Posts by sisk

Adobe Cloud offers leg up over Creative Suite's price wall

Re: Same mistake

"There aren't any alternatives to their suite for professional use."

Maybe not as a bundle, but there are alternatives. As a disclaimer, I have and use CS5. I just don't feel like I have to.

Photoshop - Gimp. It can do anything Photoshop can. There's a bit of a learning curve, but it can get the job done. In fact, I spent years using Gimp exclusively and actually prefer it to Photoshop.

Acrobat Pro - Foxit Pro if you REALLY need the kind of features it offers, but honestly in my experience most PDFs could be done with Office and a PDF printer or LibreOffice by itself.

Flash Pro & Flash Builder - Silverlight...or just learn HTML5 and do away with plugins entirely. That's probably the better option anyway, given the number of iPads out there.

InDesign - MS Publisher comes to mind, but I'm certain there are others. Desktop publishing isn't my thing.

Fireworks - To be honest I've never actually used Fireworks. I just don't see the need for this application, even as a web professional.

Audition - I don't know what the alternatives are, but none of the musicians I know use Audition. Granted these aren't people you've ever heard of, but one of them actually pays his bills (barely) off his music gigs and selling CDs that he makes in the studio in his basement.

Media Encoder - There are only about a zillion encoder apps out there. Given that they all do about the same thing and half of them are free, pick one.

Dreamweaver - You could use KompoZer or Sharepoint Designer, but personally I'd rather use Dreamweaver.

The rest are tools I've never used and thus can't comment on. I will say this though: to say there's no professional grade alternatives to pretty much anything is to be just plain lazy (or a shill, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt). There are ALWAYS alternatives, even if you limit yourself to professional grade software. You just have to put out a little effort to find them.

Battlefield Earth ruled worst film EVER

Not the worst ever

Not even close. In fact not a one of the bottom ten that I've seen (about 3/4 of them) should even be in the running for a worst movie ever award. The problem with approaching it this way is that people are only going to vote for movies they've seen, and not many people have seen the worst of the worst.

To truely find the worst ever you need to get some masochists together and have a marathon of terrible, terrible movies, most of which no one has ever heard of, and the ask which one was the hardest to watch without them stabbing their eyes out.

Dad sues Apple for pushing cash-draining 'free' games at kids

Re: When will parents learn

"You do? I see very few clues on that subject."

Clue number one: these people think it's possible to know what children are doing every second of the day. Most people consider me a very aware parent, but my kids (1.5 and 4 years old) still occasionally manage to run off with my tablet (which they have to climb to get to) to watch Netflix when they've been told that they've watched enough TV for a while. Usually this happens while my wife and I are busy with such trivial matters as cooking, cleaning, and paying bills. Fortunately the debit card tied to my device never has any money on it unless I put it there specifically to buy something, so I haven't had the problem of them buying stuff. Not for lack of them trying, mind you.

<sarcasm>

But hey, you're all right. We should just forget about everything else so that we can keep an eye of our kids every second of the day.

</sacasm>

Pirates not to blame for Big Media's sales plunge

Re: I disagree... on one (slightly OT) point

$10k-$30k sounds pretty cheap for a camera capable of shooting a real movie to me. When you consider that most cameras in Hollywood are in the six figure price range that's dang cheap.

Lesser-spotted Raspberry Pi FINALLY dished up

Re: Wuh? wuh, wuh, wuuuuuuhhhhh ...

Eh....Explain to me how a $400 computer plus a thumb drive is a fraction of the costs of a $30 computer? Both still need a keyboard, monitor, and mouse. And, truthfully, these could be scavenged from end-of-life hardware. The school district I work for quit buying monitors for our new computers years ago, and would do the same with keyboards and mice if IBM didn't include them with the box. Even if you had to buy them, you're still looking at a tiny fraction of what you would spend on a standard PC. And I somehow doubt the kids will be allowed to take these home.

Paying by connection speed?

Re: Sounds like an excellent idea

There are a couple problems with that. First and foremost, it would either cause the ISPs to raise their rates massively so as to keep the same profit margins. Second, said 3rd party would not be independant. They either have the ISP or the ISP's client as a customer. If they ISP is their customer they'd be inclined to keep the ISP happy, perhaps by having an inordinate number of their 'random' tests at night when there's less activity so as to raise the average. If it's the client then the opposite happens and they want to keep that bill as low as possible, perhaps by setting their equipment to test on the server's say so and thus make everyone try to hit the same speed test server at the same time.

As for loss of connectivity, every ISP I've ever been with will actually give me credit anytime I loose connectivity for a day or more, and the minute it takes me to reset the modem on the rare occasion that it needs it isn't worth considering in my opinion.

So what's the worst movie NEVER made?

Re: All Good Films need

It can't be too bad if you can stand to read it without having an overwhelming desire to burn it.

Completely unrelated, my wife won't let me touch her Twilight books anymore.

Patent Wars-The Movie

Sick and tired of the constant patent litigation the US voters call on Congress to create an alternative to patent litigation. The result is an arena wherein teams of executives face off in battles to the death. The winner wins the patent for their company. Directed by Michael Bay.

German scientists link two labs with ‘universal quantum network’

Re: Question

"And how much would a cable 4.3 light years long cost anyway?"

And more importantly, where would you find enough glass to make it?

Re: I am also confused

If you have enough bandwidth you can transmit a suprising amount of data in 100 microseconds. With a single atom you'll probably be doing good to have enough bandwidth for two or three bits, but if this works the way I think it does (which it very well may not) the bandwidth will be proportional to the number of atoms you're using. So if you pack it a million atoms (which is not a very big number for atoms) you would get enough bandwith to transmit roughly around a terrabyte per second*, assuming 1 bit per atom per 100 microsecond entanglement.

Of course that depends on the very large assumptions that:

a) My understanding of what they're doing is 100% correct,

b) every single qubit could be transmitted and read perfectly every single time (indicating that they have somehow taken the uncertainty principal out of the equation), and

C) the entanglement can be reestablished instantly every 100 microseconds.

</ol>

*Rough estimate based on the fact that it would be around 10,000,000,000,000 bits per second....I can't be bothered to actually do the math right at the moment.

Re: I'm a qubit confused.

Can we target that 'you were never born' bit, because that would be pretty darn useful.

Re: Higher species FFS! @h4rm0ny

To be fair Santorum has proven himself to be both racist enough to use racial slurs in public (unless you believe he meant something else when he called Obama a 'nig...uh') and so homophobic that he'd start chucking gays into jail or rehab camps if he could. Both of those veiws in a politician require a certain intellectual deficiency in my opinion. I don't care how you were raised. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that those attitudes are going to get you fired sooner or later in his line of work (or, you know, not elected to begin with).

And please, no cold wars. Paranoia and flirtations with nuclear war are not going to help any situation.

Student's Linux daemon 0-day triggers InfoSec Institute outcry

Re: Handbags at Dawn?

Good link that. The article clearly states that the vulnerability is in wicd, not Backtrack itself.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go patch wicd on my Debian notebook, since it and every other machine that runs wicd will doubtlessly be vulnerable.

Motorola's bid to sink Windows, XBoxes sales snubbed

Re: How?

I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that common sense alone is enough to tell you that the ruling of a US judge cannot overrule the ruling of a German judge on an injunction in Germany. I would think that even if Motorola is found in contempt of court that said ruling would be overturned. In my considered but amatuer opinion everyone involved should be able to safely ignore this ruling.

Then again, when has common sense ever played a role in the US legal system?

'Woz' wants $100,000 for Mac 128K prototype

$100,000 for a 29 year old machine? Typical overpriced Mac.

Ten... Kitchen Gadget Treats

@stucs201

Actually Swiss army knives work suprisingly well for cooking in a pinch, but that's usually out in the middle of nowhere over a campfire rather than in a kitchen.

Yes, I speak from experience.

LOHAN lifts lid on revised mission summary

Re: Why a titanium rod?

I was wondering about the titanium rod myself. Conventional model rockets use an aluminum or steel rod. I get that LOHAN isn't exactly conventional, but surely she's not going to be putting much more stress on the launch rod than a ground based launch would.

There's little chance of a rod of any of these materials prematurely exploding while LOHAN is on them. You could make a stiff shaft out of any of them, and LOHAN would happily ride them into the heavens before getting off.

Vintage alien tech crash-lands in field

Someone had WAY too much time on their hands.

That is all.

Matt Groening reveals location of Simpsons' Springfield

Simpsons should have stopped 15 years ago. It hasn't been funny for a long, long time. At this point they've pulled every gag the writers can dream up three times at least. I used to watch every episode back in the day, but now it's not even worth the effort of changing the channel.

CSIRO patent-trolls ALL OF AMERICA!

Re: Oi, Australians

You're half right. The system is broken as hell and needs to be thrown out and rebuilt from the ground up with the digital age in mind, but this is NOT the first time a patent should be upheld. The cases where a patent should be upheld don't make the news all that often. They're just not as interesting as jeering at patent trolls.

Sony 2011 losses are TWICE as bad as expected

Here's an idea Sony: stop treating your customer's like thieves. Put back the feature on the PS3 that they paid for that you decided to pull. Figure out some basic web security (here's a hint: passwords stored in databases should be hashed, preferably with a unique salt for each user to thwart rainbow tables).

Repeat after me: "Our customers are not our enemy. They do not want to rob us. They want to pay us. They are our source of income. We piss them off at our own peril."

Whisky IN SPAAAAACE: Zero-G Scotch is matured aboard the ISS

How long before someone decides to do an experiment on the effects alcohol has on the human body in zero G? This is serious stuff. We need to know.

Windows 3.1 rebooted: Microsoft's DOS destroyer turns 20

Re: I actually still have...

Heh, I WOULD have them still, shrinkwrapped at that, but my wife made me throw out all of the...what was the term she used again?....'junk that I'd never find a use for'. Granted I haven't had a floppy drive to shove them in since before that, but still....

550,000-strong army of Mac zombies spreads across world

Re: lol

There are Linux viruses in the wild and there have been for a while now. And that comes from one of your fellow Linux users.

Basically if you're running without antivirus on any system, you're an idiot.

Minecraft maker plots ultimate videogame for coders

Re: So what is this like?

It won't take long before there are interpreters and compilers for higher level languages so that less elite programmers can get involved, nor will it take long for open code to start appearing around the net for non-coders to copy and use. It won't remain the exclusive playground of the intellectually elite for long if the rest of the game is any good at all.

It must be said

This is either going to be the most awesome game in a long time or the lamest.

If you need me, I'll be over here brushing up on 16 bit assembly programming. (there's something I never thought I'd be saying)

Google shows off Project Glass augmented reality specs

Wrong benchmark

You should no doubt be using Google Voice Search as your benchmark for voice recognition in this project rather than Siri. After all, not only is it a much more likely starting point for Google but it also has far more accurate voice recognition, at least from what I've seen.

Feathered Tyrannosaurus uncovered in China

Re: OK

Not-so-little birdy in the sky, why did you do that in my eye?

IT urine bandit fired and charged

Re: Which is the bigger crime really?

"employees of this company have state-of-the-art vibro-massaging chairs."

Eh...that would only be one or two chairs at $4500. I looked into those about five years ago. The cheap ones that were uncomfortable but vibrated were $300 and the ones that you could actually stand to sit in for hours at a time were arount $2000.

The chairs in my office are about $500 apiece and have been here longer than me. Probably a lot longer than me given that they all went in for repairs about five years ago. Given the longevity and the comfort of these chairs, that's not a bad investment at all. Add in the carpet under the chairs (which no doubt got moist) and it doesn't take many at that price to rack up $4500 in damages.

Re: Double insult

"The dry-seat brigade must be as angry as the soggy set!"

That would depend entirely upon whether the pisser in question is considered desireable or if he's just 'that creepy IT guy'. Given that he's fairly close to retirement age and clearly well on his way to wearing the dirty old man badge in his golden years, I'm guessing he's the latter.

PLASMA GERM BLASTER GUN invented for cleaning skin

Call me crazy...

but I'd be a little leary of using this on a human until we know exactly why it kills the bacteria. If it damages human cells as well it could well do more harm than good.

iPhone fanbois enraged by Instagram's Android triumph

Re: Thank guys

Grumpy old man? Nah, that sounds more trollish than grumpy old manish.

I know around two dozen iPhone users, most of whom came to me for help getting their email set up on the things. Of those iPhone users, only two or three are what anyone would call 'elitist'. Aneccdotal though it may be, that's pretty clear evidence to me that the stereotype is wrong.

So basically the iPhone owning users of Instagram are ticked that Android owners are now using Instagram. I know the stereotype of the elitist iPhone user is wrong, but you'd never guess that looking at this situation.

Re: iPhone users <> Apple fanbois

Actually real programmers would say something to the effect of:

0110100101010000011010000110111101101110011001010010000001010101011100110110010101110010011100110010000000100001001111010010000001000001011100000111000001101100011001010010000001000110011000010110111001100010011011110110100101110011

But of course it would vary dependent upon their platform.

Linux boss: We're number one where it counts

I don't think you have to worry about Linux taking over the desktop anytime soon. If that was going to happen it would have happened while everyone was busy complaining about Windows Vista. Basically unless Microsoft releases two OSes that crappy in a row, or worse releases one and lets it stagnate for as long as XP did, Linux is in no danger of becoming the dominant OS in the PC arena.

Not that it matters. Linux already runs everything from TVs to Web servers.

Terrafugia flies first prototype: Flying cars 'within a year'

Others are closer to having flying cars on the road than Terrafugia. For real flying cars, look to the Parajet Skycar. It's on sale now (preorders only with delivery expected later this year) and has already proven itself sound by completing a 9000km road/air trip. Granted it flies through the use of a parawing, but it actually drives like a car on the ground and doesn't need an airport to get into the air.

I just can't understand why Terrafugia gets all the glory while Parajet and Moller (another promising flying car) get ignored. Especially since Parajet has a proven concept while Terrafugia has several more rounds of testflights to go.

Adam Sandler's cross-dresser shocker is Razzies stonker

Re: Er, Ah, Identical Twin Sister ...?

Maybe she's a transexual....or he is.

Or possibly, just possibly, Adam Sandler put as much thought into this script as he does most of his scripts and thus missed that minor defail.

Apple drops 'thermonuclear' patent bombshell

Hehehe

An April Fools article that links to a patent for a valve that releases hot air from radiators. That brought a smile to my face.

Vote now for the WORST movie EVER

Re: Worst vs. Most disappointing?

How could Highlander 2 be the worst movie when it doesn't exist? It can't exist because it was so bad it would ruin Highlander, which was a damn good movie.

Ok, putting aside my stubborn refusal to believe in it's existance for a moment and tormenting myself with painful memories, it was bad. Really really bad. Easily a valid contender for this list. But I have seen worse. Legend of the Rollerblade Seven, for instance, makes Highlander 2 look like cinematic gold. As do many of the dishonorable mentions I've seen.

There are some that I've never seen that make me shudder on the title alone. "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians"? What much Webster have been smoking when he came up with any concept that could result in that title?

Re: Not convinced these are the worst

If we took the criteria as being technically bad movies, meaning poor acting, poor effects, bad backstage work, and a poorly written script, most of those movies wouldn't be on the list. There are a couple I haven't seen and several that I actually enjoyed. One in particular is only bad when compared to 2/3 of the truely great series of which it is a part. On it's own, it's only slightly below par for Hollywood.

Rather disappointed

The list contains a couple of true stinkers, but overall it's far better than the worst of the worst. I suspect the method involved in picking the movies for the list is to blame for the overall lack of movies deserving of this vote. With the exception of Plan 9 you'd have trouble finding 10 people amoungst us commentards who've all heard of the same true offenses to cinema.

The only hope you'd have of getting the requisie nominations for the truely horrendous movies out there are the MST fans, and lets be honest. They're not paying attention to whatever cinematic crime is happening in the current episode. The robots making fun of it are much more interesting.

Climate-change scepticism must be 'treated', says enviro-sociologist

Re: OK, I'll bite ...

"This is because of the fairly obvious failure of large sections of the population to understand scientific topics and methods. Climate science is an example of this communication failure."

I think people find it difficult to understand climate science more because we constantly see conflicting articles on the subject from people who all claim to have authoritative credentials. The population's (mis)understanding of the scientific method can't really be blamed for that.

I believe this week we're being told 'Everything's fine, noithing to see here. Move along.' Next week we'll get told that we're all going to die in megatsunamis from melting ice caps or some such doomsday scenario and the week after that it'll all be blamed of cow farts or decomposing fish and the next week we'll be back to being told it's part of a natural cycle of that it's all in our heads. With so many 'experts' is it any wonder the population is confused about climate change?

Apple slapped with second Siri senility lawsuit

Re: Who else has got it?

Actually there are several Siri clones on Android. I haven't used any of them so I can't say whether they work any better or not, but they do exist.

Munich's mayor claims €4m savings from Linux switch

Re: 70 to 46 support calls a month????

Just a wild guess here, but could that be the number of calls per month that their average helldesk technician has been fielding? That sounds a little more reasonable, if still a bit lowish.

With this ring, I thee frag

Thoughts

First thought on seeing the subtitle: 'I thee frag' usually comes later in the relationship.

Then again, how many marriage proposals include the proposer setting the proposee on fire and saying 'Now you're dead'?

Chinese to burn iPads in upcoming celebrations

Scarey thought

Most of the ancestors would have been around long before the modern era. If our grandparents had trouble with technology can you imagine the poor guy who's expiration date was 150 years ago trying to use an iPad?

Re: It's symbolic

Build yourself a cell phone tower out of paper and set fire to it. That should take care of it.

Republicans shoot down proposed ban on Facebook login boss-snoop

Re: GOP Voters = Turkeys Voting for Xmas

"I know this happens in the UK too but the polarization here is of idiotic proportions"

I don't think 'idiotic' fully captures the problem. Perhaps 'unimaginably idiotic' would be more appropriate. Or maybe just 'terminally stupid'. The gulf between the extremes and the abandoned, desolate wastes of the political ground between them are so bad that contemplating it causes me real despair.

For the record, I'm writing in Mickey Mouse come November. Who's with me?

Microsoft to upgrade Windows Kinect kit

Re: But why?

As others have said, cheap mo-cap for indie game makers, but this goes far beyond games. Ever since Minority Report came out people have been trying to replicate that GUI, and this gives them a way to do it. Even that's just the tip of the iceberg. Look up some of the things hackers have been doing with Kinect since it came out.