Posts by M Gale

'Catastrophic failure' of 3D-printed gun in Oz Police test

OH GOD OH NO WIBBLE WIBBLE PANIC

Fuxache, I could make something less likely to blow up with a bit of metal pipe and a hammer.

But hey, this is using them magic computer things, which makes it worse, no?

Facebook Home phone plans canned in the UK

Maybe if the Bluetooth loudspeaker in the car also copied the contacts from your phone and sent them to Ford's servers, you'd have a point.

Or perhaps if Kenwood employees recognised you had one of their stereos and spray-painted their logo onto your car overnight?

Orange customer clobbered with SIX-FIGURE phone bill

Jesus fuckchrist

There really should be a cap on how much you can be charged for data. Hetzner, the hosting company, will charge you something like £6 per terabyte if you go over the traffic allowance and want to keep the 100Mbit speeds. How in fuck can Orange even start to justify their costs per megabyte?

After they've charged you twenty quid or so, that should be it and it shouldn't matter if you have ADownloader running 24/7 torrenting Linux ISOs to all and sundry. There's only so much per month a phone can download for fuxache.

Kim Dotcom claims invention of two-factor authentication

Re: Where's te logic to treat software patents differently?

That Turing bloke showed that all software is equivalent to a machine (a mechanical thing).

No he didn't, otherwise I could create a machine by thinking up some simple rules in my head.

Funnily enough, a machine is a physical thing, and software is only physical in the sense that it exists as state changes. Software is math and logic, and you're using faulty logic to play right into the psychopathic IP brigade's trap.

About microcontrollers? They are just small computers. With software. Which should not be patentable.

More than half of Windows 8 users just treat it like Windows 7

Re: OK. What's wrong with XP?

If you assume that menu bars have to be associated with windows, then, yes, OS X's menu bar will be extremely confusing to you. (As in: "what window is this thing for?") But if you can get past that mental limitation and realize that in OS X, menu bars are associated with *applications*, then the menu bar's location and operation make perfect sense and I don't see how it could be designed any other way.

I'd rather just have a UI that's easy to use. No, I don't mean TIFKAM.

When you click on a program, that means you want to use the program. Whether or not it's currently running is irrelevant.

You might have a terabyte of RAM and a ten-SSD stripe array plugged directly into the PCIe bus on a 16x slot, but I don't. Even if I did, I want to know what is running and what is not. At a glance.

Also, ever clicked the wrong button before? I'm assuming you're human and not a General System Vehicle or other synthetic intelligence that might be a few thousand times more accurate than your average meat-sack.

The hot corner stuff isn't enabled by default

Yes it is. Top right corner, zooms everything out and shows all of the windows. Sounds like a handy thing until you keep tripping it by accident.

And don't get me started on Explorer either.

Re: OK. What's wrong with XP?

Meh, horses for courses. Personally I bloody hate OS X's UI, with the unified confuso-menu, and the dock that wants you to think a shortcut to a program and a running program are the same thing. Don't even get me started on those bloody hot corners, and Finder.. god, you actually like that thing?

As far as the direction KDE's going in, you'll probably find they have the least "radical and exciting" look to them of all the Linux (and other) desktop environments. If you could use KDE3, you can use KDE4. It's just prettier, and with plasma widgets.

FLABBER-JASTED: It's 'jif', NOT '.gif', says man who should know

Re: Surely it's pronounced "yiff"?

Only in the fuzzier parts of the Interwebs.

"However HRH pronounces the word is the correct way."

Ho? Ow hinteresting.

Re: nah mate

"No. I assure you the 'American' lexicon is quite filled with distinctive names for the origins of most any people."

Italian American, Spanish American, Latin American, Irish American, Native American...

Re: Bow to the creator

Because Seán is Irish, not English, and the pronunciation rules are different?

Of course you can use the lightly-anglicised "Sean" or the heavily-anglicised variants such as "Shaun" and "Shawn" if you want.

Funnily enough, I look at "ger" and think "geranium", "germanium", "German" and "Geronimo".

Or Gerald.

In fact "Gertrude" is about the only "ger" word I can think of that pronounces things in the same way as gif.

Yes, gif. Jif is what goes in pancakes. Especially on Jif Lemon Day.

Re: Nike

Nike has only one syllable.

Niké on the other hand...

Re: Sega

Of course if you're following the same daft rules as elsewhere on the thread, you should be pronouncing it "Serga".

Service Games, and all. Wonder if they still make pinball machines for the US army?

Jaffa-cake Interchange Format

I'm sure that's a long rectangular prism shape. Usually made out of cardboard.

There's an extension to the format that allows the transfer of up to a yard of jaffa cakes at once, but it's usually only available around Christmas and Easter.

I want to roll my own distro

Maybe an Ubuntu or a Mint with the backgrounds changed or something.

I'll call it "Linux Linux", just to play with people's heads.

Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat

Re: Moving into a gaming renaissance era or command & control...?

To be honest, if they were going the way of rendering stuff remotely, then why spend hundreds on a games console when you can download the Onlive app for nowt or buy the Onlive box for significantly less than a brand new "next gen" machine?

You'll be about as likely to be able to sell or give your old games away in any case.

Re: The sleek, black 64-bit system carries an eight-core x86 processor...

"games are hard to multi-thread efficiently"

One for AI, one for physics, two for handling the server, one for the client - that's 5 already and I'm not even trying.

Of course it depends on the game. I mean you could massively parallelise a game of Minesweeper (one process or thread for every square?) - but why in hell would you want to?

Re: hax

Yeah, I've seen a few people stung by buying second hand Xboxes that turned out to be banned.

Let me guess, was that their stupid fault for assuming that a device with no faults would work?

Re: Not looking too good

"That is why you don't hear Steam user complaints"

I've heard plenty, just that most of them are out and in the flesh, not on some online forum where Valve employees and useful idiots can troll them to death.

DDR3 is better at general purpose processing than GDDR5

Really? How?

Re: No second-hand games

You must have only played about two games as well. Seriously, go look at the game requirements on the boxes.

Vast majority of console games out now use that hard drive, and for more than just saving your progress.

Trying to remember what game it is that wants you to download the entire set of textures all over again as a patch when you shove it in the drive.

Re: No second-hand games

"(and I would think Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have been doing their homework regarding hardening against hacks)."

They've been doing so for decades. As you can see, they've completely eradicated unauthorised copying of software.

Re: Rest of the world?

The Xbox 360 functions (sort of) as a Sky box. Friend of mine uses it as such.

The real sky box does it better, but hey, some people might like controlling their tellies with a game pad.

Proprietary APIs and GPU intricacies to handle,

PS3 uses MS Visual Studio as its IDE, and OpenGL ES and CG for talking to the GPU. Not sure about much else since I didn't sign the NDAs for that.

I would guess that the forthcoming Xbox will also be similarly stuffed full of interesting stuff that you'll only get to know about if you jump through the right hoops and promise not to tell anybody.

Re: No second-hand games

" Also, all games apparently have to be installed when you buy them, which could really piss people off."

Why? Virtually every console game released now has a "this game requires 4 fuckloads of hard drive storage" message on the back or similiar, and then you get the inevitable stream of patches that take the beta-level shit you've bought and plug some showstopping bugs.

Not being able to sell the game on the other hand? Well eh, we've had a few years of Steam and other such bullshit getting people used to the idea of that. People in general will bend over, take it up the arse, and deride the people that refuse to as being freetards or luddites.

Welcome to the Computer Games industry.

If you've bought DRM'd film files from Acetrax, here's the bad news

Pft, Betamax

Think about those of us who are old enough to remember System 2000!

Okay, I was only a wee nipper back then, but I still remember playing with double-sided tapes and record-protect tabs that were resettable instead of breakable, and wondering why no other video machines did that.

Re: The boot is on the other foot....

Two rubbish systems, really.

Maybe when iOS 7 or 8 or 10 or something comes out, Apple will allow people to finally just drag and drop shit to their iThings like the external drives that they basically are?

Re: TOR and torrents

By "normally" I presume you mean via a random open wifi hotspot on the far side of town?

Re: why the hell can't I try everything before I buy it?

"I've come to the point where, if a game is not on Steam, I practically don't buy it. There are a few exceptions, but they are exceptions."

And like I said, all we need now is for Steam and WGA to royally fuck up, and maybe you'll learn why Steam is a Bad Thing.

For me, if it's on Steam, or requires any other kind of bullshit online we-think-you're -a-criminal check, it gets immediately refused and the money spent on something else. Maybe something I can sell or give away once I've done with it.

Re: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

Same people who were laughing at me and throwing all kinds of asinine insults when this bullshit first hit the mainstream? The people who were telling me that I'm just a pirate who wants everything for free? The same ones with this insane level of trust in an organisation expressely designed to milk them for as much as they are worth?

Damned right I am. At you, too.

Suck it up, bitches.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

...AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA....

Suckers.

Well maybe now they'll learn, which will be better for all of us.

Now we just need Steam and WGA to fuck up royally for everyone. Well, everyone stupid enough to think having to plead with DRM servers to be allowed to use your own damned software is ever a good idea.

Eric Schmidt: 'Google IS a capitalist country... er, company'

Re: I can assure from a privacy perspective ... we would lose you and not get you back.

Just remember, while "hacking" is illegal, poisoning a database is not.

Favourite ALL the cat videos!

Oh and don't forget TrackMeNot. Perhaps someone could make a gmail version that works with everyone else who has the gmail version to randomly email each other random snippets generated from random web searches?

If you can't go under the radar, obliterate the fucker with chaff and flares.

Re: "Google is a capitalist country... company"

No, just capitalist. Their aim, like every other PLC, is the acquiring of capital.

That capitalism left entirely unchecked can well end up turning into outright corporate fascism, especially when helped by a hundred or so years of lawyering and abuse of laws designed to protect actual physical people.. well, that's a debate I guess. Still capitalism though.

Private equity firm coughs £1bn for Websense

Really, asides blocking obvious malware, why bother?

I guess if you're in a school you have to conform to some standard or other so the blame can go elsewhere when the kids discover in graphic detail how useless web filters are. Though honestly, if it's that strict an environment, then set up a whitelist of approved sites and deny access to all others.

If you're in a workplace? I presume your employees are adults. If you catch 'em slacking, deal with it. Websense ain't gonna help you there. Might even be a hindrance if necessary information ends up being stuck behind the censorwall because the word "condom" is buried twenty paragraphs down and five directories in, so the whole site is obviously porn.

I knew I'd heard of Websense somewhere

I've ran into their oh-so-accurate filtering before.

So has this guy (apparently inaccessible from Websense IP addresses, amusingly enough)

Google's cloud dumps custom Linux, switches to Debian

Re: Debian is my choice too...

So you hire 8 expensive people and a boatload of expensive Windows licensing, or just 8 expensive people?

Re: Windows, Windows,

"Lower TCO"

Who's measuring? Using how many discredited Microsoft-sponsored reports?

" more efficient on same hardware"

No. Just no. There's a reason the top 500 supers are almost all Toy Unix based - because it's not quite a toy any more. With my own personal experiences largely flying in the face of your assertion (and I'm sure, many others who have similar experiences), I have to wonder what you're on about?

"and there is Powershell - which is more powerful than any default UNIX shell."

Ah, a troll. Okay, you got me, I guess.

Curiosity plunges its drill into Mars AGAIN, seeks life-giving sample

Curiosity plunges its drill into Mars AGAIN, seeks life-giving sample

^^^I admire the attempt, I really do, but this one does seem a little... stretched.

Of course, that's probably what SHE said.

The iWatch is coming! The iWatch is coming!

Re: Why not a BOFH watch?

F5: :(){:|:&};:

(Well somebody had to)

Marks & Sparks accused of silently bonking punters over the tills

Re: Problem solved,...

Or screw all the radio crap and shove the relevant comms through a bunch of gold-plated contacts on the card.

Even simpler.

Perfect solution to the problem.

A Dremel or similar miniature power tool, and a 0.2mm or finer drill bit. Give that chip a bit of air to breath, with a hole so small a cashier won't notice it.

Biz bods: Tile-tastic Windows 8? NOOO. We lust after 'mature' Win 7

Re: Ballmer will take care of Win 7

I would use Linux if I knew beans about programming

Give one of the friendlier Linuxes a try in Virtualbox or something. Granted, you can't just download Crysis for it, but at the same time, Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic is distinctly easier to use than C++. Needing to know how to edit Xorg.conf went out of the window a looooong time ago.

Nintendo throws flaming legal barrel at YouTubing fans

"leverages Nintendo's intellectual property"

Posts a walk-through for a computer game that would probably make more for Nintendo through just one extra purchase than a whole month of ad impressions?

Nintendo can jump down a pipe, and do can the notion of intellectual "property".

Google research chief: 'Emergent artificial intelligence? Hogwash!'

Re: There is no such thing as Artificial Intellgence, and there never will be.

because they are and will always be incapable of becoming more than they are programmed to be.

Start with a grid of cells. Each cell can be alive or dead.

On every turn:

Every cell with < 2 neighbours dies.

Every cell 2-3 neighbours survives.

Cells with > 3 neighbours die.

Empty spaces with exactly three neighbours become populated with a new living cell.

Simple rules. You wouldn't think that they'd be capable of producing such staggering complexity. Complex enough to be Turing Complete, if you're masochist enough.

Hey, Teflon Ballmer. Look, isn't it time? You know, time to quit?

Re: Only the second?

"ME was the last Windows I ever voluntarily used. Didnt seem too bad at the time."

Aye. Thing is, ME was fast by comparison to Windows 98, but rather fragile and tended to fall over at the drop of a hat. At least that was my own experience before going back to 98SE at the time.

And yes, the desktop Linuxes are rather nice these days. Problem is you'll never edit a docx file properly in Linux (for one example), and the problem isn't simply an engineering one.

Only the second?

What about Windows ME? The OS that was so bad it was rumoured to be a live test of their bug-tracking system?

NASA signs off on sampling mission to Earth-threatening asteroid

You know I'm wondering if some people could stick a spear through it, tie its legs to a stick and haul it off to a Lagrange point for later mining attempts.

Half of youngsters would swap PRIVACY for... cheaper insurance

Re: Slightly OT

Getting hit by an idiot on a bike can be painful, even fatal.

However, it's not exactly a stress-free situation on the idiot either. Bicycles don't have a roll cage, ABS or airbags fitted as standard, and concrete is rather hard.

Hunt: I'll barcode sick Brits and rip up NHS's paper prescriptions

Re: Rhyming Slang

Barcodes are 1D. QR codes are 2D.

<- Yes I'm in that kind of a mood.

Prankster 'Superhero' takes on robot traffic warden AND WINS

If the accident is bad enough to totally destroy both reg plates on either end of the vehicle, I don't think you'll be worrying about your insurance.

Or anything else for that matter.