Posts by The Fuzzy Wotnot 1805 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Sep 2008
"The Chrysalids", I remember reading that at school, back when teachers were still allowed to encourage students to think creatively, not just pump 'em full of facts and make them take exams to get government figures up to spec.
Anyway you know full well the second they made of those into films they would be massive abominations with way too much CGI and big named talent that has none to speak of!
It's rather noisy in here today! Rhubarb! Rhubarb! M$ suxxorz! No, Mac sucks more! Liniux is shite for weirdy beardy types! Shut up troll! No, you shut up! Linux is not hackable! Oh yes it is! Oh no it isn't! My Mac never dies! You'll die if you shout about your sodding Mac once more! M$ haven't got a clue how to write software! Yes they have I have been writing MS apps for 65 years and never had problem! They've only been in business for 30 years! Shut up troll!
Now to retire to the pub for an hour of peace and sanity...
Sadly that can be a lot harder than half the cretins on here, shouting about boycotting Sony, think it is.
Sony make a ton of parts of other kit like CD drives that go into all manner of PCs and car AV kit. You really have to study the back of any DVD case or cinema poster to make sure Sony or one of it's many, many subs are not involved. Some obscure indy band knocks out CDs on their own but their record company needs to put out a live DVD, they may well find the only distribution channel big enough would be some tinpot production mob owned by....the big S! Metal
I am not defending Sony, I try hard to avoid buying any of their kit as it's shite, but they are growing larger and larger and avoiding their hideous tech tentacles is getting harder and harder.
On the day it all goes "kaflooey", I shall pack up a picnic, make my way up Parliament Hill in London and watch as the city explodes!
Everyone's had plenty of time to get IPV6 sorted and it's only home users and enthusiasts who've bothered. Come the day of retribution some smartarse will pull a load of NAT'd kit out his arse or they will get and some horrendous amendment to the RFC to buy a a little more time, until the whole system collapses under the weight of the sticky tape and blu-tak solutions put in place.
I was born in a age before the internet and I'm sure I could live for a few months without out it, sure it'd be tough but I think I would survive slightly better than your average 16 year old! I'll just nip up to the loft and dig out my old Speccy for a little bit of keyboard hacking. Still think of the good side, with no internet connection, no virii, malware or pathetic emails purporting to be from Mr. Nngambo in Nigeria who is holding $750k in unmarked bills for me to pick up, subject to a deposit of $20k of course!
To play on the old classic, the end of the world will not be a big bang or even a whimper, but simply getting up one day and getting the message, "Unable to locate server XYZ. Please check network connection and try again.".
Or perhaps you leave the guy alone while he injects a note of sanity into this whirlwind merry-go-round that we all seem so obsessed to ride, the "the bigger the number, the better the gadget" ride we seem unable to get off.
Granted I appreciate my HD TV but DVD upscaling is good enough for me, Blu-Ray is overrated to my personal opinion. I upgraded from a 22" CRT TV and VHS player that was over 10 years old, of course I will appreciate the difference. However, I want a Canon 5D, with it's high MBP and full-frame goodness, but my photography is not good enough to warrant the expense. I want an iPhone4, but what would it give me over my old iPhone 3G ( not even a 3GS! ), nothing much in particular to warrant getting tied to 2 years of contract or paying out 700 sovs for a toy. I want a slightly bigger house, not 'cos my family needs more room bit so we can fill it full of more shite gadgets and crap we really don't need and can manage without.
My mind is awash with bigger, better, faster and more sexy, but somehow I know none of these things will improve much over what I already have. In 5 or 10 years time, things will have moved on sufficiently to upgrade to the latest gadgets, until then I am happy to be satisfied with my lot.
Relax, calm down and just take 5 mins to survey your lot and then cast your mind back 25 years and realise how lucky you are to live in this amazing age of technology as it is right now.
I got peeved at losing my online stuff, I went out and bought a couple of domains I fancied and the registrar ( Freeparking ) even chucked in some free POP accounts on those domain so I didn't have to worry about email services. Setting up and redirecting to where the webspace is actually stored is not rocket science and does not need a trained CISCO admin to set it up for you, just 5 mins and a little reading up.
As the poster above says, DIY then at least you know what's going on with your kit!
1. Nutter tries to take over the world ( again! )
2. Bond is knocking boots
3. Mission is given to find out what nutter is up to
4. Bond is knocking boots again
5. Bond manages to check his urges long enough to found out about nutter ( and freaky henchman with odd skill )
6. Bond knocks some more boots
7. Q turns up with some fun stuff for Bond to show off
8. Bond finds out bird he was last with is working with nutter
9. Bond sneaks in to nutters base/house/space station, shoots the place up, knocks out hired skilled special henchman
10. Makes escape with another bird he fancies knocking boots with, while nutter goes off to formulate a new plan for world domination and hiring more birds for the next Bond to knock boots with!
Now slot in Roger or Sean and Donald Pleasance as required!
Well start teaching kids in schools that "ICT" ( ICT my arse, it's IT! ) does not begin and end with MS Word and Excel!
We might get somewhere if they starting teaching kids some basic idea what's inside the little grey desktop box. No I am not expecting bored 12 year olds to understand kernel development or file system coding, but some basic idea about the major components that are in most gadgets and how they work together might be a start.
Typing out a letter to Santa Claus and filling in a spreadsheet about the colour of cars outside the school gates? Yeah that's gonna make sure we have O/S admins and developers in the next generation!
Tried it, very nice, slick and works very well....
However 2 out of the 10 main sites I visit regularly, it refused to even load the content, just timed out. FF, IE and even Chrome loaded the pages flawlessly. One site I need for my job, so Opera is out the door I'm afraid.
Sorry, but Opera has been around long enough to make a difference and it hasn't, even all that bleating from their PR crew has still failed to make any serious impact. You like it, you use it. I like heavy metal, you may not. I like Marmite and Tomato soup powder sandwiches, you may not
Each to their own!
You can't go around spouting common sense! Jebus wept, can you imagine the mess we'd be in everyone stopped fighting, showed a little repsect for other people's choices and people started getting along?
FFS! What would the lawyers do?! Next time you start thinking straight and making sense, you think of all the poor lawyers you'll put out of business! Lets not even consider how boring El Reg would get without the bickering fanbois!
I suggest you switch off the machine and go think about what you've said, then come back when you've and axe to grind like the rest of us!
"support Apple and other OEM's in ripping off the end user"?
Well no one takes these people down the shops at gun-point and forces them to buy these things at these stupid prices. Sod it, if I could make a living pulling in 35 sovs for a 2 quid cable I'd be in there like a shot! If these Wally's can't be bothered to have a poke about on Amazon or eBay at the very least, then they derserve to get fleeced!
"A fool and his money..." as the old one goes!
You'd buy a HD and a HD card both bolted to to a steel casing. Slot the whole thing into a PC, this was around 87/88. Sizes where around 8-15MB tops.
Then you'd have to read the manual to find out where the firmware boot address was so you could use DOS to low level format it, before laying a file system format on it. None of this, shove it in and wait for the O/S to ask you about formatting it cobblers!
The drive would run for about 4-5 hours tops then start slowing down as there was no real concept of cooling in PCs back then. So you'd switch off, unplug the HD and use floppies for an hour while the drive cooled down before you'd fire it up again.
I still remember the wonderful metallic clicky sound the heads made as they skittered about over the platters, wonderful noise and great days!
Swear to God, honest truth.
It was TEAC CD drive round about 2000. I put in a CD-R disc and it started reading, I then attempted to copy off a shed load of data after about 30 secs there was a nasty grumbling noise and then a huge bang and a shattering plastic sound, the grinding and whining was quite loud, I just pulled the power out the back of the machine immediately!
I pulled the drive out of the case and it sounded like a parcel with china in it had been through the hands of Royal Mail! Shaking the now unplugged drive it sounded like those plastic-cup instruments with beans inside that you make with your kids.
Ha ha! Look at those people, they haven't got much money, let's laugh at them from our ivory towers! Just because you don't have much money or many possessions you're not allowed to complain about something? OK.
Please note if you study the whole fiasco it looks like another case of The Sun stirring up trouble on a slow news day, not a bunch of "whinging nobs". Another iPhone/HTC type story, 6 gazillion units of X sold and dozen returns due to a small fault or product simply not wanted!
While this is worth pursuing and holes need to be filled, sadly the biggest threat to computer security is still the dingbat sitting at the keyboard clicking away with wild abandon. Until everyone is educated to take precautions, the nasties will find the easiest route into a system.
We're the weakest link, goodnight!
I thought it was a it too flaky, even for a beta. It stayed up for around 5 mins before dying slow horrible deaths. I tried to use it for about an hour and dropped back to 10.04. I can't use 10.10 as the network drivers for my net card are so damn flaky, 10.04 was the last known good one for me. If this version goes ahead, I think this is one upgrade I will sit out and wait until 12.04 next year.
While I get a severe temptation to walk up to these kids, grab their belt loops and yank up their trousers, I also enjoy the sight of watching one of these fashion victims struggle up a flight of steps when the crotch of their jeans is somewhere around their knees! Priceless when they have to waddle up the steps while still trying to retain a look of "coolness", that being unable to walk around normally is a small price to pay to look that good! They all look like denim-clad Penguin's henchmen from Batman!
"I used to be with IT, then they changed what IT was!." - Grandpa Simpson
The cost of getting the case to court and then accepting the loss will be tiny compared to the interest this will drum up for the company in free PR!
Basically the company produces next to nothing and merely wants to get some free advertising. They shout their mouth of about some patent they believe they have a claim on, knowing full well it won't really have a snowball's chance, next thing their company name is all over 'da toobs'. Imagine if you had some crappy little company that is barely scraping by, you have some vague patent claim, you threaten the big boys and you get loads of interest from variosu parties all trying to find out about your company an hopefully some money comes in for the products you do make!
Sorry to, *POP*, burst your bubble there bub, but average Joe Public couldn't, in the main, give two monkey's about any gadget lock-in! The public want shiny, so long as it's shiny, plays MP3s, allows access to FaceBook, Twitter and Youtube, most people are happy!
Only tech-heads care about stuff like lock-in. When you see most people with iPhones or Mac laptops on trains, they just want some tech to get their shit sorted out, that's the be-all and end-all for most users these days. The tech gadget is much like the washing machine, the fridge or the TV, it's does stuff or provides a service, a means to an end.
I am a committed Mac user, love 'em to bits but flipping heck, what a complete fecking plank!
Has this nob ever heard the phrase, "Horses for courses."? Just 'cos he, like me, enjoys using one at home or for a bit or work doesn't mean they will be perfect for the bog standard admin graft of the Gov offices!
Let's not even start on the fact that my taxes would be wasted on this cack idea! Get a bloody huge order of Dells, stuff Windows on 'em and be done. Sorted! Everyone happy, MS will cut you a bloody good deal on several thousand licenses for Windows and Office, unlike Jobs, and the users will not keep bugging the poor IT support crews with questions about an O/S most of them will most likely never have used!
I realise there is the issue that it's not fair that little Johnny can't have one 'cos 6 people from the GAME store have gone into TESCO and bought 5 each, but when did businesses ever play fair with the consumer.
The thing that would make my day would be that the 3DS doesn't sell to bursting and TESCO have plenty of stock to satisfy demand, GAME are left with a load of second hand stock they can't shift.
My mate at work fancied one last night, wandered past a shop, not GAME, and got one for the going rate. Seems happy enough, doesn't really interest me but I can imagine my rugrats at home saving up the pester-power to bug me for one for Christmas+next 6 birthdays!
Wouldn't go quite that far but if he was a true artist/autuer ( that right? ) he would be looking to extend his creative talents, look for more interesting things to do, hell he has enough damn money to do whatever he likes!
I do photography for a hobby at weekends and I sometimes get fed up shooting the same sort of subjects that I need to look for completely different things, let alone if you do it for a living.
Another slice of death filled fanasy to keep 13 year olds happy and for "outraged Mum of Norwich" to complain in The Sun that "these games are not games but training for young hoodlums" choosing to ignore the fact that she bought it without checking the rating!
( No I am not implying that people who play GTA are mentally aged 13, just that 13 year olds seem to get siblings and dopey parents to buy or rent it for them, before you start having a pop at me!! )
As someone on the brink of being a Mac fanboi I genuinely believe there is nothing much wrong with MS that a decent bit of direction and some solid management wouldn't put right. Products are reasonably sound, they work 99% of the time without issue, users are in the main a happy bunch, what's not to like about MS? We just get to hear about the 1% when it all goes a little bit Pete Tong, give 'em a break eh?
I've never understood this, if you're that determined to achieve your fundamentalist and nefarious goals, sorting out some fake ID is the first, maybe second after get a gun and some ammo, on your terrorism checklist!
Now when is this data-sharing stupidity going to be stopped by our American cousins?
Everything on the census is available in a dozen Gov DBs already, so I am already f**ked! Stop making such a fuss about every single peice of personal info. Yes there is a time to fight the power, when they want DNA for the sake of it, that's wrong, but the census data is so vague as to be almost useless. Yes I know a small request today is a bigger request tomorrow and the year after, so you simply have to be vigilant, but just ease up a bit. The census data is already available all over the shop, the Gov just can't be arsed to collate it, they make us do it instead.
From what I rememeber of the census form...
I told them my name and my family's names, nothing that can't be found in the election register.
I told them where I worked, well that's down at the tax office plus a heap more stuff about my earnings that ISN"T on the census!
I told them my job title, ditto above.
I told them how long it takes to get to work, well a simple DB search on some quality geo data would tell you how far my home address to my workplace address is and via which nodes I can make it.
I told them how many rooms my house has, well that's with the land registry with a copy of the deeds to my house.
It never asked for the age of my kids, simply their name and if they are in full education, that's available with the local education authority and heap more data about them too no doubt.
Yes, I appreciate you need to be vigilant, you can't simply pass all your data along. No I wouldn't want the Gov to know about what me and the Missus get up after lights out but they most likely know from my credit card purchases at various online and highstreet stores. Some things are worth fighting over, the census is one to let it just go!
It's basically mainframe applications on terminals all over again. Sure the network is bigger and the apps are more shiny than a VT100/DEC terminal but the principle is the same thing.
I do love the idea of "fog computing", the idea of fumbling around in the mist, no idea where you are or where you're going is superb, cheers for that!!
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