Posts by sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD

US Navy says electric jet-flinger tech looking good

Scrap the air force

Why not scrap the air force and get rid of service rivalry?

As you say, you are an island nation. I am not saying get rid of the planes but put them all under the same banner.

You can't buy a lot of planes, might as well make sure your pilots can all take off and land them off flattops or land bases with the same ease.

Perhaps your landbased planes and crew (ie perhaps EWACS, long range bombers, transports) would integrate better if they were all under the same banner. Land based navy interceptors could still provide the same level of homeland defence albeit under a different name.

I mean, if they were all navy planes, what would it matter then? Might actually make admin easier. Might be cheaper.

No sense in hanging on to nostalgia for the sake of practicality.

Just playing devil's advocate.

RIM unveils The BlackPad BlackBerry PlayBook

QNX

I hope RIM do the right thing by their acquisition of QNX. I think the decision to close up the source base of QNX earlier in the year was perhaps not the right thing to do as it certainly made me markedly less interested in looking at QNX.

The traffic on the open forums certainly suggests perhaps this was the wrong thing to do.

Suggestions:

1. Open up the source code again.

2. You can always make money by selling a distro around it with support as you are already. And this RIM pad thingy.

3. If this RIM pad thing takes off, there will be a lot of end-user apps created. Use this momentum and consider releasing a desktop version. Encourage porting of more of the stuff in the linux userland that we all take for granted. Nevertheless, try and keep the bloat down or at least, optional. It's nice not to have X necessary for example.

Then shall we see if the microkernel advantage truly exists. This I would really like to see. I think the linux kernel is too bloated and complicated and if truly a simpler alternative exists, I would like to try it.

Even if it fails, I think the journey would be worth it. What would it cost you, RIM, to win more people over to your camp?

This is (likely) so...

WIN

I am only worried about the lack of a keyboard and if the OS is locked down.

If they give us an unlocked neutrino, I will be in the queue.

Moms stand firm against antenna madness

Proof.

No one really knows.

While radar is definitely harmful, I am less certain about UHF devices that are not directional.

A mobile phone may not have enough energy content to cause any significant thermal injury but accumulated long term exposure is uncertain. Microwaves are non-ionizing but they can transfer heat. There have been theories (not proven as far as I know) of dysfunction of various enzymatic systems but I do not recall exact details.

I wouldn't want to live beside a microwave mast though. A mobile phone's microwave power output is limited to the battery. A mast...

Remember we are only now living in a time where microwaves are close intimate and everywhere. 20 years ago this was not the case. It may not be a serious a threat as ionizing radiation the likes of whom Marie Curie found out not too long after but remember it took a while for her to get sick.

Look up the WHO recommended microwave exposure levels. It's on their website. Yes. someone at the WHO was sufficiently concerned to look into it. Bottom line: No one knows. We know radar is harmful, but less focused microwaves? Who knows.

*** If we are to see any health effects, epidemiologist are going to be waiting a while.

I would NOT however like to be one of the sick that they study and if I can perfectly live my life far away from a mast with minimal use of microwave transmitters, so be it.

If you want to camp beside a microwave transmitter mast and say it's all right be my guest.

Would you still want to bring up your children dancing around one of those now that you've heard my side of the story?

(Remember people thought cigarette smoking was once harmless, in fact good for you.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1818349/

Increasingly off topic

I think the OP was being a bit cynical in how the lower socioeconomic classes are reproducing much more than the higher. It probably has no bearing to the article but you wondered about...

"Its all well and good saying that people having kids is causing problems, yes over population is going to be a problem, but having more people retired than working in 20, 30 40 years will be just as much of a problem."

What if the majority of the young population then are just a bunch of yobos or on the dole?

Apple in 873-page legal claim to word 'Pod'

Lawyers...

It is time I think to think of reasons why we have a legal system. I would have thought that the reason law exists is to protect the weak and persecuted, to ensure fair hearings and ensure wrong doers are prosecuted.

Idealistically I would think that a lawyer should strive to some sense of goodness and fairness.

If you are a true lawyer, please see this for what it is. A (very) dominant company trying to intimidate and step on so many others. To control language itself in quite a very real way.

I don't know who Apple's lawyers are but I am pretty sure they do not have conscience. If you happen to be one of them, I spit on you metaphorically. I have no respect for you. You give lawyers a bad name.

People like you make all of us out there come up with statements above. My own feeling is you should all be put out in a boat far to sea and said boat sunk.

You are indeed the lowest form of life. Mainly because you have a choice on how to wield your power and influence and you choose this.

FAIL.

Mozilla Labs dreams of projected keyboard phone

Ok. fancy new keyboard...

How much power will it cost, bearing in mind the wonderful endurance smartphones have at the moment?

Apple's 11.6in MacBook Air release imminent?

Wow..

1. Where exactly did you get it fixed? Which apple store?

2. Are all apple stores going to do this for all 5 year old hardware or was yours a special case?

3. If it was a special case, how did you swing it?

ie. why would ANY company out there choose to swap a mobo and LCD *FREE* for 5 year old second hand kit.

Not that I don't believe you but surely there must be a reason. An exception for the PR it may generate perhaps - which makes me wonder if they will do this again for everyone. Or maybe you're a mac shop and they have a lot of business with you anyways?

We want to know.

Atoms and NetBooks.

I'm a confessed netbook 10 inch form factor advocate.

1. Atoms and like are powerful enough to do a lot of 'every day' stuff. For the average joe I would say this is more often true than not, gaming excluded but who games on something this small?

2. Not having a GPU and a high power chip means you get more battery life.

3. Not having a GPU and a high power chip means you don't have a lot of heat... ouch

4. Or a noisy fan.

This means, you have something you can use untethered FOR HOURS anywhere.

Of course, no one would have a 10-12 inch machine as their SOLE machine, so for more demanding tasks you will have your other.

And honestly, even if you didn't ... what are you actually losing out on? Probably only video games and stuff that demands a lot of grunt like image/video manipulation/rendering.

Apple would do well to make a CHEAP, light 10-12 inch lappie with tons of battery life. Yes, I would trade raw CPU power for battery life and form factor. I will be in the market for another netbook soon, if they do it right, I may be interested.

But a cheap apple is an oxymoron is it not?

Dell, Samsung Android iPad rivals demo'd

Good video for the Samsung

Makes me want to actually go out and see the thing.

Now all we need is the price and real world testing.

Sex, lies, and botnets: the saga of Perverted Justice

While I feel for the man...

Perhaps he should have known better.

Firstly, perhaps how to look after his own life, and secondly given what he was doing before, the hazards of misplaced on-line trust.

But this is easier said with hindsight, I guess.

IE captain flees Microsoft for Google

Blue Desktop maybe...

Well, he did work at M$...

The point is, google is going to probably regret it if they let him touch too much, which can only be good, I suppose.

"he will not work on Chrome at Google – at least not initially"

Hehehe... If google are wise, they won't ever put him on Chrome.

I reckon they're probably milking him for intel. What good would he bring to google one wonders, but ruin.

Blighty's carriers to field Windows Phone 7

There is wisdom in this.

Of course, I would tend to agree at this point in time.

I also do not yet have a smartphone. Although the N900 looks very tempting.

Win7mobile

If it is:

1. Reasonably lean

2. Easy to use

3. Easy to develop for ( probably )

4. Open, unlike Apple (this I think will not be true)

5. Reliable

6. 'secure'

Then... I think it will be interesting. But it's not going to be that way, is it? I'm not gone on the 'ad-serving' to tell you the truth. Very suspicious about it.

Nevertheless, maybe it's a good idea to fill the market with choice and see what works out.

(Personally I'd ike to see more open linux phones. Hope they get Maemo err.. Meego right, and get something out the door soon. Been tempted to get a n900 but reports on battery life are putting me off. I'm still waiting to see what Nokia does but I think it has its hands full with the N8 now.)

RIM's iPad rival 'arrives next week'

@RIM

QNX eh?

While I've never actually entertained buying a pad like device before, I shall watch this space in with great interest.

Pull it off right and you might get a purchase here where Steve did not. I would suggest the following:

1. Be nice to devs. Be really nice because you have to.

2. Keep the device open.

3. Or let there be the option of opening it up to people who want to mess about inside.

4. If build quality, battery life and UI are as good as that of an iPad, this could get very interesting.

5. Bonus points if no one commits suicide during its manufacture.

Google data center links shot down by 'bored' riflemen

A good enough reason...

Uh...

It's coming right for us?

*BLAM*BLAM*BLAM*

Harrow flicks pirate thrown in slammer

6 months?

While two wrongs don't make a right, I think this is far too much given the likes of people getting off for far less for more heinous crimes.

Why is this so?

Steve Jobs chops student hack down to size

The whole story

As much as I don't like the guy, let's take another look at the situation:

Does anyone actually know what the "3 questions" actually were and how she worded her requests to Apple's PR dept.?

For all you know she may well have been asking questions no reasonable company may be expected to answer.

Oracle spins own Linux for mega hardware

There now, I've brought this up.

If Debian fought RHEL who'd win? :P

I know RHEL is quite deeply entrenched and while I would choose not to use it, I can see why others would.

I just wonder though, honestly, which camp has more people working on the distro.

Rightly or wrongly I think this may give an idea about how frequent bug fixes are and how extensively the code base is perused.

On the .deb side you have all the ubuntu peeps and debian as well. Whereas, on RHEL, do you only have the RHEL/CentOS/etc and Fedora people?

I have the impression (rightly or wrongly) that Debian is the better bet for a stable server. I trust it more. Then there is the rpm vs deb issue (I prefer debs but that's secondary to the feeling that I have that more people are working on Debian type derivatives).

But as they all say, for an individual case, YMMV and it depends on the admin as well naturally.

Back-to-college 15in Notebooks

My advice.

Get a nice 10 inch lappie / net book that you really like the feel of. IE go see the thing before you buy it, don't skimp on research. I have bought 2 Eee's already and am looking to upgrade my current one to a 1015PE most likely. Form factor, keyboard, screen, battery - all this counts.

Put a 60+G SSD, and you'll have enough (just about) room to boot windows (because let's face it, you're likely to need it) and something else you prefer. If you are a linux head, be sure you do your homework and find out about drivers before buying. One thing not to forget is fairly convenient removable storage in the form of SD cards. Put your /home there perhaps. Encrypt it.

Basically you're looking at buying a small lappie, that's big enuf to do work on but small enough that it's not intrusively bulky or heavy and doesn't attempt to burn your bollocks off when you sit it on your lap and has tons of battery life.

Ok, right, these lads don't have much muscle, but you should see how quick one of these lads will boot off an SSD (ok, arguably a high bandwidth i/o system would be better, but 'tis still fast and well worth the purchase imho).

If you want to game, you need a decent gaming rig you can buy a second machine, a low-med end box or perhaps or a gaming laptop (effectively what I would term a portable desktop - bloody costly and I am not quite sure are they worth it - depends if you're a LAN party goer I suppose, that sort of thing).

The beauty of this, is you don't get your 'work machine' contaminated by windows games which have all kinds of spyware on board and who knows what else in way of backdoors (ie WoW, Steam - honestly, do you trust these guys? I don't)

Likewise if you're running tons and tons of compile jobs, best done on a bigger more powerful machine.

You might be tempted to try 15 inch to try and cover both ends, but honestly, I have to say, once you've tried a low power 10 inch that can go for hours on end without being plugged in, you may be converted.

But different strokes for different folks I would say.

I prefer the 2 machine approach.

(And yes, I have mac books - I still think the 10 inch form factor wins, and between OS X and linux, it makes no real difference really to me. well no wait, I know what I put in my linux, that's what's different.)

Laptop potato scammers turn to onions

No... Apples

You'd think for an Apple bait and switch, they'd at least put APPLES in the box.

Actually...

On second thoughts, if I ever fell victim (not that I ever will :P), I'd prefer the spuds, at least I could make chips...

4chan launches DDoS against entertainment industry

Most profound.

Thumbs up.

I myself can't decide whether this 4Chan action is a good thing or a bad thing. Nevertheless, they're letting some right bastards have it, so what the hell....

My own visitations to 4Chan have been (and always will be) somewhat stealthy.

Bit like a road traffic accident, actually. You know you shouldn't look, really, but somehow you just can't take your eyes off the carnage.

'Unicorn' captured in remote Laos mountain forests

"who decided it was a Unicorn?"

<- Uh... He did.

Trident delay by the Coalition: Cunning plan, or bad idea?

The LHC

Beware the Swiss. Claiming neutrality they have actually fiendishly created the most powerful uberweapon in the world, capable of imploding the world into a blackhole in less that 0,45 msecs. While this is terrifying enough, some theories exist that the LHC could be used to instantaneously project smaller self limiting blackholes to any point of the universe to swallow up any given arbitrary mass, leaving naught but an empty space and not much fallout. Think cities of opposing states here.

An ingenious solution given that they are effectively landlocked.

Don't you believe for a moment this isn't true.

Don't take my word for it. In every facet be it economically, geopolitically, whatever, Switzerland as a nation has been actually been faring better than ever before since the facility became operational. Upon closer statistical analysis, it would appear that there is little chance that this change of fortune is due to chance alone.

I would hypothesize that there have been "words exchanged in secret" between this tiny nation and the more well known players in power and that silently but surely, Switzerland has now begun to mold the world's future.

They as a nation have long lusted for power and world domination and it is likely this insidious hunger of theirs really began many many years ago.

Don't believe me? What is this www you're now reading this on? Who invented it?

They are a member of the EU yet choose to retain their own currency. (I know you Brits do that too, but you like to pretend the hasn't set on the Union Jack etc...)

Neutrality? BS...

Uh oh..no. CERN agents after me... ARRGGHH>..kjnjlkjlm lk

(Current?) Anti-missile systems.

Do patriots now actually work?

I remember George Bush saying how great they were, but I remember a lot of SCUDs making controlled crash landings in Israel and how they defined a 'successful intercept'.

Didn't a scud land and take out a US camp or hospital as well?

Don't believe me?

Go on, ask an Israeli who was there at the time. They'll tell you how good they were.

Parents back legal ban of violent vidgames sales to kids

Spot on.

Good parenting is the key.

This is a bit like the pr0N issue to some degree but not completely - I say this because i share no illusions in the likelihood of my children growing up never to be exposed to pr0n during their 'formative' ears.

Do remember why we human beings relish in violence though. If we were but passive meek animals we would not be the dominant 'mammalian' life form that we are now. Arguably much bad comes from this.

I would certainly supervise what my child would play. But I would actually make sure he understood the difference between what is acceptable in a game and in real life. Hell, I am waiting for the day the motor skills are up to a decent COD fragfest. Or some light sparring IRL.

I would like him to understand why violence is abhorrent. Conversely why violence is important to understand (and to know how and when to predict, avoid and if necessary engage in it and survive).

What I do really like about games like COD is it just shows you how easily someone can buy it and not how you are some superhuman god.

Road test: putting the iPad to work

Netbooks

Methinks a 10 inch or so Netbook be best, at least for me.

Those inspiron duo things that dell may be introducing soon sound interesting but for the OS and that it is a dell (misplaced prejudice maybe but I've seen some really bad dells).

I would like something like that inspiron duo thing, with an instant on OS like an iPad, with a UI that is similar in terms of ease of use and performance.. UNLOCKED and more capable than Apple's iOS. With tons of battery life.

Here, Apple, if you're feeling threatened by that new dell thingie, do us all a favour and release a similar arm based thingie with, I dunno, ARM OS X with an iOS type gui for the touchscreen, with average or better netbook battery life. No locked down shit.

I can tell you for THAT I would sleep on the streets and queue for. iPAD. Nah...

An HTC named Desire. OK, two HTCs...

Chinese, not Chinese

@AC

I can't say this about HTC for sure, as I've not looked at the company or the phones in detail but the fact is, quite a few Taiwanese hi-tech companies have factories on Mainland China.

I know for a fact that my Asuses (Asii?) are ALL made in China. If I were a betting man, I would say fair chance of the same with HTC. Check that out and correct me if I am wrong.

I do believe that though there has not been a formal 'end' to the war, there is very little animosity left really between the 2 countries except perhaps at the level of politicians.

So... what is the real difference then?

Tinfoil 'radiation shield' maternity wear hits 'Frisco

Steve X

"We've had radio for about 100 years*. How much longer are you going to wait?"

Do not assume all radio is safe.

Would you like to stand in front of a MiG-31 with its radar on for a bit?

Less extreme but very much safer : Do you feel very comfortable standing in front of a microwave oven?

While the silver apron is a bit much, really, I would contend we still do not really know what the long term effects of having microwave transmitters in intimate proximity with our anatomy are. I believe most of these are packet transmitters and do pulse, albeit not being very directional and being low in _mean_ power output.

I am less concerned about wireless routers which generally stay a good distance away, than with mobile phones and like personal communication devices.

If you tell me constant bombardment by low energy microwaves do not affect significantly a specified volume of water in a jar, or, say a brick, for example, I'd say fine. But we're talking biological systems here.

We do not know enough, I would contend, while they appear to so far have been 'safe', nobody might know what long term effects are in store for us 10-20 years down perhaps. The effects may be small or less pronounced, and the risk of being affected lower, than say, poor old Marie Curie who didn't know what she was getting herself into, but ... we don't know.

Cigarettes, who'd have thought they were harmful?

Biological systems are tricky.

Microwaves

1. Microwaves are definitely a hazard in certain contexts, but these are usually very obvious.

2. Prolonged exposure to somewhat lower levels - I am not sure there is a firm verdict.

You've all heard stereo speakers go crazy when nearby mobile phones send packets. No doubt the energy contained in a mobile phone battery is limited, but I, not being an engineer, am not sure what the peak power output of such a pulse is, and what really the long term effects of prolonged exposure are.

From what I read of it : no one's really been bold enough to say that mobile phones are categorically 100% safe. On the other hand no one's proven them to be particularly nasty either.

In the long run.

My take: I wouldn't go coating myself with silver, but neither would I be strapping mobile phones, wireless routers and microwave oven all over my balls and other like sensitive tissue. I wouldn't dismiss completely suggestions that low levels over prolonged periods may be harmful.

This is interesting :

http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs226/en/

Die-hard bug bytes Linux kernel for second time

FAIL

Yes, this is indeed a problem

We should not look at *JUST* the bug but *HOW* it was allowed to happen and try and put safeguards against such a future recurrence.

Human beings will always make mistakes but we should try and minimize them.

One cannot deny this was sloppy.

However, one should look at the positive side of it. The bug currently in question was found and reported because someone out there could look at the source. And there are people out there constantly looking at it. It is definitely a plus that we can do this.

Who knows how many bugs remain hidden in, for example, windows because it is still closed?

Steve Jobs no ninja, says Apple

Ninja?

A more successful Ashida Kim more like... But yeah, hype++ much for sure.

(Think about it, there are a lot of people still living that wouldn't be if he really were a ninja)

Steve Jobs carried 'ninja throwing stars' in hand luggage

As much as I'd like it to be true...

I think it does not hold water. I mean, they would have to be 'very special' shuriken, as shuriken are quite easily available as far as I recall, in the US.

Dell readies flip-screen tablet-cum-netbook

Why no pix?

You tease us, El Reg... Anyway, googling led me to this, for those of you who are as curious as I am as to what these might look like

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/idf-2010-dell-inspiron-duo-combines-tablet-and-laptop-runs-windows-7-home-premium/3846

Now if only someone would do the right thing and brings out an arm/linux version...

Cinema chain bans laptops, tablets

Piracy from the cinema seat

Sure people may pirate these films, but I have a funny feeling not many people are actually happy with the quality of such ventures.

I once tried to watch one such movie (I can't even remember which film it was) but the quality was so bad that I had to shut it off after a few minutes.

Smartbook done to death by Apple iPad

As have I

Bastards.

Sincerely hope you're wrong though.

I want an ARM *NETBOOK*

"Isn't an Android tablet really just an ARM-powered smartbook + touchscreen - keyboard?"

Well, I just so happen to like the netbook form (ie a real keyboard) not a 'smartbook' ipad form, so that's the big difference.

Second SMS Android Trojan targets smut-seeking Russians

Wait for it... wait for it...

I'll bet we'll see one or two iTards gloating here soon :P

Robots capable of 'deceiving humans' built by crazed boffins

Just wanted the honour

Of giving you the thumbs down.

LOL.

You funny, mate. You funny.

Steve Jobs lectures devs, dodges antitrust action

Sony

Apparently you have not heard me bitching.

Evil jobs for there is no Evil Sony icon (yet?)

ARM flexes muscles with fivefold performance boost

No 'real windows' arm platforms.

I believe that would be the reason.

They'd get it to work I suspect if they had sufficient motivation. The way I see it, nobody's made a decent arm desktop since the archie.

They did get windows NT on the power pc once but I can't remember the exact reasons why they abandoned it at the time.

Brits unleash world's hottest chilli pepper

Interesting...

Imma vote u up and try it

I agree... too much heat can ruin a dish, but also too little just doesn't cut it for certain people.

Nevertheless I would like to know how to get myself seeds for this super chilli plant.

Koran-burning 'pastor' loses website

So, Chronos...

Why are WE feeding this troll (El Reg)?

/snigger

(You are right though)

Excuse me...

It's the Sassanach b4st4rds that came across and invaded us.

They just happened to be protestant. No doubt if no religion existed we'd still have wanted in them old days to kick them out and would no doubt have found some other differentiating issue.

While it is good to remember what they actually did to us as a lesson, I would say, forgive and move on, eh? :) I find the Brits are generally infinitely more pleasant to deal with than Yanks, to tell you the truth!

But my point stands. People will find differences to make trouble, all the time, Religion or otherwise.

And when they don't want to, they can find reasons to be friends.

I don't think we're doing all that bad with relations with the UK and sure, aren't the US and Japan much friendlier now than they were nigh 70 years ago?

Google pulls trigger on 'Instant' search engine

Fantastic!

So now one can be done at work for searching for porn.

nice.

Privacy watchdogs challenge laptop seizures at US borders

I agree.

We would do well to watch our own governments to make sure they don't end up like that.

Think tank rages at NHS' £700 bill for fertility clinic porn

Actually...

You're not dead but you're posting in this forum. Porn must be harmful :P

Judge extends Oz PS3 mod dongle ban

Protest.

Don't give Sony another $.

Traitorous swine. I will never forgive them for that April fool's day patch.

Mozilla 'cloud' code editor breaks with Lando Calrissian

Why?

I mean, seriously.... Why?

What's wrong with running 'your favourite text editor' locally?

SciTE is pretty good and available on every platform I use, if stuff like vi/emacs isn't quite your cup of tea. Very user friendly and very customisable (ok, it's not like emacs but hey it's a pretty damned good effort).

And like it or not, there are platform specific editors which may or may not be quite what you like, but they are there.

Hell I'd rather use the windows text editor whatever it's called or nano than to use any 'cloud' editor.