Posts by Wortel 227 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Aug 2008
After having had the taste of previous Celerons I do believe i'll never buy such a piece of crap ever again if at all possible, I don't care how many new features they give it. I don't know what Intel does to those things that makes them degrade faster than 'normal' processors and run hotter and hotter as they do, but it sure as hell isn't worth it for a consumer looking to have several years of stable performance at a decent price.
Such pricing isn't all that uncommon really. Happens over here in NL too, data bundles are for the elite with the cash dropping out of their pockets. Sole reason I refuse to pay for having an operator tack on extra 'plans' with high fees for something I never use anyway. Though we don't pay for incoming calls and texts. Yet.
..more fools not reading the actual article's contents. People, get a grip! stop making yourself sound like a broken record.
Microsoft is a global monopoly on the desktop PC market, laws are in place to put the brakes on malpractice within monopolies, MS broke the laws, they have to pay the price.
EC has not even finalised the case, yet Microsoft feels it can get away with this pre-emptive stroke of 'Nya nya i'll just do whatever I goddamn like and you can't stop me' arrogance. Well tell you what, they will just get sued and sued again until they learn that circumventing the law is illegal.
Get over it!
Funny that.
No matter how much you bitch and whine about it, the EU case against Microsoft is *not* about Apple, it is *not* about how Joe Schmoe downloads a browser, and it is *not* about money either.
Why is it not about Apple? Apple has Safari, but lacks the market dominance in any direction to be considered a candidate for a case of anti competitive behaviour.
Why is it not about Joe Schmoe's ability to download a browser if none is supplied with the OS? Because a simple desktop shortcut to an FTP resource would work too, but if you don't like that, do you want another dozen solutions to this non-problem?
Why is it not about money? Microsoft sure has plenty of it, and while the fines that have been set upon them (which have *not* been paid by Microsoft so far) are quite large, what else would you suggest punishing a corporate body with for ignoring anti competition laws? Trade ban perhaps? Think about that one.
Yawn.
"Porn addiction is a serious issue, which neither government nor computer suppliers are currently taking seriously enough," she said.
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It is not the government and/or computer suppliers job to even remotely care about porn addiction, let alone force upon people some form of totalitarian control. Addictions are social problems and have to be dealt with on an individual basis (as no two humans are alike - start another discussion on 'difference' from here on if you must) by trained professionals, not by some (malicious or otherwise) exploitable process on paper and production line.
'Total Control' doesn't exist, and should you wish to try to enforce such a thing anyway, great opposition will be your breakfast, lunch and dinner for the rest of your life.
If you want people to smart up, educate them on the dos and don't s instead of telling them 'I can't let you do that, Dave.'. You know, where are the parents again? Forgot about them did you.
Further more what China does is it's own business. Wrong business, but their business nonetheless.
a Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Notebook Mouse. Ambidextrous design, good weight, good scroll wheel with an optional free-wheel (notch-less, if you will) function, excellent resolution and sensitivity, not too many buttons, very tiny USB receiver, works in all OS's and takes standard AAA cells.
I actually bought an Energizer USB attached AA/AAA battery charger (packaged with 2 AAA's) to go with this mouse, but haven't had to replace the batteries yet, despite the many hours of abuse it sees every day for the past few months that i've had it now.
Sure, it's not the cheapest mouse.. but it's one of the best I have owned so far.
I think what Mr.Bradley meant was more along the lines of what many PDA devices such as the well known 'Pocket PC' devices from a certain deceased (in body but not in name) computer manufacturer featured in their days: these had an internal capacitor/li-ion cell with enough storage capacity to tide the device over while you swapped out the main battery for another.
Given the advances in capacitor technology (think 'Gold cap', 'Super cap', 'Ultra cap', 'Green cap' and the likes of extreme capacity capacitors) it would be entirely possible to add enough grunt with such a device to make a laptop able to survive a main battery swap while in suspend to RAM mode.
Perhaps when fuel cells for laptops become common place..
This article is pretty good. Also taking into account Mr.Bostrom's comment seems wise.
I've burned through two batteries so far, both only saw one year of life before crapping out. Interestingly, the replacements are lasting much (>4 years) longer.
Kinda reminds one of the cartridges you receive with a new ink-jet printer doesn't it, those always run down much quicker than a replacement pair. ;)
Speaking of long run-times.. anyone know where you can still (reliably) buy a new Asus Eee 901 in the UK? preferably from a company that will ship to an address outside the UK.
Laptops Direct never replied when I asked them about shipping :P
So much fuss. He apologized and as far as I'm concerned he is forgiven with a pat on the head; he had the guts to stand up and admit his mistakes, now that's character.
As far as Easylist goes, default what? I clearly remember being asked to pick from a list of providers when installing Adblock Plus, and I picked Dr.Evil. Does what it says on the tin. Together with NoScript I have a happy and fast, crash-free browsing experience on all my computers.
Of the commenters asked why no alternative has been suggested yet.
Well, here's one that has already been suggested on a previous article about the same World vs. MS crap:
Microsoft lacks a package manager. A package manager that is capable of installing/removing any and all components of the OS and any applications a user may want or need, coupled with online repositories to get whatever isn't on the install disk and to get updates with.
With that, all that waffle about "how do you download 'X' without a browser??" goes right out the window.
Next!
"Of course, it's THEIR fault, not ours." Bigwig Nameless said, when questioned about document security and variations.
Mind you it's the same here, it's always someone else's fault if something goes wrong with the exams. And when it goes wrong, the entire exam is invalidated and everyone has to come back to do it all over again with new exams.. so that's at least something of a penalty to abusers.
Thing is it doesn't work. So they are pushing for us to use their 'digital' exam methods, which are so miserably programmed that it won't even run properly on a 3Ghz, 2GB quad-core. I'm really not kidding, the errors their programs display are nothing short of hilarious, complete with some miss-spelled animal names and 30-day trial license banners for some obscure programming framework.
Easier and already common practise on many schools: Kill off all access to the Internet, email, group documents, etc. on student accounts, and completely forbid them from taking mobiles, ipods, programmable calculators, books and the likes into the exam rooms.
All they need is a pen, pencil, eraser, and whatever the exam demands is present. Which is -very- little.
Rest is handled by surveillance during the exam by at least 2 persons at the same time, which doesn't give the little brats any time to turn their heads and exchange notes. If you get caught trying to cheat anyway, you fail the entire exam and school year. Try explaining that one to the school board and your parents.
ISPs should tell them to fsck off and get their act together.
Thanks for translating, that's interesting.
I still wonder how Nokia is going to make this fly though, word about more multimedia for and by Nokia has been out for a long time now (at least two years) and you can find nothing of it here in my little bit of Europe. It's iTunes all over, everywhere including milk carton covers (not kidding).
Perhaps that's because every few months, Nokia breaks or removes something they put out into the hands of users, like Nokia Maps, LifeBlog and the games that are usually preinstalled on a handset (all of which have been thoroughly ruined with the past two firmware updates and website changes).
Software patents stifle innovation. Same for hardware patents really. What is the bloody point in innovating when you're not allowed by some obscure, vaguely described 'patent'?
To augment today's farce in patenting, It is time inventors' ideas are rigorously contested before a world jury (world, yes, thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands from all technology branches) before a patent is even considered an option.
Probably because they don't want to deal with the customer asking things like "Why is my internet down?" and deal with other verbal diarrhoea coming with it, and just get on with raking in the cash from the gullible.
I'm happy to be a customer of one that does actively combat misuse in the way you suggest:
A customer found to be spouting rubbish over their connection is shoved onto a heavily filtered and throttled proxy, only allowing enough access to get OS/Antivirus updates and access to the ISP helpdesk.
An official warning is sent to their primary account address, to warn them of what is going on and what has been done, and the steps required to get normal service again.
Failing to clean up results in a speedy termination of the contract.
Problem solved.
Another good thing they do is they have recently started providing courses on computer/online safety and best practises for their customers.
"Orange describes itself as "the European telco leader" on the basis that its home page is very popular."
Not here they aren't. 'Orange' went through some pretty stupid changes and is now called 'Online' where I live.
They seem to have pulled out of the mobile business here too. I wonder why? oh, right. must have been the rubbish prices, bad contracts and shit coverage then.
"An idea to get this issue looked at seriously
By Eddie Posted Wednesday 22nd April 2009 14:43 GMT
Point out how easy it would be for an ISP to inspect traffic going to, say, www.labour.org.uk and insert adverts or redirects to www.conservatives.com.
Imagine the fun you could have with a bidding war during an election.
All the best,"
This is a good point. Let's see them wrap their brains around this one.
"..buying our products."
Oh wait..
Meanwhile in the real world, people use excellent, freely available products like Untangle (http://www.untangle.com) on simple hardware (or even a virtual machine on existing hardware) to keep the smelly meat by-products off of their corporate networks.
Sorry, busy days :)
You could say that, although I would not say on the basis of no obvious evidence, because there is plenty of evidence that is simply not being handled properly. Sometimes you have to take a step back from something that was previously considered 'good' or 'good enough' and reconsider it. There is always room for improvement. I could pull out a speech about the fragility of developing children's brains, impediment of our natural ability to heal under stress and whatnot in relation to EMF/RF radiation but we both know that would be pointless.
It's a bit like the debates going on about how female contraceptives enter the freshwater supplies and then over longer periods of time (we're talking many years here, generations) cause infertility in men consuming that water. It's a very real concern people never thought of in the beginning, but the point of the example is that the long term effects of something should not be underestimated even if it does concern existing technology/knowledge or not; it has to be tried and tested over and over and over again in order to improve.
Another simpler example would be sunlight. Light is also a form of radiation, a component of which is Ultraviolet light which is what damages us most. So we basically have a type of high energy radiation which will damage our bodies if exposed to it for long periods of time. This is an accepted fact; you stay out in the sun too long you get burned, overdo it some more you get sun stroke, skin cancer, etc.
I suppose you could say we have not reached that level of understanding yet when it comes to what most of us perceive as negligible amounts exposure to EMF/RF radiation.
That said, you and I both also know very well that mobile masts are not going anywhere any time soon, in fact more realistically they are here now and here to stay till the end of our days and till the end of our children children's days.
They will not be removed or banned, their implementation might however be slowed down.
Besides, we are surrounded by radiation, it's not like mobile masts will be the end of the story. I'd like the world to be a better place, but I have to be realistic about it too.
Just to put some contrast into the pile of sharp comments above, I for one think that the EC actually made a sane decision there.
They are basically saying "We don't know enough, so we'll stop what we're doing until we do know enough." which is fine by me really because there's enough decisions being made without thinking through the long-term consequences already.
My current office sits about 9 meters (directly below them) from no less than 3 telecoms radio masts, all I know is i've become more tired over the past 4 years, and three masts were placed in that period to bring the grand total to 4 masts on the roof of 1 building. Why we need that many is beyond me, but apparently they had permission to place them, nobody was asked as far as I know.
Think of that what you like, and don't think i'm illiterate on the subject of electromagnetics and radio waves, because I'm most certainly not.
The BBC's idea of forcing users to have a license, including it's manual (might I say violent) enforcement, even if they choose to barely or never use their content is severely antiquated.
A revenue model where there is a place for advertisement, licensing out BBC content to TV/Radio providers that are not BBC, where users can choose what to see and what to pay for, is much better and actually not that modern anymore either as it has been in use for many years in other countries surrounding the UK.
I suggest you write to your relevant authorities to get this to change.
Why not all of them? the power is freedom, freedom to choose whatever you like.
Personally the choice is Mandriva, but I also regularly use Knoppix (nice toolkit), Trinity (last-ditch virus scans before data rescue), and DD-WRT/Tomato for embedded routers or Untangle for PC based firewall/router, and whatever happens to be running on an embedded device I get my hands on such as the Buffalo LinkStation.
In the past I have also used and/or tried Red Hat (before and after the fork to Fedora, handful of releases), Fedora, Yellow Dog, Freesco, Coyote, Vector, Mint, Puppy, DSL, SME Server, SuSe (before, and after Novell got involved). Yes, I tried several Ubuntu releases too to see what the fuss was about, and it's quite nice.
Really, it's just subject to user preference. Much respect for those that create these things for us to use, thank you!
Written from a Mandriva 2009 + KDE 3.5.x + Compiz Fusion 'desktop' oriented HP Compaq nc6120 notebook, at the office :P
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No-one's asked the question
By Trix Posted Friday 3rd April 2009 05:57 GMT
Boffin
How about updates for Linux distros that you can deploy to the environment without each and every machine connecting and downloading them willy-nilly.
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Nobody is stopping you from rsync'ing the repositories to a local server overnight, and then allow the client PC's package managers access to that new local server when you're good and ready. :)
Squid as a caching proxy will help a lot too for your bandwidth woes.
And a whole lotta angry citizens on your hands to deal with when you cut their main source of information off. More so if you put them out of a job with your idiotic ideas on license requirements for IT jobs. Good luck with that, you'll need it!
The USA still thinks it owns the Internet, ha ha. that's so last century now.
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