Posts by JC 2

Yes! Perhaps! It's the Lady Gaga Thanksgiving Special!

@ It's my turn

but the only reason this obnoxious performer has gained popularity is just this, people spreading info we the masses don't want, making her seem pseudo-popular all because the recording industry wants her to be their cash cow.

Floods really will bring armageddon in 2012, insist resellers

@ How the hell

Simple. He's equating that if the price of one part (HDD) of a whole PC goes up 200% or more, then the price of the whole PC goes up a lesser amount since the whole costs less than any one of the components in it.

There is a bright side for some customers, memory prices continue to stagnate with more and more surplus building up. Soon it might be a good time to buy anything BUT a HDD.

Fingerprint scanner can detect drugs in sweat

@ 5th Amendment fail

You can refuse these tests in some situations but what makes it different is the tests mentioned have been established as scientifically valid and admissible in court rather than boffins suggesting something works "well enough" for some random purpose.

The other difference is that this could encourage intrusion into privacy more readily than a blood test, while a a breathalyzer is always unreasonable unless a person seems to be drunk at the time of the test.

@ @Bastards et al

No field drug test is necessary to detain or prevent impaired drivers from being "allowed off scot free". An officer does not have the burden of identifying with scientific precision what substances you are under the influence of, only whether your mental state meets field test standards deemed acceptable for operation of a motor vehicle, a discretionary decision whether you are acting recklessly. Positive identification of drug use is only required for the specific, secondary charge if that second activity is also illegal.

They don't usually just test "for alcohol", they test for a specific BAC % which is defined by law as a limit considered an excessive impairment. That constitutes a violation of law in addition to possible reckless or other motor vehicle operation, violations.

Certainly it is no less fair or right to hold users of other (both illegal and legal) drugs to the same standard, that they not be excessively impaired while operating a motor vehicle. The problem is that there is no definition in law as to a quantity (per blood or body mass?) considered to cause excessive impairment, that in most 1st world countries evidence that you have at some point in the past consumed drugs is not an offense that is prosecuted unless you are impaired at the time which caused the suspicion and subsequent testing.

Having metabolites of drugs in your sweat cannot determine like a breathalyser or blood test does, whether you are currently impaired by the drug to any particular extent if at all at that point in time.

The alcohol tests are testing for presence of alcohol, not the metabolites from it. A similar test for alcohol might be one where your blood test indicates you drank a few beers at some point between the administration of the test and a few weeks ago. Would you like to be cited for being drunk a couple days prior to being stopped and tested regardless of whether you were even driving a couple days ago?

@ Not quite

Quite. It has nothing to do with this idea of an exemption you posed.

A private business can't compel self incrimination testimony at all with legal penalty attached so there is no need to bind them to the 5th amendment. One needs no exemption from something inapplicable.

They are not "perfectly free to do drug screening", rather, they are entitled to make a request, make it a requirement of employment. Note the distinction. They are not free to do anything the other party does not agree to. Government can compel and attach risk while with the private business it is an AGREEMENT between the employment candidate and potential employer. There is an "opt out" in refusing to submit to the request from a private party or business.

HP unwraps Ultrabook

WOW

Something actually useful instead of an iNovelty toy

Army to deploy jumping robots in Afghanistan

@ Bloddy clever

Depends on what that "better job" is. Being up in the air projecting noise all around, a flying vehicle close enough to provide recognition tends to be easily spotted from 360 degrees. It also has to exert quite a bit of fuel or energy to remain functional while something ground based can just sit there and transmit or wait till motion is detected.

Now consider going inside buildings. Odds are high a flying robot would either crash or be so large and slow to be both easily noticed and knocked down before it even managed to focus some recon pics.

In short the point of the strategic design was purpose specific robots. Sometimes flying is better. Sometimes not.

World's only twin jet-engine bike drives onto eBay

@ Only 200MPH

200 MPH isn't all that much, a few production bikes can do it and many more would if they similarly sacrificed handling, and gearing wasn't mated more with racing needs than top speed.

Heck, throw a polycarb bubble around a $4K used sport bike in place of the fairing and put a taller gear on it, use premium oil, rings and raise the RPM governor and you'd be pretty close to 200MPH while still being street legal. You might have reliability issues but this DIY jet cycle may not last too many thousands of miles either.

Boozed-up ball-biting mum spared jail

@ Misandry

Better comparison would be a drunk man tried to bite out an ovary or nipple... and yes I do think that would make the lolnews cut.

Manufacturers testing wider cars for swingbellies

Not Just For Fat People

I am not overweight, but I am not a sardine either. I don't want a car barely wide enough, I want some elbow room, plenty of cargo room, maybe even some shagging room when I was younger.

If you need to drive narrow streets, or are poor, or have been suckered into this lets-go-green movement while the rich continue to laugh at you because they're scheming ways to make the masses live cheaper so they can keep a workforce without raising pay as gas prices go up... then by all means, get the smallest car possible and a shoehorn to get in and out of it.

I suppose there is an argument to be made for seats only wide enough if you drive like a nut around curves and need a tight seat to hold you in it, but maybe those people wouldn't be in such a rush to get done with their driving if they had enough room to feel comfortable.

Google TV 2.0 is all bling and no kerching

@ Delivery

If you have a cap, the LAST thing you'd want is your device downloading things that are "popular" just in case you might (or might not) someday watch them.

Adding HDD? Absolutely not. It'd double the hardware costs once the development costs are recouped. Key to rapid adoption is keeping the cost increase slight over a traditional TV as people are not going to abandon their regular subscription TV service until the content is there.

Gadget Shop kingpin cuffed in nightclub 'toilet sex' incident

Off Duty?

Seems as though an off duty officer ought not to have the right to search someone's belongings to find the cocaine. What do you want to bet the two will be let off with a hand slapping or minor fine if not the entire thing thrown out of court?

Granted, their lawyer fees will probably cost 20X more than it would most of us to just plead guilty and pay the fine.

Anonymous confusion in clash with Mexican drug cartel

A Case Where Being Anonymous Isn't Such A Great Thing

When you're a public figure, outlaws may hesitate for a moment before murdering you but when the average citizen has to be a fool to attack, how much more would it be the case when they can take you out without anyone knowing who, what or why? Most of these anon kids are somewhere between living in their parents house and their first apartment if not in school still, it seems hardly possible that they're up from their computer long enough to know if 3 armed thugs are waiting outside their window right now.

Is your old hardware made of gold, or just DIRT?

@ The whisker thing

The whiskers don't pop up overnight, odds are the things produced a decade ago are, right now, growing longer and longer whiskers that will eventually short out if the lead pitch is tight enough and the gear is still in service at that point.

Production faults would have to include use of lead solder with equipment not refined enough for it, or design guesswork that didn't. Whole batches of capacitors with bad electrolyte is more of a beancounter induced defect, strangling the build budget till decent name brand Japanese capacitors can't be used which largely avoided the problem... any engineer would highly prefer using middle shelf if not top shelf parts instead if it weren't for the budgetary restraints.

Improper capacitor use is very rare. You almost never see a cap rated for lower voltage than seen in the circuit and typical caps are rated for 85C in mild applications or 105C if not higher in more demanding ones... significantly lower than actual operation temperatures.

Problem is, they're building devices we expect to have last for years with capacitors rated for 1K to 8K hours of lifespan (usually the lower end on consumer gear) at a fixed set of operating parameters with the engineers having to guesstimate-calculate-derate using voodoo magic to figure out if their less strenuous use will allow a 2K hour rated capacitor to last long enough at low enough cost to offset the warranty replacement or liability costs if it doesn't.

However, the main reason for faults is the rapid advancements in tech. If we weren't changing interfaces, processors, busses, etc every 18 months then once they nailed down a design and ate the R&D costs, they could remain profitable without gambling as much on penny pinching, instead spending more time on quality control and design refinement.

@ Lead, Gold, and Apples

Not only is there no balance it is quite the opposite (not sure how you ended up so backwards). In addition to tin whiskers the thinner gold plating would, if anything, further reduce the viable lifespan of a product.

However, it's only in certain scenarios where the gold plating layer makes a difference, when the contact has to withstand a large number of insertion cycles. Otherwise an ultra thin gold layer nicely serves its purpose of keeping away oxidation and eliminating the issue of contact between dissimilar metals. If you only plug in a connector or card a few hundred times it won't make a difference given a properly applied coating and otherwise in-spec mechanical product parameters.

Catalytic Converters In Small Quantities

Actually, in many places catalytic converters are an exception to the economy of scale example in the article.

Yes you can often clip the catalytic converter off a single car and sell it. I made $140 USD selling one in the states for the precious metal salvage, which is ironically more than a junkyard would've given me if I'd signed the whole car to them for salvage with lots of viable parts on it (sneaky bastards!).

That was an old car with original cat though, today a new or aftermarket cat will fetch only $40 USD or so due to smaller size and more efficient, modern honeycomb plating tech allowing for less precious metal.

Blogger freaks after airport lackey fondles checked-in vibrator

@ Oh, noes!

It seems many people don't get it.

Writing that note was potentially offensive but it was not an invasion of privacy. The invasion of privacy was the initial, accepted search of the luggage to find the vibrator at all. There was no less invasion of privacy if the note had not been written.

Is it a matter of ignorance is bliss? It's ok if our privacy is invaded so long as we aren't reminded of this fact?

Certainly the TSA agent writing the note is unfit for the position if not being fired, but the actual offense is no greater than if you see a woman holding a vibrator up in plan sight and say "about to have fun with that". In fact, it was the supposed victim that actually gave up her privacy beyond that of any other passenger when she took an event nobody else would have known about and made it public.

Ironic.

World Solar Challenge: Why the winners were so good

@ Annihilator

Nope, you don't have to consider the TCO of any cars. Solar powered cars have been around for years and none of this racing ever resulted in a consumer production vehicle, nor will it. Just because something can be done, that doesn't transcend the concept into something viable for a different application in whole or even in part.

Whether anyone is racing or not, the future of electric powered vehicles depends solely on solar panel and battery tech breakthroughs. Without them the solar powered car is too undesirable for any practical use except extraterrestrial.

Marriage makes women get fat, divorce does same to men

Absurd Assumption

"“Married women often have a larger role around the house than men do, and they may have less time to exercise and stay fit than similar unmarried women,”

... should've read "Married women more often engage in sedentary activities like sitting around surfing the 'net, watching TV or talking on the phone while if they were really doing a lot around the house they'd be burning off the calories - although convenient access to the refrigerator would make anyone a bit heavier".

Next, "“On the other hand, studies show that married men get a health benefit from marriage, and they lose that benefit once they get divorced, which may lead to their weight gain.” which should've read "Men in general gain more of their weight later in life so after a period of marriage they're subsequently older than they were previously and thus closer to their peak weight gaining years"... 'course, it doesn't hurt that you can bum around drinking beer all day when there's nobody nagging you to mow the lawn. ;)

Ten... outdoor gadgets

@ Solar charging

Your idea of viable is arbitrary to some. If you're out in the wilderness, presumably you didn't go there hoping to spend the day conversing with those back home. Instead, a solar charger can give you a few minutes of vital phone runtime in case of emergency... or just keep the phone with a charge for daily status reports, etc.

Can a tiny handheld solar panel recharge a decent sized mobile phone battery in a day? Usually not. Depends also on where you are, cloudiness, whether you're repositioning the panels to track the sun, have the optimal angle in doing so, etc. Most people would be better off simply taking a 2nd charged battery with them or for extended outtings, a non-toy-like crank generator.

Sort of makes you wonder though, why can't phone manufacturers just integrate a solar panel on the phone cover and back so you just lay it down unfolded for integral solar charging, or charge via body heat (zombies don't use phones much).

Anonymous unsheathes new, potent attack weapon

@ Questions

Q1) QOS is rather trivial to implement. People are discontent and willing to attack anyone if they are tricked into believing that doing so will ultimately bring them more good than harm.

Q2) People are smart enough to realize that the odds of any one particular person being prosecuted are very low if the level of engagement is merely running a DDOS tool every now and then. Certainly some (younger kids) won't realize how easily things can be traced back to them, remember that teenagers think they are invincible to the point of even driving recklessly which is clearly a greater risk to them than running a DDOS tool on the internet.

Q3) People are People

Boffins deduce chip's crypto just by looking at it

@ This can only be a good thing

ALL security is security through obscurity of how to defeat *defenses*. You make a better algorithm, they just work around it another way. You spend your time fortifying that /other/ way instead and then they break the algorithm, or another way.

Ultimately the resources spent to guard the *prize* are always finite and have to be weighed against the value of the tech, it's lifespan, and overall security level instead of idealizing only one part of the equation. Little to nothing can't be hacked even if it requires they toss a researcher into the back of a van, haul them away and torture them for a few months.

Gun-toting meth addict gets 12 years for ID theft

Meth... It Ages You FAST

Interesting that he was 30 yo in 2009 (linked Reg article) but he's now 34 in 2011.

I finally understand why meth heads look years older than they really are.

Bulgarian coeds exposed in hidden camera stuffed apartment

Hard To Know These Days

... whether this really happened or it was just a publicity stunt by two aspiring actresses hoping to make it big in the US.

Earth orbit for £1,000? You must be joking

@ James Hughes 1

We shall see! I've already made my prediction. A bunch of halfway, some even quite intelligent guys with enough ego to think anything is possible, doesn't really make that true given _today's_ technology.

Perhaps an alien race will beam down some tech for them to use, I suppose *anything* IS possible given enough time, money, and a higher weight limit... which is what I wrote about.

Off By An Order Of Magnitude Everywhere

Make the payload 10X the weight limit currently imposed, 10X the launch cost, and 10X the prize, THEN it becomes remotely plausible to develop this in 10X the time period with a team and facilities whose resources and time itself is worth 10X the prize value over the development period.

... otherwise the Chuck Norris roundhouse-kick-into-orbit idea is the only way.

Microsoft copies Google, kills home energy-meter project

A Possible Reason

One possible reason why there was such low interest is that nobody has ever heard of it.

Ballmer leaves investors speechless in Seattle

As The Bubble Bursts

I've no fondness for Steve Ballmer but I have to feel a little pity for the man as Microsoft's bubble was bound to burst. You can't build a monopoly on a once-in-mankind's-history type event peroid like the beginning of the personal computing era, and expect that to continue forever and a day.

The further the tech evolves, the more and more minor the differences will be between the leaders in that industry and the competitors, to the extent that what differences remain won't be things that the average consumer cares about.

MS investors aren't thinking long term though, if they were they would see that Apple is in the same boat with their phones and MP3 players, and of course their arguably overpriced desktop computers. What market share they've been gaining will erode away in the next decade, two at most.

Do we really want 100Gig Ethernet?

(n)GbE On Client PCs

As more and more client computing devices appear in our daily lives, it's very easy to see the benefit of central data storage rather than redundant client storage each with it's own backup and fault tolerance burden.

Gigs of memory for caching data are dirt cheap now, as are TB sized HDDs that exceed 100MB/s per drive. Yesterday, let alone today and tomorrow, 1 Gigabit ethernet has been a bottleneck on client PCs, IF you tried to utilize it.

What will increasing ethernet bandwidths do for clients? They won't need to have non volatile storage, they can all boot off a network as thin clients and they can become even leaner, your "CPU" can be another kind of "central" processing unit, moved to the server for the most intensive calculations.

Some might say "we're not there yet", which is true - because we didn't have the ethernet bandwidth yet. at. affordable. prices.

US judge greenlights case against Google Wi-Fi slurp

Better Analogy

If you don't secure your wifi and my mobile device connects to it, I'm going to use it. If I don't secure my wifi and someone else connects to it, I accept that they are going to use it.

Use it meaning, use for intended purpose, not attempting to countermine the security to access a network other than that granted by default as the *open* access. IE - route to the internet.

The trespasser in your home analogy does not work because that is real (physical), private property. Your wifi signal is extending beyond your property. I do not grant you the right to be on my property to use my wifi but you can use it while you aren't on my property.

Further, to whatever extent my wifi signal exceeds the boundaries of my property I concede responsibility to not have it interfere with someone else's fair use of that radio spectrum, but it's an afterthought since the FCC in the US regulates such things.

A better analogy would be that if you are standing in public singing, or even on your private property, you can't demand that everyone not on your property cover their ears so they can't hear you.

US Spec-Ops offered camouflage for a specific site

Missing the point

They're suggesting the elimination of millions of uniforms but it is only useful for special operations, then you have to discard the uniform and start over using many more than they already do.

Plus, half the point of the uniform is so everyone knows who is on whose team. If all the good guys and bad guys look like the same popular trees in the forest things start to get interesting.

50 day lullaby of Lulzsec is over .. for now

@ Re AC

On the contrary, you don't seem to understand that trials and law do not have anything to do with what a handful of people think is "right" or "wrong".

They depend on L A W. If you disapprove of laws, act to change them BEFORE, not AFTER someone gets caught up in a violation, because to have justice, that law must apply just as it had to all those who came before and were tried under it, else it gets elevated to a higher court to decide.

You must be kidding though, to take a vigilante position attacking person(s) because you disapprove of what they do is not wrong? Of course it is, the legal system is the recourse for such things and just as it is that you should let your voice be known to repeal unjust laws, so you should also voice what new laws are needed to keep moving toward justice. Vigilantism cannot fit into this model, it is based on subjective decisions instead of popular vote regardless of what some herd of teenagers with nothing better to do, agree upon to fit in with their peers.

'Robots can save America', says Obama

@ Obama is a shill

It has always been assumed that when a political leader needs to *convince* the people of something, it is because it is not in their best interests.

Of course robots will take away jobs in the long term, but it will also lead to bigger profits for the big businesses which is what American government is all about, trying to manipulate anyone, even its own citizens, to increase wealth for a select few.

We see it in all their ongoing campaigns for automobile efficiency, getting rid of greenhouse gasses, healthcare, etc. The scarey part is a lot of people have actually been snake charmed into believing the idealisms instead of seeing the results.

Groupon hug from small businesses? Not so much

Groupons Failing

Groupon depends on businesses operating under their ideal capacity, businesses hoping to break even and introduce new customers to their services. In itself that seems simple enough, but we have not only entered, but further and further plunge into a socially aware era where businesses that aren't popular are that way because people have communicated that the business isn't as good as business XYZ down the street.

Thus, people will suffer the inferior service when it is at sufficient discount, but if paying regular price they will continue to frequent where they went before the groupon offer came along. The business spends the time and resources without a return which is essentially operating in charity mode.

These types of websites will pop up like weeds and none will gain the foothold they need. Worth several billion? Ridiculous, throw together a group of marketers and anyone can start such a site which will have popularity coinciding with the value of the deal offered.

Deal shoppers realize this, you can't just go to the same place and do the same thing and get the best discount, it's a moving target because once something becomes popular, supply and demand assures that the discount value diminishes.

Hackers pierce network with jerry-rigged mouse

Shouldn't normally work

They had to know which antivirus to suppress, AND they needed that antivirus to not scan removable media nor intervene with a sandbox until the user intervenes and changes the default, which normally there is no command line to be rid of so the device would have to emulate a mouse, run a program to find the popup which it can't, so it's game over.

It could try to connect remotely but a firewall "might" stop that. I'm not suggesting it couldn't work but you would need to know more about your target than (nothing really, social engineering of some sort is needed even if it is not a social networking site or phone calls).

Also, as a matter of routine removable storage is disabled on critical systems and those networked to them. There would be no volume mounted to execute the payload from.

Man says he lost $500,000 in virtual currency heist

A Fool And His Money...

There's a reason why *real* money exists... if we want to talk about the virtues of Bitcoin, let's then proceed to talk about the virtues of Monopoly game money. After all, it would seem infinitely more valuable in this case with so few people trying to steal it using malware.

Brit CompSci student faces extradition to US over link site

@ Thank goodness for copyright

If you want to argue "facilitates the theft", where does it end? The computer manufacturer? The ISP? The owner of the home he was conducting the activities in?

If I see someone doing something illegal and I point it out (equivalent to text description and a link to copyrighted material) so other people know, I have only shared information about where something illegal has happened, I have not told you to commit a crime. If I say, "there is a prostitute on that street corner" and prostitution is illegal in the area, it is still your choice whether to engage in any activity.

It is not reasonable to mass prosecute millions upon millions of people so an industry can benefit, nor fair to prosecute only select individuals if there is not due diligence to catch them all. Shall we declare law that it is illegal to ride a bicycle so automobile and shoe manufacturers can profit?

I do feel those producing IP deemed worthy of income should be paid for it, but that in prosecuting people the law has to attempt to be checks and balances, solve a problem or provide restitution, neither of which it is accomplishing in a reasonably effective or fair manner and there is no evidence that prosecuting this (an) individual is having any significant effect on copyright infringement.

The bottom line is that as technology made distribution orders of magnitude cheaper and easier, and the ever increasing volume of copyrighted works simultaneously devalued most of them. The industries claiming infringement have not done what any industry must in order to survive rapidly changing cultural norms affecting their business, adapt or go out of business... and yet, they are making a profit!(!!), but not just a profit, the US recording industry made record profits in 2008 (right after the US recession started, hardly a time to expect that, unless your idea that we need to prosecute people to preserve an art industry is incorrect).

Outlawing something is only half the purpose of law, the other half being the reason, that the enforcement has to serve a useful purpose which at present it does not.

AMD trumpets next-gen GPU architecture

@ Off topic faffy language alert

Though you kinda have a point, it's sorta silly to tell US that you want someone ELSE to use different language.

CNET sued for giving kids LimeWire

The Obvious Next Step

The obvious next step is a lawsuit against the copyright holders for producing the content which by existing, allowed anyone to pirate it.

Feds defend Twitter dragnet on WikiLeaks supporters

@ There is no greater crime

Nonsense. If Bradley wanted a career doing *good deeds* then there are plenty of professions in which a man can do so but instead he feigned allegiance to a military and then double crossed them and his country.

If the release of documents was only about prosecutable offenses by particular people it would be a different story, but we all know it wasn't. Assange is a jet setting dork who plays the media for attention all the while furthering his agenda to stir up hate for the US. Hate for real reasons, not for shrouds of idealism and vagueness. Once again it becomes a matter of considering facts, individual offenses should be handled one at a time, if he felt he had evidence it should be given to authorities so those guilty of anything can be prosecuted. What has happened instead? Nothing useful. In the end that's what you have to consider, will the action have a positive outcome.

Mobiles really do fry your brains: JAMA

Not at all surprising

... considering that 9 out of 10 people that _always_ have a mobile against their head appear to be brain dead.

Google patches Flash bug before Adobe

@ Fix?

No, it means that Adobe has already coded the patch for the flaw but will only release the patched version it to Google for deployment because Google helped test it while every other browser platform still needs more testing before Adobe will release it for the others.

Intel: 'We ate McAfee to slip security into silicon'

Great

I never wanted McAfee products on a PC even if you paid me to run them, and now Intel's going to cram them into the silicon anyway. Woohoo for progress, now a little bit of every intel chip I pay for goes towards this acquisition. On a positive note, maybe the day will come where they shut down McAfee's software development so we don't have systems with both on it. Hardly seems likely though, now it'll be in the driver pack.

Japanese nuke meltdown may be underway

@ yesterday

Yes we are! The lifetime emissions from this plant, even after venting, are still lower than other large scale alternatives.

Nuclear "IS" safe, this was nuclear 40 years ago.

Better question is, why are you here on the web? You are quite willing to USE the electricity but against the best ways to generate it.

Man jailed after cops uncover 'crack in bum'

Disgustingly Enough

This is unfortunately what many drug dealers do to hide their stash, as many pat downs didn't involve such depths of exploration. Bad time to be a copper is all I can think, or a crack addict for that matter.

Ex-UK spy boss says WikiLeaks sparked Egyptian revolution

@ Couldn't have done it by themselves

I have to agree that singling out wikileaks was a bit arbitrary beyond it being an example of how online information, or propaganda, can move masses of people towards recognizing (they have) their allies as it incites conversation. If anything the internet is a huge "me too" hive mentality when something seems wrong, even if nobody agrees on the right solution.

THAT is what technology did, allow the people more coordinated efforts till the snowball effect took over, at which point it was too late to just shut down the *tech* as the word was out that if you want some freedom it is a good time to act on that.

Microsoft rallies IE6 death squads

@ Well, it's very simple to kill off IE6

Hardly. You can nudge people to switch but if you kill software they're using it's time for a few lawsuits. I agree it is time to move on from IE6, but always by choice, never somebody else's mere opinion based on what they subjectively feel are factual reasons.

The truth is, without people pushing to do away with IE6 it wouldn't be much of a problem. Are there exploits? Sure, but it only takes one... tell us IE7, 8, or Firefox don't have any. The fewer people who use IE6 the less it will be targeted and the more secure by obscurity.

As for not following web standards, if it came after modern browsers it would be a problem but since it came before and was the dominant browser for quite a while (taking heritage from IE4 and 5), the web had already set itself up to work with IE6 for better or worse so if websites are now incompatible it is only because webmasters chose not to support a browser which obviously still had a very large presence on the web.

To use the words saddos, shit, moron and evil... well, it is unfortunate that we can't all make the world bend to what suits us the most but that's the way it is in all areas of life. No point whining about it, the solution is not to push people towards anything, just make your choices and move on yourself, letting them decide when to do the same.

Patent attack on Google open codec faces 'antitrust probe'

Day Late Chaps

If they'd wanted to challenge it they should have done so long before Google ever purchased (it). No, this is clearly fear in their hearts that you can't compete with free, by not defending one's patents they should lose ownership... not that I'm implying that they have a valid claim, rather that even if they /did/, they don't now.

Kentucky man denies drunk driving, blames blow job

@ Welcome to the united states of America

To add to that, in some states even if it is legal to have a closed container of alcohol in your vehicle, it can still be considered illegal if it is not factory sealed, for example a screw top container which has been opened previously - and then closed again, one that was closed when officers found it! Same applies for a corked bottle of wine apparently.

Cobalt-barrel machine guns could fire full auto Hollywood style

@ Possible Problem

opposed to muzzle flash, body, or vehicle heat?