* Posts by athame

12 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jun 2015

Dyson to build electric car that doesn't suck

athame

Make a difference

James if you really want to make a difference - invest your 2 billion in Tesla. I've already put my Model 3

deposit down and I can't see your market intervention as more than than a wasteful vanity project. Having junked a couple of your previous "breakthroughs" I'm reasonably confident that this will be an overpriced suck job too.

PS who will supply your batteries? :-)

Why do you cry when chopping onions? No, it's not crippling anxiety, it's this weird chemical

athame

Just wear eye protection - ordinary glasses are fine. It works.:-)

Microsoft totters from time machine clutching Windows 10 Workstation

athame

Performance & Lies

win 95/win 98/winNT/milennium/win2000/vista/xp/win 7/win 8/win 8.1/win 10/ win ad infinitum .........

"It IS faster!"

Gates

UK PM May's response to London terror attack: Time to 'regulate' internet companies

athame

Huh?

I have a friend who's a law professor- she's written the text book on Jurisprudence and the Internet.

What it shows is that TM hasn't a clue what she's talking about and neither does any other politician. Governments want to control that which they cannot and they love to scapegoat that which they cannot control and blame it for all of the problems they can't solve. Look at China's response to Facebook. ie, ban it. I personally agree that Fbook is an evil blight on world society but no one is forcing me to subscribe :-)

It's hugely debatable that controls over the internet would do the slightest good and the most likely outcome would be just to pointlessly limit people freedoms.It would be very difficult and probably impossible to obtain effective international agreements to control and censor the internet globally. Most users would be resistant anyway. For example if encryption is banned ( and you can't put that genie back in the bottle) how would anyone prosecute me if I'm using an encrypted service or a VPN? - that's why I signed up in the first place. Providers would simply move elsewhere in Cyberspace rather than be forced to track their clients IP's and there would ensue a permanent game of cat and mouse between governments and service providers. Just look at the international attempts to close The Pirate Bay. It's still there - right now. The British government may have forced my ISP to prevent me directly accessing the site but that's not a problem with my VPN connection and I get the added plus of not having my traffic throttled. Scores Pirate Bay 1, me 1. VPN 1 Government and stupid DRM industry 0

The best way to fight terrorism and intolerance is through liberal laws and ideals.The terrorist agenda is to try to force governments to adopt totalitarian and draconian measures against its own populace in order to undermine the weaken the state and undermine the fabric of society.

It was Benjamin Franklin who said that he who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.

So why don't we thumb our noses at the terrorists and the government stupidity and carry on!

US nuke arsenal runs on 1970s IBM 'puter waving 8-inch floppies

athame

Stuff that works

This reminds of the central clearing bank. To this day all calcs are still done in LSD.Post decimalisation a conversion module was tacked on the end. The reason being to preserve the investment of 4 billion man hours of fully debugged Cobol. You don't fix stuff that is not broken. Can you imagine the dangers inherent in rewriting strategic nuke software from scratch? Or putting it on a modern PC OS - "Cortana can you nuke Moscow for me please"

Google yanks Chrome support for Windows XP, at long last

athame

Bye bye Chrome :-)

After recently installing a Chrome "uprgade" I got a completely unnecessary and intrusive browser message on my still XP happy eeePc saying that Chrome will no longer support updates for XP.

I wasn't aware that Chrome ever updated anything except in a new release. The sole purpose of the latest one seems to have been made in to present XP users with this croc of bull message.

The answer - I downgraded to an older version of Chrome and disabled updates - it works better anyway and still allows you to set your own options ;-)

On my other XP machines (yes shudder you WinTennies, I have more than one) I deleted Chrome and put Vivaldi on them (A.K.A. Opera that works like it used too). Can't say I'm shedding any tears for Chrome.

No doubt I will receive comments - the usual Chick Licken hand-wringing about how the sky is going to fall in if I don't immediately put Win 10 on my machines - or even more patronisingly LOL about how my machines are already compromised without me even knowing about it. I mean how do you reply to wood heads of that persuasion? :-)

All I can say is that I'm writing this on a 2ghz pentium M Thinkpad that has been up and running for 12yrs+ on XP pro without a reinstall. There's no substitute for good house keeping and secure practices no matter what your OS. So when all you WinTennies have to stump up for your quarterly MS bill just for the privilege of using a piss poor OS and its rubbish office apps I promise I won't say I told you so...

Oh! a farewell is in order. Bye bye Chrome & thanks for all the fish :-)

US DoJ files motion to compel Apple to obey FBI iPhone crack order

athame

A whole new angle on being locked into Apple

Hmmm - so Apple worked so hard to keylessly encrypt customer data that once locked out they can't do anythng about it? Yep I'd call that a PR coup but it may also be highly likely and true.

What if Apple just say they can't? OK it means Apple may appear stupid on one level but it gets them off the hook and it's as good as "won't",

Anyway if the NSA is so great at snooping and catching "tersts" (Yes that's single vowel American speak for what we Brits call Ter-ror-ists) why don't the Feds just ask them to do it?

I can picture it now ... unwilling hackers strapped into chairs and receiving electric shocks, waterboarding and sleep deprivation for everyline of unsuccessful code they write and finally rewarded with a Texas burial...

A bit like how it may have been for those programming the original Mac under the harsh tutalage of the late SJ. ;-)

ADpocalypse NOW: Three raises the stakes

athame

Well done 3!

I will supress my normal vitriol and hopefully get posted for a change :-)

3 saved my life when my itinerant ways prevented me from haveing a real broad band connection.

I guess that as leaders in the mobile data market, 3 get plenty of complaints from their customers who have overshot their data allowances (and paid through the nose for the extra) about spending their money hard earned on unwanted adds. Who wants that garbage anyway? I normally get plagued with ads for things I have just bought. Things that no one in their right mind would buy more than one of. There is no AI behind targeted ad placement - just crass stupidity and greed - it's a numbers game - target enough bozos and someone will be enough to buy one. Well done 3!!!

Shocker: Net anarchist builds sneaky 220v USB stick that fries laptops

athame

Re: @ fruitoftheloon @Charles Manning: Net anarchist?

"...presumably you don't put your white spirit/meths/cellulose thinners into coke bottles and leave then in school playgrounds to see what happens? That would be the equivalent to distributing these USB sticks."

What a great idea!

Why don't we go the whole hog and create child maiming landmines disguised as toys?

But wait! It's already been done. Also Russian I believe...

Microsoft enlists web security pariah Adobe to help build Internet Explorer-killer Spartan

athame
FAIL

Athenians Beware

Putting the word Spartan and Adobe in the same sentence is surely a contradiction in terms?

Would you order a truck load of ready mix concrete to fill a blimm hole?

Expect major bloat ware.

Meanwhile Athenians quake in their beds waiting for the adobe sky to fall in on them.