Posts by Col_Panek

Meet the Frenchman masterminding a Google-free Android

And Firefox OS.

Three-hour outage renders Nest-equipped smart homes very dumb

Re: "manually adjust thermostats"

My son in law gave me one and it was kind of cool to read my house temperature from a wifi-enabled bus somewhere in the desert south of Jericho, Israel. Pointless, true, but I knew that the power was on and no burglar had broken in and turned up the heat so he could be comfortable whilst he pinched my kit.

I was also able to turn up the heat while an hour away from home, using the wifi at a service center. That was minimally useful. And no phone data used.

Still easier to just twist the dial down when we go out.

UK Court of Appeal settles reseller's question: Is software a good?

Richard Stallman is right

Proprietary software is not "good".

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

Re: Does it have all-season tires?

People think vacuum is "infinite", like pressure can be infinite. But the tires would probably hold 47 PSI, although how long I dunno. And the ride would be pretty rough.

Re: Low mileage car?

It used no electricity, but thousands of gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen. I didn't do the math because I couldn't find how much fuel the rocket carried. But I'd guess his mileage isn't so great until he starts coasting.

Google slaps mute button on stupid ads that nag you to buy stuff you just looked at

Re: Does Google really not get it?

M = mille, one thousand. Your French lesson pour aujourd'hui

Re: Can't remember the last time I...

I'm 70 and retired, yet I just got shown ads for a trailer hitch for my Focus, in case I need to get a few more!

PC lab in remote leper colony had wrong cables, no licences, and not much hope

A while ago, I visited a school in the mountains of Uganda. There was a bunch of fairly new PCs (they had flat screens) and the adult ed class was learning how to run Microsoft Office. I asked them what they were going to use their training for. They had no idea, since there were no office jobs and internet service was slow and expensive.

I left them some Ubuntu disks, haven't gotten any word as to what they did with them.

New battery boffinry could 'triple range' of electric vehicles

Re: No one will notice

We complain about range, but we only need to go as far as our bladders can take us before we need to get out and micturate. Thus if our cars can recharge in a reasonable amount of time during our personal maintenance, no problem. But finding a charging station, and recharging quickly, is where we're stuck now. It has nothing to do with range, unless your charging stations are 600 km apart. If they're 60 km apart as petrol stations are, the range problem is solved.

NSA bloke used backdoored MS Office key-gen, exposed secret exploits – Kaspersky

Re: Oooooh, really?!?!?

> "Microsoft also like copies of any files that crash any of their software, along with the memory dumps."

That's why the new transoceanic fiber.

Chill out about net neutrality, says FCC head, because mobile phones are great

This guy's name is "A Shit Pie"? Awkward.

70% of Windows 10 users are totally happy with our big telemetry slurp, beams Microsoft

Re: No need to change the default settings! Erase all of WIN 10

"Linux-equipped model cost more, not less, than the standard Windows version..."

Around these parts y'all can get Linux Dells for $50 less than Windows. One of the few perks for living in 'Murica.

What a tit! Uber CEO hijacks his staff breast-pump room to meditate

Where did you get the idea 'Murica is in the civilized world? Watch some Flat Earth YouTube videos.

The real battle of Android's future – who controls the updates

My 6 year old

.... PC runs the latest Ubuntu MATE. If only it could make phone calls .... and fit in my pocket...

Geeks on quest for world's most pointless YouTube video

Every Flat Earth video

...ever made. And the next. And the next...... the IQ of the world notches down with each one.

Faking incontinence and other ways to scare off tech support scammers

The only defense?

Possibly the only good defense against these is NoMoRobo, where you forward your call to nomorobo and the caller has to key in one number to be forwarded back to you. I haven't tried it yet.

We get daily calls from "Bridget" who wants to "lower our interest rate". Most of these guys spoof phone numbers so when we see some bizarre area code we let the answering machine take it. Many of them will hang up when they hear the beep, which is possibly a robot doing the hanging up. I wonder if I could start with a beep just to force the hangup.

Harrassing the caller or wasting their time would only work if everybody did it all the time. These places spring up like mushrooms on cow shit and getting just one to stop won't work.

Better to put the phone next to your computer speaker playing music, so they think you're on hold.

US military drone goes AWOL, ends up crashing into tree 623 miles away

Almost invaded Canuckistan

There's one at the bottom of Lake Ontario, not far from the army's Fort Drum. It was headed for the border ...

Windows 10 market share fell in September

Unknown?

Is that a code word for Linux? It would make a cool name for a distro.

Windows 10 market share jumps two per cent

Still holdouts to W10 upgrade?? Imagine

Maybe MS will pay you to install it, or send their goons around to wise youse up.

Won't work on me, all-Linux now. Well, Android too, that almost counts.

Windows 7's grip on the enterprise desktop is loosening

Convince? First they advertised the crap out of it, then they lowered the price to zero, then they shoved it up your pipes without asking. What's next, sending goons around to beat you up?

Re: Whatever

Mark Shuttleworth wants to go to Mars.

Half of me says good for him. The other half says good riddance.

Re: Saddo!

My newest PC is 4-1/2 years old. All cheapos, all run Linux.

Re: If they'd made Windows 10...

"You aren't going to have this mad dash to linux, it's not going to happen, not now and not in 10 years. "

How have your prognostications from ten years ago fared?

Windows 10 with Ubuntu now in public preview

Re: Embrace..........

Bad idea? Look how bad it turned out for Google. It seems a few people actually use their mucked up OS based on Linux And with Microsoft being a Monkey See Monkey Do company, it is likely to happen.

Bash on Windows. Repeat, Microsoft demos Bash on Windows

Re: Bashing Windows

You'd like Henry Ford...."any color you want, as long as it's black"

India orders 770 million LED light bulbs, prices drop 83 per cent

Re: Have they finally solved strobing?

LEDs don't run on voltage - they run on current. I wish I had a whiteboard and ten minutes to explain.

But you need a driver between the (fluctuating) voltage source and the LED that wants a constant current. The design of the driver has everything to do with the flicker. One can design a nice smooth constant current driver, but it will probably use a more expensive storage inductor. Or, you can use a resistor and string a lot of LEDs in series, which will only conduct on the voltage peaks, creating a power mains frequency flicker. That is a lot cheaper, but runs a lot of peak current through your LEDs. Also, the current regulation vs. voltage input is not good.

Yes, incandescents were easier to shop for. Don't get me started on reliability claims.

Millions menaced as ransomware-smuggling ads pollute top websites

Re: Ebay

Um, you're the last to find out.

Ben Nevis embiggened by a metre

So you threatened to leave her there?

Re: ffs

"enlarged" gets caught in my spam filter

Microsoft has crafted a switch OS on Debian Linux. Repeat, a switch OS on Debian Linux

Is it on Distrowatch??

....and has the Cancer spread like Ballmer feared? How long does Windows have to live?

Next: MS Linux for everyone

Including an NSA backdoor, and ad revenue for MS.

It's the Google way. And MS's corporate philosophy has become Monkey See Monkey Do.

MS Office on Linux? Shit, we can't have Skype that works right.

"Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies,....etc"

The righteous have already been raptured, and so enjoy the beatific vision of Linux. The rest will follow after the Purgatorial suffering of Windows. The evildoers will be cast into the pit of Hell, located just east of Seattle.

Uncle Sam's boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail

Re: Electric Cars: Rich People

....unless they all charge their cars at night, when power plants and wind turbines are loafing.

Re: " the electricity to do it in reasonable time"

The difference is that you don't normally drive your car all day like you run your phone.

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

Re: Fucking hell

I brought a stack of Ubuntu disks to Uganda and passed them out.

Go thou and do likewise.

Re: They own you.

I wish there was a way of setting Kubuntu's updater to do that. I want to make it automatic on a client's PC.

I suppose the evil Canonical was not successful in its nefarious plot to keep you up to date. Nice of them to ask, anyhow.

German Chancellor fires hydrogen plasma with the push of a button

Re: magnetic coils

So a stellerator uses magnetism, but a tokamak uses current. Glad they cleared that up.

Trump's new thought bubble: Make Apple manufacture in the USA

Re: And now, play the substitution game:

Easy for you to say if you don't live here.

Just remember, though, you live on the same planet, and the POTUS has nucular bombs.

Confirmed: How to stop Windows 10 forcing itself onto PCs – your essential guide

Re: Thanks Microsoft

After a while, you'll find you're booting Windows just to do the updates. And the longer you wait, the more painful they are, until one day you give up .....No Gates, no Windows, you are free to move about!

TPP: 'Scary' US-Pacific trade deal published – you're going to freak out when you read it

Re: What is it good for? WAR!

You don't have to eat that shit. I don't.

Re: Jingo

O'Bama has already achieved that.

Mohawk Valley, NY to become the new Silicon Valley in fab fab deal

However, the politicians may be slightly worse, if that's possible.

Re: Geography FAIL

No, we do not claim such a thing.

How Microsoft will cram Windows 10 even harder down your PC's throat early next year

Re: Evil

Zorin or Mint.

Get 'em out for the... readers: The Sun scraps its online paywall

Re: I've never understood why Murdoch is so hated

The New York Times publishes in your language. Sort of.

That oughta be lefty enough for anyone.

Support scammers target Mac fanbois

Trolling the scammers

"Wait a minute, I have to boot it up. It takes a long time, so stay on the line." Put phone down.

5 minutes later: "It's still booting. Must have a virus, like you said."

Go to loo with phone, hold near bowl whilst you micturate and/or defectate. "Still booting.... OK what do I do now?"

"Wait a minute while I get my credit card."

5 minutes later: "Oh, I forgot to tell you, I run Linux."

"Yes, well, let me know when your software supports Linux. Have a nice rest of the day. I hope other people don't waste so much of your valuable time."

The key item here is that the more time you keep them on the line, the less innocent suckers will be rung up.

Re: Linux ....

I was born in the year of the transistor, and despite not being able to remember bash syntax, I run several Linux distros.

And I put Zorin on my dad's machine, because I got tired of his support calls. Now he doesn't call at all.

Oh dear, Microsoft: UK.gov signs deal with LibreOffice

Re: Hidden costs

You can't afford to bail yourself out of jail, so just stay there.