Posts by Asgard

Dead Apple titan Steve Jobs, a flippin' in his grave

@AC, no one is buying your pathetic argument that I'm weak for wanting to stand up to deceitful Narcissists yet you still persist in seeking to label me as "a wishy washy tree hugging bearded sandal wearing apologist liberal conscientious objector."

Everything in your attitude AC is seeking to belittle me as we can see from above. You know I speak the truth, its why you are so riled up. So I don't need to meet you to see how consistent your low attitude is towards me. Your words are endless manipulation because you don't want us to see the truth. I do understand and you don't like it.

You see narcissists talk of bravery and want to portray themselves as brave, yet I know they secretly live in fear and its a fear they fear ever admitting (even to themselves) so they seek to laugh it off and hide it and deny it. Their fear is of allowing anyone to ever have power over them again the way they suffered power over them as a child from abusive controlling parents. They grow up into adults who feel compelled to defend themselves endlessly against all around and they will do that by any means which includes lies, manipulation and abuse. Some will even kill in their act to suppress and control others. They have to be stopped from treating others this way. Their kind are even the reason their kind exist. One generation of narcissists abuses the next.

The problem is for a narcissist its very hard to even admit any of this to themselves because even the act of admitting it feels like to them an act of cowardice, giving in, so they are trapped (by themselves) unable to admit it to even themselves and they are endlessly abusive and abuse all around them. Yet its their self-interested abuse of others, seeking to manipulate, deceive and even in some cases kill any who try to stop them is why they have to be stopped. We all have to stand up to them and standing up to them isn't weakness.

Narcissists are the enemy of us all. Narcissists are ultimately the reason war exists. Without Narcissists there would be no war. Narcissists fight endlessly for self-interested power.

Its why we have to expose them and stop them gaining positions of power in society, but the Narcissists will do anything to hold power and to cling desperately to power and they don't care how much harm and hardship they cause everyone else in their endless desperate need to maintain power over people. THEY HAVE TO BE STOPPED. If we eliminated all narcissists on the planet war would be obsolete instantly and narcissists very much are a minority of the population. Its just they are a loud and often very aggressive minority.

So whilst I feel pity for Narcissists, I will not allow Narcissists to rule over us. Narcissists are too self-interested to ever treat others with any fairness, empathy or respect. Such words to Narcissists are interpreted as weakness but we both know that's a lie AC. Narcissists don't want to consider others. Narcissists don't want to give an inch to others. Confront Narcissists and its an endless sullen attitude, peppered with bouts of aggressive insults and abuse to suppress others.

Narcissists are the enemy of us all. So AC, pick a side, but don't forget the Narcissists side are very much in the minority and they will loose the more people learn to see through their lies and manipulation. Welcome to the Internet. Knowledge is power over Narcissists. The power to finally expose and stop them. The one thing they do not want yet they are their own worst enemy, because their every move exposes them more on the Internet. The only way to make a better fairer world is to stop Narcissists and they have to be stopped.

Re: That's not courage at all.

@AC: "Ahh a wishy washy tree hugging sandal wearing bearded apologist liberal"

Hey AC, you start with a blatant straw man argument, seeking to in this case portray me as weak when in fact I talk of standing up to the tyrants to see them punished and thrown out of power, whilst you AC show all too clearly that you just want to hand them more servile fawning praise and yet more power. Its your kind AC who are the enemy of us all.

Narcissists always seek to portray themselves and others like them as powerful, whilst demonize opponents as weak, i.e. "wishy washy tree hugging sandal wearing bearded apologist liberal". Thank you, I must be hitting a tender nerve.

Narcissists are endless liars and manipulators and I seek to expose their lies and endless manipulation because their greatest weakness is people learning the truth about them. Because without followers the Narcissists are nothing and they know that, as I am sure you do. Which is why you tried to undermine me. I hit a nerve. After all you have tried to portray me standing up to Narcissists as a sign of weakness, which shows your words are really nothing but lying manipulative bullshit.

I stand by what I said. The world doesn't need these vain arrogant dishonest narcissists and never has and we will only advance as a civilization when tyrants like them are excluded from power over others in every country. I look forward to more of them being exposed by the Internet for what they are. The more people learn about Narcissists, the more power they loose to deceive everyone.

Re: That's not courage at all.

@"History is littered with people, Alexander the Great, Montgomery, Patton, Nelson, Grant, Lee, Julius Ceasar to name but a few."

They were all vain arrogant dishonest delusional narcissists and that is at best, because in a lot of these cases, they showed a psychopathic lack of thought and empathy for the harm they caused others. These are not great people, they just wanted everyone to think they were great, just like all narcissists throughout history.

There wouldn't even have been wars if *all* power hungry narcissistic tyrants were kept out of power. But then their kind have always forced people to do what they want (and lied and cheated to get what they want) and there is no upper limit to how much power they want to dictate their wishes to everyone. So no matter how much power they get they always want more. They want more because secretly they fear others with power and fear they could loose their power and so they continue to try to grab ever more power whenever they can. If you don't believe me just try to stand in any narcissists way and then you will truly see what their kind are really like. Opposing them is the same to them as trying to take away their power and then see what happens to you if you try?

The world doesn't need them and never has and we will only advance as a civilization when tyrants are excluded from power over others in every country. Thankfully the Internet now allows us to collectively expose them like never before but that is unfortunately very much a work in progress at this point in history.

But I have to say I am utterly sicked that Tim Cook sees and tries to represent such delusional arrogance to deceive (only the gullible) as some kind of “gift”. But then he is trying to rewrite history just like his predecessor. All narcissists are by definition vain arrogant lying dishonest deceitful people. Believing anything narcissists say without question is the first mistake of all gullible people and has been throughout history. Unfortunately history also shows there is all to many gullible people, but then that is made even worse by the tyrants always targeting, throwing out and even in some cases utterly destroying anyone who seek to expose them for the arrogant lying dishonest narcissists that they are.

The world doesn't need them and never has, its just their kind seek to represent their kind as needed and important and the kind of people to look up to. Just like narcissists always have done.

Facebook goes offline, shares stabilise at merely disastrous level

@"Some Facebookers said they were unable to access the website for up to two hours"

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced ... Well it was a good dream while it lasted!

Vatican in pact with Microsoft to initiate world's youths into Office

Also "Catholic education" is another oxymoron. I find it so paradoxical that I consider it blatant deceit, which is ultimately at the core of all religions but the follows have been taught to defend their right to be deceived with such zeal that they cannot stop to learn they are wrong, so they never learn to see they are being deceived, which is exactly what the leaders of the cults want and so their stone age propaganda perpetuates.

By refusing to hear they are wrong and being taught to look away whenever anyone tells them they are wrong, then how can they truely ever learn they are wrong and so its no wonder they carry on believing they are right. Yet that is exactly what their leaders want, to maintain their position as leaders. Its also why religions talk of love, yet fail to show love by following their leaders wishes to inflict such vile contempt on anyone or any group who their leaders don't like. The cult leaders words are endless Machiavellian deceit.

Society no longer needs cult leaders with their stone age propaganda and Machiavellian lies. Target the lies of the leaders and why they lie and the cults will die out because cults need followers to follow their leaders words.

ICO on new Cookie Law: 'Don't expect torrent of enforcement action'

@FatsBrannigan: "Why not complain to the ICO"

You seriously naively believe anything you say to the useless ICO will be listened to?! ... How stupid are you!?! ... The ICO have consistently done fuck all about their endless toothless gross incompetence going back for years, not least of which, their whole appalling apathetic handling of the whole Phorm spying saga. They don't want to listen to people.

@ICO: 'Don't expect torrent of enforcement action'

So no change then for the toothless, witless, useless ICO.

Steve Jobs' death clears way for rumoured 4in 'iPhone 5' screen

Re: Used to love my iphone

@AC: "Apple should do 2 different phones - one with the same size screen and one with a larger one."

So for this "larger one", you want a phone bigger than an iphone, but smaller than an iPad? That would make it an iPhad!. Sounds ideally suited to the fans.

Crooks sell skint fanbois potatoes instead of iPhones

Re: Indeed...

"I bought a bag of potatoes but ended up with a bloody iPhone grrrr"

Well they are both filled with chips and have rounded corners

Compare The Market can't touch web filth extension - simples

So what happens if they (in the future) go ahead and open up the extensions to be any word? ... Due to this legal ruling, that would mean trademark and copyright holders would then need to register potentially an unlimited number of versions of their domain name. This legal ruling gets increasingly unworkable the more extension names that appear.

BBC deletes Blue Peter from BBC One

Re: Ignore the Blue Peter angle for a moment....

@"relatively few shows that young people list as their faves"

When I was a kid the BBC was fun and entertaining and even interesting at times and yes, dare I say it, even at times educational. Now its reality TV, reality TV and more bloody reality TV, just like all the other channels.

Look at what we have lost. I still (to this day) love watching cartoons, yet you can hardly ever see any new cartoons on TV anymore. So no wonder then, that the UK cartoon making industry is going out of business. They can't get on TV any more. I can also count dozens of sitcoms and series I loved watching in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Yet now I can't find almost anything like that these days. I also loved watching many scientific documentaries on the BBC, yet channel 4 has more science than BBC 4 these days and what documentaries we have left are unfortunately all too often dumbed down these days. That's just a few examples I can give. Genre after genre of TV shows of all kinds are being killed off to be replaced with yet more reality bloody TV.

Television is increasingly playing to (and dumbed down to) the Lowest Common Denominator these days. If they wipe out almost everything other than reality TV, is there any wonder more and more people are loosing interest in the majority of Television these days. Yet the bloody minded TV executives still refuse to listen. They are determined that ever more reality TV is the answer. They don't want to listen. :(

Graphics shocker: Nvidia virtualizes Kepler GPUs

One way to reduce latency is regional and local data centres and with the very high computing demands of GPU applications (in for example games) they will need a few data centres per country. That will reduce latency (for *most* users, depending on how they connect). However users will need as much GPU power as 1 current generation GPU card per active user, so I don't see how companies will meet that level of demand.

For example, Diablo III is crippling servers as we speak and historically new big games very often hammer servers, so if the servers also had to serve real time graphics, they would need to be vastly more powerful servers ... It would be awesome to see that much computing power built into data centres, but I think we are at least a few years from that being practical. But this approach would also provide a vast resource of computing power for not just games, but also for research as well. :)

But that said, personally I still want my own GPU card and I can't see that ever changing, and for some applications it makes sense to have the GPU in the PC etc.. but for some games I can see some publishers trying to go down this route, but it wouldn't appeal to me for most applications.

Best and the Rest: ARM Mini PCs

Re: money needed to run a viable business

@Ken Hagan. The OS market is a very poor example. The OS market is established. Also its big enough to provide corporate support contracts. Also Microsoft have effectively "First mover advantage" as their OS grew to desktop dominance during the 1980s. None of which applies to or helps a new hardware start up company now. e.g.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_mover_advantage

Also look at how so many people talk about the pricing of the Raspberry Pi. Its a key decider for many users and understandably so, as they can have a few Raspberry Pi boards for the price of one other ARM board. The Raspberry Pi will effect the financial viability of competitor companies and many won't survive.

Re: Development costs

@Andrew James: "The Raspberry Pi is a not for profit venture. So of course its going to be cheaper than the others that are adding a fat margin on the top of the bill of materials."

Its not fat margins, its money needed to run a viable business.

Buying components in smaller quantities costs more per component than mass market quantities. Making PCBs in smaller quantities costs more per board than mass market product.

The Raspberry Pi is great news for programmers and a lot of electronics engineers as well. However the Raspberry Pi signals the end of the line for small electronic start up companies designing and selling their own ARM boards, as none of them will be able to compete on cost, as their start up development costs plus running costs means they cannot start a company. There is no way they can sell boards for as low as a Raspberry Pi. So this is the end of electronics engineers starting up their own ARM board based companies and I can see this also driving existing small companies like gumstix.com slowly out of business which would be a real shame.

So sure people can argue survival in niches like the Gumstix boards are a bit smaller, but for the majority of their customers a Raspberry Pi would do just as well, so with the loss of many sales to Raspberry Pi, Gumstix will struggle to survive and I would say Gumstix are one of the very strongest contenders out there. Many other smaller companies than Gumstix are going to be wiped out of business by Raspberry Pi.

So its not fat margins, its simply money needed to run a viable business.

VW STUNS WORLD+DOG WITH REAL HOVER-CAR!

@"Where are the brakes"

If that thing landed at speed, the passengers would gerbil in it :)

Carmageddon coder seeks gamers' cash for revamp

WOW!

They are asking for $400k, yet in just one day, they have raised over $100k!

Looks like this is going to get developed and they are going to get the extra money they need to make it a good game. :)

... and about time too. The games publishers have had an iron grip over developer funding for too long. With sites like Kickstarter the developers can bypass the publishers to go direct to the players in great enough numbers to get funding. (So bye bye to companies like EA and about time too).

Now we need the same to happen for Music, Films and sci-fi TV Series where fans all around the world help fund the development and everyone on the creative side can bypass the controlling middle men. So another nail or two in the coffins of companies like Fox, Sky and EA. :)

Google's self-driving car snags first-ever license in Nevada

@"I can see a future where ..."

@"I can see a future where manually driving a vehicle will be illegal."

I think you are right long term, but that could be many decades from now.

But even shorter term with cars driving themselves, it'll make Johnny Cabs from the film Total Recall entirely possible. Some airports and city projects are already experimenting with pod like cars similar to Johnny Cabs.

But longer term that could even make the need to own a car obsolete for most people. It could also mean the end of buses and coaches and even trains.

Plus lorries could drive themselves, so almost all goods could get automatically shipped around the country entirely by machines and even deliveries to homes could in time become automated with postal robots working off the backs of delivery vehicles working out of automated regional delivery centers.

Theres also a lot of good that can be achieved with network wide traffic flow management to allow easing of traffic jams where robot vehicles cooperate with each other to keep vehicles moving. Road traffic made up of all robot controlled vehicles, would also for example allow emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire engines to order all cars in front of them to make way for them, so the emergency vehicles can get through much faster which would save lives.

Apple's HTML5 bet against Android extermination

Apple doesn't do cheap low end mass market. Their target market is always high priced early adopters. (Which is all too often usually smug bastards who want to wave their latest shiny shiny in your face to say hey look at me, they have it and you don't. Dyson are playing to the same market with their products. Some car companies do the same thing, but the problem Apple have is that their technology driven markets suffer obsolescence very quickly. People always need vacuum cleaners and cars, but phones and computers etc.. become old very quickly).

Therefore Apple do get good early growth figures in a new market, but over time, they cannot compete as price cuts reduce profit margins on newer phones and computers etc... Its at that point companies like Apple have to reinvent themselves and target new markets. e.g. from Macs to ipod, iphone, ipad.

ICO mulls stiffer probe into Google Street View Wi-Fi slurp

Re: ICO will just roll over

"Here in the states, the FCC did just that." ... "I believe the one thing that makes it difficult to use the Wiretap law is"

... is really because of projects like this, i.e.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

The governments will never truly move against any corporation to stop them, because the governments are seeking to spy on everyone, on a vastly greater scale than any corporation. All we will get (as we keep getting) is government murmurs and non committal words of wanting to stop the corporations, followed by endless procrastination and when pushed, stubborn sullenness and obstructionism because they don't really want to act. They know their spying plans are worse than any corporation, so they can't act to stop spying, because any law change would make it harder for them to spend so many billions building centers such as the above example (and they are building 2 of them).

(Its worth comparing the power usage of the above data centers with even that of the worlds biggest super computers because its a lot more than any (public) supercomputer. Imagine what you could do with 65MW of power and rooms full of FPGA based massively paralleled semi-hard coded decryption. They don't even need to decrypt it all now, just the high priority stuff for now, and then just plan to wait until they can decrypt more of it later).

Their aspirations are vast, so there is no way they will really want to stop what they are doing. So when you say ... "If this were our own governments doing this... we would be rioting in the streets." ... They are ... :(

Microsoft hikes volume prices by more than a third

Re: MS on the verge

@"plus the mighty MS office"

I encountered this same obstacle, but over time, I was able to encourage the whole company to move over to Open Office. :)

Also I got them all onto Firefox. :)

I was moving them slowly towards Linux, one program at a time. :)

The sales pitch for Open Office is, its free, it can do everything most users want out of MS Office, they can even have a free copy of Open Office at home and it can even produce PDF's for manuals etc.. Tell that to your bosses. Times are hard, bosses want to save money. :)

Google KNEW Street View cars were slurping Wi-Fi

@"there'll still be a hardcore of naive imbeciles"

I totally agree, they truly are sickening. They clearly have never learned to understand the old saying, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Every time more power over people is created in society, someone subverts it for themselves and with great knowledge over others, comes great power.

But what gets me the most with the followers is that they actually think its us who are wrong, because we can't see that Google just have good intentions. The do no harm bullshit has to be one of the biggest bits of corporate propaganda in the past few decades and its deeply sickening that anyone falls for it.

Panasonic touts monster 8k by 4k 'flickerless' plasma

@wwwwoooooowwwwwwww...me want!

me want too, as my monitor! :)

CISPA passes House of Representatives vote

You want an exact definition, then use psychological profiling.

@Steve Knox: "That is why getting the definitions right is so critically important, and simply complaining about the tyranny or trying to fight it without understanding it is the real distraction."

I was defining it, specifically as a cluster B disorder known as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. A psychological profile is far more powerful and far more precise than any political description of their ideology, ultimately because their ideology is a lie to them. They don't believe their ideology, only their deceived followers believe their ideology, because that is what the Narcissists want people to believe. Its a game to lure you in and deceive you into allowing them into power. Power is what they really want. Narcissists care little for us in any way. When they show compassion for our lives, its an act.

Some people cannot seem to grasp the idea that there are people in this world who lie relentlessly to get what they want. Therefore you cannot believe what they say, because they don't believe what they say. Only their fooled followers believe it. The Narcissists and Psychopaths (known specifically as an ASPD (i.e. Antisocial Personality Disorder)) are relentless liars. Therefore their political ideologies they wish us to believe they are following is also a lie. They are not following that ideology, they just want you to believe they have these intentions and beliefs. Its all a manipulative game to them.

Therefore you cannot judge them on their words, so you have to judge them on their actions. Frankly I think animals are often a better judge of humans than many humans because animals can only judge on how they are treated, whereas humans foolishly listen to endless lies and believe them all too often as the truth. Judge the control freaks on their actions, then you will see we are fighting to stop extreme cluster B Personality Disorders gaining positions of power over society and that has always been the problem throughout history, regardless of what they call their political parties and claim to be their intentions.

Cluster B Personality Disorders also explains why they are capable of extreme acts of contempt towards other humans, all so they can gain and hold onto power. It also shows why they are a danger to society. It also allows their actions to be predicted, because their Narcissistic power hungry self-interest dominates their thinking.

Re: Argh!

It is all about control. For example: "users can now only be shared with the government for investigations into ... protecting people from 'harm'"

Talk about open ended, so perfect for adding control whenever they want. For example, how long before harm is seen and defined by politicians as harm to their careers, which they seek to define as stopping public unrest and protests at their party. Against protesters this law allows the politicians far more power to control than even the Watergate era to spy on, hunt down, undermine, setup, disrupt and even destroy the lives of their political opponents.

At which point, ironically their society is primed and ready for a revolution. The control freak politicians seem hell bent on this course of action, yet ironically they won't stop a revolution by spying on everyone, they will start the revolution against their ever increasingly totalitarian control.

Its all a pursuit of power to control, but then politicians are career power seekers, so its no wonder their need for control is shown in their actions and thinking towards others and history shows some of them will do almost anything to undermine, setup and destroy opponents. The tyrants never seen to learn from history but then they refuse to hear they can be wrong, so its no wonder they never really learn they are wrong. They are always too busy thinking about themselves and not really thinking about others. But then the very act of seeking power over someone else is in itself inherently narcissistic in its unfairness. Unfortunately the vast majority of politicians have a very serious and very recognizable personality disorder and some are very dangerous indeed, but they learn to hide their true intentions over a lifetime of deceit.

Which is why societies throughout history have fought to prevent their ever increasing spying and control because they cannot be trusted. They are not interested in fairness and representing us, they are interested in control as are many climbing the hierarchies of power, who do the leaders bidding. Its why the whole lot of them cannot be trusted with such power, not just the ones at the very top. The whole power hierarchy becomes rotten to the core, filled with power seeking arrogant bastards who have an advantage over others because they are so ruthless to others. Its why they cannot be trusted and its why they have to be stopped.

Re: Fascism?

The more far right or far left any group becomes, the more their increasing tyranny become indistinguishable from each other. Its why worrying about the definition of Fascism is such a complete distraction from why all extreme groups, left or right are a very serious danger to society.

To make sense of it, you simply have to look at it from the perspective of the psychology of what is happening. The increasing tyranny is caused by ever more narcissists dominating the group, resulting in an ever more arrogant group. So the group as a whole becomes ever more narcissistic. So whatever they claim their intentions to be, they are simply lies to gain power. Their pursuit of power over others is what really drives them and that is what their real intention is regardless of what they say, left or right, it means nothing really to them, because they want power. So don't judge them by their words, because they are liars, instead judge them by their actions, which shows up their narcissistic pursuit of power over others.

Even worse unfortunately psychology shows narcissism isn't the worst any person or group can attain. Unfortunately there are far worse people than narcissists in this world. Its how such groups can end up even killing with such callous disregard for their opponents; many of whom simply speak out against them. At which point the groups are becoming increasingly dominated by the worse of society, some of whom have truly psychopathic contempt for others.

Make no mistake, some politicians are truly psychopathic, its just they know they won't get power if they show their true intentions, so they learn to hide their truly arrogant self-interested intentions. They are masters of deceit, perfected over a lifetime of deceit, to get what they really want. Its why psychopaths can appear so charismatic and they tell you everything you want to hear so all to often we end up letting them have power over us. Its an extremely well practiced act.

That is why an ever increasing tyranny such as this law change is part of, takes us all ever closer to an ever more dangerously controlled society. The bastards in power care little or nothing for us really, they want power and some of them don't care what they have to do to get power. If you want to know what it really is to suffer hardship, then stand back and let them gain ever more power over us all. Unfortunately the alternative is very hard because it literal means we end up in a revolution against them, but it has to be done to stand against them to reset their ever accumulated self-interested power over society. They have no interest in fairness, that is just more lies, so they have to be stopped.

'Apple will coast, and then decelerate' says Forrester CEO

Re: Huh?

@Ted Treen your comments are full of intentional Logical Fallacies seeking to deceive because you don't want to hear the truth and you don't want others to believe it either. So if you have shares in Apple, I suggest you hold onto them and ignore what I said (and even buy some more), because everyone who isn't blinded by deceitful people like you and Apple's reality distortion field (i.e. the majority of the human race) can see they will have the last laugh against people like you.

Re: Huh?

@Dave 126: "it would appear that Apple don't need to do anything; they are already doing very nicely."

That is fundamentally wrong. Apple do need to do something, but they can't because they are tied to their premium priced product strategy. The Smart Phone market is currently a premium early adopter market. (To put that into perspective, there's over 5.7 Billion active mobile phones in the world now and yet only around 10% of them are currently any kind of Smart Phone, let alone high end high priced Smart Phones).

The Smart Phone prices are currently high but they are falling and when they fall high premium priced products will look ever more out of place over time. Apple's target market has always been early adopters (and frankly part of their core market are all too often smug bastards who want to wave their new shiny shiny in everyones faces to say hey look at me, I have it and you don't type of people). They are happy to pay a premium to have the latest new shiny shiny and gloat factor but markets never stay like that. Over time, like all markets, the Smart Phone market will become every more commoditized and as it does, we will get into an ever deepening price race to the bottom and that is a race Apple cannot win.

So Apple are currently making huge profits (at the moment) but that won't continue as competitor Smart Phones inevitably loose their premium prices.

At which point, it'll be very interesting to watch what happens to Apple's over inflated share price valuation. Over the next few years wait and watch what happens as Apples sales begin to plateau out and it will happen. So like I said at the beginning, Apple do need to do something, but they can't because they are tied to their premium priced product strategy.

So currently Apple are riding high at the moment, but that cannot last.

Oracle v Google could clear way for copyright on languages, APIs

@"no conceptual need for " ... Negative numbers?!

@"no conceptual need for them."

Imagine trying to tell that to all the mathematicians throughout the past 2000 years and then see if you can't find any "conceptual need for them"!.

Just because Java chooses to omit them, doesn't mean there is no conceptual need for them! ... Negative integers are very useful and fundamental in many areas of work and its a total fuck up design flaw that the only way a language can support something so fundamental is via a library which slows its performance down. But then a lot of Java developers don't believe in thinking about performance either, so in their narrow myopic mind, there is no conceptual need for them. Try opening your mind and find conceptual needs for them, because if you don't others will and they will beat you in a competitive job marketplace.

But if you want to remain close minded and refuse to see what I'm saying, we can at least just console ourselves that there is one less competitor in the job market than we thought. But I find I can't shake off the despair I feel at some people's closed mindedness!

Lesser-spotted Raspberry Pi FINALLY dished up

@Lego Case

Lego does look like its proving to be very popular for making experimental cases for experimental boards these days. Here's the Raspberry Pi lego-case-project to prove it. :)

http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/projects-and-collaboration-general/lego-case-project

Also I think Pete 2 is making problems where there is none. If you don't want to cannibalise other systems, then just spend £10 on a mouse and keyboard, they are so cheap these days its pointless to argue and PSU's are cheap as well.

Thumbs up for the Raspberry Pi (with optional Lego case ;)

Larry vs Larry: Oracle and Google in courtroom smackdown

Re: Is Java free, though? ... tricksy like those Hobbitses...

I'm sure if the dark lord Ellison got his way, he would want: "One Patent to rule them all, One Patent to find them, One Patent to bring them all, And in the darkness bind them."

Larry Ellison continues to behave like a billionare version of a bully.

I'm not a fan of Google at times but I really hope Oracle fail in this case, because this is going to be really bad news for everyone if Oracle win. Larry Ellison must be short of money, oh wait, he's got an estimated $36 billion as of 2012 yet the aggressive bastard still wants more and is prepared to fuck over everyone if he can to get more.

Bacteria isolated for four million years beat newest antibiotic

I have to wonder how isolated this cave is really? Its certainly not hermetically sealed. For example, the earth is teeming with airborne (and waterborne) bacteria. Give them a few years and they will spread. They are incredibly pervasive. In which case, Horizontal gene transfer could easily explain antibiotic-resisting traits.

i.e. "Horizontal gene transfer is the primary reason for bacterial antibiotic resistance"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer

Also even if it is hermetically sealed (which I extremely doubt) these aspects we interpret as antibiotic-resistance could easily evolve in different combinations in nature multiple times (For example, Convergent Evolution).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

Therefore antibiotic-resistance could simply be an example of Convergent Evolution where the old bacteria adapt to the evolutionary stress of exposure to antibiotics in the same way modern bacteria adapt.

AOL investor: $1bn Microsoft patent deal not good enough

Re: If you don't like it, sell

@"one has to wonder about the smarts of owning 5% of AOL"

Starboard is playing a canny game. They want AOL to hold a fire sale to bring in good money (short term) and at the same time they want to influence the board to be more filled with more people who also want a fire sale. So they can then sell off the best bits then walk away (and then go do it to another corporation). Directors like this are like parasites who feed off the host until they kill it, then they seek out a new host and repeat.

Samsung sales-floor rejig leads to layoffs in B2B push

Sounds like a very callous place to work

@"asked its internal sales team to reapply for their jobs" ... and ... ""We asked individuals to tell us which vertical they wanted to head up and they had to demonstrate a good knowledge of that vertical"

So much for training staff. So is this the new office mantra?. Fire staff and then hire new ones, as that saves on training!

WTF kind of callous place does that? ... and I bet they expect staff to still be loyal and trusting towards the bosses after that?!

Speaking in Tech: Is Instagram really worth $1 BILLION?

Re: Is Instagram really worth 1 BILLION DOLLARS?

What patents?, its just a photo taking app that uses standard filter techniques that are open and available in both source code and research papers and have been around for many years.

This isn't about patents its about user numbers. Facebook wants that app to gain access to a popular app. As soon as anything is popular companies want to buy it to associate it with their popular brands to keep their brands popular.

But there is no way in hell its worth $1B. (If I had written it I would have walked away very happy if someone had wanted to give me $1M for it. In terms of coding effort its really not worth even $1M as it could be easily written for much less).

Also the 30M+ users will loose interest in Instagram very soon and so they will be soon looking for the next fad, leaving a very expensive waste of money behind.

'Don't break the internet': How an idiot's slogan stole your privacy...

Re: What does it mean to 'break the internet?

@Ian Michael Gumby:"that we will break the models of companies like FB and Google. That they won't be as profitable."

If their business models weren't so profitable, either they would change their business models or other companies with different business models will inevitably emerge to take their place. So its not the end of the world, they or others just have to change.

Also spying on privacy is blatant exploitation and basing any business model on blatant exploitation of people is morally wrong however they try to argue its not. Exploitation and manipulation of people for profit has been outlawed repeatedly throughout history for good reason, not least because the exploited rise up to fight that exploitation, coercion & manipulation.

Also Google would not be able to erect pay walls around its search as it would loose hugely from advertisers who seek to place their websites high in the search results. That search income money can be maintained by Google without any personal information required from us. So as much as they want to spy on everyone, their business model doesn't require them to spy on people to stay very profitable.

Facebook would need more chance, but even they earn good money from for example taking a very good cut of sales of applications like games which doesn't require them to spy on people. Also they can advertise to millions without spying, its just they and Google know there is more money to be earned from spying.

Our privacy is under relentless attack and we need to draw a line against companies and governments because they will never stop in taking all they can get until they are forced to stop. Enough is enough.

Home Sec: Web snoop law will snare PAEDOS, TERRORISTS

@Sir Runcible Spoon, "Phorm"

I was thinking almost the same thing about Phorm style spying. Is this ex-Phorm people who are partly behind this who are coming back with their new business model version 2, where they lobby government and the home office to introduce and use Phorm style spying on everyone. Also by getting it supported on the side of the government, they earn a lot of money from that and then they also find it easier to go back to the ISP's to add a sweetener to them to introduce spying so they also gain advertising money from spying on all of us. This way government and business can totally screw over our privacy for their profit in both more money from us and more power over us.

Of course to block that move, we all go encrypted through the ISP's, but that will take time and a fight as they will wheel out their nothing to hide ploy once again and try to legislate and demonise encrypted connections as only used by bad people.

Unfortunately I think we have got to the point where the people in power have shown enough to prove they cannot be trusted long term with us all keep using unencrypted connections any longer. We are already there for example with mobile phone companies who blatantly violate net neutrality at will to squeeze more money out of people (For example, mobile company Three charges £10 per month tethering to a laptop on top of £15 a month “All you can eat Internet access” on your phone. So you can stream videos to your phone at £15 a month but you have to pay £25 a month if you want to download emails to you laptop through your phone. Its crazy, it makes no sense, other than a way to squeeze more money out of people whilst giving nothing in return. Data is data, yet Three think its ok for us to download a 100MB video from Youtube, but not ok for us to download a 100kB email to our laptop without us having to pay £10 a month extra?! … We need to treat all ISP's as pipes where they don't know at all what is traveling through that pipe, because its encrypted in such a way as to prevent them spying on the data.

I think unencrypted connections have got to come to an end for all but totally non-essential connections. We place too much trust in governments and companies by not encrypting connections and they cannot be trusted. They keep showing there is no end to their power hungry greed driven duplicity. They are determined to get more more more. We need to stand up and draw a line against them and say enough is enough, no more, in every way we can. This has got to stop.

iPad queue hog doesn’t want it, won’t be first

Re: dispair

"In space there are zero resources"

Wrong, there's vast resources, we just can't get at them and convert them to our needs ... yet.

"In space there is no oxygen!"

Wrong, there's vast supplies in the universe around us, plus we can recycle, etc..

"its -200 in the shade and +200 in the sun"

Not a problem, our engineering can already solve that and we just need the resources to vastly scale up.

"no oil"

So what, we use solar and nuclear. Huge solar arrays in space miles in diameter would generate a lot of power and there's a lot of potential for nuclear power in space.

"no animals, no plants"

Biodomes on moons and planets and vast Biodome ships, once big enough to support us in large numbers, can also support other life from earth as well.

"no beer"

See above for details of how we get lots of beer! ;)

Gamers pledge almost a million dollars for Wasteland sequel

Re: Kickstarter

@Firefly

I was thinking the same thing (and you got an up vote for your post) :)

It could help fund a lot of scifi shows, as there is huge fan support for scifi, but little or no support from companies like Syfy.

Unfortunately too many of the corporate companies look down on scifi, but its hugely popular with the fans so it makes perfect sense to crowd fund them and throw out the corporations messing up the shows.

UK Home Secretary approves TVShack's O'Dwyer extradition

WTF! ... this has to stop!

Theresa May is in power to protect UK citizens, not US corporate interests. Therefore Theresa May is now guilty of a gross violation of allegiance to our country and its citizens, which is literally an act of treason against our country and all of us.

I said a few months ago, this legal president, if allowed though, is so shocking it would have been unbelievable 10 years ago. This extradition law was brought in to stop terrorists. That was it, from what we were told. Now its being abused into a way to drag a 23-year-old student to America to stand trial for telling people where to find something!

Also this shockingly bad legal president can now be used to silence any whistle blower who tries to release information deemed to be copyrighted, which is all of it. So no more exposure of corruption then, because any attempt to release the information and its off to the US for punishment.

The US are trying to create a global totalitarian state and the UK politicians are helping them. Our politicians are suppose to be our representatives in government. They are not our dictators. This has gone far enough.

Seriously, do our leaders want a revolution against them and the growing global Corporatocracy that rules them and us?!

Male dinosaurs failing on social privacy

@"this survey started with a very particular hypothesis, then 'analysed' the data to prove it."

Their whole premise is flawed, because people on social media sites (like Facebook etc..) are almost by definition less interested in protecting their privacy, than everyone else who are not broadcasting their lives on social media sites.

I would like to see how many don't sign up to sites like Facebook because of the privacy issues.

US tweet deportation: Chilling behind-the-scenes photos

@"without a sense of humor"

Ruthless state officials (in every country) don't have a sense of humor. They have a "more than its their jobs worth attitude". The state officials are not thinking about other people, they are thinking about themselves. They take the very literal line, that if something were ever to go wrong, (that the person they should have stopped done wrong), then however unlikely that is, they risk being told off about letting that person through. So to defend against that ever happening, (no matter how remote a possibility it could ever be), they therefore behave with an absolute ruthlessly unthinking attitude in their clamp down to control what anyone says (and can possibly do), in case it could ever reflect badly on them being told they have not done their job.

Even worse they also want to show they are doing their controlling job, because ultimately they want to keep their position of power to be able to control others. Worse still they can (and all too often do) even just pick on people to make examples of them, to make themselves look like they are doing their job. Even worse is how so often these punishment methods don't even require a court of law to decide the punishment. The officials are judge and jury and the punishments are already allowed to be given out by the officials rules and regulations which give them power, (which they don't use against most people), but always have the option to choose to use against almost anyone, if they wish.

Added to this (as the news keeps showing), these ruthless state officials are able to act these days with almost impunity and that has to be stopped. These ruthless bastards are increasingly making our world a growing endlessly controlled nightmare for all of us and their power to control is growing year by year. But then the more knowledge they have on people the more ways they have to punish people and they are using their ability to punish as far as they can to twist laws and rules to suit whatever they want to do.

webOS daddy Jon Rubinstein exits HP

Many corporations don't want good people. Good people make bad people look bad and so bad useless people don't want good people around them to show them up, so the good people will be endlessly attacked and undermined by the bad people.

The thing is while the Executive Management Team are earning lots of money, they don't want anyone good upsetting their nice little earner roles. So they have a vested interest in maintaining things the way it is for as long as they can. That means they prevent any new good upstarts bring in any new product ideas because if the new product ideas are successful, that would threaten to highlight the rest of the bad management as incompetent wasters.

That's why most corporations without any dominate technically minded leaders are very conservative in their product designs, because their predominately bad management are far more interested in infighting to hold onto their positions of power which earn them good money. Which is why they are bad because they are not focused on doing a good job. They are instead focused on preventing anyone else climbing up higher than them and so threatening to sideline them.

Their behaviour is showing a passive aggressive form of Narcissistic personality disorder. They are entirely self-interested with an often hidden two faced obstructionist resistance against anyone else doing well around them which shows them up as bad. Its the same problem we have in politics. Its therefore no wonder their self-interested underhanded two faced behaviour is also referred to as office politics.

The bad management will continue to milk the company of money until its near collapsing, at which point they will try to sell it and then walk away with millions more from their shares in the company. But even if the company just collapses, the bad management has already earned millions out of it, so they have little money worries unlike their redundant staff. But then the Narcissistic bosses don't really care about the redundant staff and they will simply argue the company failed due to market forces. In their mind, its not their fault. Narcissists refuse to even hear they are to blame, so its no wonder they never really learn they are wrong and so they continue to believe they are right. They are Narcissistic and that is why they are bad management. Their behaviour is arrogant self deception but you won't convince them of that and if you try, you will be thrown out the company.

A company run like this can last for years if the industry its in has continuous good money to earn, but in a constantly changing industry like technology, they will eventually fail due to a total lack of vision preventing them adapting sufficiently to change. So the bosses fight to control and prevent changes in society by lobbying law changes to give them control over anything they feel they don't have enough control over. Its why for example the patent system has become so corrupted by them that it now only serves billionaire corporations, because that prevents a lot of disruptive technology companies taking the corporations markets from them. It doesn't always work of course, but the control freak bosses try hard to prevent it working whenever possible.

Its also why anyone with any good ideas will find a lot of resistance to getting accepted in any corporation and any ideas that are accepted by their bosses will be argued that the ideas are really the bosses ideas and the staff who worked hard to make it happen will find they still get held back and pushed out the company. Corporate office politics is employment hell for anyone who wants to be creative & innovative.

Flag-waving Lego Canuck soars to 80,000ft

@Chris W

Chris W all I was saying (as this is a site with a lot of readers interested in science) that it would have been nice to include some more numbers in the article, which is a statement which still remains true regardless of what you say.

As for finding which of the previous 64 PARIS articles had the actual figures in them, a quick Google gave me the BBC article with a near enough estimate to satisfy my curiosity, but still it would have been nice to have some more figures in the news article itself.

Its interesting they achieved 80,000ft but I wish the article had some comparisons with previous efforts. So I looked it up. :)

PARIS achieved around 90000ft (I had trouble finding this info, (hint, hint, Reg), so in the end, I found the info on the BBC! :)

MIT's Project Icarus achieved around 92400ft

Also as a comparison, the Kármán line defines outer space around 327360ft (or 100 km or 62 miles).

So here's hoping LOHAN can achieve at least 100000ft :)

London Underground Wi-Fi pusher to be announced in spring

Underground Wi-Fi

Oh how refined. Wi-Fi on the underground. So now we can all sit back in wonderful comfort to use our phones and maybe even a laptop on the Underground. Meanwhile back in reality, the experience for most of us on the London Underground is one of sometimes being so badly packed in like sardines, that there are times we can hardly have room to breath! ... Its illegal to pack in animals as tightly as they pack in humans on the Underground!

Also outside of rush hour (more like rush 4 hours) even in the late evenings (when it is a bit quieter) there are many people who wouldn't want to risk using a laptop or even some a phone, on some parts of the Underground, for fear of being mugged.

So some how, I can't help thinking they have far bigger problems than just wifi as a barrier to us all using more technology on the Underground! ... So is this an Olympics PR move by the London Underground? ... To try to make more people (who have yet to visit) think the underground is some how more refined, just in time for the Olympics this year?

Icon for: Your train is being held (in this hot stinking tunnel, with no fresh air coming into the hot stinking carriages), whilst we (again) wait for the train in front!

A preview of SOPA: Web shut down before my eyes

@Evan Essence

Unfortunately I know democracy means nothing in our time. Democracy has become a lie to make us think we have any say in how we are ruled, yet those rules are all too often chosen by the wishes of the rich and powerful who truly rule our lives. They are the growing global Corporatocracy that I referred to, who truly rule our lives and the lives of the politicians who they pay for.

Yet the Internet can help expose that lie and its no wonder the politicians and rich and powerful would move towards a system of increased state control that allowed them all to shut down any site that exposes evidence of their wrong doing, under the guise of it being their copyrighted material, whist at the same time doing exactly what the rich and powerful corporations want in increasing their power to control all of us as well.

All politicians backing SOPA need to be taken down hard. Supporting SOPA needs to be made a career destroying move. We need lists of every politician who backs it in any way and to publicly globally damn and condemn them during their re-election campaigns, to bring awareness of what a danger they are to freedom and freedom of speech.

The US politicians talk of being in the “land of the free” so that needs to be used as the politicians Achilles heal so to speak. They want their people to believe they are free and everywhere else is less free, when really the backers of acts like SOPA are control freak politicians who are moving towards ever greater authoritarian control of their people and to meet the wishes of the growing global Corporatocracy.

As these politicians want to fuck up our freedom then its time to fight back and bring them down hard and destroy their careers. We need to stand up to them and saying no more.

George Lucas: 'No more Star Wars'

Critics love to criticize because it gives them a false sense of superiority over others, which they delight in feeling, yet they prove their words are illogical vitriolic arguments about having to watch films they don't want to watch, when really if you don't like it, then forget it and don't watch anything like it again!, instead of trying so hard, time and time again to put down what others enjoy.

George Lucas has been hugely influential in the film industry and his success has greatly helped transform production methodology across the entire industry which in turn has allowed others to build on that to create spectacular amazing films that many people do enjoy (which is proven time and time again by huge box office takings that show many people enjoy these kinds of films), yet the pathetic critics still cling to their tired false closed minded acidic endlessly negative abuse of the success and work of others.

I love the Star Wars films and the Star Wars universe. Yes it is at its core a very basic good Vs bad battle, but then so much of life is at its core, as is so much of fiction for that matter. The simple fact is if you enjoy that, then enjoy it, but if you don't, then don't endlessly seek to ruin the enjoyment of others by being endlessly abusing, negative and denigrating about something others enjoy. Its ridiculous to hear so much pathetic endless negativity filled with endless smug false superiority that they know oh so much better than others what is good. Their smugness is so false.

Well critics, if you do think you still know better, then lets see you frankly shut the fuck up and make it happen. Prove it. I want to see you negative critics prove you know better by making it happen. Lets see you create something instead of endlessly sniping from the sidelines because I bet all too often they have no discernible talent of their own and try hard to feel superior by put down others because that makes them feel better, because they really know they have nothing to compare of their own. The critics behavior is all too well known in Psychology as a passive aggressive pattern of behavior and its characterized as a deeply manipulative pervasively negative attitude towards others to put others down below them. Exactly the pattern we see in the critics.

They will probably delight in voting me down for saying all this but I don't care and I usually can't be bothered to listen to critics, because they show all to well, they can't add anything of value, but it does help from time to time to cull their numbers by exposing them for what they are. The truth hurts as they say.

Now for anyone who does enjoy George Lucus's work and the Star Wars universe, as its often called, I would say I would love to see a massive block buster epic scale film (or trilogy) based on the storyline in Star Wars The Old Republic, centering around the long war between Grand Master Satele Shan and Darth Malgus. If you don't know the storyline, here's a link to the 3 trailers of the Star Wars: The Old Republic game. The artists who worked on this are brilliant. It has some of the best and most complex CG human acting I've ever seen. It really shows the potential a film would have based on this storyline. Here's the link for anyone interested with all 3 videos in 1. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1KM3E0emjg

Plan hatched to view Milky Way's black hole heart

@“Black holes are like babies"

Wow that's one massive over filled nappy we are all very happy to be light years away from!