Posts by Grant

88% of IT admins would steal data if fired

@How to secure the trust of your PHB

This was pretty much standard policy when I worked in finance for all top level passwords. Put in 2 sealed envolopes, sign over the seal, one to offsite backup, one to safe/vault. Each month have envolopes returned, check seal, change password and repeat. It also serves as disaster recover backup in case I am hit by a bus.

Unfrtunately I could never get myself fired with the accompaning 1 month to 1 years compensation, I always quit out of political frustration when the sane management who hired me moved on.

How to stop worrying and enjoy paying for incoming calls

Phone spam here we come.

I get almost no voice spam on my mobile (in Japan) because they have to pay. If termination charges move over to me paying instead of the caller paying, I'll get shit loads of sales assholes calling me. I think it is importnat to keep the cost on person initiating the call or else it will be exploted.

ISO rejects Office Open XML appeal (redux)

a new low in tech related articles

I know the reg post shit to get comments, but this really is a new low in stupid tech related articles. Please keep your insanely inane article to topics like global warming or speeding. If your tech articles are also stupid their really is no more reason to come here

Drizzle plans to wash away DBMS past

@Don't really have a clue...

Yeah he kinda does. although that guy was bigger. Awsome movei too bad the sequels sucked

IBM's eight-core Power7 chip to clock in at 4.0GHz

About on the curve

Comparing to the "Projected Performance Development" curve at

http://www.top500.org/lists/2008/06/performance_development

for 2011 delivery this machine is pretty much on the curve.

AVG disguises fake traffic as IE6

@It's simple

No don't redirect to /dev/null redirect to AVG let them pay for bandwidth. They are generating the bandwidth. The only thing thing that will AVG will notice is it cost them money. You may consider put invisble links to AVG on your sites that users won't see but AVG link spam software will, this would boost their ranking but would generate more link spam to AVG sites and bandwidth.

AVG fake traffic spares Google AdWords

AVGsucks site

so who is going to put up the avgsucks site and ask for money to slander grisoft until they kill prescan spamming and just scan the links users actually click on?

US firms use own staff to snoop on co-workers

I'd like to see some of these wankers fired.

In Japan some of the weblogs show management with offices spending 3~4 hours every friday afternoon surfing the prostitution sites chosing their bookings for the night. Upper management ignored these reports, but I would have been quite happy to see these wankers discipline a few times (by the company not their Firday bookings) then fired. When I was at work I worked ( now selfemployeed so if I wank off it is by definition my own time), I expected other too also or suffer the consequences.

No I don't agree with blocking access to any site that might be considered non-work or getting upset over every phone call, but you need to set some limts or some wanker will abuse himself on company time all the time.

Added green burden could ground flying cars for good

It matters now.

"Let's not hang another millstone round the flying car's neck before it's even born. Let's get it working first, or at least get the roadable light aircraft working first - and make it green later, when doing so would actually matter."

Let's not hang another stone around the planets neck. Let's not get production up large enough so it's fuel consuption actually maters and it has an industrial lobby, then try and fix it. Fix the problem before mass production not after mass production. I don't care if you want your new toy, I want an ocean that is not giant carbonated drink.

Nintendo Wii 'like a virus', games boss sniffs

profit point

From what i understand the Wii's profit point is immediate on selling the Wii so at either 3.5 or 5.6 Nintendo is doing well. When does Xbox start turning a profit? Though it was sold under the loose on the box make money on the licenses.

Apprentice contestant to offer Zeppelin trips above London

Already over Tokyo

Zeppelins have been flying over Tokyo since last fall. I am guessing the vulture fact checker for this story went through one of the engines and ended up as my icon.

Cyberwar threat way down the agenda at NATO conference

Not war threat, but is a crimnal threat.

I agree with NATO on this it ranks around 47 out of 50 as a military threat, and as criminal threat it worth a couple of conferences and treaties. I am glad to see none of this war on the concept of the week (drugs , terrerism, etc) that US keeps throwning around

Scotland Yard criminologist: DNA-print troublemaker kids

I hate to suggest a politition may be right but...

"mixing up his biting dystopian commentary with his sci-fi just a tad, we suggest." Just because 1984 is dystopian commentary does not mean it is not science fiction.

LSDigital drops federal botnet confession

@Extradition then?

Why do you want to house and feed this guy for years? Just cause Americans do stupid things is nor reason to want be stupid like them? Now if you had corpral unishment things would be different. Did he hack any Singaporean or Suadi computers?

Google encourages 10 teams to rocket to the moon

learn from history

After the first X-prize was won and a couple on contestants who were close dropped out, the people running X-prize said they should not have had a winner takes all prze but should have a second to do it and third also. Since having somr diverisity in methods and technology is very important to find a god technology long term. So since then what do they do, a bunch winner takes all X-prizes because it makes good PR.

Häagen-Dazs battles honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder

Monoculturing

Monoculturing whether you do it with potatoes, bees or GM crops is bad idea, when will they ever learn.

Japan confirms world's fastest maglev plan

Air restiance vs rolling friction

At these seeds air restiance is more important than rolling friction for fuel economy.Still it should have an impress k/l/passenger figure.

Gmail exploit aids domain hijack

no longers oops

Just checked it looks fine now. He mentions going down due to heavy traffice but has fixed that up now.

How to copyright Michelangelo

Seems reasonable to me -if not extendable

I don't have a problem copyrighting a photograph of the Sistine Chapel. Photographing a physical oject is not like photocoping, lighting, colour saturation, angle etc have to be dealt with. But the photograph has a limited copyright period (50 years or whatever) After that that photograph falls into public domain ( none of this extending Mickey Mouse copyright for 100+ years crap). That way if an artwork is retored and rephotographed the new photos have a period of copyright. The public is getting something new for their money, they could not look at picture of the artwork in it current sate before the photographer did their work. If a new reprduction terchnec like holograms becomes popular and some one makes a hologram of David, then the hologrammer should have copyright for time, as their work is adding to public benifit. A view does not have to travel to the musem to view the original artwork. In time the copyright on the hologram will lapse. I don't like the DRM stuff, but at the very least it should not to be illegal to bypass DRM on works without a current copyright.

Top US engineer in piss-off-everybody car fuel solution

Methanol is also highly posionous

Methanol is more posionous than gasoline, that was major reason that Brazil went with ethanol for fuel.

from a Neurology Residents handbook http://www.uwo.ca/cns/resident/pocketbook/disorders/criticalcare/methanol.htm

- Highly toxic

Lethal dose 30-50 ml (0.5 ml/kg)

Blindness - as little as 10 ml

(yeah I know that the piracy icon but so appropriate for poison)

Wii grasses up cheating wife

@This is why...

+1

(this line is because Reg.won't let me post just +1)

Hushmail warns users over law enforcement backdoor

So do you use a closed source OS?

And people wonder why China and many other governments want to use linux or some other code that they can read the source to. What makes you think Cheney has not already issued executive orders to gather passswords from anyone he feels like this week.

Bike bonk bloke cops three years' probation

WTF?

I was going to make a snide comment comparing to American prudes but really all I can to is read the story and think, WTF? Some one mentioned getting it quashed in the comments after the first story, I had some how dreamed that night happen, but he is still on the sex offenders list.

Topless Liverpudlians confined to tropical fish stores

@Japan

The Japan law like I would guess, 3/4 of the other listed is just wrong. The age of consent in Japan is 13. And recently (in the 90's) they made it illegal to pay childern under the age of 18 to work in the sex industry(minimum age before was 13). Hey what did you expect from a country that ranks second behind Israel in the sex slave trade.

Living with robots: The $3.5m DARPA Urban Challenge

$21m to prep for $3.5m prize

Does anyone else think this is rather strange. Surely if your going to spend $21m to prep the site and god knows how much more on salaries and other expenses not directly related to preping the site you could have spread a bit more around for those actualling proding the product.

X-Factor singer withdraws over 'happy slapping' vid

@@SpitefulGOD

But Leadbelly had talent.

Satanic car key traps 12 motorists in car park of horror

Sounds like a great soft terriost attack

For those kinder gentler terrorists just make a few thousand of these (at what $5 a piece) and scatter them around town. I wonder what happens to cars that aren't parked?

Gotta love the motter industries desire to save a pound here and there.

Facebook sued for mis-sending dirty texts

re:Why the US doesn't rule the world

Well in Japan caller pays for calls to mobiles but reciever for emails (since there is no way to charge sender.) All phones have an email address but it is assigned by the user and is not your phone number. It used to be your phone number but there was too much spam, including companines send emails to every 8 digit number for for a provider. There is SMS by phone number that only works from a phone on the same provider.

Even with this companies still manage to spam. If you call someone and they don't answer you are not charged. If you hangup after one ring or less it is very unlikely you will get answer (espcially at 3:00 A.M.), but the reciever will see a phone number on the phone in the morning and may call back at which point you voice spam them. Very irratting since I get the occaisional real calls at 3:00 AM I leave my phone on and near the bed (futon actualy).

The phone companies finally did something (possibly involving the police or maybe just some guys with baseball bats or swords) and this does not seem to happen anymore.

Lastly why has no one mentioned people who get Paris Hilton's old number?

Comcast busted for bagging BitTorrents (again)

So what...

Not really clear from the article but it sounds like they are saying P2P traffic is being "managed" ie. limited and slowed. I say so what.... I want decent service when I surf the web and resonable speed when I down load the occasional large file. If that means some kid down the block is has his speed capped when downloading 20 DVDs he'll probably never watch while acting as a seed for another 20, So what...

We are not talking about food, water, shelter, medicine or any other essential, we're talking about some entertaint for the (brain dead) masses.

Cheers,

Tasmanian tumours blamed on inbreeding

@thylacine

as Presumably... said Tip; if attempting to correct someone, be sure you know what you are on about.

The link site has a picture of a thylacine from 1928 on the page the link goes to. on another page it mentions that the animal "went extinct on the mainland" not in Tasmanian, within the last 2000. So 20 species in 200 years is dire sounding and sadly correct.

Brazilian physicists boycott Dell

@Ben Ruset

"Simple solution -- buy a system from a non-US vendor."

i.e. boycott Dell like he suggests

Church hall bans 'unchristian' yoga for nippers

@just a big marketing mistake

"But honestly, you can pretend it's yoga when your at the YMCA. I would recommend calling it something like 'Noah's animal party' when your at the church."

YMCA - Young Mens Christian Association.

Casio demos 'world's fastest-shooting' digicam

why 300 fps?

Your right I can't see 300 fps that is why I want a camera that can capture 300 fpos. I do sparring and I can not see whathappened in real time. If I watch a 300 fps movie at 30 fps or 10 fps I can see what happened.

Google ponies up $4.6bn for wireless spectrum

re:Microsoft?

No M$ showed it's true colors pretty early. I remember the rumor around DOS 2 or 3 that an internal requirement for the OS to ship was that the competing (and dominate at that time) spreadsheet would not run on the new version.People prety much knew what M$ was up to. Google has not shown M$es level of business practices openly yet.

'Suspicious looking' man hauled off translatlantic flight

WWII liberties

>Would the World War II generation have ducked their heads and begged for liberties to be removed because someone *might* be coming? Or did they fight to preserve those liberties, for everyone?

Actually we (Americans & Canadians) rounded up all our Japanese and shipped them off to camps and confiscated all they owned. After he governemnt security investigations reported that they were loyal citizens and not sympathetic to imperial Japan.

Windows Vista aligned with good management practice

re: Unlike 98

>it should become public domain and free to everyone.

No No No.

I agree with your sentiment in most of the post but that is just insane.

What I did do when I realized there was going to be a cut off in windows XP and I would eventually have to go to Vista was buy a Mac. OS X not perfect but very nice.

Cheers,

Grant

Leopard gets dose of Solaris ZFS

Jobs was pissed at losing his thunder

Jobs was pised sun stole his thunder about ZFS so did not talk about it. Seems to fit pretty well in to Jobs MO. Rember ATI rage leak anyone?

Microsoft too busy to name Linux patents

this story + Antigua + Court ruling MS vs. AT&T

Combine this story plus Antigua story plus story that US courts have no concern about MS violating Software patents overseas and you see even if MS had some valid patents here (which I doubt) it would not affect anyone overseas. and if you set up distro server in Antigua evrything just gets messier to track.

*Last month, Microsoft was on the winning side of a patent squabble when the Supreme Court ruled 7-1 that the company was not responsible to compensate AT&T for patent infringing software sent overseas in Windows gold master disks.

Brinkster.com battens down the hatches

Why do they even have my password in plain text

All the passwords should have been stored encrypted to start with.

No end in sight for Vista's Long Goodbye

Bought a Mac and a bunch of dells with XP when Vista launched

When Vista came out I bought a Mac. I told My client to buy new Laptops before Vista came out so they wouldn't be forced to buy Vista. A little hassle finding good replacement utilities like FTP on the since it OS X is new for me. But now I am glad to see I made the right decession. I spend my time making things better on the machines not just trying to get them to work as well as they did a year or two ago.

Terminator kill-bots to be run by system called 'Skynet'

Good Life will be spared

While it remains useful.