* Posts by FFred

23 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2009

Kit attacks Microsoft keyboards (and a whole lot more)

FFred
Gates Horns

Obscurity ?

XOR isn't even security through obscurity. I wonder why they even bothered, typical Microsoft botchering up something simple. Either you use a cypher or you don't. XOR is just stupid. They should have stuck with double ROT13. The security is pretty much the same, but at least it has a *double layer* of protection.

Whatever happened to the email app?

FFred
Troll

Incredimail ??

I wasn't really sure what that was so I looked it up. Apparently it's Hello Kitty Email meets MySpace cuteness (puppies !!!) and it only runs on Windows.

It's obviously an essential piece of kit. I instantly installed it in my virtualized XP.

Then I reduced the memory size and I watched it suffer. It was great !

Kentucky woman breastfeeds sheriff's deputy

FFred
FAIL

Spewing fluids and the abuse thereof (yuck)

Any body fluid ?

How about perspiration ?

I'm glad I don't (that I know) and probably won't have any kids. I certainly don't want to have to undergo any special training to be allowed to manage all the stuff they continuously spew out of their various orifices during their early years. I'd have to hire a plastic clad nurse. With my luck she (or he) would come with warts and weigh 135 kilos.

And there have been *many* cases of female humans actively abusing (sexually even, eww, gross) the offspring of the species. Won't anybody think of the grubs ?

Uh, underlings ?

I agree that today's society should be taken out back and shot.

FFred
Joke

So a redneck mom goes into a bank...

"Put the money into a paper bag or I squeeze it into your eye !"

Microsoft unplugs middling Windows server

FFred
Jobs Horns

Cloud computing

Your data, we wants it

World of Google zombies mistake news story for Facebook

FFred
FAIL

I gave up on users a long time ago

For what it's worth I stopped a while ago.

Now I just recommend people stick to paper and pencil. For the few who are literate. Or a tape recorder.

I used to think that people could use Linux merely because it had the exact same kind of window/menu/icon interface as pretty much any other system. But then users can't use any other system. How silly of me.

Google yanks IE6 love from web apps

FFred
Coat

Bastard Google

First they don't even support Gopher, now they remove IE6 !

At least lynx still works. Hrumpf.

Mine's the one with the VT120 in the pocket.

Schwartz puts comforting arm around stricken Sun

FFred
Black Helicopters

12 000 candles ?

Damn, that's a lot of CO2 ! It must be a plan to flood Ellison's beach house.

FFred

Sex

You aren't allowed to have sex in the US. That's why there are so many storks over there.

Verified by Visa bitchslapped by Cambridge researchers

FFred
Coat

Duh

"Merchants who use it push liability for fraud back to banks, who in turn push it on to cardholders,"

Sounds like security to me. It makes the bank's money more secure. Wasn't that the point ?

I'll pay cash, thank you. Where's my wallet ?

Scott McNealy signs off in style

FFred
Pint

Alas

I fear that Sun will go the way of Silicon Graphics (and I don't believe the current SGI has much to do with the Silicon Graphics of yore).

I'll have one to the memory of Sun.

Lost mobiles to pile up in taxis in run up to Xmas

FFred
Pint

As a part time cab driver...

I only work as a cab driver a couple months par year, I also run a seasonal second hand used tech shop on e-bay.

Anyway I don't see what all the fuss is about. It's good for the economy.

Prevx blames Microsoft for black hawk screen down

FFred
FAIL

Sooo

Back is the new blue ?

On a semi related topic, I've been trying to "downgrade" my Windows 7 prerelease which is a Windows "all included" version to Windows home (which I actually bought directly from Microsoft.

Except downgrading is not allowed. So I theoretically have to re-download all of my Steam games (which is what the Windows partition is for).

I'm still working on it (there are apparently hacks around this, some of which don't seem to work) but this is one of the many reasons that have kept me off Windows for the past 15 years (working with the MS people at the time and knowing a number of inside things was another...)

So I run Linux and it works for me (I also worked with the Apple people). I'd still like to be able to run my games and I'm really not into consoles, so unfortunately I still dedicate a disk to our evil overlords and spin it up every now and then.

Kent Police exceeded powers in too-tall photographer case

FFred
Flame

Easy fix

Obviously there should be more terrorism in Kent so that the police force starts to learn its job.

Hoaxed US Chamber thumps pranksters with blunt instrument

FFred
Pint

Obvious fake US chamber of commerce guy

He didn't even have a pencil over his ear. That was a dead giveaway IMO.

Obviously those pranksters poorly researched their subject.

Aussie Sex Party in evangelist head-to-head

FFred
Flame

Still going on in this day and age ?

I find it appalling that today, in 1609, some people still fall for this kind of crap.

Um, wait...

They should just sacrifice the evangelists, it should "purify" the place in no time. And the country at the same time.

North Wales Police institute new happiness law

FFred
WTF?

Firearms car ?

WTF is a firearms car ?

Has Q been selling his wares on eBay ?

As a semi-pro photographer, wherever I go a few cameras follow. Astoundingly, so far I haven't been arrested in Britain. Maybe I ought to go to Wales.

Because it's so obvious that "terrists" will go about with a big DSLR and a discrete 70-200 in order to get the sharpest possible pictures. And then they'll probably upload them to Flickr's "Terror" group too... So much better than a quick sketch.

Now I think the police just do what they're told to (and a lot of them, not being too bright to start with, just go ahead with that), but the real problem is whoever starts them on that track. Those people are often elected officials, and are obviously not playing with a full deck. They should be put away (or preferably taken back and shot).

Samsung GT-B2100 Solid Extreme rugged phone

FFred
Thumb Down

Not rugged enough

When I'm diving 600m deep in acid, I want to be able to take pictures while listening to the radio dammit !

This is "rugged lite", you can actually lift it with one hand, what kind of phone is this ?

Also it doesn't even run Linux and doesn't have a full keyboard. How am I to email headquarters when the Russian sub taps the well head at -870m on our polar oil well ?

Pitiful I say.

I'm not even going to comment on the lack of poisoned spikes or flame throwers.

Google Android future haunted by fragmentation past

FFred
FAIL

Phone quality is beyond crap

Most of the phones I've used, even the simple ones, managed to have their system crash on a regular (if not daily, thanks Sony !) basis. Whatever the brand The quality of those products is just atrocious. Even Microsoft never released anything this shoddy.

The best way to break Linux is to give it to phone manufacturers. Those people will wreck anything.

Second open-source Silverlight hits beta

FFred
FAIL

Silverlight should go away, and take Moonlight with it

I still haven't seen a single non-Windows machine with Silverlight installed, and then those only had it because it was somehow pushed with the updates. I've never tried it (I met maybe 3 or 4 sites using it) and I'm certainly not about to pollute my machine with this crap which probably doesn't even work outside of the few test cases on the dev site (as usual).

I've seen very few non-US sites using this thing and there doesn't seem to be that many in the US either. And hopefully we'll eventually be rid of those crappy add-ons with HTML5 (crossing fingers). They're not indexable, not bookmarkable and make a mess of content. Thankfully most clueless web agencies have stopped using them site-wide (except for the "artsy" types, by far the worst of the lot to work with).

This crud should just die a quick death. It's pitiful how bad it is.

CentOS back from brink of death

FFred
WTF?

Why all the fuss ?

All of this doesn't make much sense to me. The business world already has standardized on a distribution. Most places run RedHat because a proper contract makes the PHBs feel good, whether it's useful or not. Other distributions are only used when the admins have their say (doesn't happen that often in non tech places) or in smaller shops.

And even if CentOS vanished tomorrow, DimeOS would take over in a couple weeks. Its users probably wouldn't even have time to be impacted.

And re. the Mac, an awful lot of the people who have tried OS X (myself included) quickly came back to Linux / Unix. That horrible mess with its mangled filesystem, numerous quirks and poor i18n was just as bad as Windows to me. Unless you needed an application that ran in it, few people I know stuck with Apple's system, especially given their tendency to not be very open (and the pain of dealing with their users).

I know my iBook has been a doorstop for two years now, replaced it with a random Samsung PC that works just as well, doesn't always require an external mouse (X11 with 1 button is just too painful) and runs a KDE desktop just fine.

And now I can easily type all of the Latin-9 charset without looking up a table, in a logical way, and I have a lazy mouse focus which does *not* pop windows to the front. All of which are among the minimum essentials I expect from any current machine (Windows doesn't deliver either in that area : you *still* can't reliably type in French in Windows).

MacOS certainly isn't the best thing out there unless you set your requirements pretty low. It's better than Windows XP but that's not saying much.

From tracking sex performance to tracking sex offenders...

FFred
Flame

There's an app for that

Ok, the apps for the stupid Apple phone have long gone from stupid to inane and are now entering the surreal but now that they start mapping [group], I expect the whole thing to self destruct any time.

Please make one that maps non Apple phone users and nearby weapon dealers so this can finally be sorted out in the streets.

And I won't even comment on the "sex offender" thing (pee in the street ? sex offender !). People who download this map app should be scheduled for immediate termination.

Cowon D2+ DAB

FFred
Thumb Up

The D2 already was a great player

Not quite sure if the DAB is a worthy addition (I would prefer RDS on FM) but the base of the D2 is very solid with great sound, especially compared to the rest of the market. The radio was an especially nice touch for me since I use it quite a lot (France has some great radio programs).

And of course the long battery life is a boon. Definitely a winner for me.

I also use mine for video every now and then and despite the small screen it works fine (you probably don't want a film with a huge amount of details though). I had to tweak a video conversion script to make files for it but it works pretty well now (never tried the Cowon tools since I don't run Windows).

I once had a Creative for a couple months before it found a new life via eBay. The thing was just unusable.