* Posts by Brad Ackerman

274 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Aug 2008

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US Navy buys Linux to guide drone fleet

Brad Ackerman
FAIL

Re: Yuk

There are some open-source-like projects with a no-nefarious-use license (for varying definitions thereof), but...

a) such licenses are, by definition, not open-source, and

b) if the Elbonian military absolutely must have your software as a critical component of its puppy-blending missile, license terms aren't going to stop them.

Tape lives: LTO-6 rolls out – with more than TWICE the capacity

Brad Ackerman
Alien

Re: @AC - Pity it's so damn expensive.

If you can't verifiably restore from backup media that's gone offsite (and back onsite), you don't actually have offsite backups — hence your verification process shouldn't depend on devices that would be molten slag in a non-exercise scenario.

Sectoids, because if aliens attack... er, I suppose I'd be busy at work and my home data would have to take care of itself for a while.

People-powered Olympic shopping mall: A sign of utter tech illiteracy

Brad Ackerman
Mushroom

Re: Just what I needed...

Maxim #6: If violence isn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.

Google's self-driving car snags first-ever license in Nevada

Brad Ackerman
Black Helicopters

Re: Only in Nevada

Nevada's gun laws are about as restrictive as you can get while still being a shall-issue state. Since there are only ten states that aren't shall-issue (plus DC, VI, PR, GU, AS, MP), that's pretty far down on the liberal-gun-laws list.

Black helicopters, because there's got to be some state that will let me own an attack helicopter.

AT&T to allow unlocking of out-of-contract iPhones

Brad Ackerman
Devil

Optional

Dark Helmet's crew aren't doing this because it's the right thing to do unless they've all been replaced with pod people. Heading off more stringent requirements from the FCC?

CIA tells big biz to serve up bite-size software

Brad Ackerman
Black Helicopters

Re: Re: Pun alert!

Don't forget "cyber warrior" — everything's cyb0r these days.

If you have to ask why the black helicopters, you're visiting the wrong website.

Virgin Media to push out nimble new broadband speeds

Brad Ackerman
Black Helicopters

ORLY?

Some infill? Last I heard Virgin had a strict no-infill policy. If a property didn't have service when they bought the plant from NTHell then no way, no how would it get cabled.

Perhaps the black-helicopter men abducted Virgin's management and forcibly implanted them with clue. (On the gripping hand, I'll believe it when I see it.)

GCHQ spooks' code-breaking puzzle solved

Brad Ackerman
Facepalm

That would be suprising; Cheltenham certainly has no shortage of holes in the road.

Red Hat serves up red-hot Ceylon sauce

Brad Ackerman
Paris Hilton

Parsed as "red-hot Cylon sauce"

And wondered why they're facilitating Baltar's pwnership of the defense mainframe.

Back to the actual topic, I see some nice features... but we've already got Clojure, Scala, JRuby, and even Groovy for keeping the JVM and access to existing libraries while ditching the bad bits (i.e., the Java language). Life just likes to keep reenacting xkcd #927.

Paris, because Number Six was busy frakking Head Gaius.

UK.gov moves to close VAT loophole on etailers

Brad Ackerman
Holmes

Closing their eyes and humming real loud

The record stores in the UK are going out of business because they have crap hours. Supermarkets are open when the customers actually want to shop (excepting most of Sundays in England and Wales, but that's not their fault); CDs will happily fit through a mailbox slot without needing to deal with a Parcelfarce depot; but record stores still haven't noticed that trading hours were deregulated.

So do I go through contortions to make my schedule fit the retailer's, or do I choose vendors who actually want my money? Not a hard choice at all.

Americans to get five-year wireless tax freeze

Brad Ackerman
Pirate

And lots of those fees are even more regressive than is first apparent — in particular, "911 surcharges" are often capped at a high double-digit number of lines. About the only good thing you can say is that the tax rate is smaller than on picking up a rental car at an airport.

Jolly Roger for the obvious reason.

Hundreds of Mr A N OTHERs discovered on payrolls

Brad Ackerman
Coat

Our free-range days are over.

No doubt being a time traveler and/or undead will become a protected characteristic one of these days.

My coat? It's the one stuffed with a bunch of allicin grenades, carbon bullets, and a video-sighted pistol.

Georgia Parole Board blocks Amnesty email campaign

Brad Ackerman
Thumb Down

There may be other reasons to object to this execution, but not allowing polygraphs isn't one of them. Passing a polygraph proves just as much as a séance, except that the props are more expensive.

Amazon tackles soaring textbook prices

Brad Ackerman
Pint

$100 or Rs. 295, your choice

Back when I needed to order textbooks, the Indian divisions of Pearson's Puppeteers, Random House, etc. did an acceptable job of bringing down my costs. Rs. 295 for the book, Rs. 500-1000 for shipping to the US, and it still comes to less than a third of the overpriced US edition.

Beer, because what else would you spend the difference on?

IT suppliers fear new GP consortia will 'create difficulties'

Brad Ackerman
Badgers

Understanding is a three-edged sword: pointy, pointy, pointy

On the one hand, we have a government that's quite fond of constructing massive bonfires of fifty-pound notes. On the other hand, we have the company that brought us Non-Mission-Capable Internet.

When both parties are engaging in a concerted dumb-off, who's the bad guy? We all know who will pick up the tab, of course.

Since there's no Mark Hurd devil avatar, the badgers win by default.

Ofcom proposes UK phone numbers prefix re-org

Brad Ackerman
Badgers

Still crap

Any plan that has 084/087 with its current status is a failure. A better option would be something like:

01/02 -- geographic

03 -- nongeographic -- must cost no more than local call

07 -- mobile rate (applying the same rate to 070 and 076)

08 -- freephone; on mobiles must be either free to user or cost no more than a call to 01/02

09 -- revenue sharing; all regulated by PP+ with at least restrictions currently applicable to 09

But I'd add the mandatory £££ logo on 09s.

Why badgers? I have no idea.

The 99p mobile phone: What's the catch?

Brad Ackerman
Badgers

(untitled)

Er, AC, the 6310i was possibly the best phone ever built, for values of phone meaning something that places and receives telephone calls over a GSM bearer. They go for thirty bob or thereabouts on eBay if you ever get tired of it.

Badgers, because there aren't any mushrooms are snakes to choose from.

Attack of the Killer Tits

Brad Ackerman
IT Angle

IT?

Because someone's got to ask.

Extra large condoms hit UK supermarket shelves

Brad Ackerman
Grenade

Skynet runs the ad server, again

I've got a Jaguar ad appearing next to this story. Hmm.

Demon ends porn-less Internet Archive block

Brad Ackerman
Black Helicopters

Be elsewhere.

Already told Be where they can put any blocking screwups they may care to implement. Move to A&A in progress as fast as OpenReach can switch over the line.

No idea why, but black helicopters.

Acer beats arch-rival Asus in Q3 netbook match

Brad Ackerman
Paris Hilton

Missing something?

Shouldn't this article have a certain picture, given that it mentions the Eee?

Paris, for the obvious reason.

'Idiot' pulls cables, downs ISPs at Telecity

Brad Ackerman
Stop

し〜〜〜〜〜ん。

Okay, Thursday's 1650Z anonymous -- are you seriously telling us nobody's ever made a CLM on a border router's BGP configuration?

SiCortex cranks clocks on mega MIPS machines

Brad Ackerman
Pirate

Blast from the past

Manufacturing computers in Maynard? Old HPaq facility?

Pirates, because it's still ITLAPD out west of Hawaii.

Advent 4211 mini notebook

Brad Ackerman
Linux

Would have liked it

As the review says -- the Sentelic pad was a showstopper. The shipped Windows image doesn't some with drivers, and even if you want to run Windows on it the in-store staff don't have drivers. So have fun with your tap-to-click clicking about every three keystrokes.

The wireless card is a piece of junk (Realtek 8187) -- if that was the only problem, I'd have just replaced it with an Intel 3945, but the trackpad made the Wind extremely painful, despite the schw33t keyboard and screen. So back to PC World it went.

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