Posts by Philip Kroker

Gmail in massive web outage

AAARRRRGGGHH!!!!

It my be back up but ALL of my contacts have been wiped out!!! If this is a taste of the reliability of cloud computing they can keep it.

Apple tablet spooks world of PCs

Archos anyone?

So it's like the upcoming Archos 9pctablet then eh?

http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/index.html?country=ca&lang=en

Call me when something truly new hits the market.

Inside USB 3.0

Sigh.....

I had hoped that they would remove the CPU from the USB3 equation, but I suppose they figure that since CPUs are so much more powerful now than they were, we wouldn't notice the extra clock cycles. Like the first two posters mentioned, CPU dependance makes USB completely unsuitable for high bandwidth applications. Though perhaps with the extra bandwidth it might become useful. Hopefully they will fix CPU dependance and lack of P2P next time when they make USB4.

VeriChip shaves 3mm off human RFID chips

I got four words for ya...

OVER

MY

DEAD

BODY!

New non-volatile memory promises 'instant-on' computing

Instant boot?

My Tandy TRS-80 CoCo 2 did that. Hit the power button and 1/10th of a second later I was ready to go. Now if only I could do that with my new computer...

Canadian cops cry for BlackBerry wiretap

RE:Theory versus practice

Sorry to dissapoint, but it's not. Cry loud and long enough you'll get it passed regardless of how illogical or stupid the idea is.

Sex crime 'lie detector' pilot could prompt wider use

What next Tarot cards?

I remember reading an interview some time ago that was conducted with the guy who invented the polygraph, later in life. He said the the device did not work, he was ashamed he had made it and that he was trying to have it removed from the judiciary process. He also said that it was unlikely that it would be given up because the beurocracy was addicted to technology and silver bullet fixes and they would look like complete asses if they admitted it was unreliable (Imagine all the criminals they'd have to let go).

Vladimir Putin bitchslaps Dell-boy

Re:Comrade Putin...

According to a relative of mine who had the misfortune of living in the great USSR, the real reason for the downfall was their prohibition of alcohol, nothing else. They lost a great deal of tax revenues as a result and the people hoarded all the foodstuffs required to make their own vodka. Unhappy plebs + no money = change of govornment.

Israel hacks Arab TV station

Religion?

To the best of my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong) but the little war happening in Gaza at the moment has precious little to do with religion, it is a purely political war. After WWII the Jews were given a piece of historic Israel back and the Palestinians living there didn't like that. So the current conflict has been going on for the last 60 years with low blows by all sides.

Perhaps the situation could be resolved (read ceasfire NOT cessation of hatred) by replacing the police in Gaza with UN troops with the authority to kill. That should stop the rockets and therefor the Israeli blockade and any excuse for restrictive military checkpoints on the boarder.

If you want to inform yourselves about the situation a little more there is a wonderful documentary made by a Brit entitled "Death in Gaza". Watch it, it should make even the toughest guy cry.

(Alien because religion not at the center of conflict seems to be an alien concept)

Follow the Somali pirate scourge via Google mashup

What ever happened to the good old days?

Back during the pirates hayday most if not all merchant ships were outfitted with cannon, why not do the same now? I realize that the official navies of the world can't prevent all attacks due to the volume of shipping and the fact that the pirates don't exactly fly the Jolly Roger, and I wouldn't approve of blowing every suspect ship out of the water because chances are you'd guess wrong. So arm the merchant vessels and I imagine the insurance companies might even give a discount if you outfitted your ship with a few 20mm autocannons, maybe a 5" deck gun or two and handed out assault rifles to the crew to deter pirate attacks. I'm fairly certain that after a few disasterous encounters all but the most hardened pirates will go home.

Archos 5 internet-enabled PMP

@ "Looks lovely but..."

I agree with your sentiments, but I must add another feature they missed out on completely is bluetooth headphones. There are just some places you can't flash a gadget like this without getting mugged for it and wires are such a pain.

Met Office: Global warming sceptics 'have heads in sand'

Global warming is a fact

it's been going on since the last ice age ended. Every child in Canada lears about how the North American continent was blanketed in a 2km thick sheet of ice and how people crossed the Bearing Strait in something like 3000BC due to it being frozen over and how as the ice receeded they migrated further south and west. What I didn't learn about was the giant CO2 spewing factories churning out flint arrowheads and pottery at an unprecedented rate, that must have existed for all that nasty global warming to have occured.

The world isn't static people, it never was and never will be. The sooner the environmentalists get their minds around that fact the better.

Motorola gets down with the kids

Re: 'millennials'!?!

I resent arbitrary lables being applied to me. I'm joining the other two.

American man too fat for execution

Civilized meathods

The Romans were a civilized people, at least that's what the history books tell me. So why don't we do what they did with their bad crims? I say put on gladiator games for the public. That way the public is at least entereained by their death.

EU abolishes the acre

Screwed up measures

You Brits are whinging about dual systems, in Canada it's no different. Officially we are a metric country, yet when we build a house we use feet and inches because all lumber is still produced in imperial dimensions. When we cook most cookbooks will only give us imperial directions and temps, that goodness our ovens for the most part still don't have a temp display in celsius. All farmland is still sold in acres, my dad has a quarter section, bugger all if I know how many hectares that is. Ask me how tall I am I'll tell you in feet and inches, weight in pounds, etc. The only time I use metric is when I'm driving or going to the store for food and I'm not even 30.

Baptist church in assault rifle giveaway

@Jesus Puncher

"And when you come across intolerant people such as myself, or the gun-bearing god-fearing religious nuts, which would you rather share a neighbourhood with?"

Hmmm...I think I`d have to go with the red-neck religious nuts as at least they would just shoot me as opposed to impressing upon me how backward I am until I feel the urge to do them grievious bodily harm, at which point they then stand back, condemn me all the more and feel self rightious because they feel that they have just proved their point.

@Jesus Puncher

The definition of evil according to Webster " a: morally reprehensible : sinful, wicked <an evil impulse> b: arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct <a person of evil reputation>". Ergo evil is a subjective term depending on your point of view, therefor judging by your comment everyone who doesn't see eye to eye with you, you would consider evil, as it would appear that you find them to be people of bad character or conduct.

I find it increadibly amusing when those who preach tolerance are themselves the most intolerant people I have the misfortune of coming accross.

*mine's the body armour with a cross on it*

MS takes Windows 3.11 out of embed to put to bed

All gone eh?

I resent the implication that I should be pushing up the daisies at 23 for having used WfW. It was better than DOS shell and it still boots faster on my 40MHz 386 than Windows XP does on my 2.5GHz Athlon64!

Oh, and I found a few sealed OEM copies of it still for sale at a local computer store, on 3.5" floppies no less and at $20, I'd call it a bargain.

Seagate first with 1.5TB hard drives

Not quite there yet

I'd still need 8 of these puppies to adequetly store my data and that's in RAID 5.

Are the ice caps melting?

Hah!

They will twist facts and figures to suit whatever point of view they wish to push. As mention in the article, back in the 70's global cooling was causing a mass panic and people were writing books and making lots of money on the idea. Then people stopped caring so they stopped selling books and making scads of dough. Now they're on about global warming and all the sheeple are freaking out and buying books on how the earth is going to hell in a handbasket due to global warming and the "experts" are making money again. To anyone who cares to delve into the history books, there have been temperature fluctuations ranging from miniature ice ages to global warming for as long as people have cared to note down observations on the weather. Heck there used to be palm trees where I live, but now I have to drive 2,000+ miles south before I see any.

Global warming you say? Bring it on!

Firefox 3 Download Day falls flat on face

I finally fot FF3....

only to have it crash when I went to check out the far cry 2 website :'(. And mouse gestures won't work now either .....grumble grumble grumble

A quarter of UK adults to go on child protection database

Re:Tony Humphreys

Too late, we already have a child protection scheme similar to the one being recommended in the UK. If you want to work with kids you have to have a criminal record check done, so if you ever nicked a candy bar and got caught, good luck ever working with kids. Did I mention that the check will cost you?

Assyrian clay tablet points to 'Sodom and Gomorrah' asteroid

@Anonymous Cowards

I find it interesting that the "non-believers" out there feel so insecure about their own beliefs/lack thereof that they must resort to bashing those who do adhere to any religion. Is religion bashing perhaps a new sport? I also find it amusing that they are overly eager to point to the events of the past that paint religion as the source of all evils while blissfully ignoring/failing to mention that people who despised religion in all its forms also committed some less than flattering acts, Stalin comes to mind, though there are others.

Even more amusing than that I find the fact that most of the cricizing is done by anonymous cowards. Are you so ashamed of what you believe that you are unwilling to put your names behind what you say? Perhaps you need to hide because you fear recrimination for your childish insults? I am not ashamed of what I believe so I am not afraid to put my name to it, that does not mean I agree with everything done in the name of God, because as we all know that turn of phrase has been used to "justify" some things that are just wrong.

Again to any posters whos name really is Anonymous Coward my apologies, to those who name is not but still use it, grow some backbone!

@Anonymous Coward

if you feel the urge to mock someone be man enough to put your name to it, unless of course tht is your name, in which case I apologize for ridiculing your manhood Mr. Coward.

@supermeerkat

I hate getting into a theological debate on an IT website but it has already begun so...

if the bible is truely so nonsensical and inaccurate, then why is it when completely rational, non-bible believing people give it an honest openminded effort to disprove the bible once and for all they end up believing it? If you don't believe that this can happen check out www.leestrobel.com, that is if you aren't so closedminded that you can't even give a competing viewpoint a chance. This website just happens to be the most public example of this, there are many more.

cheers!

PS I think the reason why Sodom and Gomorrah haven't been found is that God completely destroyed them. I'll wager though that the map that shows the exact former location of the cities is sitting in some museum.

LiveLeak pulls anti-Koran documentary

@A J Stiles

Unless I am seriously mistaken there are violent and dangerous people that belong to every stripe, monotheistsm, polytheists, atheists. The reasons for people becoming violent and dangerous are many and varied and in my estimation only a few of those reasons can be directly linked to any religion. I think most of those can be tied to poor family life, childhood trauma, etc, but I'm no psychologist so I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Geert Wilders faces legal threats over footage copyright

I think you fail to see his point

You obviously haven't watched the interview he gave on television some time back (which btw is on liveleak) where he states that no he doesn't think all muslims are evil he just thinks that some of them are. This movie that everyone is getting so worked up over is merely a collage of footage and text of things already widely available. He has merely put these together so that we have a more complete picture of things. Granted putting all together "under one roof" is like drinking lemon juice from concentrate but it gets the point across. *NEWSFLASH TO ALL LIBERAL FUZZY WUZZIES! NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO BE YOUR FRIEND!*

History lesson: Hitler came to power. Hitler broke Versaills treaty. Europe gave in to his demands. Hitler became a bully. Europe said "oops" and spent the better part of 6 years and a lot of lives to fix their mistake. Does anyone else see a similar situation beginning to play out now?

@Sean Aaron

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "so-called Christians", because you gotta wonder if they aren't just using religion as a coverup. Many people say they belong to a religion out of convinience, not because they actually believe it. I make no bones about the fact that I am a Christian, it doesn't make me perfect, it just means I have a different worldview from most of you.

@ all Anonymous Cowards

If you feel the need to bash someone at least have the courage to put your names to it. And if you haven't watched the interview and the movie shut up and watch them before you comment.

cheers all!

BOFH: Impatience

WHY???

on earth is the BOFH story posted under the bootnotes heading instead of its own BOFH heading? I reckon its an evil plot to make it more difficult for us to get our weekly BOFH fix.

MIT plans to roll out 'folding' car

What about non-tropical climates?

I don't know about the rest of you but I live in a place where there is a minimum of 15cm of snow on the ground for 6 months of the year, so unless they are going to put track options on these things they'll be useless for half the year. Also best not let your battery die where I live, cause if you do it freezes and needs to be replaced. I'll leave it to your imaginations as to what glare ice could mean for this car.

*Dead vulture icon 'cause I think the idea was a still birth*

RIAA chief calls for copyright filters on PCs

KGB mentality

GOOD GRIEF!! I thought that this kind of mentality was paar for the course in nasty commie or nazi dictatorships not in the *cough* "free" western world. What's next a bunch of thugs showing up at your house at midnight to take you away for "questioning"? My grandparents moved to north america to get away from that cr*p.

Torn between the dead vulture and pirate icons.

Microsoft tells Ultimate Extras fans to 'hang on'

Dreamscenes is old news

has no one ever heard of VLC media player? Aside from being a great all around media player thats really light on system resources it can also loop a video as your desktop background, and the best part about it is that it runs on almost any OS.

If you want to check it out go to www.videolan.org

Galileo to get public cash, agree EU ministers

Hidden Fees

If they need money to pay for Galileo, why not tack on a one time liscensing fee to the price of the reciever units of €25 or something like that? It means they get money for the project and the consumer doesn't feel like they're being bent over and getting it in the backside.