Posts by Justicesays

Ubisoft: 'Vast majority of PC gamers are PIRATES'

Yeah Right

Essentially Ubisoft have screwed their own sales by their inability to realize their DRM policy and bad recent games are the problem, not rampant piracy.

Their PC platform sales have dropped by 90% in the last couple of years (Source: PC Gamer) , inconveniently in the same time period they introduced always on DRM, long outages when people couldn't play games due to DRM server administration etc.

Rather than admit , yeah, hugely restrictive DRM was a mistake and doesn't make people buy more games, they have instead gone "Well, clearly no-one buys any games any more, thats why our sales dropped 90%, so we are going to give stuff away for free instead and hope to addict people to micropayments like some kind of drug dealers"

I pay for all of my games (mostly via steam) , but I haven't bought an Ubisoft game (apart from really old ones) for a while due to the dual facts that:

1) They didnt look any good

2) Always on DRM puts me off. Steam has an offline mode that works fine.

Everything Everywhere to be Nothing Nowhere in rebrand

Orange-T

Doesn't sound that snappy, but you could paint Mr T orange and use him as your spokesperson.

Which would provide immediate brand recognition in the over 30s!

Assange's fate to be revealed at high noon

Re: Legal basis?

IANAL, but

They could grant him Ecuadoran citizenship,

then appoint him as ambassador to (say) Argentina

1. If a diplomatic agent passes through or is in the territory of a third State, which has granted him a passport visa if such visa was necessary, while proceeding to take up or to return to his post, or when returning to his own country, the third State shall accord him inviolability and such other immunities as may be required to ensure his transit or return. The same shall apply in the case of any members of his family enjoying privileges or immunities who are accompanying the diplomatic agent, or travelling separately to join him or to return to their country

In this case the UK would be the "Third state" and not have an option of not receiving the "Diplomat", but be obliged to not hider their progress.

Pretty sure he already has a visa, which they granted him.

Then they put him on a direct (charter?) flight to Argentina, and from there he can go to Ecuador

So long as Argentina don't deny his diplomatic credentials before he gets there.

Which seems unlikely tbh.

Google, PayPal, banks, mobile networks in pay-by-bonk peace summit

Not sure I understand

I keep seeing variations on this phrase "protected as they are with chip'n'pin transactions" used in conjunction with contactless payments.

So, a contactless payment is treated (in fraud terms) the same as an authorized PIN transaction?

If you claim a PIN authorized transaction is fraudulent, the first response of the bank is to claim that you did it, then they claim you must have told someone the pin. Then they refer it to the banking ombusman who sees "PIN Authorized" and backs the bank.

So we can expect the same treatment if we report a contactless payment as fraudulent?

Great! Sign me up!

Hello nasty, don't use my music: Deceased Beastie Boy to admen

Re: Don't Worry

That article also indicates that I'm not wrong on the judge thing.

The estate is still taxable on the value of his image and music etc. that could be used in advertising?!

Even if he forbids that use (a pretty much non-enforceable term apparently)

Re: Don't Worry

I just looked it up myself.

Based on Wikipedia and the NYT, he is stuffed on post-mortem image rights because he died in New York.

Unless they have put in legislation since then.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28madoff.html?_r=2&hpw=&pagewanted=all

Don't Worry

I'm sure a judge will be along shortly to let the owners of the estate know that they don't have to abide by this kind of restriction.

What is the "copyright" on your own image anyway? life+70 ? Or just as long as it takes before noone bothers to sue you?

Microsoft: It's not Metro, it's Windows 8

Call them this:

Tablet apps should be referred to as "Tapps"

desktop apps as "Dapps"

The Windows advertising team as "Twats"

Windows 8 Tapp

Windows 8 Dapp

Windows 8 Twats

Sorted

Using copyright to avoid Freedom of Info law? Ha, ha, NICE try!

Re: Automatioc publication

I thought under the great new ruling passed down from the legal monkeys at the top of the law tree , the email itself is publishing the information (albeit, just to the recipient)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/03/text_talk_legal_status/

Google Talk goes dumb in massive global outage

Re: "...apocalypse..."

"You'd find that a substantial portion of the younger population would suddenly have to look up and deal with the world as it really is (something many of them may never have had to do before). I find the prospect quite scary."

Might even be riots in the street.

Except without BBM, Facebook and Twitter rioters couldn't possibly organize themselves.

Plus the destructive feedback loop of having nowhere to gripe about everything being down.

"Damn Facebook is down, I'll just send a Tweet complaining about it"

"What? Twitter is down too? I'll have to Google+ about both of them then"

"No Google+ either?! And no BBM?"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" (Darth Vader style)

*phew*, I think we would be safe.

Might be an uptick in graffiti.

Stuxnet: 'Moral crime' or proportionate response?

So , where are the "sports" police

"Operation Olympic Games"

This is clearly a breach of the special magical protected state of the word "Olympics".

Aggravated even further by the use of the word "Games" in conjunction with it.

I assume the Corporate goons of the IOC (Illuminated Olympic Conspiracy) are even now moving to arrest the coiner of that operational label?

And this website.

And me.

Sysadmins! There's no shame in using a mouse to delete files

Would prefer admin gui's not to exist unless complemented by equally full-featured CLI

The main reason people in this topic state that they have to use GUI's is because "There is no easy way of doing it on the CLI" or "The GUI presents information difficult or impossible to obtain on the CLI".

This isnt a fault of the CLI, its the fault of the application/OS designer.

Personally I hate it when admin tasks can *only* be accomplished in the GUI. Like being forced to use a graphical installer (bye-bye easy automated deployment) or security settings that can only be determined via GUI pages (say goodbye to automated security audit scripting).

Sure, using a GUI can be nice when casually monitoring systems or doing a simple config change, but that task or information should also be obtainable/executed via CLI queries or commands.

And GUI's are ideal for general information creation and display, or for unskilled users (when well written).

Moving to GUI's means more people have to be employed to manage things, as GUI's are designed for humans to use. CLI's can be used by both humans and computers, which enables automation. Automation means one skilled sys-admin can keep on top of multiple systems and gainfully use their experience to work on new business projects. Doing the same work with GUI's requires the employment of more people, who will also be paid less, thus less skilled and less able to work on new projects.

Of course GUI writers can try to include automation in their designs, but this has a big flaw. Automation in GUI's allows you to do what the writer wants you to do.

Automation in a CLI allows you to do what *you* want to do.

Gov must act on 'innocent' web-browsing copyright timebomb

Just rationalizing existing laws

This is the same legal point why the online PVR companies get screwed (because they have to make copies).

Given some of the rulings around the required amount of text you can copy before its breaching copyright (like the newspaper headlines web sites were slapped for republishing), I'm surprised that the ISP and internet backbone escapes the same judgement (packets held in buffers being copyright material that requires a license).

Its not in the interests of the legal profession or Government to change the legal status of these "transient" copies.

Such nitpicking is a huge source of legal fees for many years to come.

Also allows big business much more control over their media than they would otherwise have.

The little guy is still screwed once they declare his work an "Orphan" ofc. Only big business need apply.

AMD pins its server hopes on SeaMicro technology - maybe in APUs

Screwed by Intel

When AMD managed to come up with architectures that were better and faster than Intels, Intel used its market dominance to suppress those products until its own chip engineers managed to get their next big thing off the production line.

Despite Intel having the crap sued out of them by the European commission and AMD , its not like AMD magically made market share after the court case, so Intel are still laughing all the way to the bank.

And extra money now (instead of 8-9 years ago when it could have been put to use funding research) isnt going to help AMD much apart from keeping the lights on a bit longer.

Valve to raise Steam for Ubuntu

Ensuring their future

Pretty sure Valve are seeing the writing on the wall so far as windows and the desktop is concerned. As apple only sell their OS with hardware, and the console markets are locked up tight, moving to linux gives them future proofing should MS go tits up , decide GFWL is the only allowed gaming platform on windows, or move their entire development effort to tablets.

I'm surprised they are using an existing linux distro actually. Might make more sense to provide a "ValveOS" cutdown linux with known drivers etc you can install in addition to your regular distro in a small partition, run off a USB stick etc. Game storage could be put on any drive after all.

Olympics security cockup down to software errors - report

Re: Yeah ... riiight

A loss?

They were originally contracted to provide 4000 staff at a cost of £83m ( £20,000 per person)

then they were asked to provide 10500 staff at a cost of £279m (£26,000 per person)

Now they say they can only provide 7000 staff, and would lose £50m (£229m overall taken, at £32,000 per person).

So, given their cost per-person (and presumably profits) went up at each stage, how are they making a loss on this?

Looks like they managed to increase their initial profit by 50%, and I imagine the directors already pocketed the cash bonuses (as the contract was booked last year), so are perfectly willing to leave.

How to fix the broken internet economy: START HERE

Re: two points

>Perhaps, if Google produce a DRM'd system that will allow them to securely (defined by MPIAA/RIAA) deliver >content, wouldn't it be likely that the content providers would either 1) line up to have their content delivered to >the US and Canada via this method or 2) license said technology and deliver the content to the US and >Canada themselves?

Fixed that for you.

Geographical availability

That is what screws up most of these business models right away.

If you actually cannot get the media in your country, but know it is out there, there is a huge incentive to obtain it via "alternative sources".

Three years ago I could surf to any ebook vendor site and download anything they had on sale.

Now they all have "only available in the US and canada" everywhere.

Amazon.co.uk has "This publisher has not yet made this book available on kindle"

If you are lucky the ebook version will turn up in the UK at some point, months down the line.But sometimes not even then, as if the book is niche enough , it will never get its rights bought in this country.

WTF? This made some sense when you would actually have to commission a print run in the country concerned, but we are talking about making some computer bits legally copyable.

And if you do make them copyable, you will make money you will otherwise not make.

Even dumber when the book wont be hard copy printed in the country for the same niche reason.

Some kind of mass foot shooting going on out there.

The same with films that were released in the US well ahead of the UK theatrical release (sometime the US DVD was coming out before they arrive in UK cinemas)

And the first posters P!nk example as well.

These are the companies who thought DVD regions were a good idea, and would actually accomplish anything (top tip, the DVD player doesn't actually know what country it is in)

Windows 8: Not even Microsoft thinks businesses will use it

Re: Windows 9

>"I expect Windows 9 will be turned around pretty fast much like Windows 7 appeared with 18 months of Vista."

Nope, all the MS developers will be forced to use windows 8. We'll be lucky if they every manage to release windows 9.

Microsoft 'hardens' Windows Update from Flame penetration

Trust Us!

"Windows Update can only be spoofed with an unauthorised certificate combined with a man-in-the-middle attack."

Or a top secret order of the president to MS Execs/blackmailed MS employee/spy in Microsoft modifying the windows update servers to send the worm to targeted PCs of course.

Seems like the easiest way to get that worm on really.

Sean Parker launches Chatroulette killer: For why?

The next "next big thing"

It just came to me, the ultimate ever anticipated technology.

3D Video Chat.

I'm off the see if I can patent that and found a company right away...

PC-makers hope for Windows 8 hero to sweep up sales

Its not the idea of a "Metro" UI that annoys me

Its the fact that MS are deliberately stopping people from not using it.

IF Metro was the right choice for a windows mobile device then people would use it, over trying to hit tiny menus and scroll bars.

But forcing it on desktop users, then going so far as the specifically thwart attempts to allow people to use old UI elements is just crazy.

Even worse when its on Server systems as well.

Pretty much saw it coming when the "Ribbon" was forced down peoples throats.

No "old style menus" option available, you MUST USE THE RIBBON , IT IS BETTER, IF YOU DON'T SEE THAT YOU ARE DEFECTIVE.

And lo and behold, the person running Metro is the person behind the Ribbon as well.

US military gives NASA two better-than-Hubble telescopes

Kickstarter

Need $8.6 billion to fund the construction and launch of two "better than hubble" space telescopes.

Already have the telescopes, need to get cameras/instruments and launch payload on a big-ass rocket.

Pledge $15 or more,

Huge resolution desktop wallpaper of some fancy nebula somewhere

Pledge $100

Chance to have a newly discovered asteroid/comet named after you

Pledge $100000

1 day of satellite tasking at sky section of your choice

Pledge $1 billion

1 week of satellite tasking at world leader/military target of your choice.

Oz has to go nuclear, says Adelaide U scientist

Re: Inevitable if you think about it.

Did you try what it looks like if the disaster happened at Chernobyl?

http://howbigreally.com/dimension/environmental_disasters/chernobyl#Chernobyl

I still seem to have both my heads so I guess I am ok.

Terror cops hunt laptop snatched from retired MI5 spookmistress

Just an excuse

If you have your laptop stolen, plod will give you a crime reference number and that is the last you will hear of it.

Let slip that you are a former head of MI5 and suddenly there is an APB out for the potential enemy agent that must have swiped it!

I guess her ex-colleagues over at spy HQ were willing to back her up so she can recover the turgid novels^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ^H Top secret contact details she has on there.

MySQL's growing NoSQL problem

Maybe Some Bias

". If you take a look at market share in the server space, as you look at traditional data centers, about 70 per cent are running on the Windows platform and about 30 per cent are running Linux."

Man, UNIX is doing worse than I thought !

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/11/gabriel_unix_server_survey/

New smart meter tells Brits exactly what they already know

Hmm,really

You might be able to refuse to have one put in on your current property.

Whats the odds of them letting you change it to a "dumb" meter if you move house to one that already has a smart meter?

"Sorry Guv, we dont have those old fangled meters no more, just the smart ones"

ALL NHS patient records online by 2015

Re: How much is this going to cost?

It wont cost much at all.

New Facebook profile created for everyone who doesn't already have one, new NHS records section (shared to everyone by default ofc.), and Zuckerberg will do it for free so that Pfizer, Glaxo etc. can target drugs directly at you and your GP (who will have to be in your friends list to see your records).

Looks to be the UKGov strategy, and then they can use that Facebook login to give to access to the Digital by Default project like they wanted to all along. Double Win

Basic instinct: how we used to code

Re: Jupiter Ace

I bought a SPECTRUM BASIC compiler (at a computer faire I believe).

It wasnt too bad, the biggest issues were that it didnt handle floats, just integers.

And you had to have enough room for the BASIC program, the compiler, and the resulting machine code .

Indiana cops arrest violent 6-year-old

USA Foreign policy

Where else!

Major science fiction publisher to zap DRM

If only they could make a decent website

The Baen websites (baen.com and webscription.net) are pretty awful, but I do appreciate their book prices and DRM free stance.

Bought a book from them last night in fact , $6 and my choice of DRM-free format to download in.

This was a new release title mind, although you can pay $15 for a pre-release copy (with whatever spelling issues etc. might still be in there) and get it a bit earlier.

Best if you like military sci-fi / fantasy , as thats what they specialize in.

Google founders, James Cameron, go asteroid mining

Nice prelude to supervillain hood

Hmm, private companies with the capability to destroy entire cities/countries by raining rocks down on them.

Possibly even on purpose!

Compulsory coding in schools: The new Nerd Tourism

Re: So how do you teach coding?

I did a GCSE in CS,

As I remember it involved the history of EFTPOS systems, using spreadsheets / turning on a computer and other mindless rubbish. At no point was any programming done.

A Level Computer science was apparently mostly about VLSI, and no university considered having A-level computer science in any way worthwhile from what I was told.

So expect that excitement to be well and truly worn out of your sister before she gets to do anything worthwhile in school! But maybe I am wrong, and GCSE/A level CS now teaches programming (I dont count HTML web page design as programming).

I taught myself to program in BASIC, age 9 , and the first formal lessons I had were at university, (Using Modula 3 to start with). Because I had already learned how to program, uni taught me the following things other than new language syntax:

1) Recursion

2) OO

3) Functional and Logical Programming

4) Not to expect your coursemates to do any of the shard project work

5) How to program a solitaire program in 2 hours before it had to be handed in.

ICANN battled dot-word TLD registration leak bug for WEEKS

In their interest not to fix it?

Damn, I bet ICANN are gutted that they may potentially have to run extra auctions and thus make loads more money.

Quite a good return for having poor security.

I bet banks wish security flaws worked to their advantage like that.

Minister blows away plans for more turbines

Re: 230 million cups of tea per year!

It does do a good job of putting it in perspective though, but maybe not in the way they think.

You would need *360* of those wind turbines just so everyone in the UK could have 4 cups of tea a day.

Lets hope no-one wants to wash their clothes as well!

Workers can't escape Windows 8 Metro - Microsoft COO

Who wants to be "distracted" by email while trying to produce a budget spreadsheet by combining requests sent in by email.

who wants to be "distracted" by the web page while they are working on the source for it.

Who wants to be "distracted" by the application while they are trying to document the menus and features

Who wants to be "distracted" by web pages/forums while trying to solve a knotty OS or application issue.

If you dont want people to be distracted, uninstall the stuff distracting them, or limit their internet access, or just give them a low appraisal and tell them to buck up their ideas.

Dont make their desktop a shitty smartphone single task OS.

I guess the days of browsing the web whilst playing a game and watching a video are over for home users as well?

Don't worry, I'm sure

People will find something else to be distracted by.

Possibly something with an OS they want to use....

That sure to promote the use of windows,possibly as something to throw their desktop computers out of.

Antimatter asymmetry: new results bring solution closer

Re: My Concept on the two-sided universe

The Cities in flight series (James Blish, 1958) , has the ending of the final book, "The Triumph of Time" based around a similar concept...

The Icon is a spoiler...

RIM PlayBook price cut specials become standard

Re: Problem is

Yep,

great minds worked on this product

1) Limit the target market to people who already own one of your devices, by not offering your most popular application (BM) unless linked to a blackberry.

2) Call it the "Playbook", a baseball reference that only Americans could interpret as anything other than a name for a leisure device

3) Price it at a premium.

4)....

5) Profit? - I dont think so.

Nominet to launch .wales and .cymru

I expect that

most registrations in the .cat domain are along the lines of

lol.cat

Labour targets Tories' Google problem

Hmm, right

"Harman says the Conservatives should speed up implementation of the Digital Economy Act,"

Good plan, get the Tories to push the Labour introduced legislation, then blame it all on the Tories when it becomes wildly unpopular.

Phrases like "We wouldn't have implemented it that way " Or "The Bill, as originally intended" will feature heavily in the blame pushing ofc.

Crap PINs give wallet thieves 1-in-11 jackpot shot

Re: You carry your birth date around with you?

Driving license photocards probably, although I don't carry mine around.

Maybe the insistence of supermarkets age checking 92 and 72 year olds when they try to buy alcohol means more people carry a driving license/proof of age card?

I would imagine a bigger issue is the fact that "Verified by visa" allows the use of your DOB to bypass the "password security" it claims to offer. So why bother guessing PINs?

CERN boffins to lift LHC beam power

2.78*10^44 Femtobarns in a nanowales

Barclays axes 422 UK IT staff

Odd that

I have yet to hear of a company outsourcing its CEO and board of directors to a country where the salaries are much less. You could probably save 100's of millions in many cases.

French court fines Google $65k over search suggestion

Leglislation will happen

Otherwise no company in their right mind would make any kind of autodrive system available to the general public.

Leglislation and (more) insurance

Black hole radiation could provide insight into quantum gravity

The article is slightly misleading

The decay mechanism is not that the anti-particle falls into the hole and annihilates something inside. The energy of the annihilation would stay in the hole (duh) and the overall mass/energy of the hole increase.

The (proposed) mechanism is that virtual particle/anti-particle pairs are formed by vacuum energy fluctuations, and close to a black hole one of the virtual particles can be whisked off into the black hole before they both disappear back into "nothingness". Because of preservation of charge, spin etc the other particle then has to become real, and the energy "debt" of the creation of this particle passes to the black hole, reducing its overall mass/energy. As its random which of the two fall in the overall charge of the black hole will stay constant +- minute fluctuations .

Or at least, this is the standard english language explanation given, the actual theory uses mathematical tranforms of the vacuum in the presence of a black hole AFAIK to get the result "energy comes out of black holes" and particle/anti-particle quantization of the vacuum is in there somewhere.

Salesforce gobbles 'Facebook for the office' startup

Just one small change

And HCM is Human Cattle Management.

Which I guess is how the HCM departments are already thinking anyway.

British Library sprinkles digital dust on dusty newsprint

Names changed to protect the innocent?

So,what about the "right to be forgotten"? Is a paywall sufficient divide between publicly availiable and research only archive material?

When is an credit/employee/CBR check going to include as standard a check for any references to you (or people with the same name that might be you) in past newspaper articles?

Not so fast: Italian boffins say neutrinos not faster than light

Imagine a balloon

With lots of galaxies and stuff floating around on the skin of it, in a 2d layer, and call that layer a "universe".

Now consider the expansion of the "universe" is caused by the balloon getting inflated,

Where is the "center" of the universe that lies on the skin of the balloon, and how would a 2d "skin dweller" get there?

Now just add a dimension (or 7, or 9, or however many extra small ones they need atm) to approximate that question in our 3d-ish universe.

SQUID calls 'virtual photons' into real existence

The key is

Acceleration.

Being accelerated is specific to your frame of reference, which is why this involves a mirror being accelerated to 25% of light speed, not just one coasting along at that "speed". The light emission only happens during the (brief) acceleration period.

This is also why in the "twin paradox" of special relativity, its the twin who travels far away at near light speed and comes back that is the younger one, even though from eithers frame of reference you could say that its their twin thats is moving at near light speed. Only the travelling twin experiences the acceleration.