Posts by wikkity

So long, thanks for all the ...er, FISH BRIGHTER than boffins thought

Re: no surprise to me

Was going to ask which finger they bit until I realised I miss read what you said and they don't bite like humans.

Microsoft fitness bands slapped on wrists: All YOUR HEALTH DATA are BELONG TO US

> How can I get any sleep if you keep waking me up to go to meetings!

Thought you were supposed to sleep during meetings not before.

Big Retail: We don't hate Apple, we hate the credit card companies

think this kind of activity is cool

Or in more likelihood, profitable. It's probably more likely someone trying to commit fraud was hacking around than someone trying to do a cool hack.

Amazon hopes fire stick will light up its video service

Re: Where is the vanilla android version?

Thanks for that, never noticed that. Looks like it only came out last month though, about time.

Where is the vanilla android version?

If they made app available on non-amazon android devices they might get a few more customers. I had a "free" subscription to this with Prime but no hardware I could use it with, no longer have prime but may have kept it if I could have used this.

UK consumers particularly prone to piss-poor patching

Re: It's not my choice...

I need this too. However I simply white list works access site, bingo, java does not run for any other site. Maybe your IT department needs to understand how java works in the browser and provide suitable instructions rather than encouraging you to drop security down.

Mozilla releases geolocating WiFi sniffer for Android

Re: "The spiel for the app even encourages users to walk roads less travelled"

At least the police would know where you went missing.

No nudity, please, we're GAMING: Twitch asks players to cover up

Why?

Maybe I'm getting old and missing the point, but why do people want to watch people playing computer games? I can vaguely understand why someone would want to watch the actual gameplay but watching the player completely stumps me.

Apple, Google take on Main Street in BONKING-FOR-CASH struggle

Re: Funny..

Thought they meant it was invite only for the vendor.

Cray-cray Met Office spaffs £97m on very average HPC box

Re: entire region

Their forecasts for a specific location are very good. For an entire region is impossible unless the whole region by some freak chance has the same weather. An area by the sea could be quite windy with fog, a couple of miles inland. Giving a forecast in the style of the TV forecasts is pretty nonsense really and gives nothing but a guide of what to expect.

Painfully trendy: Someone just spent $200k on ebola.com

Re: ebola.co.uk

Thought that was a bingo site

Seriously though. Ebola has been around for a longer than the current crisis. I don't know how long it has done so but this site is collecting donations for UNICEF.

Interestingly the site appears to be a genuine UNICEF site but the whois entry state a registrant type as an individual.

Natural Ebola remedies

Judging by the other websites they probably intend to sell a natural remedy for Ebola. I'm sure there are easily enough people willing to buy Ebola targeted snakeoil.

Now: The REAL APPLE NEWS you need to know

Re: England is /not/ synonymous with Britain.

Of course it is, the referendum is over and they voted to stay. We can continue our disregard for them. I'm sure there was someone else involved with our island, can't remember now.

Mozilla hopes to challenge Raspbian as RPi OS of choice

Concentrate on the browser please

Firefox used to great but over the years it's started to lag behind. Maybe if they concentrated their effort on what made them they could claw back some users.

UK.gov pushes for SWIFT ACTION against nuisance calls, threatens £500k fines

Re: Stop using landlines

I guess you are lucky enough to not need to ring 999 very often. Can't really nip outside for a better signal when giving first aid.

Samsung gets virtual with tiny S5 upgrade and goggle grab

or maybe a

typo?

Doctor Who and the Dalek: 10-year-old tests BBC programming game

Re: hold on...

> reductio ad absurdam doesn't help your argument and fails in any case. There's nothing wrong with crayon art

Hardly meant to be taken seriously. Plus, there are people don't think Latin is too bad, just as you like crayon art.

>What you're not going to do is write a program that changes the way the world thinks about anything in Pascal. You'll bin it. You will waste idea after idea on a dead language.

I never mentioned any language, if I was desiging a course for kids to learn "proper" langauge based programming Pascal would certainly not be considered

> It's like suggesting that kids should write all their essays in Saxon English rendering them effectively worthless for the future.

So the concepts and ideas the child expressed in Saxon English would not be abe to be transfered to a different language? True, I'm sure there is likely to be some aesthetics lost in translation if it was poetry.

This week, I've worked in C (no ++ there), java and javascript on the same system, that software shares the same domain model, interact with each other via a defined vocabulary/contract, there is even an embedded DSL based on scheme in there. The nature of the language imposes some mechanical issues at the implementation level but that is all they are, _implementation details_. In the same way I might print a picture with laods of tiny dots or pain the same image with brush strokes.

The implementation medium is a way to express your intent, if you can't express your intent in a particular language easily then it is the wrong choice for the problem, this looks perfectly good for 10 year olds sterring a Dalek

Re: hold on...

Maybe we should give toddlers oil paints then rather than wax crayons.

Seriously, I know plenty of people who know c++/java/etc inside out, does it make them a good developer? No, it is the problem solving ability that makes them them a good developer. A language is nothing but a tool used to express how to solve a problem. Last week I've used 5 differnt languages, more if you also include shell/scripting languages. Am I unique for that, no, it is simply the nature of our work, some tools are better for different tasks, the language is nothing but a way to convey out intent to the compiler.

Teaching a 10 year old a specific language for the puproses of they may use it 10+ years later is crazy talk, sure many of us learn't using lower level methods but those were not lessons thrust on to us, it was out of our interest in discovering. Sure move onto a "real" languages later but the learning the ability to break problems down into smaller pieces and building a solution that fits together is much more benefical as a starting point. It's also more likley to encourage them rather than getting bogged down by obscure compiler erros because they've fogot a semi colon in the header file.

Re: hold on...

Forget the language, that is simply a tool. It is the logical thought and reasoning that goes in a developers mind and that is what is being exercised here.

UNIX greybeards threaten Debian fork over systemd plan

Re: @Numpty Scrub the "fun" part about systemd

Maybe the update included a new kernel? I've meant to try ksplice on mint but never got round to it, rebooting takes my (home) server machines less than 5secs and with no SLA requirements (assuming no prompts for saving stuff) .

Martha Lane Fox: Yeuch! The Internet is made by men?!?

Re: so I didn't cast a vote for any of the candidates

The correct way to register your discord with the available candidates is to spoil your vote. If you genuinely feel that way it's the only way to distinguish your opinion form someone too lazy/apathetic to vote.

Sh** just got real: Amazon to open actual shop in New York City

Re: or Argos

I found my five year old looking at the toy section in the argos catalog this weekend when she was supposed to be asleep.

Google in 'right to be forgotten' snub probe: Ireland tackles moans

Re: Witness the discrimination inherent in the system!

The little guys get told too. A small company I did some work for had some comments made by an ex employee who left under less favourable conditions, the ex empolyee got google to "forget" the page, presumably as potential employers googling for their name would find it.

I suggested someone (too busy) add a delete comment button for admins won't take much but don't think it affected them really, Google still listed the page if you searched for something specific to the content rather than his name.

Apple KILLS SUPER MARIO. And Zelda. And Sonic

Re: What did people expect?

I'm pretty sure if you fixed a bug someone on the android team would take it and merge it. You think that is any diufferent to any sigifcant OS project, you think Linus lets anyone push their changes into the kernal, what about Apache, GNU etc... I don't beleive that they is anything in the definition of FOSS that requires contributions to be accpeted.

Adding new features to any open source project is likely to fall on edaf ears unless it is on their road map. You can however create your own fork. Creating your own fork of Android is probably not that useful, you are either likely to be a hardware manufacturer or someone prepared to spend a lot of time and resources shaping it to something people want. For a successful example of the later look at Cyanogen, there is no way they could have done what they did if android was not open source.

Google hauls Java-on-Android spat into US Supreme Court

Re: Oracle are most definitely evil

Regardless of what someone's opinion on Google as a company is, you can not knock their contribution to innovation and making it available to the world via open source or without fear of being sued. Sure, they could do a lot more put compared to the other big names they are far ahead.

Windows 10 feedback: 'Microsoft, please do a deal with Google to use its browser'

Re: It would actually be a smart business move for Ms

"the number of weird and wonderful business critical web apps"

At least you only have to support windows then. Having web apps target a cross platfrom browser is easier then.

Chap runs Windows 95 on Android Wear

RE: Why would anyone want to

Once upon a time I'd have disagreed with you like the rest. Now I'm a lot older, survived kids and far too much work, a pint now sounds like a much better option to me.

Be nice to the public, PC Plod. Especially if you're trying to stop terrorists

Re: offense at the lower end of the scale

Downvotes, which is it? People believe that drink driving is a minor offence, or someone stupid enough to drive a heavy lump of metal when under the influence of alcohol without considering the implications is still trustworthy enough to be allowed to keep guns?

Re: offense at the lower end of the scale

Hmm, I would hardly call drinking and driving the lower end of the scale. I live in a place where 2 separate instances in less than a year have seen 5 people needlessly killed, drink driving killed around 300 people last year in the UK. How sure are you that someone who does not have the common sense to not drive when under the influence is not going to pick up a gun drunk?

Microsoft to Samsung: COUGH UP $6.9m in unpaid interest over Android PATENT SPAT

Maybe the EU should

also ask MS what the exact nature of it's licensing deals with Android manufacturers in the same way they are asking Google.

Yahoo close to investing $20m in disappearing chat app Snapchat

Re: a mesage to my pension fund manager

You beat me to it, this that was all I could think of when I was reading the article.

One million people have bonked on London public transport

Re: Another explanation

> Still a billion a year on bus passes for people that are better off than many working people does not sit quite right.

Not just OAPs, people with qualifying disabilities also get them, i.e, can't drive. That is a demographic that tends to be worse off.

Google goes Dutch with new €600 MEELLION DC

Real reason

While the "stability of Dutch energy supplies" and "direct connections" may be factors, I'm sure the Irish/Dutch Sandwich is the most important factor at play here.

Every billionaire needs a PANZER TANK, right? STOP THERE, Paul Allen

Re: Allen's firm alleged it had not received the panzer.

MyHermes once claimed to have left a parcel at my front door, not surprisingly it wasn't there when I got home from work. A friend also had a parcel left at the backdoor when they lived in a flat that only had a front door, I that was city link though.

I saved Bitcoin and the PERFECT DRAFT OF HISTORY, says Assange

RE: tone down its anti-Assange bias

Personally, I'd like to see it toned up to 11.

Phones 4u slips into administration after EE cuts ties with Brit mobe retailer

RE: why are they closing now

I'd guess the management want their share of the "significant" amount of cash in the bank. Why else would a business making a profit, not just now but for the next year at least, just bail out?

iPhone 6: Advanced features? Pah! Nexus 4 had most of them in 2012

unlike Android’s comparatively fractured ecosystem

I'd like to see how many ios apps don't work correctly when screen ratios change compared to android ones. This "fractured" view is wrong, the word varied would be better and most android developers learn how to deal with this on day 2.

Airbus developing inkjet printer for planes

Re: F'ing Hell.....

> Going by HP prices it would be cheaper to coat them in gold then hand engrave the picutre

They'll just buy OEM or refilled carts.

Amazon axes hated Fire Phone price: 99 pennies but a niche? Ain't none

Re: 2 year ATT contract?

Of course they can fork it and have done. Doesn't mean to say I want their fork on my phone. I won't even have their app store on my phone even though I've purchased a fair bit of software via it a while back.

Dodgy Norton update borks UNDEAD XP systems

RE: behaved as "badly as a virus"

So operating normally with norton installed then

Do you accept Bitcoin? That'll do nicely, says Apache

Re: could someone please explain?

Are you looking to get down voted again?

Finally, a practical use for 3D printing: Helping surgeons rehearse

Re: Invest in titanium sintering

Adamantium would be better

Next blockbuster you watch could be rendered on Google: Star Trek fx biz Zync gobbled

RE: missing something

Passing the data back and forth is quicker than the processing on the data.

Super Cali signs a kill-switch, campaigners say it's atrocious

RE: There go the tinfoil hats then, I guess..

Surely any self respecting tin hat owner has already stocked up on tin foil to last several lifetimes

MPs to sue UK.gov over 'ridiculous' emergency data snooping law

Re: So there actually *are*

Or in the pay of ISPs who want to save on disk space.

SAP gets into OpenStack bed with... ORACLE? (and 100 others)

I'm surprised ms, google and amazon are not involved so as to slow the process down and create a standard that is impractical or even unworkable.

That AMAZING Windows comeback: Wow – 0.5% growth in 2015

Re: People have stopped laughing at Windows Phone

Yeah, even the best jokes grow less funny with time.

Virgin Media struck dumb by NATIONWIDE DNS outage

Re: Status Pages

They couldn't update them as they could resolve the servers host name

Chuh. Heavy, dude: HP ZBook 17 mobile workstation

Re: Pricey and f*ck ugly..

Dells M4800 is more of a closer spec to this, same screen size for starters, if you match the specs as close as you can on their website is works out about the same but poorer graphics