* Posts by Tim

14 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

EMC founder clashes with IRS over 'tax evasion' scheme

Tim

The rich are thoroughly soaked

Those in the top 1% of income pay 40% of the income tax revenue in the U.S., so I think they are already pretty well fleeced, even though I'm not among them.

Did the width move for you, darling?

Tim

Doesn't work on Opera mini on blackberry

I click on a link, and it just reloads the whole page....

And I'm working on a privoxy rule to change it from fixed width to fluid. :)

OMFG, what have you done?

Tim

No you don't

"we felt that the gains we would make in ability to control the look and feel of our product would outweigh this."

Ah, but that's misguided website design. Did you hire a bunch of designers with magazine/print backgrounds, where they had control over the placement of every pixel?

I shun the look and feel of your product anyway, and read using Opera in "user mode," where CSS is ignored entirely. I forget why I started doing that years ago, but it was probably because you made lousy typeface choices, or something like that. That flexibility is another of Opera's key features: You land on some abhorrent site whose "designer" decided purple text on a black background was K00l? Just type Shift-g (i.e., capital 'G') and CSS is instantly disabled, rendering the site with your default typeface in black on a white background.

Vodafone says termination rate clampdown would hit the poor

Tim

No marketing calls to US cell phones

All the comments about cold calls miss one important point: marketing calls are not permitted to mobile numbers in the U.S. In fact, that is one of the great things about dropping land line service and going mobile (aka cell) only. You simply don't ever get marketing calls.

That, along with the "do not call" list of numbers to which is forbidden to make marketing calls means that telemarketing in the U.S. should have one foot in the grave.

US man cuffed for executing lawnmower

Tim

You can shoot your mower...

...as long as you use a weapon that you can legally own, and don't do it where local ordinances prohibit firearm discharge.

This guy did it with an "illegally" sawed off shotgun. (In quotes because it's only illegal due to unconstitutionally oppressive gun laws.)

Prius hybrid to get rooftop solar panel

Tim

econo-trucks

> My new 2008 Ford F-350 diesel gets 11 mpg. Ouch!

Unhook the trailer, release the parking brake, or perhaps lighten your foot a bit. My 2000 F-250 diesel got 19.4 mpg at my last fill up. Or have they gone that far downhill in the past 8 years?

Mag-lev flywheel UPS firm says shipments speeding up

Tim

existing tech on different scale

Beacon Power has flywheel-based technology at power plant scale for frequency regulation and storage: http://www.beaconpower.com/products/EnergyStorageSystems/index.htm

And Volkswagen has done the flywheel thing in their Ecomatic system, which turned off the engine when stopped, and used flywheel stored energy to start it up again once you wanted to go.

iPhone turns blue as IBM creates Lotus client

Tim

Even IBMers hate Notes...

At least they did 4 years ago when I fled IBM. It was interesting to read internal forums, where there was an active Notes-loathing culture, with absolutely zero participation from Lotus employees.

Untold engineering effort went into adapting clunky workarounds, since the Domino server scalability was so poor that they couldn't take the performance hit of enabling IMAP or POP access.

Four years and 1000 promises land Solaris at Dell

Tim

"UNIX is a trademark of ...."

The Open Group. www.unix.org, where you can even learn that Linux isn't Unix.

And the unix industry _did_ realize that use erexperience convergence was necessary, and they created CDE.

It is Linux that has always chosen to ignore standards.

DoubleClick caught supplying malware-tainted ads

Tim

ABP is not the only tool

If you don't like firefox or are forced to use IE, you can use privoxy and get essentially the same thing.

Google puts $10m on the table for Android apps

Tim

Limited development platforms

Where are the Solaris SDKs?

Admittedly, it's not fanboi compliant, but at least I don't get unexplained lockups like on my other "unix-like" system.

IBM hopes open office is Symphony to your key-tapping fingers

Tim

Please no!

"kicking off its participation by donating code it has developed for its Lotus Notes project."

I'm sure MS would love to see Notes code poisoning all of their competitors. Lotus Notes. What a steaming heap of trash.

Toyota Prius is not so green, says ads watchdog

Tim

What's all this plugging-in nonsense?

The Prius charges its batteries exclusively via its own gasoline engine. You cannot plug it in to recharge. (This is at least true for U.S. market versions, though I'd be astonished if it were different elsewhere.)

As such, the _only_ benefit the Prius provides is recapturing energy during braking. That is why they have no real benefit in limited access highway driving.

Microsoft feasts on Vista coupons for record quarter

Tim

Deferred revenue isn't a scam...

... it is _required_ under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Joe user bought an XP system with a coupon for a vista "upgrade," all for X dollars. MS is not allowed to book the full (wholesale) price as revenue, as they have not delivered all of the value. To wit: The Vista upgrade, included as part of the purchase.

They defer that portion of the total revenue, and book it later when when they deliver the final component of value offered in the product. The breakdown of that portion of the value is theirs to determine, but it must appear reasonable to auditors based on pre-coupon sales, the value of the upgrade, and perhaps other factors.