Posts by J 3

What do you call the iPad in Arabic?

but "Portugal" is

No, it's not. É pá!

Sky 3D soccer fails to score

Well...

It could have been worse, like... Cam-Toe(TM), to go with the above comments. Ouch.

Danes ditch Microsoft, take ODF road - at last

From April next year?

Oh. So plenty of time for bribery then. Or for MS to introduce ODF in their products.

Nah, bribery is much more likely.

Remote tribe discovered worshipping iPad

Cupertinus fanboisia

I've mostly worked on microorganisms only so far, but if I ever need to name a new species of plant, I'll keep that one first in line!

So, the Ka'zi are from PNG? I would have expected them to be from the island of Pundora, actually...

Hong Kong Taoist masters still hard at it

Heavenly treasure?

Well, she hasn't gone to heaven yet (I reckon she's still alive), so how does she know that the treasures aren't coming?

Google (finally) pays bounties for Chrome bug reports

Good idea

Not that I will be making any money off of this, but it sure is an incentive to the skilled guys to do it.

Requiring skills or not, I don't report bugs of any kind to companies of proprietary software -- unless they start paying me. Why should I spend my time to work out what is going on, decide it's a bug, then take the time to send them a report, only to be ignored? (or have to wait months or years for a fix, usually)

I do report bugs as much as I can to FOSS projects though, because it's a way of paying for all of their work from which I'm benefiting.

Google mystery server runs 13% of active websites

I believe

He says that's not correct and that he "believes" GWS is not based on Apache?

I believe that, when you say "I believe", it means you don't actually know for sure, but you think that way.

Subtleties of language or a slip of the tongue?

Windows 7 upgrades Vista laptops to lower battery life

Must be said

Windows 7 is not ready for the desktop, how can they get something that basic wrong, etc. etc. etc. (just copy and paste from some commentard on a story about any Linux distro)

Ceci n'est pas une joke.

Apple iPad vs netbooks: fight not over yet

Hm...

As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm starting to think the iPad might be at least reasonably successful. That conclusion comes from the reactions I've seen from a handful of people. Two artists/web designers, and a biologist who is not techie at all. They all drooled on the idea/demonstration of this thing. The biologist colleague already has a Touch, which she uses all the time. I mentioned "but the iPad is just a giant Touch", and she said "yeah, wouldn't that be great?". One of the artists mentioned the possibilities for graphical apps.

So, I guess only time will tell. I myself am a bit meh on this. Yeah, a large Touch would be fun (I don't have one), but for how long? Will people find uses for this thing to keep their attention for more than a week? You know, after the novelty wears off and they get tired of lugging a large media thing around, when their pocketable Touches and iPhones have about the same capabilities but are, well... pocketable. Now all that is needed is the killer app for the iPad, if Apple wants it to succeed as more than a $500 overgrown Touch.

Steve Jobs uncloaks the 'iPad'

Damn...

This will be El Reg's most commented on story EVER. Just doing my part...

Anyway, I'm starting to think the iPad will be at least reasonably successful after all, after hearing the reactions of a few "regular people" about it.

Mine

"no virus's is quite tempting.... how many netbooks can boast that..."

Mine can!

Microsoft 'offered sex and drugs to distributors'

Offering sex and drugs?

Hey, they do it everywhere!

They screw you AND also give you Windows... or are those the one and same action?

Toshiba looks ahead, sees a 14TB disk

Sends shivers down my spine...

...just to imagine the amount of data lost when one of these babies starts doing the whirring click of death or something.

Almost makes me have backups, so you know it must be serious.

Which? warns on pirate letters

Not surprising...

The scammers ALWAYS find a new angle to their activity. I wonder what took them so long, actually.

Spanish town to reward good drivers

Re: OK....

You didn't really understand the article, did you?

There is nothing to be funded.

If everyone behaves, you divide the proceedings from fines (0 euros) by the amount of good drivers (everyone), and pay them the resulting sum (0 euros).

Now, who will want to be the ones giving up and resume paying the fines?

Top Gear's Stig prowls Loch Ness

Never takes helmet off...

...and apparently never unfolds his arms either!

Must drive with the power of his mind.

'Aurora' code circulated for years on English sites

Either way...

Are the Chinese the only people capable of reading Chinese?

I know it might sound like a very alien concept to some Anglophones out there (specially those of a Merkin' persuasion), but one CAN and often does learn another language. I mean, it's not like English is the first, even second, language I've learned... E.g. I've been told by Japanese speakers that they can understand a lot of the ideograms written by Chinese and vice-versa (since they have a common origin), even if they can't speak each others' sounds.

Just saying.

Sure

And North Korea has TESTED nukes. What are you doing about it? When was the invasion by you righteous folks?

Oh, wait, they are not swimming in oil. Who cares, then? Let's do diplomacy.

And by the way...

The chemical weapons? You knew they had them. Because you sold it to them (to use on Iranians).

Apple: iPhone App and iTunes stores don't make money

@Ted

You, sir, just suffered a sarcasm detection failure, I suspect.

Hm...

That makes me evil then, for letting his Steviness down. I only bought an iPod (which is very good) and stopped at that... Better than stopping at the iTunes (which I've never used) phase, though.

Adultery website boosted by Christian publicity campaign

Who WJD?

I don't know. As someone said above, who knows which way he went... I mean, a 30-something Jewish guy in those days and still single? Interesting.

"He's clearly some kind of viral marketeer who's (sic) genius campaign has already got the unknown website mentioned in the Daily Telegraph, Sky News..."

Forgot anyone there? Anyone WHOSE superb quality tech news we highly appreciate?

Steve Ballmer defaces fanboi MacBook

@retards above (e.g. Raspy32, Ascylto)

"roles reversed", duh!

Like, you know, the other way... duh! Steve Jobs signing a (non-Apple) PC -- maybe running OS X, maybe not... either way.

iSlate leaves fingerprints all over the net

Big iPhone?

Hm, will they allow multitasking this time?

Australia leaves the internet

@Acme Fixer

Hey, how do you know the future? How about me, who will have the pleasure of having me as their ancestor?

German dentists develop 'painless' plasma tooth-blaster

Yup, that's true

I used to go to a dentist back home who was able to apply the anesthetics without pain -- to me, I mean, not him. His "secret" was to warm up the syringe, as well as skill in choosing the right spot (after the customary piece of cotton with surface anesthetics on the spot, of course). Worked every time, I could never tell when he had started or finished injecting the stuff.

Same goes for the tooth extraction stuff. A couple of years ago I had my four wisdom teeth removed, all in one go (now I have even less wisdom, haha, er...). A different dentist from the one above. It took exactly two hours from me sitting on the chair to getting up from it -- it only took that long because one of them broke, due to a cavity, and took a little longer to extract (about 30 min, I think). After all was so easily over, I asked about all the horror stories I had heard about wisdom tooth extraction, and how lucky I must have been, etc... The dentist, a real, specialized dental surgeon who only does that told me that the stories were due to bad dentists not knowing very well what they are doing. He said he could treat a cavity, for instance, but would probably be a bit lousy at it.

So there you go, choose well. :-)

gnasher-boffins

Gnasher-boffins: word of the week! In German that should be Gnascherboffin, I reckon.

Clinton throws down the gauntlet to China over Google

Hillary Clinton has demanded...

...and China will answer "up yours, bitches, or we stop the money flow!"

But in a diplomatic way, of course.

Amazon opens Kindle to third-party apps

Amazon will not permit...

Does that mean they will be screening the apps like Apple does, or will they rely on users "reporting abuse"?

Apple's iPad - the tablet with the data center soul

I saw the iPad...

...on Avatar, and it's transparent and stuff.

Why Bono is wrong about filesharing

All true...

The only problem is that "discriminating people" of the type you allude to is a very rare breed, and therefore irrelevant.

Or do you think Bono and 50 Cent are worried about the Jazz snobs' disdain for their music?

2010 will be 'boom time for Apple'

Boom time?

Are they exploding Apple? Yay!

FBI nicks 22 in classic bribery sting

Corruption is NOT victim-less

Only victim-less crime here is you speaking bollocks on the Internet -- and even that is debatable.

Corruption is not victim-less. Don't you hear all the retards whining that African/Latin American/[insert hellhole of choice] country X is only where they are because they are corrupt and we shouldn't even feel sorry for them? Who pays for that is the regular folk in the street of said miserable countries, not the ministers and militia chiefs who are rolling in money themselves. Well, as you acknowledge yourself the corrupt do not stand in a vacuum. There is always a corrupter for every corrupt, stands to simple reasoning. If a 3rd world country is corrupt it is also YOUR fault, because you are paying their bribes. If nobody payed, what would happen? Would they just go without the things they were trying to buy? Would they be honest? Would they find another way to get what they need, licit or not? I don't know.

But I do know only immoral people believe that being a corrupter and a criminal just to make a buck is acceptable and justifiable. (but mum! everyone is doing it! is no defense, as anyone with an honest mother must have heard at least once)

Ofer Paz

Most ironic name ever for a salesman of such merchandise.

2010 will be the year of the net tablet, claims analyst

NetTabs are lighter and cheaper

"NetTabs are lighter and cheaper"... until the retards start complaining that it can't run Photoshop, and it can't do this, and it can't do that, just like they did with the defunct netbook. Then the manufacturers will gladly sell these people a small laptop for the same (or higher) price of a regular one, but call it a NetTab. And then it will be just another failure, because people buy a dishwasher and complain it does not make them coffee...

Either way, I'm not interested in buying one of them "tablets" yet. Maybe never, will see if it is ever useful.

Man Utd imposes social networking ban

Sounds wrong

How on Earth is an employer allowed to determine what the employees can and cannot do out of job-related activities? If they had determined that the players were not allowed to talk about professional stuff, then that would be more acceptable. But if the bloke wants to "twitter" about his petunia growing hobby or "facebook" with his cat mates, who the hell has anything to do with it?

They should be allowed to friend Paris on Facebook.

Verity Stob's App Store

lowering the register of your voice by a minor third

Good stuff, heh. I give you a triumphal fifth for that!

US makes travellers go online, before getting onboard

Yup...

People always act surprised when I mention that Americans need to pay $100 (last I checked) for a tourist visa to go to Brazil. But almost no one else asks us for visa!?, people say. Well, Brazilians have to pay $100 to get a tourist visa to the USA, so... Reciprocity. A Romanian friend of mine was very happy about that, when he had to pay only $20 for his visa to visit Brazil, but the Merkins had to pay 5 times more. :-)

You should have seen the indignation, gnashing of teeth, etc. that ensued when the Brazilian border control started taking pictures and fingerprints (with ink, no less, because we didn't have those optical readers) of all Americans, reciprocating for their (at the time) new rules that demanded that. It didn't last long, but was fun to see for a while, it was all over the news there.

Would that make less tourists visit Brazil and bring money? Definitely. So what? Our dignity can't be bought for so little. If you offer more, we can start considering...

Discrimination warning over airport body scanners

You, British?

I thought the British were so proud of their great mastery of the Queen's English and all that (just witness what happens around here when your American overlord cousins leave a less than perfect comment...). Here's a "political incorrect throught" for you: learn the grammar and the writing of your own freaking language, if you are indeed British, and people might take you a little bit more seriously -- even if what you say is manure anyway. It works; you'd be surprised to see how many more responses the Intertube's trolls get when they sound like sane, educated people.

Anyway, the fucking white male (of which I am considered one, apparently) is NOT discriminated against except in your small paranoid Daily Mail reader mind. If you just look around without your hatred-colored specs on, you'll notice who gets singled out for police raids, "random" traffic stops, "random" airport checks, etc. etc. Whether discrimination is the right or wrong thing to do is another issue (after all, not all Muslims are Islamofascist terrorists, but all Islamofascist terrorists are obviously Muslim...), but deny that it exists or, even more ridiculous, invert its "signals" seems quite unjustified given reality.

Steve Wozniak, your time is up

Uff...

Gee, sounds like Woz fucked someone's girlfriend... on a Segway!

Article does not sound much like the author's regular style. Must be a joking troll-bait thingy, yeah, that's it.

Anyway, had I done only half of what that Woz guy did (and earned one tenth of the money), hell, yeah, I wouldn't give a rat's ass about people's opinion out there and just enjoy myself too.

LG publishes bendy 19in e-newspaper

Pretty cool

Although it looks a little clumsy to carry around if you can't roll it or fold it.

Now, if they make the screen relatively cheap, that could work. A master unit in the pocket, cellphone-sized, transmitting the data to the page as you ask for it. If the screen got damaged, lost, etc., you could just buy another one and pair it with the transmitter. Changing to a bigger/smaller/more resolution/whatever screen would be the same, as long as the new screen did not demand capabilities not supported by the transmitter.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the screen was more expensive than the rest of the machine, in which case this idea of mine is a relative fail...

Pentax K-7

Gee...

I'm sorry for you guys across the pond... You really get ripped off -- the price here in 'Merka is the same digits as there, just change the currency sign.

Anyway, I have a K10D, which is very good, but I'm waiting for the price of the K7 to lower so I can get one. Very nice piece of kit indeed. And I can use ANY Pentax lens made in the past 50 years or more and still have the benefit of image stabilization.

"curiously, Pentax's on-line shop prices at only £30 more than the body-only listing"

Not curiously at all, if you've been looking at Pentax gear. That 18-55 lens that comes in the kit (same as the one that came with my K10D) is the cheapest ass lens they have. It sells by itself for $100 or so. It is quite soft at larger apertures. Take the same picture, perfectly focused (e.g. focus and then switch to manual focus to be sure the comparison is fair), at f2 and f8 or 11. It will look a little out of focus, soft, for the large apertures (f2), looks great for the lower ones. Of course that happens to ANY lens, and optimum sharpness is usually around f8-11, but the degree of that problem varies with lens quality.

Swedish Weight Watchers bring down the house

ODFO

Tittle says it all, "Dr." Bob.

Men more different from chimps than women, say boffins

Christianity?

He mentioned religious extremists, not Christianity. Oh... never mind.

And by the way, I thought you were supposed to be turning the other cheek (and therefore keeping your mouth shut) instead of trying to "retaliate". I therefore conclude you are no Christian -- or a quite lousy one at best. Scientologist?

Titter

"What this means, of course, is that women are in fact much closer genetically to being chimps than men are. "

Woa, *much closer*!? Have any idea how tiny the Y chromosome is? And how little of it is actually coding and not just repetitive stuff?

"Some have even interpreted the research to mean that men are "more evolved" than women, having left their heritage as apes further behind than the ladies."

Hm, who are the "some", I wonder... Citation required, hehe. All fun to tease the girls (specially if some make up sex is involved later), but "more evolved" is really not the case...

Firefox 3.6: I am more than my Monkey

Yeah

Yeah, but when I see a post deleted by the moderator, I ask myself... why? I mean, if it got past the moderator the first time, does that mean the Moderator is not perfect and change her mind, deciding later to delete it? Or are rejected posts now shown like that? (I wouldn't think so, but...)

UK.gov moves to block Hamas kids site

Eh, yes

If "apes" is to be considered a valid phylogenetic group, then we ARE descended from apes, and we ARE apes too. Look up monophyletic group.

If apes is to be defined as all anthropoid primates excluding humans, i.e. a paraphyletic group, then... we'd still be descended from an ape anyway, even if we weren't one. But paraphyletic groups, e.g. "reptiles" are invalid phylogenetically, so don't waste time with them.

Anyway, even if it was technically wrong, that was not really the point of the original comment above.

Apache mulls end to 1.3 and 2.0 web server releases

Weird...

Microsoft gives them money? I fail to see why, but that wouldn't be the first time...

Naked scans: Net cries nude-o-geddon

Ha!

"The next time you walk past a war memorial, think to yourself "What did they die for?""

I know the answer to that one: 99% of the time, they died to protect their country's rich people's revenue, that's all -- from the feudal lord's troops of servants (and before, of course) to today's armies, all the same. That's what nearly all wars are about, one way or another, even when you think of a resistance fight.

What, cynic, moi?

2010: The year PC prices go up

That means...

That means that my 7 or 8 year old home computer will have to survive a little longer? Well, it was going to, anyway, unless something blows up (like the video card did a few weeks ago, but I had a spare).