Posts by Jack 23

Noobs can pwn world's most popular BIOSes in two minutes

This update may brick your motherboard

There's one good reason why users don't update *and* why vendors don't advertise their updates:

"WARNING! There is a small chance this update may render your motherboard unusable."

I've had boot problems when updating a BIOS that have only been resolved after flashing it again and again over several days with no obvious reason why the problems arose or why they suddenly stopped arising. There are few components whose failure can spoil my day so much. Therefore, I typically only update my BIOS when I'm doing a processor upgrade and need a newer BIOS version to handle it.

Where's the motivation to update if you might be faced with buying new hardware? What is a small chance? One in 1,000? One in a million?

Indy devs to AOL: Save Winamp, or at least make it open source

Media Library

No other media player I've used comes even remotely close to Winamp's ease of use, response or concision.

The GPL self-destruct mechanism that is killing Linux

Confused much?

I don't see conherency in your arguments. You pull out the viral nature of the GPL code and I don't see that as a bad thing. But that fact doesn't explain the open/closed development model. There are plenty of closed-development projects that (regardless of the breadth of platforms they support) are actually *targeted* at Linux users. There is nothing in the GPL that forces an organisation of developers to accept code from outside parties. In fact, developers of GPL code regularly come in for criticism because of their close development practices. That's not because of the GPL license either though.

On the non-scalibility of Linus: I'd still rather have him dropping slightly too many patches than the opposite situation - where almost every patch is accepted. But you seem to be going against the main grain of your argument in bringing that up anyway.

The main difference between development of core FreeBSD and core Linux is nothing to do with the licenses. Both are relatively low-level systems and code for each of them that is brought in from outside the main development community is BSD-licensed or GPL-licensed respectively. I do appreciate the closed-house approach that FreeBSD advocates, but differences between that and the barely-contained-whirlwind approach of Linux kernel development are due to historical imperative, *not* the licenses.

Finally, "bizarre" is spelled "bizarre", not "bazaar".

Windows 8 ribbon entangles Microsoft

Alas it will only get worse

The reason the ribbon will stay is:

The productivity of workers using Office, on a scale of dribbling moron to enlightened superbeing, goes up exponentially if you're using the traditional menus and something like logarithmically if using the accursed ribbon. Most people have a skill level topping out somewhere around the cross of those too productivity curves, so using the ribbon will increase productivity in any organisation that isn't full to the brim with enlightened superbeings.

There is little reason why the menu structure cannot be retained for enlightened superbeings though, because as enlightened superbeings, they probably know enough that any extra support costs incurred by running two interfaces to the same system will be nullified by the fact that the enlightened superbeing knows considerably more than user support, who generally know a little about a lot and a lot about nothing.

Apple turns the flamethrower on Android

Actually incredible

I find Apple's attitude difficult to comprehend. As the article says, there will be 10 years of shitslinging and then some dollar will change hands, and by then, the actual problem will have gone away.

Also, half the processes stated as against the patents are performed by any number of different softwares.

The only party who looks bad in this case is Apple. What a bunch of good-for-nothings. I hope the rest of the industry destroys them for this.

Google Buzz leaves privacy concerns ringing in ears

Creepy

Creepy is the right word. You can't turn it off from your settings page - the switch is buried in the small type at the bottom of the mailbox page. It's like someone who touches you in the wrong place when you hug them.