* Posts by BinaryFu

39 publicly visible posts • joined 11 May 2011

Google's Siri-a-like to be named 'Majel' after Trek actress

BinaryFu
Alien

I would much rather...

hear Michael Dorn growling from my Android device...especially with a Kingon language pack...

*removes nerd glasses to clean the lenses*

NASA working on nuclear rocket for manned Mars trips

BinaryFu
Coat

I'm no rocket scientist...

But isn't space a great big huge really large massive cold spot? Would it not be possible to set up a liquid cooling system that routes the coolant through external piping that would cool the liquid while outside the ship and then return sufficiently colder?

Couldn't such heat by-product be utilized to run another power generator? Perhaps something along the lines utilized in geo-thermal work and then shuttled off for cooling?

Like I said, no rocket scientist, but it just seems to me that there'd be a way to to make it work with a little thought.

Men most likely to friend dodgy Facebook strangers

BinaryFu
Coat

Men tend to expose themselves more than women

At least that's what I got out of this article...

:D

Gallery mulls 'damage' after cleaner scrubs modern art

BinaryFu
Trollface

True Art Incites Emotional Response...

I dunno about you all, but it's making me laugh my arse off - I'd call the new version definite art.

Universal Music sued by its artists over downloads dosh

BinaryFu
Pint

Burn bitch burn...

The media industries are starting to smolder...just keep fanning boys! The flames will reach the top soon enough!

It's time to end the Windows Wait

BinaryFu
Thumb Down

Are we there yet?

Well, no - not yet anyhow. Although a 32gb or 64gb SSD is in the affordable range, a reasonably sized one (read as, for Windows OS) isn't. A Windows 7 disc will take up a fair amount of room just for the OS, not to mention any games/programs installed. It's not unreasonable to see 50gb+ on an average user's Windows 7.

Add to that the fact that you cannot get Windows (anything) to install on drive C but install other things (like for example, games and such) on a separate drive, without the game going "No no, we won't work unless we put a few things over here on C...like a gig or two of data..."

So, until someone comes out with a MINIMUM of 128gb SSD at a reasonable (Under $100US) we're not going to see them anywhere except in high end (read as expensive) laptops, where longevity and speed are critical.

Android 'stands on Microsoft's shoulders', says MS lawyer

BinaryFu
Mushroom

What we need...

Is the removal of all IP/Copyright/Patents and redo from start. This is a mess that's been turned from "little guy protector" to "little guy annihilator"

Basically, if you try to start up a company now - there are so many patent trolls, copyright trolls, IP trolls that there's nothing you can do without paying license fees to half a dozen giants in the industry or buying (for a retarded amount of money) what basically amounts to the rights to someone else's work and ideas.

This is, quite frankly, so mentally retarded it should be riding a short bus and wearing a safety helmet so it doesn't harm itself further.

But no, instead we go, "Oh, yeah, it's completely screwed up, but you know...it's what we got so that's okay..."

Canonical: Mobile OEMs are going to love our Linux

BinaryFu
Linux

Sorry, I can't read this article...

Did you seriously just call Ubuntu Mac-Alike? Seriously? It shares (let's count them here) 1 common feature with a Mac - the top bar layout is the same.

Personally, I wish them luck in the fondleslab and fondlephone arenas. More competition is always a good thing.

Steve Jobs' last words: 'OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.'

BinaryFu
Linux

I'd say it was probably just the heroin kicking in.

Pete Townshend condemns Apple as 'digital vampire'

BinaryFu
Pirate

I stole his son's bike...

But since I made a copy of it, he'll never know nor be without it nor feel any loss from it.

But I have a nifty bike I would have never bought in the first place and tell all my friends about what an awesome brand it is...and eventually I might just go out and buy myself one just to have one that's been professionally built instead of being a copy of the original.

Jackass.

Anonymous threatens Mexican drug cartel

BinaryFu
Trollface

Poor leverage?

I don't know...publicly outing cops, journalists and taxi drivers who've worked with them means the police will have a LONG list of "Persons of interest" to get information from - and when the drug cartel starts randomly killing everyone they can on that list, you can bet your bottom dollar those still alive will be pounding on the polices' doors begging for protection in exchange for information.

Apparently Anonymous thinks more moves ahead than the average El Reg reader...pity.

Don't let Halloween malware haunt your PC

BinaryFu
Happy

In all fairness...

The saying is, "Trick OR Treat" they just seem to be opting for the former. :D

Happy Halloween, el reg readers and staff alike!

Boffins insert 3D objects into any old photo... realistically

BinaryFu

Wow...

Bad shadows in the first pic - it shows rudimentary branches, not detailed branches (look at the tree...now back to the dragon...back to me....get it? Good...now back to the tree)...and the second one? No dimple in the carpet!!! C'mon, rookie mistake.

I have to agree - these are techniques that anyone with moderate knowledge of GIMP or Photoshop could produce without excessive work.

It just seems they've created an easier way to do it - that still needs more tweaking to pull it off.

Skype lets hackers track your BitTorrent downloads

BinaryFu
FAIL

But...

What if you add encryption into the mix?

I sincerely doubt you're going to be able to track what I or someone else is downloading off BitTorrent from a packet sample.

In fact, I'd say it's impossible. You might be able to say "Well, this person (who doesn't use their real name in Skype - who'd be that dumb?) is downloading an encrypted file via BitTorrent, and the file is unknown."

Congratulations, you now know half as much as an ISP.

Gulf of California terrorized by ONE-EYED MUTANT SHARK!

BinaryFu
Joke

He's sooo cute!

I want one for my exotic species collection. He can go right next to my three-assed baboon!

Hackers expose Citibank CEO's privates

BinaryFu
FAIL

Occupy Everything...

Looks like it just keeps growing. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Also, a side note - I do not believe the people are anti-capitalism. That would just be silly. They're anti-corporate controlled government, if I understand correctly.

Basically, they, like a lot of people, are fed up of the people not having the government's ear because the corporations are stuffing the employees' ears with money.

The closed door deals of "We'll give you support into office from our company if you help us..." to "Now that you're about to leave, make sure to do XYZ for us and then we'll get you a nice cushy job for you to retire on a big fat pension..."

It's things like that which are raising the US citizen's hackles - not capitalism. I know you Euro-tourists assume if anyone's pissed at America, it boils down to anti-capitalism but that's a common mistake.

MIT boffin: Salted disks hold SIX TIMES more data

BinaryFu
Trollface

Wait...

People are still using mechanical drives? Oh oh...is it for slow-access long-term storage units?

An ode to rent-a-nerds and cable monkeys

BinaryFu
Pint

And now back the the article's actual subject...

Well written, sir. I have never understood the whole "I'm better than you/more important than you" mindset in a workplace.

Have your boss leave for a month vacation sometime - I'm sure he'll do it, there's still a few months left in the year. Nothing happens. Everything just keeps right on going, you hardly even notice.

Let one person from the IT department be sick for a few days and the world falls apart.

Anyone in IT should consider US vs THEM as a solid mentality. WE fix things. THEY break things. Period.

Busting net neutrality may amount to spying, says EU

BinaryFu
Mushroom

Such a relief!

That they reviewed everything thoroughly before making law so they didn't have to correct it with more law later on....oh wait.

Furious HP staff stage protest over job cuts

BinaryFu
Flame

Pink slips are fun...

Except when you're the one getting one. Pink slips should seldom, if ever be required except for poor performance. Cutting someone's job because the higher ups didn't do their jobs properly is not a good excuse. Unless you're pink slipping the higher up - then you might very well save the company substantial money.

Companies know where the fat spending is, they ignore it. Why would they want to face the fact that some of their upper management make six figure incomes when they themselves make far higher six figure incomes?

To save a company money, they don't need to lay off 9,000 employees who get $30k a year salary. They need to lay off 900 of the ones who make $300k a year for being a relative, friend or frat brother to one of the high ups.

They need to remove the redundant bosses. Nobody needs four bosses. One will suffice.

But companies simply cannot see that. It's okay to create a new position in the lower levels and then close it up when it's not useful anymore. But god forbid it is done in the upper management area where you have an Executive Assistant to the CFO's Assistant. And their assistant as well...and a secretary for each.

Seriously, it's not just HP, but all companies really need to get their collective heads out of their collective posteriors.

Unity: 'We'll make a terabit chip by 2014'

BinaryFu
Boffin

TerraBIT?

So, we can only look forward to a 125 GigaByte chip then? Which of course, isn't, because of the 1024, not 1000...so in reality...a 122GB chip...

Hmm...you know, that just doesn't quite sound very exciting to me.

Google+ chases MySpace for second place

BinaryFu

ZOMG I WAS ON FOR A MONTH AND NOBODY WAS AROUND!!!

During closed beta testing. That's like saying, "I was in closed Beta of World of Warcraft and nobody played that game, it sucks..."

Here's your sign, here's your safety helmet, you may not want to venture out into the real world.

Al Gore wants to borrow your Facebook and Twitter accounts

BinaryFu
Thumb Up

Instant solution!!!

Google+

Problem solved. Thanks Al Gore for giving us just one more reason to ditch FaceBook! :D

Much of the human race made up of thieves, says BSA

BinaryFu

The best way to prevent piracy is...

There's NO way to prevent piracy. That's reality. There are those who will claim ignorance - so ignorant they figured out how to pirate something?

There are those who will claim cost - but if you make it cheap, they'll still prefer free. Will you then make it free?

There are a lot of people in this world who would and do pirate software. That will never change. It started in the 80's and it is still going strong today. There are kids who were raised by old school pirates of software. You're not going to change a mindset.

You will never stop piracy. DRM has failed time and time again. Encryption won't work - pirates will crack it. Validation checks don't work - they'll crack that too. Whatever you make to lock down your software tighter - will only piss off your legit purchasers and make the pirates laugh.

Case in point - I have a legal copy of a certain game (I won't bother with the name here - it's unimportant) and it checks for the DVD before loading - EVERY SINGLE TIME. So, since I play it a lot, what did I do? Found the pirated crack to make it possible to load the game without the DVD. Why? Because their security check to prevent piracy impeded my enjoyment of playing their game. So I fixed it - via piracy.

That tells me that a pirated game will most likely play better than the original. So, which one am I more inclined to look for the next time I want a game?

Sometimes I hear programmers say, "Wait, so you think it's okay for someone to STEAL MONEY FROM ME???" No, I do not. I also do not think it is reasonable to count money as your own until it's in your pocket. If they aren't paying now, what makes you think they'll pay if you change XYZ?

I've heard programmers also say, "Well, if we can't stop pirates, how am I supposed to make money with my programming degree I just got???" I have a solution that has worked for YEARS for programmers - McDonalds is hiring.

Russian Progress space truck crashes in Siberia

BinaryFu
Trollface

We need a new skit for this one...

"Well, obviously this ship wasn't placed right"

"You mean these ships need to be placed properly?"

"Oh absolutely! This one wasn't even in the right orbit!"

"Which orbit would that be, then?"

"Well, obviously the one where it crashed, you see..."

"So then you have orbits that aren't like that?"

"Of course! I don't want people thinking this ship was unsafe due to errors in the design or anything, it was simply not placed in the correct orbit..."

"So there are safer orbits, for the ships to be in?"

"Absolutely! There are plenty of orbits out there, after all."

"That are safer for the ship?"

"Definitely!"

"Such as?"

"Well, the ones where they don't crash into the earth during orbit, obviously."

Paintball round pops Bulgarian airbag

BinaryFu
Thumb Up

A misspelling?

I believe the original wording of their post was:

"You will also be issued with extra PATTING to protect your implants while paintballing."

VW Scirocco BlueMotion Technology TDI 140

BinaryFu
FAIL

Honestly?

Economically speaking, these vehicles really don't make any sense at all unless you're truly in the market for a new car. The cost savings on fuel (one of the common arguments I hear from the greenies as a GREAT reason to buy one) equates to taking over 30 years for the car to pay for itself.

By that time I'd expect 2 more of them would be required, which means they are not cost efficient at all. Now granted, when they come down into a much more reasonable range of cost, then yes, there will be a definite economic reasoning for purchasing one. Until then, my very evil road hog will still be more economically sound.

Marriage makes women get fat, divorce does same to men

BinaryFu
Holmes

What a load of bollocks...

I GAINED weight while married the first time, LOST weight the second go-round. In-between? I was still fat.

Why? Simple - the first marriage was hell, I ate to compensate for my depression - constantly.

Unhappy marriage = weight gain.

Unhappy being on your own = weight gain.

Therefore we can extract the following formula:

Unhappy = weight gain.

Neighbours cop an earful from screaming Swedish w*nker

BinaryFu
Pint

You know...

Some fetishes have masks and gags for this sort of thing...maybe his neighbors can give them to him as a present... >.>

Amazon web services back up and running

BinaryFu
Trollface

Obviously...

Lulzsec is now hiring out the IRA to perform dirty work on transformers and generators...

Lightning indeed!

MySpace site glitch mistaken for hack attack

BinaryFu
Trollface

FIVE?

You give them too much credit by a factor of 3...

Researchers poke gaping holes in Google Chrome OS

BinaryFu
WTF?

Call me silly but...

"“Whose problem is this to fix?” Johansen continued. “We don't really have an answer for that. LastPass did everything correctly. It's the other extension developers that developed an extension with a vulnerability in it.”"

Didn't he answer his own question? If LastPass did everything correctly and the other extension developers developed an extension with a vulnerability in it, doesn't that, by default, make it the other developers' problem to fix?

Are you slaving away on the wrong projects?

BinaryFu
IT Angle

Sure it's their job, but how many are actually doing it?

I think that's the main focus of this article. There are many companies where the IT Director gets mired down in the day-to-day dramas that often come from other managers who want pet projects done. Some companies don't even HAVE IT Directors, just simply "supervisors" who basically say "Yes, this is important, no this isn't..."

This is a great article to remind IT Directors, or those supervisors who find themselves in a Director's position, that without them overseeing and personally approving the projects from the word go, there can be a lot of fragmentation in the company over what needs to be done and why.

So in short, is it the IT Director's job? Of course. Do they often do it? Of course not.

Do we really want 100Gig Ethernet?

BinaryFu
Stop

Please think about the brain cells...

"The second option is undeniably more future-proof but calls for a much bigger investment in the supporting fibre infrastructure."

Can we please do away with this nonsensical catchphrase "future-proof"? Unless by "future" one means simple "Next Tuesday."

'Great Reversal' as world's forests stage a comeback

BinaryFu
Trollface

OMG!!!

We're all going to LIIIIIIVVVVVEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Wait, that's a good thing, right?

Brit censor stamps on The Human Centipede

BinaryFu
Stop

Honestly the problem actually is...

the fact that they don't have a rating higher than 18 (and I don't mean NR crap either).

Back in the day, when they had some rather limited restrictions on bestiality films, for example, there were some that you had to be over the age of 25 to rent, if I recall correctly (I was a teen at the time but I recall seeing a second that was restricted to 25 or older) and that might resolve the issue we have today - Parents going, "Well, my kid's mature for 13, he can watch an 18 rated movie..." and then they see things like this - guess who gets assaulted by the outraged parents? The censors.

So, you crank up a higher restriction rating for films, allows for more "artistic" content to be allowed (even if you're going to vomit blood after watching them, most likely) while still protecting our youth from stupid parents who don't realize an 18 rating means 18, not 17, 16, 15 14 and a half...or less.

Then you can protect the stupid people from themselves without censoring the population - you just say, "Sorry, you need to be THIS HIGH to ride this ride kiddo - no exceptions."

Cheers,

BinaryFu

Apple admits scareware problem, at last

BinaryFu
Pirate

Hackers don't infect computers - users do.

ANY computer is vulnerable to infections of ANY sort, provided you have two main factors in play:

1) Someone found an exploit and wrote code to utilize it.

2) A user was stupid enough to give it root access.

Any platform, any OS. Period.

Mentally ill file-sharer had 'low self-esteem'

BinaryFu
Grenade

@corpsewood

A brilliant point, we often forget that even in nature mimicry is commonplace - it is perfectly natural to attempt to duplicate that which is great and to ignore those things deemed as failure.

Instead of dragging heels like tar-pitted dinosaurs, the Music Industry need to learn to innovate. Create donation music - high quality digital tracks that come with a simple info tag that says where you can send money if you happen to like the music...sure, some people might give cheaply, but others may give quite a bit. Charity works when it is not forced upon us.

Utilizing your ideas on history teaching us about tomorrow, our earliest troubadours made their money from donations given by a pleased crowd that had been properly entertained - much the same way concert goers pay to enjoy musicians today. Couldn't we do the same digitally?

On another note, something else the Music Industry could learn from - file sharing improves sales, it doesn't harm sales. Their sales didn't start dropping until massive lawsuits and horribly negative publicity had smashed their reputations into unrepairable pieces. In fact, a quick browse of their sales numbers and the advent of peer-to-peer file sharing shows an impressive boost in their overall sales. Inversely, Metallica sales plummeted after their negative campaign against file sharing - while their music was distributed en mass, thus showing disapproval of their actions by the masses.

Add to the idea of donation media, the industry could actually SUPPORT a file sharing program (or 3) and add into it say, a track counter that showed the most popular files - arranged by quality. They could then use that to show the REAL TIME pulse of the Industry. In so doing, they could even see how advertisements, press releases and news stories about the performers affect their popularity and sales. It would revolutionize their industry by giving them more data than anything else they could possibly dream of.

But what do I know, I'm just a geek who works on computers.

BinaryFu
WTF?

Seriously?

They're still going on about mp3s over there? The MIAA has already given up its fight - it found out that even when they win, they lose - Spend several million, get nothing in return (even if they win the case, good luck collecting) and the negative publicity has just about buried them.

The bottom line the Industry has to learn is that "illegal" music sharing boosts sales on items that normally might not sell. You might like songs 1 3 and 7 on the latest pop sensation's new CD...however I listen to the "popular" tracks on YOUTUBE and think they're absolute rubbish. Someone's sharing them and I download the entire CD and find out that 2, 4-6, 8 and 9 are ABSOLUTE GEMS in my book! So now I'm headed to the store to go buy a CD I'd never have purchased in my life.

Multiply that by say, only 20% of the total number of people filesharing (assuming the worst - 80% deadbeats who'll never by a CD) and you have an INCREASED SALES of 20% of that number...because that other 80%? They wouldn't buy a CD anyhow, even if they couldn't file share.

No loss, 100% win. Viral advertisement at its best.