Posts by Smithson 30 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2011
They did indeed. According to the BBC:
"This revision will reduce the spread of copyright infringement activities on the internet," said the body's [The Recording Industry Association of Japan] chairman Naoki Kitagawa, who is also chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment Japan, earlier this year."
A truly shitty law, pushed by a truly shitty company.
They make it look like a broader anti-IE whinge when they don't include later version/s of IE in their "better browser" box. And while I'd occasionally like to tell a customer that they "appear to have been in a coma for five years", even I know that talking to customers, especially prospective ones, like that is liable to make them go elsewhere. To say nothing of adding a "tax" to their bill for using a browser I don't like. Publicity stunt maybe, but it does make them look a bit wanky.
Wow, I wasn't even aware that Vista/7 could play DVDs without additional software! Knew that WMP couldn't play a DVD on 98 or XP until I installed PowerDVD -- and even then only in a slower, less customisable, and generally crappier way than PowerDVD itself, thereby rendering said WMP functionality entirely pointless. However given that various manufacturers (e.g. Acer, Sony) include extra media player crapware on their current Win7 machines anyway, I don't think the removal of in-built functionality that's only been there since Vista is going to affect the end user too much. And anyone buying and installing a retail copy of Win8 is going to be literate enough to download VLC. But either way, I think anyone using WMP for watching DVDs is doing themselves a disservice.
I fell afoul of this change myself a couple of weeks back, and despite the disbelief of several commentards above, I also had a selection of questions for which I had no answer. Don't drive, didn't hate a teacher (more than any other), wouldn't describe any particular friend as being "better" than the others, don't remember where I was on 1st Jan 2000, etc. But then if you remember it, you weren't really there, or so I hear.
So if I ever come to forget my iTunes password, or whatever circumstance where you're expected to answer these questions, I'll have to guess at what my fictional answer/s were, undoubtedly get them wrong, and get banned for being no better than a News of the World account "hacker". There are several better ways to prevent children from running up big bills on iTunes. "Don't give them your sodding credit card number, you lunatic" being quite high on the list.
""Antivirus doesn't work and it's only the addition of anti-spam, firewall, data loss prevention and other technologies that have kept customers buying it," Morley told El Reg."
So that's why every AV is getting increasingly crammed with useless shite - people like him think that we actually want all the bloat. By my own experience VERY few people know about, care about, or want all that. They want an antivirus simply to stop viruses, keep out of their way the rest of the time, and not make their machine unreasonably slow.
"I'd tend to agree, but then statrted thinking "I wonder if stem-cell guy has access to super-computers for his research?""
If you're going to do it that way you may as well give the award to the guy who invented electricity, or the guy who invented coming down from the trees. Neither Torvalds or Yamanaka could have done their thing without the work of others.
I don't have the best understanding of this quantum stuff so forgive the stupid question, but if the two atoms have to be physically connected by fibre before they can become entangled, it wouldn't be possible to do so over the kind of distances where FTL communication would be necessary.* So what's the point? Or is the "communication" aspect being overplayed, with other uses more likely?
*And how much would a cable 4.3 light years long cost anyway? ;)
"Installation and training included"
Why would you need to be trained in how to sit in a chair? I learned that when I was six months old. Maybe I was some kind of chair-sitting prodigy and never knew it? Better put that on my CV quick -- "1981 - learned how to sit in chair, no further training required".
A nasty injury with possibly permanent effects according to the source article, but... I just can't reconcile the internal construction of a laptop DVD drive with this kind of injury. He was apparently closing the drawer when it happened, so there was no mechanical movement happening inside the drive at the time. An 11cm piece of metal suddenly flying out with force enough to IMPALE the user at that, or any other point, just doesn't make any sense. Does it?
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