Posts by Philip Cass

'Predator' Microsoft applies to give itself cancer

Re: Lol

>Microsoft Open Source is the equivalent to Military Intelligence.

>

>It just doesn't exist

http://www.freeallegiance.org/

:P

I do wonder what OS/application stuff this will apply to, though.

When 'God Machines' go back to their maker

iPhone vs iPod

The iPod was (and is) more expensive than other mp3 players of similar specs, and in some ways inferior (what file formats it can play, for example). Yet it was a runaway sucess. Why? Well, most people don't care about file formats, it was pretty much AS GOOD AS any other player functionality wise, and the UI was, compared to most other players of that era, astounding.

problem is, the iPhone isn't functionally as good as other phones. The camera doesn't matter - all phone cameras give mediocre results regardless - but no MMS? That's quite laughable.

It has a brilliant UI for browsing - but isn't 3G. You can't talk about how great the UI is and dismiss that at the same time.

It does wifi - well, that's great. If i'm in my house - a place where I have computers ANYWAY - I can get a fast net connection!

It can play mp3s, but only has 8Gb memory. I can't fit my music on that, and I have no desire to swap stuff around. And I could get a sony ericsson for do to that, at a vastly reduced price, if I so desired.

As it is, I'll stick to a separate mp3 player and a smaller, better featured, phone, and save myself wads of cash

Google Desktop finds Linux at last

re: No good for Gentoo or LFS users

"There's no way in hell that I would ever install a single piece of software on any computer of mine that had been compiled by anyone except me, or somebody independent of the authors and whom I trust."

So when you download the source you then proceed to go through it checking for problems? Because if there WAS a source available, there won't have been any time for anyone to have done an analysis for issues with it yet.

Also, have you checked your compiler's source code? And then written a primitive compiler yourself in case your compiler binary is contaminated?

http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/ is a great article about trust, and it doesn't even mention the BIOS or the CPU.

That said, the byline "Search app goes open source" is more than a little misleading (although it could be argued, not by me, that they mean "it's now available for an open source OS") though I'm not terribly surprised. Richard Kay has said it better than me. AND it only works on 32-bit distros on x86. "PPC is coming soon" - I'm fairly sure linux is used on more architectures than just ppc and x86... I can live with proprietary nvidia gfx drivers, and they are linked to a specific architecture, but for a utility like this, I'll give it a pass, thanks

Ebuyer in hard-drive warranty debacle

OEM and OEM

In response to Chris - quite right, after reading through the thread what appears to have happened is eBuyer's supplier gave them a batch of "component" OEM (intended for manufacturers) instead of "bare drive" OEM (intended for end-users without the fancy packaging and cables etc)

While retail and the second category of OEM get a 5 year warranty from Seagate, the other type don't (you should go to the place you bought the computer from)

Given that ebuyer's policy is to honour any warranty stated if the manufacturer won't / ebuyer mistyped the product description / whatever, I don't see the problem

Note that this explanation implies (but not definitively) that ebuyer didn't make money out of this

Virgin throttles national cable network

ppl suggesting services with high caps who let you know when you're close to your limit...

Point 1: virgin aren't capping, they're throttling :P

Point 2: yeah, perhaps virgin should collate usage figures every day and email people who are approaching their limit...

....oops :P

(seriously, if you email people far enough in advance for them to be able to read it, the number of false positives will be far too high)

RE: Comment @ Tuesday 8th May 2007 11:56 GMT - iirc the throttling is achieved by uploading a new profile to your cable modem, so its logs should be able to tell you if it's contention or not

RE: Comment @ Tuesday 8th May 2007 12:50 GMT - how does it increase latency, and how is that "usual for this sort of thing" ? I mean, technically my connection's throttles already (my cable modem can handle 30mbits, its net port can handle 10, and it throttles me to 4) so i don't see how changing the numbers will change latency - I'd expect it to be better in fact (coz the bulk downloaders will be throttled)