Posts by b shubin

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! settle un-American activity claims

Indulgences

good to see governments took over where the church left off. redefining vice as virtue has always been a wonderfully profitable business for the powers-that-be.

there is legal self-destructive behavior (regulated, taxed, state-sanctioned), such as alcoholism; this is moral in the eyes of the law.

on the other hand (same hand?), there is illegal self-destructive behavior (unregulated, untaxed, penalized), such as a heroin addiction; this is immoral in the eyes of the law.

much like a church indulgence; there's only one difference between the two.

same with gambling: legit in a casino, but immoral online. nonsense, but here we are.

morality is flexible enough that any authority can subvert it.

US surgeon snaps patient's tattooed todger

Religious perspective

from an atheist's point of view, this incident (with all its absurd details) proves that there is no God. an omnipotent and omniscient, yet prudish, dogmatic and micromanaging, but also merciful and benevolent God (for that is how he is described), would never allow anything like this into his great God's Plan; therefore, if the incident is real, then God is imaginary.

from a monotheist's point of view, this gives new meaning to "God works in mysterious ways."

Paris icon, as her meticulously documented existence also illustrates this point very clearly.

T-Mobile (temporarily) halts Web 2.0rhea

Microblogging is to blogging as...?

wow, something even more knee-jerk, stream-of-consciousness pathetic than blogging. i didn't think it was possible.

in the olden days, sonny, people would think, ponder, try to get some perspective on events, critically consider what they have to say, before writing it down. now, some wanker eats a radioactive isotope for breakfast, and it's news?

still, it gives pathetic people something harmless (and profitable) to do, and makes the economy go around.

don't have any use for it myself. if i have something to write about, i'll write.

blogs are for diarists (in this case, derived from "diarrhea"), and i don't have OCD.

US woman launches 'Taserware' parties

No more slow news days

just wait 'til all the FASHIONABLE people carry them...

i can't wait. very much looking forward to all the twitching people in the street. sure, nonlethal, what could go wrong?

maybe the cops will get tired of filling out the mounds of new paperwork created by all the twitchies, not to mention the stiffs and the odd chemical or electric "accident", and they'll have to restrict this AFTER it gets out of hand (errr...duh?).

to be fair, any civilian who tries one of these on me is going to need that laser sight, because if they miss, i will likely make them eat it. 'course, most ex-military types out there, from any country, would probably do the same.

in Michigan, fortunately, it's illegal for private use (according to the article). local types will still shoot you (that's how Motown gets down).

the Paris icon, dahling, because nothing says "Glam!" (and then "BZZERRT!") like a pink Tazer...

Nokia to turn cameraphones into foreign food finders

Global business model

"man, this neighborhood sure looks run down...hey, a cul-de-sac! i think we're lost...i wonder what that big sign says...

"i know, i'll use my phone to translate it! hang on...

"ok, here it is: IF YOU ARE READING THIS SIGN, I AM STANDING BEHIND YOU WITH A GUN. GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY, YOU <untranslatable> TOURIST!...

"crap."

Budget HD DVD player to include even more free discs

High-def filler

erm, perhaps i'd find the latest high-def format more useful (and relevant) if:

[1] there was not yet another VHS/Betamax pissing match,

[2] the hardware offered truly compelling and flexible new functionality,

[3] it wasn't packed full of DRM (from the two parties known for graceless DRM hack-jobs, Sony and MS),

[4] it was priced reasonably,

[5] it was backwards-compatible, and

[6] it was not yet another half-baked solution looking for a problem, in a long series of planned-obsolescence upgrades, extending to infinity, serving no purpose other than to extract money from fools

it is ironic that Maxell announced holographic storage disks back in 2005, and the technology is now in production. the format is currently sold only to the professional media market. the disks start at 300GB, and are expected to reach 1.5TB in a few years.

the next standard is already out, but you can't hear it over the marketing noise. see here:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/computing/item_35.html

apart from that, the most compelling argument AGAINST hi-def is the content. most movies (i'd say 98%+) released over the last 10-20 years, don't even qualify as "renter". why the hell would i want to watch that crap in higher definition?

like spending hours, inspecting a turd with a magnifying glass: this is not anything i need to see in more detail, let alone waste between 1 and 4 hours of my life looking at in the first place.

high-def formats do nothing to address this problem. most of the content my wife and i watch, is perfectly viewable on a Mac laptop (which is exactly how it is actually viewed), and is available online, legally.

Microsoft squeezes out early release of 2007 Office SP1

Premiums

a common problem all desktop MS products share, starts with "p", ends with "e", one syllable, jiggles in your pocket, yep, that's PRICE.

if the desktop products are priced in the same tier as the server products, then what occurs is called a "barrier to entry". Vista and Office 2007 may suck for lots of people, but they are not the first products released by Gates Ballmer & Co. that suck. this has never prevented adoption before; slowed it down some, sure, but not stopped it outright.

now they have a different problem: there is no return on the premium they charge. the productivity gains will be incremental, when one considers the sorry state of training in the workplace, resistance to change, and variations in personal usage habits.

the pricing principle works like this: one can release a sequel that sucks out loud, but it has to be affordable.

in China, it costs a few dollars US to license Windows and Office on a workstation, legally. MS made that decision when the alternative became obvious (that everyone would simply pirate and/or crack their products anyway).

How much do YOU want to pay today?

Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain

Reality is subjective

and Wikiality is even more so.

any power matrix distorts information that passes through it (credit: Robert Anton Wilson). where there is hierarchy, there will be multiple conflicting public and private agendas.

an undemocratic, opaque caste system of mostly anonymous, unpaid idealists is THE perfect set of conditions for this sort of problem. in such a situation, many idealists tend to become ideologues, and that's how today's Wikipedia version of reality probably evolved.

it is not a completely flat organization, so one should expect all the dysfunction of a large, distributed, stratified entity (think UN or any large government bureaucracy), nurtured in isolation, secrecy and anonymity (SlimVirgin indeed), as if in a hothouse.

makes for a very interesting study in pathology. just pretend you are an anthropologist, or a shrink, and enjoy their plethora of amusingly distorted "facts", presented as truth. see the world through a funhouse mirror - kinda looks like the real thing, but different...

Catholic schism over mobile icons

Business is business

religion is primarily a business.

so it always was, so it always will be.

religion sells warm-fuzzies, righteousness, guilt, power, and the excuse to brutalize and/or kill those who do not believe EXACTLY as you do (according to the methodology of your particular church, or other faith-based murder-license-granting institution). there are some other accessories (processions, holidays, outfits, facilities, hatreds, etc.), that vary by cult.

in the US, religion is a trillion-dollar, tax-free business.

if a church is also a state (see GW Bush & Gang), all the better, as it makes for a bigger (also more righteous and more deadly) business. a church that is a state has the special ability to mount Crusades (this is armed robbery writ large, see below for references).

for more historical examples (a non-exhaustive list), see:

-the Crusades

-the Holy Inquisition

-the Salem Witch Trials

-the Divine Right of Kings

-Timothy McVeigh

-Jerry Falwell

-abortion clinic bombers

-Abu Sayyaf

-Red Army Faction (ideology as religion)

-Baader-Meinhof Gang (same as previous)

-the Cultural Revolution (and again)

-WW2

-Ancient Rome ("Jews vs. Lions")

-Darfur

-9/11

-"The 300" (Xerxes was a God-Emperor)

-Ancient Egypt (the Pharaohs were considered semi-divine)

-Sunni vs. Shi'a (vs. New Crusaders)

......

or any other 2-to-5-way matches by Christians vs. Muslims vs. Jews vs. heathens vs. "unbelievers" throughout recorded human existence.

Sperm-derived power system for nanobots patented

Nature's wonders

the boffins who are trying for the patent, should be required to follow each sample of "prior art" during production, and then to examine each sample in detail, for however many sample contributors decide to show up to challenge this patent.

i feel certain that they'd quickly decide that trying to patent a widespread and established natural process is beating a...well, you know.

this is especially true for a process they haven't completely figured out yet. perhaps they should be given a "patent in principle", which would provide absolutely no protection, but give everyone else easy access to their work, and if someone else patents the process (and all of its details) in its entirety, before they do, then the "patent in principle" becomes void. this should discourage other greedy tossers from trying to patent things they don't really understand.

i eagerly await the first patent on the stars (luminous stellar bodies distantly seen through the atmosphere), a la "The Little Prince"; this patent will instantly be granted, because no one else had the gall to apply for such a thing before. prior art (literally art, this time) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry will, of course, be discarded as irrelevant.

it seems practical at this point to take the entire USPTO out to a testing facility, run repeated IQ tests on all persons working on patents or setting policy, and fire anyone who scores under 105 intellectual IQ. when that is done, run repeated psychological tests and interviews, to establish who among the remaining persons actually cares enough to do a decent job, then fire everyone else. lastly, give all remaining persons a salary of $100k or above, with the firm promise of regular raises, and tell them that they will be subject to monthly ethics and quality oversight. most who stay, will be worth keeping.

this process should also make the USPTO much harder to corrupt and mislead.

i "spit" in their general direction (USPTO and the research tossers, both).

Appraisals are dishonest, waste of time

Check your context

@ Evil Graham

you're asking for "sympathy" from Reg readers.

you will find "sympathy" in the dictionary, somewhere between "shit" and "syphilis". (credit to my father-in-law, a Canadian of great integrity)

you will not find any "sympathy" here. and fsck Christmas, it's a shopping holiday anyway.

Mum defends suspected Kiwi botmaster

Historically accurate

"Apologize to ze nice Geahhman mann, dollink, ohhr you vill be shott, ya?"

yes, he must be the very epitome of evil. don't tell me, you've never dealt with a case of arrested social development before?

it is common for slightly retarded humans (it's not PC, it's harsh and offensive, but it is accurate, and not meant pejoratively - no flames please) to have little or no moral judgement. many can benefit from formal statements of society's rules, and/or psychological counseling, but few receive such advice. societies do not teach that sort of thing in a structured way, it falls under the "upbringing" and "parenting" catchalls (as if normal parents are trained to deal with such situations).

i moved from the USSR to the US at age 10, and the socialization process was extremely uneven, traumatic, and unpleasant. the culture shock was more severe because most kids in my school didn't like immigrants. i adjusted, but some people do not.

i can easily see how this guy could have developed into a criminal (a desire for acceptance and validation was likely a big part of it), and he's definitely not an isolated case.

at least he didn't shoot anyone. comparing him to Hitler is absurd.

iPhone tops mobile browsing charts

Flesh tones

@ Matt Brigden

to quote a popular musical, "The internet is for P0RN!"

Mozilla rubbishes IE Firefox security study

Hard sell

the IE/Firefox comparison was based on a time-honored tactic:

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff. --Cicero

perhaps if Ballmer & Company made better software, they wouldn't have to spin everything (thus the "Get the Spin...err, Facts!" marketing campaign). it's absurd that every sentence that comes from Microsoft and friends, has to be checked for marketing-driven bias, which then has to be filtered out; otherwise all data must be discarded as useless.

a vendor's recipe for integrity is very simple: make a good product, provide a good service, fess up when you mess up, and charge a fair price.

Vista was universally judged to be a pig, but they continue to put lipstick on it.

Microsoft's sex-obsessed RoboSanta spouts filth at children

Broken AI

ahh, that's good. happy holidays, folks, it's like Eliza working blue.

MS will probably say it's a feature, and the users are misusing the software.

Net to be whupped by TV in attention battle

Life || TV

depends on whether one has a life. no one i know who has one, watches TV.

some watch TiVo, iTunes, or online content, with the occasional movie or series on DVD. sometimes, they catch some TV by accident - in the bank, the airport, the gym.

this is the US, so there are anywhere from 10 to several hundred channels available where i am at any given time. most of the programs are not worth watching, most of the time, on a value-for-time-spent basis. our house has 3 DVRs (2 TiVo, 1 DirecTV piece of crap). the big-screen TV (42in plasma) has been used 5 times in the last 11 months.

the simple truth is that the most profitable demographic is also the most time-constrained, as it is also the group with the busiest schedules, whether because of professional interests, or due to the abundance of choice in activities, or both. watching TV is usually a non-priority.

Joe Sixpack, on the other hand, is still watching, but he's fairly price-sensitive (and, as energy and food prices continue to rise, wages stagnate, and the US dollar falls, Joe will become ever more prudent with funds).

i suppose it depends on the advertiser's target audience. at the very least, casting a wider media net will certainly provide more ad opportunities. it will likely generate more sales too, and drive down the cost of ad space/time.

Paris and Britney top US kids' Santa naughty list

Add another

loudly pontificating about one's strong moral values (and running a socially conservative political campaign), though one has the character of a starving New York city rat, the compassion of a snapper turtle, the power drive of Genghis Khan, and the political philosophy that would cause Benito Mussolini to shrug knowingly and say "Well, of course his name is Rudolph Giuliani, best of both worlds, no?"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2007-11-28-giuliani-bills_N.htm

someone is due a lump of coal, but we need it to power the electric grid, so maybe we should just convert him to biodiesel instead?

Boffins report lightning on Venus, our non-identical twin

Greenhouse?

a substantial portion of the US public will tell you (and anyone else within earshot) that the greenhouse effect is a fabrication popularized by biased scientists, and maybe even immigrant terrorist gay married liberals with ambitions of embryonic stem cell research (if you live in the UK, don't get too smug, you have these idiots too).

the same crowd will blame Al Gore for misrepresenting the facts about the climate of Venus ("really, it's quite nice, i've heard!"), and assert that [a] it is a perfectly natural state, requiring not greenhouse effect, and/or [b] that God (in some flavor of The Big Three - Trinity, Yahweh, or Allah) intended it that way, so you and your pesky scientists should mind your own business.

this is usually followed by a demand that the funding for this sort of thing be put to a more useful purpose, namely a tax cut.

Man sentenced to 20 years in murder of online rival

Online trailer park

it's like Jerry Springer, but online, with guns, and it takes longer.

Expressive e-commerce safe after judge sides with Amazon

There may be hope yet

wow. who appointed this guy?

i bet Cheney's pacemaker went into overdrive for about 5 minutes after he heard about this.

though it is my fervent ambition to stay far, far away from the US judicial system (can't really call it "Justice" if there's universal wiretapping, security letters, DHS, suspended habeas corpus, the Imperial Presidency, Gitmo and the torture prisons, etc.), and this guy's writing style is worthy of the tabloid press, i would shake his hand and thank him if i ever meet him (i am NOT a social person, so this would be a stretch for me).

Microsoft offers $300m for web-washing ad campaign

Jinglelicious

Microsoft Live...

[a] We're not dead yet! (a la Python)

[b] Not as bad as you heard.

[c] Quite useable, really.

[d] A compelling solution for...forrr...ummm...

[e] Like almost using Office!

[f] You have to admire our nerve for pushing this stuff...

[g] Exciting product with a name more accurate than "Works".

[h] We take your money more slowly (giant sucking noise now a pinhole leak).

Virgin Mary appears in Google's Iowa data center

Bleeding obvious

from the previous comments, it is clear that, outside the bubble universe of California, some other places in the US (especially those away from the coasts) have not had it nearly so good in the last decade.

here in SE Michigan, nearby Detroit would be ecstatic about a new datacenter. a large construction project like that would make many an unemployed worker salivate. the ripple effects of an expenditure of that magnitude in the local economy, will likely last longer than the project itself. the additional utility demands and recurring maintenance expenses will continue to contribute locally, long after the construction is completed.

even here in Ann Arbor (UMich), people were excited about the Google advertising facility that opened recently (not that many jobs there, actually).

California was, until very recently, the world's 7th largest economy (may still be), so the assumptions valid there are a special case, and the context in Iowa, or Michigan, is starkly different. perhaps that's why the big players are going to obscure places - because they get more cooperation there. Microsoft may be going to Siberia, which makes Iowa a rather conventional choice, actually.

the PH icon is for the distorted, bubble-universe perspective.

EMI's Hands squeezes trade bodies

Half measures

why stop there? keep all the money, financials indicate that EMI needs every cent.

by their own admission, the lobbies are losing enormous sums in their anti-consumer campaigns, and EMI's return on this investment is customer hostility and even lower sales. it's a losing game, and sounds like it would be more effective (and cost-effective) to bring lobbying in-house.

use the savings to fund a viable, subscription-based or low-price-per-unit online portal for your content (or just buy eMusic, they've already done it).

your bottom line will thank you.

Microsoft on the hunt for 'serious' Windows flaw

Easy to exploit IRL

@ Rich

you're having a laugh.

in real life, it is almost a no-brainer. i have a recent example.

last weekend, i was at the home office of my wife's colleague (name withheld to protect the clueless and the ignorant) whose "friend" (software developer) was kind enough to set up a Linksys wireless router for her cable connection some years ago. her company (sole proprietorship) represents suppliers who want to do business with a particular cable TV shopping channel (QVC), and she is a conduit for tens of millions of dollars worth of product every year.

so this was like watching a veterinarian practice neurosurgery on human infants. seriously, programmers should either [a] learn more about systems work, or [b] stick to what they know. this guy didn't change ANY settings in the router. default SSID, no encryption, default admin password (looked it up on the Linksys website, i did), web administration accessible, so the biggest security hole i've seen in a longish time. they did their banking on this connection, as well.

many of these routers include DNS proxy functionality enabled by default (this one did), so registering a domain is not necessary. one can set up whatever DNS information is required, within the router itself; or one just points the router to a rogue DNS server, and sets up whatever domain information one wants. this IE "feature" would then allow capture of all Windows clients through a web proxy one can configure, for the perfect man-in-the-middle attack.

in real-life situations like the one i was presented with, it is TRIVIAL to exploit this problem. since most users and many IT wannabes have no clue, scenarios like this are rather common.

Like any other week

in my business (technology systems and software support), we call that job security.

i'd like to thank Gates, Ballmer & Co., and also millions of Windows-focused ISVs all over the world, for NOT changing their business priorities or development processes to focus on software quality and security, first and foremost. every year that these companies continue to be driven primarily by marketing considerations, my customers will need my services for another 5 to 10 years after that.

if there were no fires, there would be no money in addressing and preventing fires.

that reminds me, i need to get more marshmallows....

UK pushes token security line on child database

Exception is policy

don't know how many times i've tried to explain this to management.

any exception made for anyone, for any reason, becomes policy, as everyone will expect the same exception to happen in the future.

a policy should be developed with this in mind, and required access should be made available within the scope of the policy.

the sad fact is that management is usually too short-sighted, apathetic, or just plain stupid to address this.

We know security and usability are orthogonal - do you?

Reverse optimization

the reason so much ISV code circumvents API is optimization, driven by competition.

if third-party software only addressed APIs, all the calls would occur at the same speed on identical hardware/OS, and the quality of the ISV's software would become the sole source of competitive advantage.

that would require retaining, training and investing in your programming staff, instead of farming out the work, on an ad-hoc contract basis, to inexpensive code monkeys in a distant cube farm, somewhere in the developing countries (and they're lucky if they have cubes). it's cheaper to just hack the software into the guts of the operating system, ignoring the API security and abstraction layers altogether. that way, the ISV saves money and time; the code is closed-source, so if it's crap, nobody sees it; and it can always be patched later.

please note that most ISVs are business first, software designer distant second. in terms of project management methodology, time and cost are highly significant to them, and scope is quite flexible. their primary goal is to get shiny product to market (and then sell it to uninformed, credulous middle management in as many organizations as possible), not to create a good or great product (that would be nice, but it's not nearly as important).

having dealt with the dog that is Vista (want your computer to run 4 times faster? try removing Vista and installing XP, go on, i dare you...), i can easily understand why ISVs would try to optimize around the clunky house that Allchin built. i hope it's the DRM in the kernel that makes it so slow, and they tear that out next year when the rest of the media content oligopoly caves on that front. barring that, i fail to see the value of moving from XP.

full disclosure:

i turned to unix/Linux after almost 20 years of supporting MS products. i made the transition to preserve what is left of my sanity. so far, so good.

China condemns high-tech outsourcing

The "or else" is silent

so the problems with the next-gen carrier rockets have been solved, for the peaceful exploration of space.

it may be possible that their new rocket technology will find other uses...

the Chinese are inscrutable as ever, but lately, their straight-faced pronouncements sound sardonic to me. perhaps it's their warm-fuzzy history, or their gentle ways of dealing with their enemies.

any odds on who will complete an orbital-bombardment platform first? truly, we live in interesting times.

WolfKing howls about wacky gaming keyboard

Hardly worth posing with

really, the poser typists already had a superior option: Das Keyboard.

what could be more pretentiously minimalist than a completely blank keyboard?

what we have here is version 1.0 of the chav keyboard.

version 2.0 will come with spots of primer, a dual chrome wanker pipe, and silly chrome rims (see Web 2.0).

version 3.0 will feature customizable backlighting, a top half that is darkly tinted transparent plastic, with a choice of fuzzy dice or handcuffs hanging off the side; one or the other will become the hive mind's "correct choice", justification will be invented for this arbitrary nonsense, and dissenters will be flamed and ostracized (a la Web 3.0).

Red Hat haunts Ellison's Linux dream

Glass houses and stones

perhaps Larry should get his own software house to a functional level first. the recent Q&A hosted by Ellison himself, regarding Oracle's Fusion project, indicates that they have trouble dealing with the product line they already have.

if Oracle wants to be better, faster and smarter than RedHat, it would help if the company was at least as effective as RedHat is right now. this does not appear to be the case. Larry's ponderous monster looks like the snake that ate an elephant, and is wondering how to go about digesting the meal.

considering Mr. Ellison's (nonexistent) record of friendly cooperation with external entities, i'd say RH has a sizable advantage - RH has no shortage of players who want to partner with the 800-pound Linux gorilla. quite the congenial ape it is, too, by most accounts.

one would think RH would be paying attention to Ubuntu, not to Larry (he does go on though, doesn't he?). Shuttleworth's creature appears to be a far more effective and agile competitor, a velociraptor to Oracle's brontosaurus.

Why do we think virtualization is new?

Soft target

what you see is not meant for IT managers who have IT knowledge. it is aimed squarely at CIOs and other CXOs or Directors, preferably ones with no hardware background or operations experience.

the vendors are selling trinkets to savages, essentially. no point in educating this kind of customer, he already has everything required: ignorance and purchasing authority.

if you make it SHINY enough, he'll sign anything.

this happens whenever nontechnical people make technical decisions. it almost always ends badly, and the technical workers are usually blamed.

Is Sprint getting cold feet about Pivot and Xohm?

Roadkill

as a former Sprint customer (never again), i would say that the only thing worse than Sprint wireless service was Sprint customer service.

that was almost 10 years ago, and the stories of angry Sprint customers have been pretty much the same since.

if Sprint-Nextel hasn't straightened this out by now, it is not likely to get fixed in the future. time to shoot Old Yeller and let the vultures eat the carcass.

Microsoft spoils Christmas with Xbox 360 locking feature

Potentially enlightening

perhaps the 45% to 51% of the American public that are functionally illiterate (can read road signs, package labels, etcetera; have trouble with paragraphs, filling applications and the like; average vocabulary approximately 200 words), will now have to learn something new.

more likely, TV ratings, food and retail sales will increase ("at least we can watch/buy/eat something!").

bread and circuses by any other name...

Sony unveils third-gen 'portable' PS2

Progress

@ SeanR

it would indeed be cheaper and easier, but my interests are in another direction.

[1] i don't want an XBOX that i then have to mod. the PlayStation platform will run Linux without modification, i just have to get the right distro.

[2] i like the low profile of the PS2, and the newer box will have lower power requirements, is RoHS-compliant, and likely has updated components (if for no other reason than they couldn't get any more of the original low-end stuff that went into the original PS2).

[3] buying used electronics in the US is chancy, unless it's a certified Apple refurb or similar (where you have some recourse if it goes ugly). i don't want a console that some 12-year-old twitch gamer (like the thoughtful, articulate Julian from the first post) tried to run into the ground and failed; it wouldn't be worth the £50 (or, in my case, $110-$120, at the current exchange rates).

[4] XBOX has a history of electrical problems (houses have burned down because of it).

Twitch buyer

gotta love the Microsoft fanboys and their worship of planned obsolescence (it's a real word, Julian, look it up).

i know a guy who's still using the original modded XBOX. it runs a Linux distro that turns it into a media center and set top console. he's not even a geek, he's a music producer, and he's ecstatic about that box, wouldn't give it up for the world.

i would never buy the XBOX 360 or the PS3, i don't have the kind of time to make it cost-effective (got a life and responsibilities, you know?), but i may buy the new PS2 if i can get a decent media-oriented Linux for it. got just the place for it, too, it's so low-profile, it would be perfect.

yes, there is absolutely a market for PS2 at that price point, as the Wii has already demonstrated. worth noting that i'm not a gamer, and have no particular affection for Nintendo or Sony.

i do have scorn for Microsoft and their idiot fanboy trolls. Microsoft writes software the way Julian Cook uses English - poorly. perhaps he's in their QC department...

'PlayStation-deprived' teen admits part in plot to pop parents

Darwin Award candidate

life is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike video games.

let's say an actual contract killer was desperate enough to accept the job on a contingency basis (which would be pretty uncommon, i would think). once the parents are dead, the boy is a material witless...er, witness.

a down-on-his-luck killer (male in this case - i don't doubt the ladies' prowess, no flames please) would likely shoot the kid, and take anything else that was valuable in the house, console included. this would make it look like a random burglary, and earn some much-needed cash from fencing the stuff (driving a few states over, or to Vegas, and fencing it there, would help conceal the origins of the stuff).

in this case, "young and dumb" is an accurate description. cart his ass off to juvie (i worked in one briefly, on an IT migration project), no loss to the world.

China goes lunar

Diplomacy

i so love the way they do that.

"We are willing to co-operate with the rest of the world to the benefit of humankind," the BBC quotes Long as saying. "But as to what kind of co-operation, it depends on specific circumstances."

i once heard diplomacy defined as the art of saying "nice doggie!" until you find a rock. this sounds very similar.

it is likely that the cooperation will decrease as the need for it diminishes, like if/when they have the facilities in place for kinetic bolide bombardment. after that, maybe not quite as much cooperation; more like, "who's the superpower now, bitch?"

i, for one, will welcome our new Chinese overlords (but i'll have to learn Mandarin - good thing the wife is already working on that).

Manhunt, mods and maddened mothers

The Fix

@ amanfromMars

the Fix is always in.

all empires make the same mistake, arming the have-nots. at some point, the disparity between rich and poor becomes too inequitable. humans are programmed for "fairness", not logic or reason, and that's how the empire breaks down: at some point, the Praetorian Guard decides who gets to be Emperor.

that's when Manhunt 2 goes from social outrage to training tool.

YAO (Yet Another Outrage)

the people of the US fear any number of existential threats. here's a sample:

[1] bare boobies on television are a grave danger to society.

[2] a bunch of guys with WW2-vintage weapons, building improvised explosive devices in a cave in the Middle East, will destroy this country.

[3] gay people, especially the ones who marry, will doom us all.

[4] genetic experimentation is wrong, unless it is done for profit and we eat the result.

as long as the ignorant, barely literate public is focused on that sort of thing, they will fail to notice that their Big-Debt, Big-War, Big-Brother, Big-Corruption, Big-Pollution, Big-Religion, Big-Government leaders are about to drive this bus over a cliff.

ICANN annoints Vint Cerf's successor

Obligatory

MWHHHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAAAAAH!

all your struggles are for naught.

surrender, and you may serve me for the rest of your life. resist, and you will all die, quickly (busy busy, no time for that waterboarding stuff!).

so, what will it be?

[Reg really needs to get Lucas's permission to get either Vader or Palpateen icons for moments like this - the helicopter seems so inadequate]

CA reaps benefits of reaping employees

But what about the software?

does this mean they'll stop selling the utter crap that made "CA" a four-letter word? their stuff made Microsoft release versions look good.

it would be nice if CA could put some of those savings to use creating software worth the name.

Cisco borgs Securent for $100m

Not just in China

in the US, the government (through its various three-letter tentacles) uses Cisco gear (and all other backbone equipment, really) to run universal surveillance on the populace (they monitor all means of communication, not just the internet), and harass political dissidents.

it's really a matter of degree rather than substance.

Mandriva bigwig (nearly) accuses Ballmer of b-word

Shock/horror

there's corruption in Africa? and Microsoft as a party to it?

no way...

coat/door/bye.

Acer and HP patent rumble rumbles on

Let them eat lawyers

the only thing the current patent regime in the US provides is secure, plentiful revenue for lawyers. this is logical, as the patent system is heavily influenced by lawyers. i'm sure there's no conflict of interest (insert unavailable sarcasm icon here).

it's absurd. they trumpet the number of patents filed each year as a metric of success and innovation; on the contrary, the system appears to stifle innovation and competition, and to promote endless lawsuits, injunctions and appeals. most of the patents filed are obvious, derivative, or trivial in the extreme, literally nothing more than legal fodder.

the team with the most lawyers usually wins.

the USPTO is fundamentally broken. let's see how long they keep a finger in this dike.

Docklands train runs off without operator

Job description 3.0 beta

@ Mike Richards

i'm pretty sure the joss-sticks brigade came up with "Customer Satisfaction Coordinator", "Quality Experience Provider", and/or similar, but the focus groups reacted with stunned silence, followed by gales of mirth, so they had to settle for Passenger Service Agent as more neutral and less absurd.

"Conductor" (short, sweet, accurate) is so last-millenium, not to mention not-billable.

@ Ferry Boat

thanks for the flash of nostalgia, had an iSeries at my last gig, really miss the big beastie...

Privacy advos demand 'do not track list' for websites

History shows otherwise

any market bound by "self-regulation" fails to effectively deter abuse. it's like having a junkie monitor and regulate his intake of narcotics, because surely he will do the right thing, won't he?...

for a good example, consider the amount of marketing mail most people in the US receive in their email and postal service mailboxes. that marketing self-regulation works about as well as one would expect, that is to say, abysmally.

yes, let's have more self-regulation on the internet, like the IAB suggests. what could go wrong?

Japanese officials in tables-turned GPS tracking rumpus

Not invasive enough

these are government officials, and when they are at work, they get oversight, not privacy.

leave your phone on your desk when you go home, but know that people will notice that it is not with you (and wonder what you do off-hours, same like they do now). if you work in government, you deserve no privacy.

laird has a point.

i would suggest, however, that the budget power ceiling be $10K, not $1M, makes it harder to weasel out of. or better yet, everybody is subject to oversight, no matter where in government you work. spooks may be an exception (they would have to fake it anyway to maintain secrecy, so no point in trying).

Samsung glass breakthrough to slash LCD TV prices?

Surely smash or shatter prices?

it IS glass, you know.

coat/door/bye.

Sun: MoD has Bond/Potter/Klingon cloaking device

Secure, undisclosed location

could someone PLEASE get lots of these invisible sheds to the US government, so they can stop building those huge bunkers all over the place?

that way, the next time they need to hide from the people they are supposed to serve, they can just assemble the damn sheds, and take them down when they're done revising whatever section of the Constitution they happen to be "working on"...oh right, they're just ignoring it, aren't they?

well, at least we won't have to look at them, then. any time George the Younger or Dick (how fitting, that name) become invisible, it's a happy occasion.

Vyatta does open source networking with a mean streak

Better than Cisco

i had an ImageStream Linux-based router/firewall/VPN (with unlimited client licenses, all for under $6k) at my last gig, and it performed worlds better than the Cisco T3 router it was eventually replaced with (the Cisco was several times more expensive, and firewall and VPN were optional, and also expensive). my boss told me he wants the Linux box back (along with me, or someone at least as capable), but the new management at corporate HQ won't let him have it (or hire another BOFH-grade network type).

sorry if this offends the Cisco fanboys, but in my experience, Cisco devices are slow, expensive and poorly supported, and the support is hideously expensive too. if i had a question, i could call ImageStream and have a tech who knows the distro logged into my device within 15 minutes, checking things out. that's what i call support, and it only cost a couple-hundred dollars a year for 24/7/365 coverage. the ImageStream stayed up continuously for 4 years (i left around then). the Cisco failed after less than 12 months, and had to be repaired.

nothing personal, but most Cisco specialists don't know what they're missing. when people trot out those tired ASIC arguments, they neglect to mention that a recent networking speed record was set by a NetBSD box built on a generic PC platform.

finally, IOS (and all Cisco software, really) is still quite buggy and requires patching as much as Vista does. it may be a multi-billion-dollar global 800-pound networking gorilla, but Cisco has become bloated and complacent, and it's been that way for a long time. success has not been healthy for the company, regardless of profits. i'd rather have a responsive, agile vendor any day.

i haven't tried Vyatta's stuff, but maybe i should. if they're anything like ImageStream used to be, it could be a sweet product.