not get the (admittedly bad) joke... Must be the American x British English problem. Slaine is there though.

Huh?

"Do you take my assets?"

Hey, whoa there! Last time I checked they were supposed to do it for procreation purposes only. So none of this "assets taking", thank you very much!

Fairly realistic flying car offered for 2009 delivery

Brrr...

"The first of these is the one-touch folding wings, which the company believes it has cracked."

Folding wings? Has cracked? Never a good expression to hear when discussing a flying car, methinks...

Ballmer: All open source dev should happen on Windows

Sue, sue! Or not...

"Actually can we have that as an icon? Steve Ballmer in a jester's hat?"

I believe El Reg is afraid of flying chairs, so I'm afraid this is not happening. Unfortunately. :-)

Now, couldn't the open source companies sue MS for slander or whatever is the term? They are clearly trying to damage their business, and doing so by saying (at least so far) unfounded things about them. I thought that could get you in trouble.

Apple sued over i-Bricks

Er...

Hm, sounds like a hard one to me, but I don't know that much... How will the customer prove that Apple deliberately bricked the phones? Apple can always say that software is complicated, blah, blah, and that they can't be responsible for mods they didn't make -- and didn't approve of to begin with. No?

Or will the judge tell Apple to open the code to a bunch of "experts" (maybe under NDA) from both defense and prosecution, for them to try and show one way or the other whether the update purposefully "broke" the phones or whether it was collateral damage?

Ah, whatever. I don't have one (and don't want either) anyway... :O)

RM readies Linux sub-laptop... for £169

Cool...

Pretty nice, I just think more than 4 Gb storage would be even better -- although of course you can use the SD reader for more, I assume. But I see this machine as a great way to empty my DSLR's SD cards while on the field. And you know how big files are these days...

Amazon punts anal beads to UK kiddies

Er...

"1 Used & New for 2.99"

Used? Yuck... New? Yuck too...

Genetics boffins on the verge of artificial bacteria

Grey goo...

Hey, this icon kinda looks like a beardless Venter, come to think of it...

"we could see a mass of grey goo taking over the entire planet"

No, we probably could not, actually. At least as far as basic science/logic is involved. I don't remember who started this "grey goo" craze (when writing about nanotech, I think), but I'm pretty sure Bill Joy was repeating this drivel in an essay condemning genetic engineering. To the grey goo apologists, "one" word: first law of thermodynamics. How can something reproduce so much as to take up all the resources and *cover* everything (thickly enough to be grey, by the way), unless the resources are extremely abundant -- in which case, it's not on THIS planet, where organisms have to fight for everything with each other. Now, the "grey goo" notion is even more ridiculous when applied to some hypothetical, artificial nanotech device.

And as far as goos go, the entire planet is ALREADY covered in it. It's been around for some billions of years and it's called bacteria. Hardly menacing now, innit?

"Even the more credible experts rarely agree with each other over the most basic of issues"

Of course, otherwise it wouldn't be "ethics", would it? ;-)

UK police can now force you to reveal decryption keys

Great...

Now they will ban the use/download/possession of TrueCrypt or whatever... And say that if you do have this wretched piece of software, you get 10 years in the slammer. But only 2-5 if you have encrypted data but won't tell the key. :O)

"but that is the price of freedom"

Pearls to pigs there, mate. People with that troll's mentality only accept any "price of freedom" when it refers to spending billions to kill people in some place they can not locate on a world map. Anything else is "communism" or something. And the trolls never have anything to hide either, of course.

Lawmaker shows nudie pic to high school seniors

Police!?

Police!? POLICE!? WTF??? These people here are so uptight you can open a Coke using their asses... (I refer to one of those old bottles, for all the young ones here)

It always shocks me how it is possible that they continually show those medicals shows on TV here in the US, with all the blood and guts exposed for all and sundry, all day long, and as soon as someone pulls a Janet Jackson for barely a second it is like the world is going to end in nuclear holocaust next morning...

I myself make a point of going to the swimming pool in my Speedo, just to upset the "merkins". And I don't like to have half of my legs white anyway...

Geeks and Nerds caught on film lacking geeky nerdiness

Get real

Oh, IT professionals... Get real, stop defending those guys/companies. Dust free room!? Pushing a new computer? Come on... Many of those guys are just crooks and you know it. It's not because YOU have 137 years of IT experience that everybody must be as good as you.

And after all THREE of the ten technicians got it right, so it was far from difficult to diagnose it, eh? Hell, even I (nothing to do with IT) have ran MemTest on some memory I bought which seemed to be making my computer unstable (it turned out one of the sticks was faulty indeed).

Now, I hope that they reward the ones who did get it right by mentioning their (company) names in the "full report" the guy mentioned...

RIAA hits paydirt: wins first music-sharing jury trial

Talk about fascism...

Yeah, she was wrong. But what happened with the "cruel and unusual punishment" stuff?

These mafia tactics remind me of a movie I've watched recently: "America, from freedom to fascism". It used to be freely available to watch (legally) on YouTube. The second half is a bit too loony, I'd say. But the first part, about how the US income tax is illegal (or at least irregular) and how the IRS behaves using mafia tactics and ruining people's lives (even when they are innocent) reminds me of these RIAA things.

Vista Business sales soar like leaping dachshund

Turing?

"Perhaps a Turing winner here?"

Or maybe it is a "reverse Turing" test winner: a person convincing you he is a computer...

What's 77.1 x 850? Don't ask Excel 2007

Re: Re: Software vs Hardware

"apart from the aggressive and slightly substandard intelligence / illiterate manner in which you raised it"

Oh well, I can't be bothered to put a disclaimer at the bottom of everything I write stating that I am not a native speaker of English, and have been speaking it for 5 years now. And no, I'm not 5 years old, before someone inevitably makes the suggestion. :-)

And it's not like your English is exactly stellar there either, I'm afraid. Maybe you have the same excuse as I do?

Now, why are you afraid of the aggressiveness? Chill, nobody is after you...

CERN BOFH needs a bigger storage array

Re: basic arithmetic and such

"information is filtered to concentrate on interesting events"

Well, I don't know the nature of the discarded info (redundant stuff?), and I'm pretty sure it was quite well thought out, but I still think it's sad so much info is discarded. You know, it's very common that in science the most interesting things are those you were NOT looking for or expecting...

Forget basic arithmetic, anon. What about some basic reading skills? From the article: "data acquisition occurs at around 100MB per second."

Science and religion collide for galactic conference

@David Ralston

That was really funny (not in a good way), but at least kudos to you for not posting "anonymously"...