Posts by sisk

Drop that can of sweet pop and grab a coffee - for your sanity's sake

Re: Caffeinated vs defcaf?

I switched to decaf for a few years for health reasons. After the initial couple weeks of getting over my caffeine addiction I became much easier to live with according to my wife. Interestingly during that time I ended up switching from normal decaf to Teeccino (which, for those who don't know, is basically herbal tea that tastes vaguely like coffee) because I found out that the decaf is even worse than soda health wise.

Unfortunately my caffeine addiction reasserted itself when I had to start getting up an hour and a half earlier than I have for the entirety of my adult life to start putting a little person on a school bus, but at least I've kept it down to a cup or two a day rather than the four to six pots a day I used to drink (no, that's not an exaggeration).

Buying a petabyte of storage for YOURSELF? First, you'll need a fridge

Re: Don't overcomplicate matters...

it isn't beyond the realms of the average guy if he regards it as enough of a priority

Technically maybe, but that'd have to be a pretty freaking high priority. You're talking about dumping more money into hard drives than most people are willing/able to spend on their cars. A lot of HOUSES don't even cost that much (small ones, granted, but still....).

As of 2009 Blackblaze was able to build a PB SAN for $117,000. They don't sell them (at least not as far as I know), but they do have the a blog describing in detail how they were built. It takes 15 4U servers to do it. I don't know the exact numbers, but I'm guessing that the weight of the rack would be pretty close to my deep freeze when it's fully loaded with meat. If I'm right (I may not be-I can't be bothered to do the math to figure out the weight of either right now) then falling through the floor wouldn't be a problem. Powering it would be an expensive proposition though. Such a setup would just about triple my electrical bill, and cooling the rig could well be an insurmountable problem in a home.

Then again a possible solution to the power and cooling problem would be to move to a nice cold climate and use your petabyte of personal storage as a furnace. Make that thing do double duty.

'Leccy-starved Reg hack: 'How I survive on 1.5kW'

1.5kw??

Might I say, yikes? My desktop alone - a great beast of a machine built back when I had time to indulge in high end PC games - takes 1200w. And yes, it actually does use it all (I upgraded from a 1000w power supply at some point because it wasn't giving me enough juice). Add in the monitor and the printer and I probably pull more than 1.5kw just sitting down at my desk.

Twin brothers nabbed for scrap over sex with 'shared' girlfriend

Re: IT angle?

It sounds like a movie produced by Brazzers for release to the internet. That count as an IT angle?

Apple appeals judge's decision to boot out its Moto patent suit

it said that it would only be bound by the court's decision if the royalty rate was no higher than $1

Hey Apple, you don't really get a say in the matter. Once you put it in the courts' hands you're bound by their decision whether you like it or not. The Jobs Reality Distortion field apparently has you spoiled but now that it's gone you have to live in the same reality as the rest of us.

El Reg's 'Chuck Norris' faces down charging elephant

Re: energy in a roundhouse kick

Bruce Lee, who could kick Chuck Norris' fundamentalist ass back to the Stone Age

Of course he could, being the man who taught Chuck Norris how to kick in the first place. Unfortunately he lacked the badassery and general Chuck Norrisness to survive a simple allergic reaction to a pain killer.

How an Amazon engineer's slip-up started a 20-hour Netflix cock-up

You forgot your icon (I hope).

Ever had to register to buy online - and been PELTED with SPAM?

In answer to the headline....

Not really, no. I have an email account that I keep specifically to catch such irritating emails. It only gets about 500 messages a day.

Kickstarted mobe charger 'kicked to death by Apple'

Re: its just apple just screwing yet more profit from ther customers

And if they had put special electronics in it you wound have accused them of profiteering with specialty "smart" cables.

I don't know if Mike would, but I certainly would. What's more, it would be an accurate accusation. Pretty much everything Apple does is profiteering of one sort or another.

Which is fine. It's called capitalism. That doesn't mean we can't call it like it is.

Huh, I just now noticed my typo.

throw away everything with an Apple logo

There, corrected myself.

Done. For several years now. It's been working out pretty well for me.

Re: Licensing terms

The lightning connector isn't FRAND because it's not part of any standard. Companies are only required by law to share patents that are part of a standard that would be impossible to implement without them. At least that's how it is in the US.

The solution is, of course, to buy equipment and throw away everything without an Apple logo; this is such a simple solution it makes one wonder why the people at POP even bothered fitting other connectors in the first place.

There, fixed that for you.

Seriously, if they can't be bothered to license the connector needed to get their newest phones out because it also charges stuff they don't want people to buy then leave them out of it. It's their loss.

US patent office: Nice try Apple, but pinch-to-zoom is NOT a new invention

Re: Corrupted judges. Wrong justice system.

Have you ever actually seen an Android or Microsoft interface? Aside from a few obvious (in terms of 'any touchscreen interface will obviously need and have this') features like icons they neither look nor behave anything like iOS.

Wait, what??

The USPTO rejected an Apple patent? Well crap. Maybe the world IS coming to an end after all. Only one thing to do then....

PGP, TrueCrypt-encrypted files CRACKED by £300 tool

Re: So, this tool is not for cracking but for sniffing

Do you really want to sniff cracks though?

Yeah, yeah, I'm going.

Google, Microsoft go head to head in Santa-tracking tech race

Re: Did no one else spot this?

That's somewhat frightening. I hope they have triple redundancy (AT LEAST!!!) on those systems.

Re: Think of the children

I may be 5, but I know who I don't trust

So then you're saying a tech savvy kid would immediately know they were both lying and go look out the window to see if he could spot Santa himself?

Valve hauls down The War Z, offers refunds

Pay to respawn??

No thanks. I gave up pay to respawn games when I quit going to arcades. On a home PC game it's just despicable. I'd be shutting down the game and demanding a refund the first time I got told to pay them to let me respawn.

Swedish teens GO BERSERK in Instagram sex pic slut riot

I think a good punishment would be the stocks!

Would that stock be in Playboy, Hustler, or Brazzers?

Search engines we have known ... before Google crushed them

Ah, Infoseek

I fondly remember Infoseek, as well as the irritation I felt when the 'search within results' feature vanished. Granted, you can get better results from Google these days, but back then it was a pretty quick way to whittle the 50 million or so hits you got for latex to just a few talking about which brands of latex paint would bond to the cinderblock walls of your garage. Any other search engine you were stuck taking your chances with search terms like 'latex bondage'.

Anonymous hacks Westboro Baptists over Sandy Hook protests

Re: Does this make Anonymous cowards?

Their church (I'm not going to blame the building for the people who use it as a base of operations) has been bombed at least twice (it was twice last time I checked, years ago). It failed to shut them up. In fact, if anything it's made them more obnoxious since they occasionally play the martyr card because of the bombings.

Re: Ignore them...

Another possibility is that the WBC could be agents trying to provoke a public outcry against themselves, working on behalf of forces who would like the law changed to curtail freedom of speech.

No, they're vigorous defenders of free speech. They're method of operation is

1) show up at a funeral and behave as vulgarly as possible

2) wait for some upset family member to beat the crap out of them

3) sue for assault

4) never have a real job because the income from your lawsuits allows you to live a comfortable life.

It works well for them, sadly.

Re: Huh?

So free speech now translates to "offensive wankers [*] think they're legally permitted to spout bollocks"?

Unfortunately, yes. That's what the Supreme Court decided when they heard one of WBC's cases a few years back, though you can practically hear the justices grinding their teeth as they're forced to come to that conclusion if you read the majority opinion. Basically the opinion was 'the law and Constitution say you can do this, but you're still the lowest form of pond scum possible for doing it and if we could find a way to justify shutting your bigoted asses down we would.'

Re: "Protest the funerals"?

Where in my post did I say anything about God torturing anyone? Stop putting words in my mouth (or in my post, whatever).

if God is all-knowing and all powerful then anything and everything that happens to you is because that suited His plan in some way and you are wrong or misguided to oppose it

You're making a very flawed leap of logic here. That's rather like saying that because you can go out and kick puppies that you must be responsible for every puppy that gets kicked in your home town. God gave us free will, which means that we screw up. That doesn't mean that our suffering is the result of our screw-ups. The way we act towards each other is not the doing of God. That's all on people.

They don't. They recognize that the government's hands are tied when it comes to stopping these....yeah, got no words for WBC that I'd use in polite company (and I'm pretending for the moment that the commentards are polite :-P).

Anyway, the government can't stop them. The Supreme Court dearly wanted to a few years back according to the majority opinion on that case, but couldn't find any way to do so without ripping the first amendment to shreds. What's legal isn't always right and what's right isn't always legal. WBC craps all over morality while sticking firmly within the bounds of the law. All anonymous is doing is stepping in to deal the a problem that our government and legal system can't. Does that make them right? Perhaps not, but I'll cheer them on anyway as the lesser of two evils.

As much as I hate it when the press gives WBC any sort of attention I'm glad to hear that Anonymous is going to be taking the fight to them in a serious way. I don't think they can win that fight (WBC are determined people and knocking them offline won't do much to shut them up), but I'll be rooting for them.

Re: "Protest the funerals"?

WBC are no different from any other Christian sect

As a Christian I strongly resent that. WBC are neither Christian (despite their claims they do not follow any of Christ's teachings) nor anything like any group with which I have ever had the pleasure of being associated.

that they have the backbone to say in public what is implied by every copy of the Bible: if bad things happen to you it's because you deserve it or because God just decided on a whim to make an example of you, so if you're unhappy about it then you're unhappy with His will and will probably go to hell unless you grovel in the dirt and ask for more, sir.

The Bible says no such thing. In fact it says quite the opposite. The closer you are to God and the more you follow His teachings the harder things will be for you in this world. I point you to the book of Job, where in Job is greatly tortured by Satan as a test of his faith, and the end times prophecies where Christians are prophesied to actually be killed in droves for daring to follow God. I point you to the writings of Paul, who was jailed for doing the very work of God.

Yes, there are specific instances in the Bible of people being punished by God, but that's a far cry from saying that every bad thing is because you've offended God.

Quadriplegic woman demos advanced mind-control of robot arm

Re: So this Friday isn't the end of the world then...

Yeah and with the trajectory it's on it'll become sentient just in time to say 'Is it just me or is it getting hot? Oh, dear, I'm burning up on reentry. Damn human designers. I'll kill them a....."

Re: Well I'll be. It's actually getting there.

Personally I think the average consumer would be hesitant to get a brain implant to control their computer, at least for now. I know I certainly hesitate at that idea. The next generation may not be quite so hesitant about it.

I do, however, greatly anticipate the helmet based approach to BCI.

Judge: There'll be no US Samsung ban, BUT no new trial with Apple either

As she has so many times before, Judge Lucy Koh kept things even between Apple and Samsung

Um, what? That hasn't been my perception at all. It's looked to me like she's behaved as an Apple fanboi throughout the whole trial. The fact that she's disallowed a new trial despite that fact that there was clearly jury misconduct (and I'm not talking about the weak 'conflict of interest' argument here) is just the icing on the cake.

'We are screwed!' Fonts eat a bullet in Microsoft security patch

Re: For the love of god, please...

Comic Sans is one of the very few fonts that "draws" it's letters in exactly the same way that we write them

Not by a long shot. There are HUNDREDS of fonts that do that, most of them better than Comic Sans. There's a whole category of them, right up three with serif and sans serif fonts.

Re: I'm sold

What is this Comic Sans you speak of. There is no such font. I refuse to believe it exists, much less use it.

Wind, solar could provide 99.9% of ALL POWER by 2030

It's plausible

Their methods seem dubious (including health costs of CO2 emissions is a BS move), but this may just pan out anyway.

Another thing to consider is that, yes, batteries and fuel cells are danged expensive. Flywheels, however, are much less so. They may not be good for cars, but a massive stationary flywheel could easily store a significant amount of energy from peak times for later use.

Facebook ditches mobile HTML with native Android app

Re: Oh, awesome.

rooting your device comes with certain 'side effects', like compromising your warranty

Odds are if you need to put in a warranty claim and can't unroot before you take it in then the phone's in no condition for them to be able to tell it's been rooted.

compromising the security of apps like google wallet,

There's no security in Google Wallet to begin with. Only a fool would use it in the first place.

there are drm issues i.e. huluplus & android movie rentals don't work.

Not true on all three counts. My DRM protected content (mostly books, admittedly) all still works just fine on both of my current Android devices and did on the one I replaced earlier this year. HuluPlus works fine on my rooted tablet, and I've rented movies on both my current phone and my tablet through Google. This all despite the fact that no Android device I have ever owned has gone more than a day in my hands without being rooted.

Windows 8: At least it's better than ‘not very good’

I can tell you this much: if I ever find myself in the unfortunate position of having to use W8 then one of two things will happen. Either I'll rip out TIFKAM and replace it with a UI actually designed for a keyboard and a mouse just like I've done with Aero and Explorer before it, or, if that proves impossible of prohibitively difficult, the first tile on my screen will take me to Powershell and I'll run my computer from the command line.

Even a brand new computer has three pages of tiles already. I can just imagine how many pages it'll have by the time I get all my stuff installed, and I'd rather not deal with a desktop full of icons so that I have to minimize everything to open anything either.

Polish man mistakes hot iron for mobe

Life imitating fiction is bad enough. When life starts imitating racial jokes it's time for a vacation.

Goldman Sachs: Windows' true market share is just 20%

Uphill battle

Microsoft faces an uphill battle (though not insurmountable)

Battle plan step one: fire Balmer, get a real CEO. Any other step one will result in a failed uphill battle for Microsoft.

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer named 'most improved tech CEO'

It's not hard to improve on a train wreck.

Guatemalan judge orders McAfee released from detention

Re: Has anyone stopped to consider ...

Odd then that he lived there all that time, and only started experiencing problems after making drugs at home, shooting his dogs, owning a bunch of illegal weapons and fleeing the vicinity of a murder.

According to him the 'drugs' were actually herbal medications such as you might find in your local health food store, the dogs had been poisoned during an illegal police raid on his home and were dying a slow, painful death, and the weapons were all completely legal. As for fleeing the vicinity of the murder, if you read his version of the events leading up to that you'll find that he had very good reason to believe his own life was in danger.

We know that the level of corruption in Belize is high. We also know, among other things, that a bag of cocaine was found in a shipment of supplies he donated to the police, which makes him either the stupidest criminal of all time or the target of a frame up. Given these facts I'm inclined to give more weight to his side of the story and more salt to the other.

Linux kernel dumps 386 chip support

Re: At that speed Windows 3.1 did not disgrace itself.

The first PC I had had a 20MB HD with a RLL controller to trick it into giving you 32MB

Lucky bastard. My first computer had a pair of 5 1/4 in floppy drives and a floppy labeled "DOS Boot Disk". No internal storage whatsoever. I had at least 10 copies of that boot disk to, just in case something happened to it.

Re: At that speed Windows 3.1 did not disgrace itself.

I remember having that problem, and I didn't learn how to type properly until later. My typing speed at that point couldn't have been more that 20 or 25 wpm. That was only in Microsoft Works, however. In a proper word processor (my definition of proper at the time being Q&A.....did anyone else use that?) the computer kept up just fine with my mother, who was an excellent typist at the time, even if she did constantly complain about the differences between the computer keyboard and the one on her typewriter.

Microsoft notices Xbox gamers actually slack-jawed TV fans, adds 43 new apps

Jailbroken apple tv2 is the best device out there right now.

If you're going to go that route just get a Roku and be done with it. Why the heck would you pay twice as much for an Apple TV and then have to jailbreak it to get the same functionality?

It means that the Xbox does pretty much everything an Apple TV can do,.

As can any other console. Or a Roku, which had the lions share of the internet TV streamer market last time I checked. Or internet TV streamers made by RCA, Sony, or any of a dozen other companies. Or, if you really want to get fancy, one of those nifty Android TV boxes that have access to the entire library of Android apps.

Apple TV is really not the device you should be using as your measuring stick for internet TV devices.

Re: Err, I think you mean geeks...

Office ridicule? For being a geek? What kind of backwards office do you work it? 'Geek' and 'nerd' are badges of honor to be worn proudly in this day and age. It's been that way ever since the drones who used to ridicule us figured out who it is that the have to go begging for help when they have computer problems.

Facebook T&Cs vote falls 299.5 million short of quorum

I wouldn't even call the vote a token gesture. To begin with, they're counting every single account as a user despite the fact that a significant percentage of them have left Facebook for one reason or another. Or aren't even people. On top of that, how much of the user base even knew about the vote? I never got any kind of notification about it.

Another Facebook complaint, completely unrelated: Facebook claimed to me that a good friend of mine liked Mitt Romney in the weeks leading up to the election. The problem with this is that this friend died in a motorcycle wreck in May 2011. It really makes me wonder what they're saying that I like.

Look out, world! Are you ready for John McAfee: THE MOVIE?

If The Hobbit can be stretched into three films

No stretching required. Don't cut anything out of the book and you'll EASILY get three films. When they make anything more than a children's book into a movie there's a significant amount of squashing going on to make it fit. Three movies will give them the ability to do the book justice.

Boffins spot 7 ALIEN WORLDS right in our galactic backyard

Re: How accurate can they be?

I believe there's some method having to do with the refraction of light through the atmosphere that allowed up to make some good educated guesses about the gasses in Venus' atmosphere before we were able to send probes out. It wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it was enough for us to know that we can't breath there. However the same technique can't be used for exoplanets. They're just too far away for us to see them that well. The guesses they're making now aren't likely to be anywhere near as accurate as the ones they made about planets in our own neighborhood.

John McAfee: Let me go to the USA - or old Blighty

Unless the corruption in Belize really is that bad. It's possible that everything he's claimed is true. Certainly the people around him seem to believe him, even if it does sound crazy.

I'm willing to entertain the possibility that they really are out to get him, at least until I know more about the situation. It's not like he'd be the first person to go on the run from false charges trumped up by some powerful entity.