Posts by JustNiz

Apple's last tower topples… and the others will follow

Apple have always tried to get a complete hardware lock down, This is just one more step to force their customers to have to buy new hardware every year.

Apple customers as a group are hipsters not geeks, and also aren't hardcore gamers, so Apple can get away with abusing their customers because

they aren't the type of people to mess with the hardware in the first place. They are already the type of person that would buy a whole new machine

rather than just buy a larger RAM or drive and install it themselves. Also most buy a new machine every year or 2 at most anyway because they

are also the type of customer that wastes thousands just sot others notice they have the latest version of hardware.

Just because Apple can do this hardly means that the PC world will or even could follow.

There are far too many significant use cases to justify the continuation of user-expandable hardware, not least are gamers, and far too

many giant manufacturers relying on the fact that people can buy components. AMD, Asus etc literally depend on it.

Your mates vape. Your boss quit smoking. You promised to quit in 2019. But how will Big Tobacco give it up?

Here's an idea...

Just get control of yourself and stop being a self-harming addict.

UK.gov: Psst. Belgium. Buy these Typhoon fighter jets from us, will you?

Re: European project!

Better from Londoners than from foreigners in Brussels.

Guilty: NSA bloke who took home exploits at the heart of Kaspersky antivirus slurp row

Re: Yeah right...

I would say suspiciously so. I'll bet there's actually a lot more behind this than we'll ever know.

Re: Pho no!

Not running Windows in the first place, and upgrade to Linux. Yes I'm serious.

Car trouble: Keyless and lockless is no match for brainless

Prize to the first manufacturer who starts making cars without any electronics, LCD screens etc. again.

Just give me a completely braindead car with a standard sized radio slot that I can just put my own stereo in.

Samsung's Bixby assistant fails English, gets held back a month

"I can live without Bixby"

Thats funny. I'm not buying an S8 because it doesn't have the option to uninstall Bixby.

Pirates hack was a hoax, says Disney boss

or far more likely: it was real and the FBI/CIA have now caught the hackers, and Disney want to not look like a bunch of chumps and to discourage future copycat hackers.

'Nobody's got to use the internet,' argues idiot congressman in row over ISP privacy rules

I'd be prepared to bet money that he still uses fax to communicate and pays all his bills by mailing personal checks, and couldn't figure out how to send an email if his life depended on it.

USA can afford golf for Trump. Can't afford .com for FBI infosec service

Enough already.

Please can we stop artificially turning EVERYTHING into yet another opportunity to brainlessly bash Trump? It not only destroys your credability since it just looks childish, more importantly this blatantly sensationalist white noise achieves nothing other than to obscure the real issues that we actually need to be bashing Trump for.

To put this into perspective:

According to Yahoo! News Obama played 186 rounds of golf during his presidency until Aug. 12 2016. The final number was significantly more due to additional rounds on Martha’s Vineyard. Dwight Eisenhower played almost 800 rounds during his eight-year presidency, according to a study of his daily itinerary cited in Golf Digest.

This is where UK's Navy will park its 65,000-tonne aircraft carriers

I truly wonder about the actual need for these giant money pits.

Did your in-flight entertainment widget suck? It's Panasonic's fault, claims software biz

I wish British Airways would replace the poxy screens their systems use, at least on the trans-Atlantic flights. You can barely see the actual picture, especially in daylight. Apart from the contrast sucking ass, there's a layer of barely translucent chequered plastic over it. Its also about a 50-50 shot whether the entertainment system even works for the whole flight or not.

Java? Nah, I do JavaScript, man. Wise up, hipster, to the money

Because real men don't need no stinkin type-safety.

The Psion returns! Meet Gemini, the 21st century pocket computer

I wish someone would finally make a Linux-based phone with this format.

Alcatel wants to be Android, but different – and another crack at the Windows market

...because that wont totally drain your battery in a very few minutes, honest.

Facebook scoffed at $500m damages. Now Oculus faces nerd goggles injunction

Re: Why VR is doomed to be nothing more than a Niche within a Niche

Have you even experienced roomscale VR? It doesn't sound like it. Its at least definately far more than the sum of its parts.

I can accept that VR will continue to be a niche product but that doesn't necessarily mean its going away anytime soon either. There are many very successful companies (Ferrari etc) that have gotten very rich from serving niche markets for a very long time. I mean you could argue that PC gaming as a whole is niche (given far more gamers are actually using consoles or even phones) but nVidia are still getting rich out or making premium GPUs for the PC gaming market.

> Kinda like people who buy the latest i devices. :)

That would include the "niche within a niche" billions of people that bought iPhones and turned Apple into the cash-richest company on the planet?...ermm.. ok...

Your next PC is… your 'Droid? Remix unveils Continuum-killer

Re: One can only hope

No, No they're really not, unless all you do with your PC is surf the net and read email.

'At least I can walk away with my dignity' – Streetmap founder after Google lawsuit loss

I really don't have any sympathy for her.

It seems pretty obvious that it was always at best a high-risk case. It was utterly stupid of her to literally bet the farm on such a tenuous claim. She'd have had far more of a chance of success by just going to Vegas and putting it all on black.

Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus – and publishes a 6,000-word world-saving manifesto

>> In the United States election last year, we helped more than 2 million people register to vote and then go vote.

Is it just me or does Facebook "helping" 2 million people to vote actually sound really scary?

GoDaddy CEO says US is 'tech illiterate' (so, yeah, don't shut off that cheap H-1B supply)

>> (think Bill Gates), and THEN went on to become highly successful engineers

Gates isn't an engineer he's a businessman. Do you REALLY imagine that he spent his time at Microsoft writing software himself?

>> An experienced programmer (without a degree) is AT LEAST as likely

Sorry but you're wrong. I was an experienced programmer before I got my CS degree, and I can tell you that without a good knowledge of Computer Science, you're only ever actually going to be a second-rate hacker, no matter how good you believe yourself to be.

Also, and possibly more importantly, you won't understand the thinking/rationale behind many things you'll see in other people's code that you'll have to fix, maintain and extend.

> US is "tech Illiterate"

Really? As compared to cheap and most usually clueless and very low quality Indian workers that the chances are, significantly cheated on their degree (if they even have one) and/or was from a university that is little more than a certificate printing shop?

http://time.com/3752128/india-bihar-exam-cheating-climbing-walls/

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/phds-bachelors-degrees-on-sale-in-punjab-463936

Also name me any significant computer technology that was invented in India? The only one I could come up with is Backus Naur notation, which doesn't really count because John Backus was American. Now consider the long list of computer technology that was invented in the US.

Its VERY clear what's really going on here.

Totally not-crazy billionaire Elon Musk: All of us – yes, even you – must become cyborgs

I can't help thinking that those religious groups like the Amish that eschew all technology are stating to look more and more like they might actually be the smart ones.

Why does it cost 20 times as much to protect Mark Zuckerberg as Tim Cook?

Maybe if Zuckerberg and his companies wern't such dicks to other people and the world in general, he wouldn't need so much security. That said, this is probably just another tax writeoff that has zero basis in reality.

WTF is your problem, Netgear? Another hijack hole found in its routers

Here's your best option if your hardware supports it:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start?dataflt%5BBrand*%7E%5D=netgear

Revealed: Soros Group behind mystery unit that gobbled Violin Memory

Oh no! Now where can I go when I need more memory for my violin?

Parliamentary Trump-off? Pro-Donald petition passes 100k signatures

By far the most insightful point made by the majority of anti-trump statements here are that they are all just just braindead personal attacks. It actually says far more about the intellectual level of the commentards than that of Trump.

Saving the queen from embarassment? really? can their argument even get any more lame and passive-agressive?

If they'd have actually bothered to inform themselves first, they would have quickly realised that in the real world, Trump is in fact the US president, and that the queen is in fact a prettty tough lady who has already been demonstrating for about 65 years now and still counting, her amazing ability to manage just about any situation with class and style and still do her duty. I'm sure meeting the US president is just a walk in the park for her.

Re: "he is the leader of a free world"

>> [For an extra 5 points define "free"]

Cheaper than cheap?

PDP-10 enthusiasts resurrect ancient MIT operating system

Thanks Steve,

I used a PDP-11/75 for my first real programming job. which actually would have been around 1982.

Pleas remind me which PDP-11 operating system(s) used pip?

as in:

pip /li

etc?

Thanks!

God save the Queen... from Donald Trump. So say 1 million Britons

Re: Where were all these virtue signallers...

>> Also we're happy to let them buy up our companies (hello JLR) when it suits us.

That was India not China.

Obviously you dont understand the concept of a majority.

President Trump tweets from insecure Android, security boffins roll eyes

Re: hang on...

iPhones arent made in the USA.

Annoyingly precocious teen who ruined Trek is now an asteroid

I have no problem with this.

Wesley Crusher was the Jar Jar of the Star Trek universe, but Wil Wheaton himself seems like a pretty cool dude.

Donald Trump will take cybersecurity advice from, um, Rudy Giuliani

...Because Rudy Guliani is already famous for his technical understanding of the internet and associated security and IT issues? Yeah somehow I don't think so.

I'll bet that he's just another one of those clueless government muppets that think "the interweb is like a bunch of tubes" and if you put the word "cyber" before everything you'll sound cool and smart.

Google Cloud unlocks key achievement

Give all your keys to us, we're google you can trust us honest. we wont abuse it to spy on you. Much.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-could-be-helping-the-government-spy-2012-5

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-newman/why-googles-spying-on-use_b_3530296.html

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/google-fishing-satellite-tracking/2016/09/15/id/748549/

Microsoft's Blue Screen of Death dead in latest Windows 10 preview

Cortana? edge? I just "uninstalled" them and a bunch of other crap that I dont need but noticed was running all the time (such as an Xbox client, I dont even own an Xbox). (Windows has no option to uninstall them, you need to dual boot into Linux and delete the appropriate folders under windows/systemapps). Now my windows 10 box runs A LOT faster/smoother/more reliably. Far less "mystery" pauses etc. I don't know what Cortana et al were actually doing all the time, but it apparently was taking significant resources, which makes me VERY suspicious.

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

so just use an ethernet cable between your TV/PC and your router.

How Rogue One's Imperial stormtroopers SAVED Star Wars and restored order

IMHO it was better than The Force Awakens, but thats not exactly a high bar to reach. I though there wasn't enough back story and the battle scene was way too long/predictable/boring.

I just wish they would flesh out the everyday lives of people in the universe far more, and we could have a star wars movie that finally goes beyond the formula of a 30 minute batltle scene inevitably culminating in the hero alone blowing up a deathstar/deathstar 2/planet turned into a deathstar/base with plans to the deathstar

Sysadmin 'fixed' PC by hiding it on a bookshelf for a few weeks

Re: Aaron is a twat.

1) presuming he knows better about the best tool for a job than the person actually doing the job.

2) Wasting time and hurting someone elses productivity.

3) Lording it up and being a roadblock instead of helping support/enable the guy to use tech to do the actual business of the company more effectively so earn the company more money (i.e. what IT are in most cases ACTUALLY paid to do).

Aaron sounds like the dictionary definition of a twat to me. Also coincidentally perfectly fits the "little Hitler" stereotype that you find in so many companies IT departments. Its only sad that he quit before they could rightfully fire his ass for massive incompetence.

London's Winter Wonderland URGENTLY seeks Windows 10 desk support

Wake up and smell the coffee already.

How are there so many stupid managers out there that keep basing new projects on Windows even though there is metric tons of evidence that it is a completely unreliable POS?

Brexit judgment could be hit for six by those crazy Supreme Court judges, says barrister

Re: Media and entertainment

>> it is just within the bounds of possibility that she might yet pull off the political manoeuvre of the century, which would be to reverse Cameron's brainfart without pissing off the voters

Sorry but anything short of a full Brexit, i.e.what I and the majority actually voted for, will piss me off mightily, because it will clearly prove true what I have long suspected, that the self-interests of a few hundred corrupt politicians actually outweigh the will of millions of citizens, so the UK is actually a dictatorship that is only playing a superficial game of being a democracy.

The bottom line is that the majority of votes were for Brexit. Now get over it and do it already.

Beancounter nicks $5m from bosses, blows $1m on fantasy babe Kate Upton's mobe game

I'm just amazed that there's a game out there where you even theoretically could blow as much as $1m on in-game purchases.

HMS Illustrious sets sail for scrapyard after last-ditch bid fails

Re: Hmm

HMS Donor Kebab

Are you listening, Mr Trump? World's largest tech distie is now owned by the Chinese

You just know they pushed like hell to get this done before Trump is sworn in and can nix it.

The UK's Investigatory Powers Act allows the State to tell lies in court

>> The problem here is not that drug dealers are being caught, but that they are being caught in a way that subverts the legal system and unfairly skews what is supposed to be a level and honest playing field in court.

Aww poor little flowers. If the dealers are stopped with drugs on them then they deserve everything they get. Actually I wish there was a law that the cops could just shoot them on the spot like the evil parasitic vermin they are, and save millions of taxpayers money for far better, much needed uses like heating pensioners houses in the winter.

Spinning rust supply chain seizes up after BIG disk demand spike

>> All Disks Must Die. Some will be replaced by flash but the majority will not

Flash dies too, its just that no-one notices because it doesn't fail all at once, it gets smaller over time as cells die. Flash has FAR less write cycles than spinning disks.

I just bought 32TB of spinning disk storage for about $1000. I'll take flash more seriously when the same storage as flash wouldn't cost me as much as a new luxury car.

Tobacco giant predicts the end of smoking. Panic ensues

Re: Vaping isn't cool

>> It's considered non harmful

Only by the willfully ignorant or deniers wishing to justify their stupid habit. Vaping is definately better for your health than cigarettes but its wrong and misleading to say vaping is not harmful at all.

Dirty code? If it works, leave it says Thoughtworks CTO

This is wrong thinking. You wouldn't build a house on a bad foundation, so why would you do so with software?

Follow this "dont fix bad code" strategy long enough and you get to a point where even small changes take months, have a very high risk of unanticipated side-effects, and eventually even management are forced to agree that the whole system needs totally rewriting at massive cost.

The problem is that if the code is bad then so are its interfaces, and so are its side-effects. If you have some shit code somewhere in your code it always ends up forcing bad behaviours through the whole rest of the code in a sort of viral way.

How many times have we been forced to add new code in some screwy way just to comply to some fucked-up underlying code rather than fix the actual problem. So now you just have even more shit code. Not fixing the underlying bad code is just kicking the can down the road to a much larger problem later. I've already lived through it at several different companies that all thought they were being 'smart', and every time they learn their lesson the hard way.