Posts by Morrolan

Apple’s macOS Sierra update really puts the fan into 'fanboi'

Re: Activity Monitor

And VMS too. I don't know why Activity Monitor works that way, it's pretty much the only CPU monitor I've ever seen that does.

Activity Monitor

When Activity Monitor shows a process running over 100%, that means it's running on more than one core at the same time with multithreading. Often with multi-core modern Macs the total CPU usage is over 100%, because 100% just means full utilization of one core.

This is typed on a Mac Mini with SeaMonkey. I've had SeaMonkey lock up on occasion, but really only when I've gone completely out of control and have several dozen tabs open. (Although that's much of the time with me.)

Meet ARM1, grandfather of today's mobe, tablet CPUs – watch it crunch code live in a browser

The 6510 was different from the 6502 in a few ways: it had the extra bits to let you remove ROMs from memory so you could directly access the whole 64K of RAM at once, giving the Commodore 64 its name, and also it had different undocumented operations in assembly. While the regular 6502 instruction set worked the same on the 6510, there were "extra" operations that weren't in any of the official MOS manuals that did work on the 6510. The one I still remember is LAX, which loaded both the A and X registers with the same number. I think it was either A9 or A7.

Mac malware has a neat trick to install itself on OS X fans' machines

Re: MAC - Malware

OS X is roughly at least as vulnerable as every other implementation of Unix out there. Which is to say, it's more secure than Windows 98 by a long way, but even OpenBSD has been hacked in the past.

An awful lot of the OS X holes - like this one - are connected to its extensive sudo support, as well as its habit of running too many background processes as root. Personally, I would have been happier if nobody had ever invented sudo and we still had to su on the rare occasion we actually needed root access, but that's me.

You want the poor to have more money? Well, doh! Splash the cash

Re: THIS IS PORN.

You're falling into one of the common traps.

Capitalist economists are not trying to find the answer to the question "What is going to make the poor poorer?" They're asking the same question as the socialists (which is, how do we make people in general better-off), only coming up with different answers. It's the answers that you come up with that distinguish you into one group or the other.

Hackers invade systems holding medical files on 4.5 million Cali patients

Re: Calling California "Cali" ...

Don't forget LL Cool J as well.

Yahoo! won't! fix! emoticon! exploit! in! death! row! Messenger!

Re: Yahoo jettisoned messenger long ago

Adium still works with Y!m accounts on OS X.

Handing over emails in an Irish server to the FBI will spark a global free-for-all, warns Microsoft

Re: DAT EXCEPTIONALISM!

Yes, but Microsoft's in Ireland too.

Suppose a court in Ireland issues an order for Microsoft to not release those emails. (Which is entirely conceivable.) What's Microsoft to do then? Whichever way it goes, it's disobeying one court system or another.

This is the whole reason we have jurisdiction, so that courts don't bump heads in this way.

Apple hypegasm countdown. What will the new, big iPad ACTUALLY be called?

Lewis Page is something of a comedian, and it's well-known that all comedians are bitter.

The legendary Marvin the Android's character was based on a comedian.

Tree hugger? Your wooden harem is much bigger than thought

Re: Oh the irony!

Nature is published online, and most scientists read it that way.

It's pretty expensive either on paper or online, so the big advantage of the online version is that as long as your institution has bought a site license, a scientist can read the new issue of Nature without having to use one of the one-three copies the library can afford. So all the scientists can read it at once.

This is true of pretty much all the major academic journals now.

US trade watchdog deep-sixes patent infringement claim against Microsoft

Re: ITC seems to not care about discrimination

I was criticizing Anglo-American patent law decisions in general. They're nearly all poorly written, and it's a trend that's been getting worse over the last few decades. Alas it doesn't seem to have much impact on how the courts view them, as many of the judges that Interdigital is likely to appeal to have a similar dreadful writing style.

Yes, I know that Microsoft was making the discrimination arguments. The point was that the ITC didn't even address them, but rather appeared to base its decision on an interpretation of the patent's wording.

ITC seems to not care about discrimination

For what it's worth, the linked decision appears to indicate that the reason Microsoft won this time is because the Nokia phones don't actually infringe on the patents, the way the ITC reads the patent. There's a bit of discussion about the wording of the patents.

I say appears because the decision is appallingly poorly written, even by the standards of such decisions.

However, they don't mention Microsoft's other arguments about discrimination and so on in the key paragraphs where they give the actual reasons for their decision, near the end.

What Ashley Madison did and did NOT delete if you paid $19 – and why it may cost it $5m+

Re: Chapter 11

Just a note: ALM is Canadian. Chapter 11 is US bankruptcy law, Canada's bankruptcy laws are somewhat different.

It'll be a while before any bankruptcy declarations might be made anyway. They'll probably fight the lawsuits and try to save their business, and I suspect they have quite a bit of cash in the bank given how high their fees are.

And it begins: Ashley Madison bonk-seekers urged to lawyer up

Re: Ontario is Canada?

People in Ontario make fun of the dollar coin by calling it the loonie as well.

The loonie, you may recall, was brought in by the Mulroney government, which wasn't terribly popular. It began to be seen as a symbol of everything he did wrong.

(I've lived in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario & B.C. They all say loonie. Even anglo Quebecers say loonie.)

Attempted criminal acts are usually criminal too. You can be prosecuted for attempted murder just fine, even if you didn't succeed.

This isn't going to be much of a problem in this case though, looking at the map I don't see too many of the countries which still treat adultery as criminal in red.

In most class actions, the plaintiffs actually get the bulk of the reward. It's just that there are often thousands, in some cases millions of them.

So the lawyer - who gets 5% or 10% or whatever - makes a lot more than any individual plaintiff. And yes, if that's 5% of a 5-billion damage award, that's a lot more than you need to buy a yacht.

Both the law firms in this story, however, are Ontario law firms. In Ontario, being paid a percentage of the settlement or judgment is illegal under Law Society rules. They have to charge a fixed fee. That fee will probably be fairly high but the plaintiffs, if they win, are going to get most of the proceeds.

If they lose, it's a problem.

Ashley Madison invites red-faced cheats to bolt stable door for free

Re: Wow

Private investigators don't want that data released. It'll allow divorce lawyers to not have to pay their fees. PIs get hired when there's a suspicion of adultery but no evidence.

The other people you forget to mention who'd love to see it out there are the tabloid journalists.

Yahoo! dumps! thing! that! made! it! Yahoo! and! told! to! bed! AOL!

The functionality of Yahoo! Mail depends partly on your ISP. Some ISPs (like mine) pay Yahoo! to host their email, and so for people like me Yahoo! Mail is actually pretty decent, and works fairly well.

The rest of the world... well it varies depending on their mood I think.

I still use My Yahoo! as an RSS reader. It's handy to be able to jump between systems and keep all my feeds.

The Yahoo! Directory didn't used to be called that. When it started that was just Yahoo!

That was the whole website. Just categorized links. And it actually predated Alta Vista, although not by much and AV was always a much better way to find stuff than Yahoo! was.

Yahoo! did give Apache to the world though. I wonder how fast the web would have spread with just the NCSA junk for free server software.

Hacker 3D prints device that can crack a combo lock in 30 seconds

Re: I don't get science

It's not science, this is security information. Security researchers (who aren't scientists, they aren't trying to deduce physical laws of reality or the like) try to break security mechanisms all the time.

The effectiveness of a security mechanism is determined by how difficult it is to break it. Personally, I don't consider combination locks to be security mechanisms really at all, because they are easier to open than a jammed door. I've yet to find one that didn't make an audible click when you hit the right number, and that means that anyone with good enough hearing can open any combo lock regardless.

It'd be interesting to see how difficult it would be to construct a mic-based combo lock breaker.

Microsoft: Free Windows 10 for THIEVES and PIRATES? They can GET STUFFED

Re: re: reply to the highest appearing post with a complete non-sequitur..

BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The post the AC was quoting mentioned three of those five. It's not a non sequitur.

Verizon FLICKS FINGER at Netflix with skinny à la carte-style TV package for fibre munchers

Re: How can this be competing with Netflix?

I have Netflix in Canada, so I don't know about other countries, but here Netflix is showing new episodes of The 100. They get added to the list when they air on The CW in the US. It's not just back seasons anymore.

Most of the popular live-action stuff they show is their own shows, as well. Most of the back season stuff is anime. And it's quite clear from the Popular on Netflix category that Canadians at least are pretty much getting Netflix to watch TV shows, every once in a while a movie shows up there but it's dominated by episodic television.