Posts by Wallyb132 216 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2009
There isnt much guess work involved in figuring out who is responsible for traffic congestion, especially if you're Netflix. Verizon can make all the claims in the world about how Netflix is responsible for the problem by choosing bad interconnect points, but if all that are available is bad interconnect points then Netflix really isn't to blame...
I think Netflix is spot on with their name and shame efforts...
Who ever said I used 3.0 in anger, I just simply said it sucked...
And I know very well that WinME and Win2000 were parallel forks, one of Win95/98 one of WinNT, thats why they were listed separately.
And your argument that Win3.1 was rock solid compared to 3.0 (despite being as flaky as hell to any impartial observer) shoots itself right in the foot, because if it was flaky as hell to the casual observer, it was flaky as hell to all observers. It was just simply flaky as hell.
As for Win3.11 being such a minor point release. It may have been a minor point release, but at least for me it was much more stable and fixed many problems. It was as minor of a point release to Win3.1 that Win98se was to Win98.
I appreciate your efforts, but your arguments are invalid...
The mistake Microsoft made was thinking that the whole world was ready to just ditch the traditional style non-touch keyboard/mouse computers and jump head first into using tablets and such.
Now that they've made that mistake, they should realize that after three major attempts, now matter how hard they try, no matter how much makeup they put on the pig, in the end, its still a pig in a dress, and nobody wants to take pig to the prom, even if its in a really pretty dress.
If they dont get win9 right, they're gonna seal their fate. The world is not ready for the single unified interface and it wont be for a long time to come. Even apple gets this, thats why OS X and iOS have different interfaces. If it was time for the single interface across all that is electronic, everyone would be doing it. Although i'm sure apple is very grateful for Microsoft doing all the market research for them. They dont have to travel this road themselves, all they have to do is pay attention to Microsoft's fuck ups.
I expect that Win9 will be pretty good though, Microsoft has a distinct pattern with OS releases dating all the way back to windows 3/3.1 which sucked, 3.11 was pretty good. Win95/Win98 sucked, win98se was good. WinME was an abortion, Win2000 was ok but not finished, WinXP good, Vista sucked, Win7 was good, Win8/8.1 sucks, Win9 should be pretty good.
It seems like every time Microsoft is just about to cast themselves in to the bin of uselessness, they put out an OS that works for the world and save themselves from total doom.
Maybe now that they've got some fresh blood calling the shots they can break this every other OS sucks pattern, but that depends on how much of a sock puppet the new CEO is.
Behind the wheel of a car, i'm at least somewhat in control of what happens around me, and if I take the proper safety precautions and pay attention to the others around me, I have a good chance of staying alive, even if my car develops problems while traveling.
On an aircraft, they tell you to lean forward and put your head between your knees, the reason for that is so that you can kiss your ass goodbye when you hit the ground, or the water, depending on where you are when your aircraft goes down...
I read all the comments saying this story is fake, so I looked a little deeper. This supposedly occurred in Canberra. Looking on the local news site canberratimes.com.au. One would think this would be a big incident that would be all over the local news, but nope, not a word, as a matter of fact mum is the word all just about every Australian news site.
I really hope AMD continues to turn things around. Rory Reid seems to be doing a good job turning AMD around, and I'm glad to see it.
Like Voland's right hand said, their kit is really starting to come of age, and we're really starting to see the returns from their $5.6bn investment in the purchase of ATI.
The forward thinking seeds planted by Hector Ruiz and followed on by Dirk Meyers is starting to come to fruition. I truly hope calmer seas and favorable winds lie ahead for AMD. I've always been a huge fan (and supporter), tried and true, of the little green machine.
Maybe with a little luck they can even produce a few design wins like those from the days of the Athlon and AMD64 that brought them out of obscurity and propelled them into the mainstream.
I haven't spent much time with Windows 8 or 8.1 yet, but I have spent a fair amount of time working with server 2012. it still blows my mind that they put this mentally repressed, logically deficient interface on a server OS.
My first day setting these servers up was hell, literately, I couldn't get shit accomplished, I just about punched the monitor trying to find the shutdown dialog to restart the damn things. After taking as long lunch to gather myself and regroup, I came back and installed a start menu replacement and revived the quick launch area on the taskbar, I installed classic shell, not the best choice but it allowed me to be productive and finally get some work done. what a nightmare.
Once I undid the Microsoft user interface fuck up, working with server 2012 wasn't bad, it does the job its designed to do very well. I set up multiple identical servers in a failover cluster running Hyper-V, I was extremely impressed with how well server 2012 handles multi-path I/O and VM failover. If only Microsoft wouldn't have completely desecrated the user interface they would actually have a golden egg here.
I think it boils to the fact Microsoft cant handle / is afraid of success, they go through all the trouble to make a great OS, but deep down inside they have a defect that just wont allow themselves to be great, so they had to go and bork that great OS by fucking up the user experience.
Win8 - 8.1 has some compelling features as well, like full fledged Hyper-V on the desktop OS and a few other things, but with the mental retardation of the user interface, i just cant bring myself to do it... I recently tried StartIsBack+ on a Win8.1 VM, Its a great start menu replacement and very well polished, but the underlying retartedness of Win8 still oozes thru that band-aid, so at least for now, its Windows 7 and VMWare...
"You mean like endangering people's lives like the Snowden leaks did... is that really good journalism?"
And who's lives would that be? The only life Snowden endangered was his own, outside of that, nothing that has been released to date has endangered anyone's life, or weakened national security or anything else of that nature as the government would like you to believe. The only thing Snowden's leaks have done is shown the world just how slimy and full if shit our governments are.
His leaks haven't even really revealed things that weren't already known, they just confirmed it. The only people truly affected by his leaks are the tinfoil hat crowd, because now they get to run around saying see i told you so! and here we all thought they were just crazy....
Intel's 2-N-1 is hardly new, Asus has their Trio coming out in a month or 2 that runs Android in tablet mode then can switch to run Windows 8 when attached to the base... Intel just like recycling used ideas, they're getting as bad as Microsoft and their 5 year Apple idea recycling program, in which they recycle Apples ideas 5 years later....
Ok Trevor,
I can sympathize with your situation, the guy was actually driving me nuts. To the point that i cut down my reading of the comments by about 85%, because i couldnt stand his constant banter, but this led to a sad realization. Reading the comments was one of the biggest reasons I read El Reg in the first place, So by cutting out the comments, I also cut out my interest in even reading this website. So for a brief period El Reg was replaced in my daily rag lineup by Tech Dirt, but after a while i felt as though something was missing from my daily life. it slowly start to dawn on me that I've been reading this website for the better part of 9 years, long before Eadon was even a forethought on this rag. So here i am reading El Reg once again. I did notice that there was a widespread and extremely welcome lack of Eadon, which has been delightful to say the least.
But Trevor! Let me say first off, I read many of your articles and i agree with the things you say 99% of the time and i find them really insightful, as I too walk the same path as you, I'm an IT specialist and an independent consultant and support mostly Microsoft products. Now, with that said, I must say, I dont mind you using the occasional euphemisms, even those is foreign languages, but for the love of god will you at least fucking spell them right. its ad hominem not ad homenim.
Thank you, that is all
You fail to take in to consideration that this "post" is not a normal assignment for the plods and therefore not in the staffing plan, so most if not all of these plod are on overtime. its not like they have a closet full of spare plods at the station where they can pull out of few extra for an assignment here or there and throw them back when they're done.
On a side note, this whole situation has an air of bullshit about it. The math just doesnt add up.
The math problem goes like this:
A: Sweden says they just want to talk to him about some allegations of (non-violent) sexual abuse. they haven't even charged him with a crime yet.
B: The US is saying heh we dont give a fuck about him, we have no interest in him what-so-ever, nothing to see here, move along. (which we all know is bullshit)
C: The (Cash strapped) UK is spending what works out to be £5.1m a year keeping a post of plods outside the embassy where JA is holed up 24/7/365.
In the equation, how the fuck does A + B justify C.
The allegations against him in Sweden, though somewhat serious in nature, definitely do not warrant a multi-million pound and years long operation to apprehend him, especially considering this bill is being footed by a third party who has no dog in this fight, and no interest in this situation outside of the fact that he's within their borders (I would have said he is on their soil, but he's actually on Ecuadorian soil).
All parties involved need to switch off the bullshit emitters and come clean. Sweden needs to just step out of the picture and the US to stop their bullshit and just unseal the indictment that we all know damn good and well has already been filed and is being kept sealed, outline the charges against him and issue an international warrant for his arrest.
This whole smoke and mirrors charade is disheartening and disgusting. The whole reason the US wont lay their cards on the table is because they plan to lay some seriously bullshit, trumped up and over-zealously harsh charges on him, similar to the "Aiding the Enemy" charges against Bradly Manning, and because most, if not all of the extradition treaties the US has in place with other nations have a dual criminality clause, and with the scope of charges they plan to bring, most other nations would refuse extradition based on the fact that the charges / punishment do not fit the crime (if there even was one on Julian Assange's or wikileaks part)
But I just recently purchased 2 Travelstar 7K1000 7200RPM 1TB drives to replace my 2 WD Scorpio Black 320GB drives. Historically I have always used WD Scorpio Black Drive, their performance and reliability have always been top notch, and lets not forget the 5 year warranty. As my 2 320GB drives started filling up I began considering the replacement options, which usually only included the current available WD drives, Seagate has been off my radar for a long time and i've always been skeptical of Hitachi drives. Over my years of doing PC/Laptop repairs one of my odd quirks is that i dont throw old/dead hard drives out. Looking at the stack of dead Hitachi drives makes one at least think twice before buying their drives.
When it came time to actually buy the replacements, the 7K1000's had been out for a while, long enough that chronic failure rates should've started surfacing by now. I had read that HGST had made some major improvements in power consumption, performance and reliability and that these drives were pretty solid, so i decided to give them a whirl.
So far, these drives kick ass. I benchmarked them against my old drives and was quite surprised at how much faster they were, granted the WD's were 5 years old but still. I'm pretty impressed so far.
A quick google search turned up this article on huffingtonpost.com:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/heather-hayes-pantless-arrest_n_2877913.html
If you take a moment to browse huffingtonposts.com article you will quickly understand why this fellow chose the xbox.
I'm curious how he landed himself in the relationship in the first place. Was the xbox his escape from the relationship, or the cause of it?
I call bullshit on the statement made in response to the death star petition that said:
The Administration doesn't support blowing up planets...
Bullshit, the administration nuked the moon 3 years ago for no good reason, my guess is that Obama was practicing for when he causes the senate to implode, creates the Galactic Empire and declares him Emperor... He cant build the death star yet, its too soon, people would become suspicious...
Well this certainly adds an interesting twist to things. I can imagine this is going to cause some serious headaches for the researchers...
The interesting part of the story is the figures given at the end. The number of phishing attacks went up by 50% but the loses due to these attacks only increased by 22%. So all in all, even though the number of attacks is increasing, they are becoming less successful.
It kills me every time i read about someone getting taken by phishing attacks, its really not hard to avoid turning yourself into a (broke) victim. A little common sense can go a long way, but common sense isn't as common as its name implies...
"$10m fine when the bribery resulted in contracts worth $54m, seriously? "
The total contract was $54m, not their profit. The average ballpark profit from big contracts is about 20% +/-. ironically 20% of $54m is $10.8m. So after the settlement of $10m , that leaves $800k and i'm sure the lawyers will make short work of that. So all said and done, once the dust settles, IBM will have made a whole bunch of nothing on these contracts...
So these settlements aren't as weak handed as they seem. Often times they're designed to chew up any and all profits made from the illicit ventures. Leaving the only profiting entity from these illegal act being the government. Which is why they dont throw these exec's in jail, the government cant afford for them to think twice about slipping a bribe, or anything else for that matter.
These companies decide to show their true colors and let their users know they're shit and that their privacy / rights is worth less than an advertising dollar. They all of a sudden decide that they're above all that is holy and start granting themselves rights to your copyrighted material, and its perfectly ok, because its written in the T&C's...
Adobe tried this same shit not too long ago* with their T&C's for Photoshop express, giving themselves complete and irrevocable control over your content...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/adobe_photo_pimping/
The end result for Adobe was the same as well. Revise the T&C's and tell the public "you misunderstood our intentions, we never intended to use your content for any ill mannered purpose, we love our customers, we wouldnt do that."
Bullshit... The only thing that was misunderstood was Instagram thinking they could slide this past the public unnoticed, because nobody reads the T&C's anyway, right? or that the general public is too stupid to realize what they're agreeing to.
These T&C's are written and reviewed by lawyers, very carefully, a misunderstanding, my ass! It states their intentions right in the T&C;s. To say it was a misunderstanding is a bigger insult to its users than the fact that they tried to pull this crap in the first place. The CEO should save face and just be honest and say: whoops busted, my bad! sorry, wont try that again...
Instagram's Updated T&C's:
"Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."
"Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service."
Adobe's Photoshop Express T&C's from their attempt to pull this shit:
Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
Adobe tries to go a little farther than Instagram did, but the general spirit is still the same.
*Apparently, my perception of time is badly skewed and "not so long ago" turns out to be 5 years ago...
Poison every market it can get in to. Make it so no other company can do business in that market, let alone want to business in that market. Guarantee, by contract, that no other operation the world over will ever get a better price than you. Next it will, by contract, forbid the publishers from distributing its good thru other vendors period, once it has sufficiently dwindled down the competition to the point of irrelevance.
The is just another example of why the people of the world need go see a doctor about a rectal cranial extraction and stop feeding the animals.
If people would stop buying their crap, they would stop acting like they own the world.
Your comment was spoken like a man whos walked in my shoes...
Windows 7 works well for me, Its fast, stable and hard to break... why microsoft thought it was a good idea to step away from that is beyond me. when i read the headline last week about sinofsky's departure, i cheered! I didnt even bother read the article, i didnt need to. i didnt need to know the reason, just the fact that it happened was good enough for me.
I am in a position similar to many others who read this website, i am the one people in my world come to for information about technology. i am the one who they ask about what to use, what works and how to fix things that dont. when people ask me about windows 8, i simply tell them i dont know, i used it long enough to figure out how to put the start menu back in, and to restore aeroglass, then i shut down the VM it was running on and haven't started it since. i see no compelling reason to even bother with it, because unless they need the metro UI, people in my world wont be using it, so there really is no point in working with it, period.
I have had people purchase new computers and bring them to me and ask me to fix the UI, so i formatted the machines and installed Windows 7! I then explained to them that that was the only fix available...
"Jail time would be far easier."
Apparently you have no understanding of the California Youth Authority (CYA) or the California legal system.
Had he chosen to go to trial and been convicted, the same or similar restrictive punishments would have been imposed on top of any incarceration, there would have been a probation term imposed as well, likely to be the same 6 years or longer.
For those who think he was better off taking the jail time, you are sadly misguided. The California youth authority is no joke, its not some country club where kids are taught to behave and learn the difference between right and wrong. CYA is a gladiator school, plain and simple. A kid like this, a 15 year old nerdly script kiddy would get devoured. Sending him to CYA, he would get the shit kicked out of him multiple times, his demeanor would become violent and he would spent the rest of his life in and out of prison
With the whole direction of apple at the moment, this is starting to resemble the first "Look and Feel" lawsuit between apple and microsoft 30 years ago, and just like that lawsuit, apple came out strong in the beginning but lost their ass in the end, to the point they almost went under, and, it was microsoft themselves who prevented apples demise by investing $150m in apple. the difference this time around is that Steve Jobs wont be there many years down the road, after they run themselves in to the ground, to save their ass...
"... screwed up by telling the truth."
Telling the truth huh? why is that the truth?
is it because only black people live in New Orleans?
its it because black people cant swim?
is it because black people were smart enough to get the fuck out before the storm hit?
Is it because black people are poor and couldnt afford to get the fuck out before the storm hit?
Sir please do explain to me why this statement is true?
So far there has been one death in Louisiana related to this storm, and guess what, it wasnt a black person...
Apple Should have to give up the profits it made from selling its competing products during the period that the ipad ripoffs were being detained x3 and also should be liable for paying NT-K for all lost revenue past, present and future as a result of this little legal shanghai x3.
If the courts started handing out judgements along those lines Apple might rethink its actions before dragging companies in to court.
Google is being taken to task over android making it hard to switch search engines and prioritizing google products in the results...
So when is Microsoft going to be taken to ask over WP7? they dont make it hard to change search engines, they make it impossible, oh and bing also prioritizes results, except when its copying googles results...
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