* Posts by Kevin

102 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007

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Microsoft, Asus launch anti-Linuxbook campaign

Kevin
Go

the problem is

Saddly I do agree with the "Windows can prevent poor, unsuspecting non-techies from "dealing with an unfamiliar environment or major compatibility issues.""

When non-techies buy a computer they think windows is the only os from what I've seen. When I worked in a school we had a teacher that bought a laptop with ubuntu installed and brought it in and wanted to know why windows software would not work on it. When we tried to explain to him Unbuntu was a different OS and he would need a windows emulator his eyes glazed over, kind of like the deer caught in headlights look, because he had no idea what a OS was and any explanation that it was not windows was lost we didn't even get to explain what a windows emulator was before he completly tuned us out. Turns out he thought Ubuntu was some kind of program that changed what the start menu in windows looks like...

So lets all remember standard users have issues with understanding directions on opening programs and changing settings in windows. I cannot begin to fathom the mental anguish that would come from trying to explain to a standard user how to install, run, and change settings in linux.

Microsoft breaks Windows 7 three-apps netbook handicap

Kevin

I wonder

Will it run as fast as the 1st public beta of windows 7 and not like the bloatware of the final RC?

And what will be its price. If its under $60 I might actually pick it up and upgrade past 2k if it preforms like the 1st beta.

I only wonder because I've tried them both and the 1st beta was fast as hell on the PC I used, and the Final RC was a fair deal slower on the same exact PC.

Time Warner gives up selling AOL

Kevin
Happy

@CD Wall!

This post reminded me of the best use for AOL CD's someone ever found http://stupidco.com/aol_throne_intro.html

although I do miss my free cup coasters :(

Analyst forecasts Apple Kindle-killer for 2010

Kevin

err

about the "how to make such a gadget work without a keyboard, something UMPCs failed to do"

Funny my Samsung Q1 does EXACTLY what I need it to do without a keyboard. Wish people would understand Tablets, UMPC's, and even netbooks were NOT designed to replace laptops.

Now if this is a tablet with a 7-8inch screen for around $500 and has decent specs (atom+ processor none of the VIA crap Samsung swapped to for the new Q1) then I might actually be tempted to actually buy something apple made for once in my life because my Q1 is starting to get issues in its old age.

Spielberg: Games consoles doomed

Kevin

Dammit

I'm still waiting for my 3d holographic TV like they had in the jetsons.

An we all know VR will come after we achieve warp drive and jack it from an alien race.

US lawmakers put Canada, Spain on piracy 'watch list'

Kevin

Wow

I can't believe anyone in those countries actually waste the time to download the crap that Hollywood and music companies are making. It boggles the mind. I actually agree with Andrew Fraser above 100%.

The thing hurting the movie companies and music companies is not piracy, piracy has ALWAYS existed. The thing that IS hurting them is the constant shit they keep churning out. Hell the local bootlegger that sells copies of the DVD screeners for new movies for $5 is losing business due to shit the studios are churning out, so who in the hell is going to pay almost $20 a person to see the crap or pay $20 for it on DVD.

Microsoft IIS hole fells university server

Kevin

LOL IIS

Seriously I used IIS on my 1st webserver

it was raped left and right in 3 days by people exploiting it (it was fully patched)

Swapped to apache and have had 0 breaches in years.

Sure apache is a little bit harder to configure but IMO the amount of headaches it saves you from its well worth it

Linux group, Microsoft form unholy alliance against US lawyers

Kevin

Well...

I can understand where MS and the Linux foundation are coming from.

How are either supposed to make 100% sure that their software works on 100% of the machines made. Seeing they support millions upon millions of combination's of hardware and software. Truthfully MS OS's are pretty stable IMO the instability starts coming with some of these hardware manufacturers half assed drivers that don't play nice with each other and likes to install TSRs to use the hardware they made that conflicts with something else that is running.

So technically if they get that passed MS and Linux distros will have to go the apple route and make closed systems that their OS is specifically tuned for to work 100% on and will not work on any generic brand computers released by competitors.

Now if this law would pertain only to drivers and firmware made by hardware manufacturers than it would be a good step.

BASF to develop 350-mile e-car 'super battery'

Kevin

Umm

I think Nigel was referring if it had close to 0% discharge. Personally I put under 70 miles on my car a week driving to work so if its discharge was close to 0% (impossible I know) I would only have to charge it once every 4-5 weeks. So I would only go through 13 charges tops a year out of 200-250 the battery would potentially last 20 years. So if that was the case 3k would be nothing compared to the amount of gas the car would go through in a similar time. BUT these calculations are in a perfect world with 0% fault and no other factors like humidity etc causing some leakage across terminals and a 100% perfect battery.

Microsoft: Windows 7 release in August '09

Kevin

@Somethingelse

you know I was thinking the same thing actually I thought it was just me ;)

the current RC IMO is actually inferior to the first beta they released

But I guess the current RC is where they started adding in all the DRM crap to keep the big companies happy

So it looks like I'm staying windows 2k till nothing new works than maybe linux

or maybe someone will hack the first RC and remove its time constraint

2060: Humvee-sized, bulletproof meat-eating spiders attack

Kevin

umm

If I remember right couldn't they just fling talcum powder on them to clog up the pores they use to breath? From what I remember that would kill most of our would be mutant insectian or arachnid overlords.

Mozilla mauls Microsoft on IE, Windows 7 bundle

Kevin

and next.

Dodge will complain that Fford mustang's do not come with the option of Hemi engines as a option.

For as much as I love using FF they maybe should put some of their $$ from suing MS and lobbying for MS lawsuits to TV ads, or paying Oprah off to say how good FF is on her show. The market share if Oprah talked about it would probably hit 85% overnight and crash their servers.

Now if MS added mozilla.org to the hosts file by default to point to a null page or went out of their way to make it not work or even install on windows, then I can see the complaints. But as it is right now their bundling their software with their own hardware.

Last I checked Apple included Safari and are not being treated in the same way. Most the Linux distros I've tried had Konqueror installed as default and not FF. So why isn't Mozilla not suing everyone else for anti-competitive practices is the only question I have.

Duke Nukem Forever developer defunct, says staffer

Kevin

@Kevin Campbell

Blizzard is accepting closed beta sign ups for SC2 right now. So with the way closed Beta went on blizz's last expansion in wow expect it probably be released by December with no bug fixes for bugs that were reported.

and Diablo 3 they just started working on not that long ago so you gotta wait for that.

Now on the other hand I always called it Duke Nukem Fornever personally it really irked all the people i knew that were duke3d fans

Win 7 RC fails to thwart well-known hacker risk

Kevin

@Ash

Agree with you 100%

I've heard multiple times when I worked on someones PC and enable the extensions so I could locate their virus and forget to re-disable them. "Why did you rename all my files to something with a .txt or .exe and why don't my files open anymore that I removed them?" So in this case its better off disabled than enabled because just seeing something.jpg.exe won't stop them from clicking and opening it to try and see whats inside if they were told its a picture.

So this is 100% non-issue.

Open source closes gap on Microsoft's next Silverlight

Kevin

hmm

"Plus, there's the ability to drag content built in Silverlight out of the browser to run on the desktop."

Why does that sound like something that will be exploited heavily in the future and Microsoft will remove after it is.

Microsoft: Don't rush to download Windows 7 RC

Kevin

hmmm...

"The advice on Windows 95 was for a 386DX processor and 4Mb memory"

I pulled it on a 16MHz 386 SX with 4 megs of ram took 35minutes to boot... seriously

"You could get away with a 233MHz processor and 64MB memory on Windows 2000."

Hmm I ran it for over 290days with no downtime on a P1 133 with 256 megs of ram. it was used as a web, FTP server, and router it ran perfectly fine and only went down when we had a blackout do to a failed UPS.

"The fudging of the hardware numbers on Windows Vista landed the company in court."

Can't argue that seen so many PCs that were made for vista, or had it on them, that Vista chugged along horribly. Kinda reminded me of my 386 with windows 95.

Koreans cook up glow-in-the-dark beagles

Kevin

@Edward Miles

sadly those don't glow in the dark :( I have about 20 currently. Now if you combo them with a blue LED in the dark they seem to glow but they do not glow in the dark themselves.

Windows XP Mode: Certify like you mean it

Kevin

Well

It seems Microsoft doesn't learn and decided to make 10 billion flavors of shit again to confuse people and slow up adoption.

What ever happened to the simplicity of Win2k? For users you had one edition and that one edition was good. Not this home, semi uncrippled home, what should be standard, deluxe, super duper delux, and the Primo OMG you need a quad core with dual Nvidia 9800 in SLI mode just to load the OS and click on the start button version.

Personally looks like I'm still gonna stick with Win2k till no one makes software compatible with 2k and xp than go raise up the penguin flag

Botnet speed test uncovers drag racers of malware

Kevin

@AC 12:17

There is a problem with your way. People like me who run their own e-mail server for their own domain that is hosted off their internet connection. Just because others use their internet connection only to browse the grand old internet doesn't mean everyone uses it for the same thing.

Apple rides fanbois to popularity crown (again)

Kevin

umm about Vista

It IS a pile of shit.

My ex boss built a custom quad core with 4 gigs of ram, and 2 of the most expensive Geforce's made at the time (forgot which model) when he first installed Vista the machine booted in seconds and blew XP away in performance and after 3 months it ran like shit. My sister bought a laptop same exact experience Vista ran fine (2Ghz Dual core 2 gigs or ram) and was faster than XP and after a few months it got bogged down to taking so long to boot you could go make a cup of ramen in the mean time.

Hell dealing with Vista converted my one programmer friend into what I call a loyal Appleite that acts like I'm making fun of his religion when I make fun of Apple products (He now owns 4-5 Ipods, a Iphone, and a 2nd mac...).

Just hoping Windows 7 does not suffer from the ever expanding boot times issue that Vista has, if it doesn't I might upgrade my Win 2k box to it instead of joining the ranks of the penguin army.

Google boffins unveil 'What's Up?' CAPTCHA

Kevin

hmm

I actually would prefer this next to the current captchas which are getting so bad now that I can't even tell what they are. Forgot where I saw one that the O's and 0's looked identical and the Z 2 were hard to tell apart along with the 5 and S, and I 1 l, seeing they were rotated in random directions with strikeouts going through them at random angles.

The Pirate Bay loads cannon with official appeal

Kevin
Happy

@GreyWolf

I heard the same thing about the queue for jail at Sweden. You are tried given a sentance than told to go home and wait till they get back to you for jail time

Pictures of a Swedish jail....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUgrYU5xF_s

That place looks better than where most law abiding people I know live at...

and seeing they have computer labs in the jails they could keep working on the pirate bay while serving time or even host the server out of their room ;)

There's also a jail I saw once on a documentary that looks like a country club with kayaking, skiing, fishing, horseback riding, and the guards were there to keep people from breaking into the place not out...

I vote every country should have jails designed like Sweden.

'Soon soldiers will have 3 tiny choppers in their pocket'

Kevin

@Tim Spence

same exact thing I thought when I saw the video

Must get would be the ideal replacement to my micro helicopter that looks likea complete pile of shit next to this

and as someone said the small size of this would probably have issues dealing with a breeze or a draft. From experience I know my micro RC will go nuts if it hits a good draft and usually crash in a split second due to its rotors tiny size (which look almost exactly the same as the one in the video) and lack of weight.

Advent AIO-100

Kevin

@W

"Imagine that. Someone with needs and wants different to yours. Try not to be so short sighted and presumptuous next time."

you sir are correct

PERSONALLY I would never buy this for myself, but I can think of a couple of people I know that this setup would be ideal for. Even with the keyboard and mouse taking 2 USB ports up seeing to them all a computer does is load Ebay and Google and nothing else.

The mobile phone as self-inflicted surveillance

Kevin

WOOHOO

I would be considered a terrorist if i lived in Germany or France due to not wanting a mobile piece of crap (aka a cellphone).

Failed Nork rocket bits straddle Japan

Kevin

@Gene Cash

Well I can see why Japan should be concerned

They shot a missile, that failed its 1st test and crashed 40 seconds off the launch pad, right over their country. What would have happened if the booster would have cut off like in the 1st test and it would have hit a populated town. So I can understand their concern about the sky possibly falling.

PS3 back to haunt Wii in Japan

Kevin

Wow statistics...

the most imaginary numbers on the planet

instead of reading it as 1 game increasing PS3 sales and Wii's going down due to ONE game people could also read it as I dunno maybe the Wii is hitting market saturation in japan and no one needs a 2nd-4th for their house where as no where near as many people own a PS3 and are buying the 1st and only one.

Lloyd-Webber calls for clampdown on ISPs

Kevin

@AC 11:38

actually you hit it right on the head

last CD I bought by my favorite artist had 1 good song and 12 I couldn't even get through one listen of and the CD cost $17. His next album that came out I checked the songs the artist had released on his site was like wow their good, than I read a review of the album, turns out the songs that I felt were good and worth me purchasing it weren't even on the damn CD. So I went got a rip of the full CD the songs on the CD were absolute shit and I didn't even listen to any one of them for more than 20 seconds and deleted them cause they were a waste of space.

Honestly if they want to charge outrageous prices for stuff at least make the stuff semi worth it.

Same goes with movies last movie I paid to see was Transformers. I felt like I paid $18 to see a 2 hour commercial for Pepsico, Ford, Ebay, and Nokia. Sad part is there has been nothing released in years I felt even worth wasting my bandwidth downloading let alone spend money on to see. Hell I can wait till its on DVD 4 months after its in theaters and rent it for $1 and usually then I don't even feel most movies are worth it.

To the studios and record companies heres how to stop copyright infringement: Release a product that is worth something. Most "music" (and I use the term loosely) that you produce makes listening to nails on a chalkboard sound like a Beethoven symphony. And to the movie producers the trailers for the damn movies are usually better than the movies themselves, which somehow never have those excellent scenes shown in the trailer in them.

EA: No DRM for Sims 3

Kevin

@Josh Hamilton

The thing people didn't like was secuROM installed in the background and was ALWAYS running and does not uninstall after you remove the game. Remember sonys infamous rootkit secuROM essentially is the same thing it hides processes which the only way to completely remove is to waste a few hours trying to delete files and unregister dll's (which does not remove 100% of it) or just reinstall the OS after you format your drive (fastest method and only real way for a 100% removal)

Now I personally could care less if the game called home once to authenticate after install or every 10-20 times its ran. but there is NO reason to have the damn authentication software running all the time and being unremovable and potentially screwing up other apps or potentially causing instabilities.

Thats why people were up in arms over it. Now if you like that crap running all the time the pcs on its upto you.

Designers mock up bonkers 'leccy car concepts

Kevin
Thumb Up

hmm

I actually like the KTM it looks a way better than most of the current concept cars the big motor companies are showing. Hell it looks like it could drive through Chicago without getting damaged from all the potholes and speed bumps that make my current car bottom out. Adding a gullwing door to hold glass looks like it would be ultra easy on the design. Front suspension looks lacking but could be fixed pretty easily, hell its a good design from a student. But the only thing I think Tyco might get a little pissed off stole their RC car design.

Now the 2nd one I think looks a little weird I'd just pop the threads off it and slap it on the KTM for extra snow performance. ;)

Samsung launches latest netbook UMPC

Kevin
Thumb Down

damn

If this had a Atom 270 or some version on board I would have bought it in a heartbeat to upgrade my original Q1. I've had too many bad experiences with performance on VIA processors to shell out almost $800 for it. Now if it was around the netbook price range I might have considered it.

Lenovo erects Atom tower

Kevin

@Nigel Wright

True in cost but savings on power from running a 90-120 watt power supply which these can run on fine instead of a 250-500 watt supply which power usage costs add up fast especially when your talking a company with 100+ computers that employees just need basic apps.

Gaming rigs they are not even though my 330 dual core can run World of Warcraft with minimal settings. But they are able to do word excel and most other non processor intensive applications perfectly fine which is ideal for businesses.

US cops called to McDonalds menu cock-up

Kevin

Wow another

think it was a week or so ago I heard the 911 call of a guy, I think it was in Florida also, who was upset Burger King ran out of lemonade and wanted the drive thru attendant arrested.

Hollywood to totally recall Total Recall

Kevin

I'll bet

$1000 they will blame online piracy as why the movie tanks

not the fact that almost 60% of the movies I heard about recently were horrendously done remakes of the originals that there blaming piracy for.

World of Warcraft: 'The crack cocaine of the computer world'

Kevin
Coat

@AC 20:38

ACTUALLY they have parental controls to limit playtime on WOW so if your kids playing too long it immediately boots them off for however long they want so there is no need to regulate their wow intake 24 hours a day because Blizzard does it for them if they bother setting it up.

Now back to equipping my epic robe

Windows 7 fast track alarms technical testers

Kevin

Actually

I'm shocked with windows 7 it actually installed and runs on a Micro ATX VIA C7 800 mhz (1st gen) board with 384 megs or ram. It does not run very well but hell this particular board and configuration had issues running windows 2000 and XP so I can't blame Microsoft. Oddly though it actually booted up faster than 2k, XP and even ubuntu which was very interesting to note.

and @ raving angry loony

Microsofts done it in the past

windows 98 was a service pack for 95

Windows XP was a service pack to 2000 that added some prettiness and made it easier for average users to migrate to.

Pirate Bay prosecutor tosses infringement charges overboard

Kevin
Pirate

You know..

I think I finally figured out where the recording industry Ass and movie industry is losing their millions of dollars of revenue a year. There losing it paying stupid ass lawyers to chase people down and sue em just think of how much money they would not lose by just halting the mindless lawsuits. Only people I truly seeing the need to prosecute and sue are the people who sell the bootleg DVD's for $10 of movies still in the theaters, and $5 for new CD's, because that actually does hurt their sales when the actual product hits the shelves.

And with the new savings with my idea they could go and hire people who can actually sing without computer assistance to make them sound good, or hire someone with a new idea for a movie instead of rehashes.

And for the record I don't use TPB at all seeing there has not been one thing released in recent years I actually found worth wasting my bandwidth downloading and hard drive space storing, let alone worth paying to see.

Samsung NC10 netbook

Kevin
Unhappy

aww :(

wish they would have remade the Q1 with these specs. I personally love my Q1 but its getting a bit old and some newer programs don't work quite as well as they do on the 2 atom based boards I own.

Obama's rainbow stealth aircraft uncloaks over Virginia

Kevin

@AC 19:39

Actually your idea is why I thought America got planes rammed into its tower due to them not wanting us pushing that stuff over there and destroying their heritage...

Only thing America really needs (besides invulnerable killbots and other fun DARPA related death machines) is to stop applying the American way of life on every other country on this planet and leave them alone.

Circuit City goes titsup

Kevin

wtf

"Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers,"

all 10 of them?

Seriously though I shopped at that shit hole probably 5 times in the last 14 years. 4 of which was for what I seen in a sales ad went in the very next day miraculously they never had the item in stock the day after the item was off sale they had 15 on the shelf...

Bought a Sega Dreamcast there after they were discontinued (last place to have any) told the cashier literally 15 times and got in a argument about not wanting the service contract and that it was discontinued still they pestered me to the point I told them to shut up or they can keep it.

The last one was for a 500 gig drive a year ago ended up going to best buy and price matching seeing Circuit city had absolutely 0 in stock in any store within a 50 mile radius, BTW this was the 1st day of the sale.

Circuit city so long you shall not be missed.

US woman says Ubuntu can't access internet

Kevin
Coat

@Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 15th January 2009 03:16 GMT

"How can you say it's as bad as it was 10 years ago... that's like saying Windows is as bad as it was 10 years ago. "

Actually after the <sarcasm>JOY</sarcasm> of using Vista I would say windows is probably worst off right now than it was 10 years ago.

I'm guessing she probably was using a verizon cell phone with a dongle for her internet connection that has no Linux drivers readily available. Or had one of those stupid gateways that comes with a usually unneeded windows only CD and has no alternate instructions.

And maybe the school's web page is made to work only on <sarcasm> the Internet standards</sarcasm> of IE6 seeing it is a technical school and its probably the most they teach.

@Simon

I don't think I have ever seen repair connection work once in all my years working on windows PC's

Also remember this is coming from the same state that had a 34 yo enrolled in high school as a 15yo and didn't question her age... HEY maybe there the same person ;)

City of Heroes fingered in MMO patent lawsuit

Kevin
Gates Halo

OMG

that patent picture looks exactly like the Lobby from Microsoft's V-chat that was released back in December 1995.

McCain campaign sells unwiped Blackberry for $20

Kevin

eh?

I don't see why people were so hung on Mc Cain not knowing how to use a computer. Lets face it if most of the politicians knew anything about computers they would never have passed such half assed laws like the DMCA in the 1st place.

Microsoft preps IE 8 for the web-challenged

Kevin

Webdevelopers are lucky

Think of it like this Microsoft is doing their best to keep you guys in a job through the recession ;)

Customs warns of killer consoles

Kevin

Heres the thing

Theres a good chance these are probably the DS's that failed inspection and were thrown in the to be destroyed bin for some reason. So yes you might get a perfectly fine system that only has a cosmetic glitch or there might be a problem with a processor when certain games are fired up which if this is the case as its highly likely some of them could be a potential hazard by overcharging the battery or shorting it.

Or there breaking in at night and firing up Nintendo's factory and punching out extra chips like I believe they were doing with the counterfeit Cisco gear awhile back.

'Faith-based' investment firm fingers holiday's most sinful games

Kevin

I'm shocked

World of Warcraft only got a 9 I thought for sure the demons running around would have pumped up its rating as well as the pentagrams in summoning circles at certain places in the game. Maybe they should have done Wrath of the Litch king where you go killing innocent townsfolk for 30 minutes for fun when you start and turning them into a army of undead ;)

Asus to downgrade Eee Box CPU?

Kevin

Well

I got a original Intel atom board in a mini ITX case. I found what you said to be true till I disabled Hyper Threading in the Bios. I bought it to use as a cheap DVR replacing a Celeron 800 which I was using at the time. The Celeron was outperforming it all around playing videos, games, and in recording the Celeron could record in the TV tuners "Medium" quality mode fine where the Atom was having issues with audio synch problems in the Medium mode and the video would black out at random.

Now I got the crazy idea to disable Hyper Threading and the Atom is performing as I expected. Plays almost any video I chuck at it, records at max resolution my tuner allows with no video or audio issues.

So if your having issues try disabling Hyper Threading in the BIOS because unless the programs your using are designed to use it efficiently it only causes issues IMO.

Nintendo in profit on each Wii sold

Kevin

@Michael B.

Beats me why people think the Wii don't sell games my cousins own 20-25 games for it.

Only reason I can think of is that people look at sales papers like from Bestbuy and Circuit city and see like 1/10th of a page (if that) each week total for Nintendo's systems, 9/10ths of the page to Xbox, and Sony has its own page usually for the PS3 and PSP. So if you look at the sales paper and see that you almost think the systems doing fairly poor

@Ian Michael Gumby

I can boot up linux on my DS... My one buddy done it on his Xbox... Linux on a console is not a big selling point I hate to say and does not make it productive...

Chrysler: the future's bright, the future's electric

Kevin

hmm

out of the electric cars I've seen the Zeo ranks #2 in looks.

Personally I like the way the Chevy volt looks

Now if the Zeo didn't have the huge wanna be 50s car of the future bubble roof and something more normal it would look damn good.

Firefox update fixes four critical flaws

Kevin

@Florence

completely agree about the awful bar

Unfortunately I couldn't locate the installer for FF2 and spent 40 minutes locating the settings and extensions to disable 90% of the damn thing.

@Mark Legosz

your comparison is a little off it would be like giving your grandmother an iPhone when she only wants a basic phone that makes a phone call with minimal effort. Not having to press extra butons.

Some people just want something that works without the un-needed bulk and shininess while others find it appealing.

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