Far too many applications either won't run properly when run under a 'standard user' account or won't run at all. Many more won't install, won't update, won't do certain basic tasks. Microsoft has no control over this. I set up my father's system (WinXP) with a 'standard' account and hid away the admin account; before six months were up he was so pissed at the way things worked (or, rather, didn't work) that he insisted that I give him admin privs on what was, after all, his computer. Six months after that, he was so pissed at what were sufficiently clear to even a very non-technical 77-year-old retiree were serious security problems with Windows that he junked it and got a Mac instead... which he runs from a 'standard' account, not an admin account, 'cause that actually can be made to work properly there. This is in large part because the apps he runs on the Mac (many of them written by the same people as those he'd run on Windows) do _not_ misbehave nearly as badly when not granted admin privs at all times.
And, oh, Tuxers, go suck on an ice cube, he didn't even consider running Linux 'cause the apps he runs don't work there. Period. End of story. And no, he's not about to learn how to write replacements for 'em himself, and I'm not gonna do it either. The apps in question include certain popular word-processing, spreadsheet, and associated other productivity apps, certain personal-finance and tax-prep apps, and a whole bunch of entertainment apps, many of which later not only are both Mac and Windows compatible and are_ NOT_ available for Linux, but the Mac and Windows versions ship on the same damn disc. And which he spends literal hours playing, so he simply is not going to consider a system that doesn't support them. And, no, I can't understand why a simple game would need admin privs in Windows, either. Especially when that same game doesn't need admin privs in Mac OS X.
Please be sure to let the general public know if you ever implement such a strategy, so that those of us who have friends, family, or business in India, the Philippines, South Korea, or Japan can avoid you.
Assuming, for the moment, that the 98% figure is correct... the answer to your question is 'zero'... if the browser is capable of using HTML5. That list includes Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, and... MSIE 8. (Though that last one has only limited HTML5 abilities. Allegedly MSIE 9 will do better.) Anyone who has a modern browser can access HTML5 sites without a problem. And, most important, they _DON'T HAVE TO USE A BUGGY, MEMORY AND CPU HOGGING, SCUM-SUCKING, ABORTION OF A PLUG-IN TO DO IT_.
Anyone who has WinXP can update to MSIE 8 for free... except for those poor slobs who work for luddites who require MSIE 6. Mickeysoft all but begs users to please, please, PLEASE drop MSIE 6 and at least go to 7, and if you're at MSIE 7, to consider going to 8. They've been trying for _years_ to get people to move on.
If you don't want to move on, then that's your problem. If you're working for luddites, then what are you doing cruising the Web on a company machine looking for video, anyway?
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080745/> says that that particular movie dates from 1980. If you think that that's recent, I think that you're on the wrong pills and perhaps you should execute your trainer. (Yes, I'll a fan of Sam Jones' finest ever work)
Of course, you _could_ mean that vile mass of excrement that was the 2007 tv series. (Sam Jones' worst ever work) In which case I _know_ that you're on the wrong pills.
"Could you imagine a percentage of MS's employees happily working on Linux or Mac OS computers while at MS?"
Actually, I can, easily. For just one example, each and every person in Microsoft's single most profitable division: the Mac Business Unit. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Business_Unit>. They all run OS X. They have to. Steve 'Monkey Boy' Ballmer wants to ensure that the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that the MBU generates is not cut off, same as Billy-Boy Gates before him.
in addition, there will be other MS employees in the various O/S and network divisions running OS X and assorted versions of Linux. How else will Mickeysoft know what to steal next?
Pirate icon, 'cause, well, it should be obvious...
Instead of going to all the trouble of getting chimps, just use goldfish. Much cheaper and yet still more intelligent than a member of the cabinet. Indeed, it's quite possible that _one_ goldfish would be brighter than the lot of them combined.
Sven, m'man, you just volunteered for a fun-filled, all-expenses-paid, trip to sunny Afghanistan where you will be a roadside bomb detector. That's a whole lot safer than asking about the tech angle on a Reg article. Especially in Bootnotes. And most particularly when it's Friday.
I know a few people who ordered machines from Dell during the September-November time period. One of them got his laptop (a $5000+ Alienware gamer special) six weeks late (not six weeks later; that would have been only four weeks late, but six weeks late, two full months after making the order) and not the way he wanted it (they were out of some special screen he wanted, he could have got the special version if he'd been willing to wait another three weeks; in addition, it had half the memory he'd ordered, 'cause they were out of the special RAM he wanted, too...). Three others canceled their orders after waiting for up to 5 weeks without getting their machines. In all four cases Dell charged their credit cards almost immediately, so they were without their money _and_ without their machines. The guys who canceled had serious problems getting Dell to return their money, and had to threaten to go to their card providers and have the money retrieved that way before Dell gave it up.
If you don't like the EULA, don't bloody buy the product. Seems simple.
Oh, you want the product, but don't like the restrictions? Cool. Change the law.
Oh, that's not gonna happen? Sucks to be you...
I haven't purchased a Sony product for _years_ (and that includes music or movies from Sony-owned sources) because I don't like certain aspects of Sony's behaviour. If enough people did that, perhaps Sony would change its ways. I'm not holding my breath waiting.
Your problem is that you don't like some things that Apple does... but just as Sony doesn't care about my opinion, Apple doesn't care about yours. And you simply can't get enough other people to care enough about your opinion to make Apple care. In this particular case, Apple is completely in the right according to the law, and has enough (more than enough) support from the public (expressed in cash flowing their way) that they simply don't give a damn about your opinion. If you want things to change you have to:
1 change the law
2 cut off the money supply
or 3 both
As things stand you're not going to be able to do any of that. Sucks to be you.
Seems to me that not only would that be legal, but it would be impossible for Apple to stop without putting something into the OS X installer that looked for something specific on Apple hardware.
The site's still up 'cause while they were stealing the tech behind the Rebel EFI (still available for $0, oops, out of stock, but a great value for the money) they also stole zombi tech from local Haitian immigrants. Which means that they're about to have _much_ bigger problems than Apple's lawyers.
I wonder how many $15 tee-shirts they have in stock? That's the only other thing available on the site. Hmm. I mean, the only thing available...
Welcome to South Florida, boyz'n'grrlz. The further south you go, the worse it gets. Mark 'turn over the page' Foley was born here in Palm Beach County and represented a district from just north of here. Here in Palm Beach County (a.k.a. Corruption County) multiple former county officials are currently guests of the Feds after being caught pulling fast ones. Lots more Broward County officials, including the previous Sheriff, either are or up until recently were, guests at Club Fed. Pretty much the entire Dade County government, especially including Miami city management, were with them. Bermie Madoff lived in Palm Beach. Since ol' Bernie came to light it has been revealed that he was merely the biggest Ponzi operator around, multiple others including one ol' boy who tried to skip town for Morocco in a private jet (no, I'm not making this up, look up Seth Rothsteien in Fort Lauderdale...) having been pulling similar, though smaller, schemes for years. (The ol' boy who tried to skip town in the jet was also the ol' boy who hired the ex-Sherrif once he got out of Federal stir...)
Pikers, they were. Small potatoes.
My only question: who was bankrolling them? My money's on a certain chair-throwing gentleman who really likes his developers.
Yes, a total of 7 attack Tornadoes were lost... out of 46 deployed. Literal decimation would have been 4 or 5. IIRC, 3 of the loses were directly combat-related, two of the three on very low level anti-airfield attacks. 3 more were 'operational' losses... problems while going to or getting back from an attack. IIRC one was due to flying into an obstacle at very low level en route to a target, and one was lost on the way home as a result of battle damage sustained over the target. Depending on how you count it, that's 4 to 5 lost out of the 46 available due to the type of mission they flew right there: literal decimation. The last of the 7 was shot down by a US Army Patriot missile battery.
IIRC 0 out of the 18 interceptor Tornadoes were lost. But then interceptors don't fly very low level very high speed attack missions.
Also, IIRC, the loss rate incurred during the very low level strike missions was sufficient to convince the RAF that perhaps they shouldn't fly any more of those missions any more... However, this goes back to vaguely remembered articles in Flight International dating from the time of the Gulf War, so I may be mis-remembering. i kinda doubt it, though.
The Power Mac G3 dates from January 1999... just short on _eleven years ago_. In those days Win98SE and WinNT4 roamed the landscape... It has a maximum (supported) OS of 10.2.8. (Think Win2K vintage...) If you put XPostFacto on a G3 you could run 10.3.x, but you might not like the results. (I certainly didn't. I put 10.2.8 back on in very short order.) Running 10.4.x would be painful, running 10.5.x out of the question, and 10.6 runs only on Intel. I'd say that Flash support on a 11 year old machine would be the least of your problems...
And, yes, I have a beige G3. 266 MHz. 768 MB RAM. (officially Apple supported 192...) 6 MB video RAM using a ATI Rage card. (Yes, 6 whole MB video RAM, it shipped with _2_ MB...). I've replaced the original 4 GB hard drive with a slightly larger 80 GB drive (note that it's impossible to install OS X onto a partition larger than 8 GB on a beige G3, to install the OS I had to put the drive onto another, newer, Mac and run the installer from there; it'll run just fine once installed but simply won't install). The only browser I have on that machine is MSIE 5.2.something, and I've not even tried to access the internet from it for _years_. I suppose that FireFox 1 might work, if I could dig up a copy...
I have this vision of trying to watch a YouTube vid on it....
1 If they hand't run their yaps I, for one would never have known the recording was on the site. Congrats for vastly increasing the number of people who know about the recording and where to get it.
2 They don't seem to have a legal leg to stand on for this.
3 I'm certain that lots of people have now downloaded it just in case it does get removed, even though it seems unlikely that it will be taken down. this means that they have _increased_ the number of copies floating around.
4 the recording in question appears to be quite straight-forward.What's the big deal, anyway?
My WPA2 code is, errm, unlikely to be cracked using a dictionary attack.
1 I used a phrase, not a word.
2 I picked a phrase which was significant to me, but not necessarily to someone else.
3 I picked that particular phrase 'cause i knew its transliteration (_NOT_ translation) into a certain obscure language, one which doesn't use the Latin alphabet. (Good luck figuring out which one...)
4 I then deliberately misspelled all the words in the phrase, in a way that made sense to me.
5 I sprinkled in a few numbers and symbols and changed some caps to lower case and some lower case to caps.
Result: a 18-digit phrase which is absolutely guaranteed to not be in any dictionary and which will make no sense to anyone else. And which I tweak every ever so often by adding or subtracting a number or a symbol or changing the case of a letter. Or some combination of the above. It used to be a _15_ digit phrase. I could have achieved good results by simply using the same phrase in English but adding the variable caps, numbers, and symbols.
" a candidate belonged to a group of people so evil that right-thinking people would not only kill them but also make sure their bodies didn’t pollute the Earth". So he was a sitting Labour MP, then?
we can easily fit a large turkey in our main freezer. One year, when we were having the rest of the family over at Christmas, we fit _two_ turkeys and a ham in there, and our freezer is on the small end as things go locally. (We had turkey and ham leftovers for a month after that...)
To give you an idea of the size of the larger freezers, there was a CSI episode where the Bad Guy (well, Bad Girl in this case) hid the body of the victim (her mother...) in one of the larger chest-type freezers. The freezer was large enough that no-one noticed...
Unfortunately the dogs used as the UGA's mascots (named Uga I, II, etc, the latest and now deceased one being VII) are mostly too well-behaved (unlike the University of Texas' longhorn steer mascots, several of which have demonstrated that Very Large Cattle with Very Big Horns are not the safest of things to have around, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevo_(mascot)> and note that UT Austin originally had a bulldog mascot, too...) to properly deal with PETA. May I suggest that Uga VIII be trained to be somewhat more aggressive and to bite the nearest PETA moron and _not let go_?
May I also suggest that schools which currently use students in fursuits for their mascots (you know, Bears, Cougars, Lions, Tigers, Wildcats, Huskies, Wolves, etc) get The Real Thing and hold them in readiness for PETA attacks... and then counter-attack. North Carolina State, for example, is the Wolfpack; get 'em, State!
Tombstone 'cause there's no 'devoured by wolves' or 'stamped flat by enraged cattle' icon.
He's an Aussie. They're used to being attacked by assorted vicious creatures (including other Aussies) and this one wasn't that bad. Certainly not as bad as a drop bear drunk on Foster's.
Mine's the kevlar one with all the holsters for multiple pistols, thanks.
Just think of it as Gordo's way of trying to keep undesirables out of the UK.
You see, UK residents are likely to be voters, and would therefore be likely to vote _against_ NuLab in the next election, and so are undesirables.
Simple when you think about it, really.
Just before the next election a kind benefactor will send mailings containing tickets for free overseas vacations to residents of safe Tory and LibDem seats... and then passport control will keep anyone who took the offer up out of the country until _after_ the election. And no, you don't get an absentee ballot.
Actually, I _do_ back up my DVDs. The first thing I do when I get new software is to generate a copy and then install from the copy, keeping the original in a safe place where it won't get scratched, warped, or broken. Any software which can't be copied is immediately returned to the vendor. If I can't make a backup, I don't want it. This also applies to movies and music. Let's just say that if I _didn't_ follow that procedure at home, I'd have purchased at least four copies of one recent (and highly popular with pre-teens) cartoon movie. Instead of buying another copy, I merely ripped a new copy from my original, and put the original back into the child-proof storage area.
There are certain products which are difficult to back up; I have made a note of the vendors of such products, and no longer buy from them. If they make it difficult to protect my investment, I will decline to give them my money.
And, before you ask, yes, that's why I don't have a Blu-ray device anywhere on the premises. Blu-ray is a giant exercise in copy-protection, and those who indulge in it will not get any money from me until after there is a safe, simple, reliable, method for backing up my purchase.
volunteer, hell. Grab the nearest PETA idiot and use him instead. Monkeys are far more intelligent and useful.
Mine's the one with the cobalt-60 irradiator in the pocket. Give it to the nice PETA worker over there, please, I want to see if he knows what the phrase 'Cherenkov radiation' means.
That's 'cause you have sense and actually RTFM. Certain other people 'keep things simple' and share the desktop or the entire home directory or even the entire bleeding drive. No, I'm not joking. I've seen it happen.
It seems that someone has been reading some old (1950s and early 1960s) H. Beam Piper sci-fi. Piper's 'countragravity' worked something like what this guy says he has, only as Piper was writing fiction in the days before Star Trek he had to at least try to make his techno-speak hang together semi-plausibly. The ships in Piper's stories about the Federation appear to have been better thought out than that 'demonstration video' thing. After all, Piper _was_ writing for John Campbell at Astounding, and Campbell was notorious for wanting to see the rivets on the hulls of the spaceships before he bought the story. (Campbell would have bounced most of the stories put on the air in Star Trek, for example. Not least for the outrageous biology behind Spock...)
On the other hand, Campbell _was_ a big supporter of the Dean Drive, which this also somewhat resembles and which also didn't work. IIRC Lee Corey perpetuated a Dean Drive story or two a few years after Campbell's death. It wasn't nearly as well received without Campbell there to push it. I expect that this 'device' will go tits-up RSN.
He put _illegal_, _card-forging_, devices _into checked baggage_ on _Southwest_?! And then when the bag went missing, he didn't scarper himself, and instead _called in to claim lost baggage_?!
And it all could have been avoided if he'd driven to Phoenix instead. At about 11-12 hours it'd have been a long road trip, but quite doable either as a single long run or as two 6-hour or so runs over two days.
and exactly what is stopping our would-be miscreant from doing something like, oh...
1 printing out the page and putting the paper into a briefcase and walking out the door?
2 getting out his cell phone and snapping a pic of the screen?
or
3 getting out a sheet of notepaper and a pencil and <gasp> <shock> <horror> writing down the info?
Why, depending on his job, the miscreant may even be able to produce a valid reason to do (1) or (3), though explaining away (2) may require creative thinking.
I'm sure that Reg readers can think of several other methods of abstracting info from 'secure' systems, even systems secured by legions of rabid attack penguins.
Pirate icon. We really need a blood-thirsty Attack Penguin icon.
It's available for Windows and Macs. I don't have it installed on either platform locally, but it's available. Every time I go near a Microsoft website using a Windows or a Mac browser the site pops up a window begging me to please install Silverlight.
The current Mac version of Silverlight, 3.04something, can be obtained here, if you don't want to go to Mickeysoft directly: <http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26623/silverlight>. You'll notice that it is not highly thought of. Gee. A Mickeysoft imitation Flash bloated plug-in thingie that's disliked by Mac users. Who'd have thought that such a thing was possible?
I got an RTM version of Win7 (from the MS Alliance) and installed it on my Toshiba laptop.
1 it took well over an hour to install (3 GB RAM, 2.2 GHz core 2 duo, good hard drive, so I don't think it's the hardware)
2 it wouldn't do the update install, I had to do a custom install. That, of course, stuck all my old data and apps into the Windows.old folder. And, of course, my old apps don't work anymore.
3 Mickeysoft has a way to move your old _data_ from the Windows.old folder. But not your old apps. In theory you have to delete the Windows.old folder once you've moved your data (so that you can have some space on the system) and then reinstall your apps. All of them. Alternatively you can attach the external USB drive that has your full clone backup and use one of the various 3rd-party system migration utilities (approx US$50-100, depending on which one you pick) or Mickeysoft's own heavy-duty migration utility ($260, and you'd better have an Active Directory server hanging around) and move your apps over. Or you could do what I did: clone the clone back onto the laptop and go back to Vista.
No flames, bro. Those who read USENET will be able to see that I posted something on this very subject on Sunday on comp.sys.mac.systems... and was met with disbelief that it could possibly be Apple's fault. I've taken six dead TCs apart so far, and _all_ of them have had bad caps, demonstrably killed by overheating. It's a design problem. Simple as that. The built-in fan does sweet damn all, the system heats up and then the caps die. There are several fixes for the problem, including retrofitting an external power supply to the unit. If you go with the external power supply the TC is _much_ cooler. There is also at least one mod which can be made to the fan, which allows it to actually do something. If you _both_ do the fan mod and the external power supply mod then your TC will be immune to this... but your warranty will be void, and your TC will be both noisy and ugly.
There is also a method by which you can turn existing hardware (HFS+ formatted drives only, so far as I know) into a NAS and have Time Machine use that to back up to over the network; you have to turn on a software switch that Apple has turned off _except_ when you have installed a TC, but that's not difficult. I have an existing OS X Server setup with 3 TB of RAID 5 storage which will be available as a TM network backup starting next weekend when I have some time to fiddle with my server.
And no, I don't personally have a TC myself. I thought that they were too damn expensive for what they did _before_ they started to die left and right. Apple would have to pay me to take one off their hands... and the first thing I'd do, warranty or no warranty, would be to mod the fan and the power supply. 'Working' beats 'pretty' any day so far as I'm concerned.
y'all are thinking too small. If they can get this to be _true_ 360 3D, so that a viewer can see different angles of the object depending on where he is (and I say 'he' with malice aforethought) and if they can bring the costs of actually producing such content down to a reasonable level, then the porn industry will have lots of fun with it. 360 degree 3D rumpy-pumpy!
Shortly after that George Lucas will re-release the Star Wars movies in 360 3D WrapAround You-Are-There-Vision. i feel a disturbance in the Force...
And then there'll be Halo 3D from Your Friends at Microsoft.
Samsung UN55B8000 55" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
LG Electronics 42LH30 42" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Samsung UN55B8500 55" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Sony BRAVIA KDL-40EX400 40" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
Samsung UN40B6000 40" LED TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, HDTV)
220 posts • joined Thursday 14th June 2007 12:42 GMT
Page:
James O'Shea
and we have a winner → # ↑
Posted Saturday 6th March 2010 16:44 GMT
In Microsoft sends flowers to IE6 funeral
I love the smell of winoze fanboi drool in the morning.
James O'Shea
Mickeysoft innovates again → #
Posted Friday 5th March 2010 21:15 GMT
In Microsoft sends flowers to IE6 funeral
Way, way, WAY back in 2002, the iSteve famously buried Mac OS 9. http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-899914.html
And so here we are, eight years later, and Mickeysoft shows just how innovative it really is...
Bah. Humbug.
James O'Shea
Incorrect → # ↑
Posted Thursday 25th February 2010 23:13 GMT
In MS uses court order to take out Waledac botnet
Far too many applications either won't run properly when run under a 'standard user' account or won't run at all. Many more won't install, won't update, won't do certain basic tasks. Microsoft has no control over this. I set up my father's system (WinXP) with a 'standard' account and hid away the admin account; before six months were up he was so pissed at the way things worked (or, rather, didn't work) that he insisted that I give him admin privs on what was, after all, his computer. Six months after that, he was so pissed at what were sufficiently clear to even a very non-technical 77-year-old retiree were serious security problems with Windows that he junked it and got a Mac instead... which he runs from a 'standard' account, not an admin account, 'cause that actually can be made to work properly there. This is in large part because the apps he runs on the Mac (many of them written by the same people as those he'd run on Windows) do _not_ misbehave nearly as badly when not granted admin privs at all times.
And, oh, Tuxers, go suck on an ice cube, he didn't even consider running Linux 'cause the apps he runs don't work there. Period. End of story. And no, he's not about to learn how to write replacements for 'em himself, and I'm not gonna do it either. The apps in question include certain popular word-processing, spreadsheet, and associated other productivity apps, certain personal-finance and tax-prep apps, and a whole bunch of entertainment apps, many of which later not only are both Mac and Windows compatible and are_ NOT_ available for Linux, but the Mac and Windows versions ship on the same damn disc. And which he spends literal hours playing, so he simply is not going to consider a system that doesn't support them. And, no, I can't understand why a simple game would need admin privs in Windows, either. Especially when that same game doesn't need admin privs in Mac OS X.
James O'Shea
Idiocy → # ↑
Posted Thursday 25th February 2010 23:13 GMT
In MS uses court order to take out Waledac botnet
Please be sure to let the general public know if you ever implement such a strategy, so that those of us who have friends, family, or business in India, the Philippines, South Korea, or Japan can avoid you.
James O'Shea
pay attention → # ↑
Posted Monday 22nd February 2010 10:34 GMT
In iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare
Assuming, for the moment, that the 98% figure is correct... the answer to your question is 'zero'... if the browser is capable of using HTML5. That list includes Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox, and... MSIE 8. (Though that last one has only limited HTML5 abilities. Allegedly MSIE 9 will do better.) Anyone who has a modern browser can access HTML5 sites without a problem. And, most important, they _DON'T HAVE TO USE A BUGGY, MEMORY AND CPU HOGGING, SCUM-SUCKING, ABORTION OF A PLUG-IN TO DO IT_.
Anyone who has WinXP can update to MSIE 8 for free... except for those poor slobs who work for luddites who require MSIE 6. Mickeysoft all but begs users to please, please, PLEASE drop MSIE 6 and at least go to 7, and if you're at MSIE 7, to consider going to 8. They've been trying for _years_ to get people to move on.
If you don't want to move on, then that's your problem. If you're working for luddites, then what are you doing cruising the Web on a company machine looking for video, anyway?
Get real, twit.
James O'Shea
'recent'? → # ↑
Posted Friday 19th February 2010 16:18 GMT
In Two Chinese schools implicated in Google Aurora attacks
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080745/> says that that particular movie dates from 1980. If you think that that's recent, I think that you're on the wrong pills and perhaps you should execute your trainer. (Yes, I'll a fan of Sam Jones' finest ever work)
Of course, you _could_ mean that vile mass of excrement that was the 2007 tv series. (Sam Jones' worst ever work) In which case I _know_ that you're on the wrong pills.
James O'Shea
Yes I can → # ↑
Posted Tuesday 2nd February 2010 23:01 GMT
In Google yanks IE6 love from web apps
"Could you imagine a percentage of MS's employees happily working on Linux or Mac OS computers while at MS?"
Actually, I can, easily. For just one example, each and every person in Microsoft's single most profitable division: the Mac Business Unit. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Business_Unit>. They all run OS X. They have to. Steve 'Monkey Boy' Ballmer wants to ensure that the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that the MBU generates is not cut off, same as Billy-Boy Gates before him.
in addition, there will be other MS employees in the various O/S and network divisions running OS X and assorted versions of Linux. How else will Mickeysoft know what to steal next?
Pirate icon, 'cause, well, it should be obvious...
James O'Shea
why waste the money → # ↑
Posted Friday 29th January 2010 16:35 GMT
In Interpol chief questions body scanner rollout
Instead of going to all the trouble of getting chimps, just use goldfish. Much cheaper and yet still more intelligent than a member of the cabinet. Indeed, it's quite possible that _one_ goldfish would be brighter than the lot of them combined.
Who, me, bitter? Why do you say that?
James O'Shea
and we have a winner → # ↑
Posted Friday 29th January 2010 15:35 GMT
In Hong Kong Taoist masters still hard at it
Sven, m'man, you just volunteered for a fun-filled, all-expenses-paid, trip to sunny Afghanistan where you will be a roadside bomb detector. That's a whole lot safer than asking about the tech angle on a Reg article. Especially in Bootnotes. And most particularly when it's Friday.
Grenade 'cause Sven will be seeing a lot of them.
James O'Shea
what a waste → #
Posted Monday 11th January 2010 15:35 GMT
In Celebrity goat declines Britain's Got Talent gig
That goat shouldn't be stuck on a farm, it should be in Parliament. It certainly seems brighter than half the NuLab backbench...
James O'Shea
Dell Hell → #
Posted Thursday 31st December 2009 21:03 GMT
In Dell crowned Bad Santa computer maker by angry customers
I know a few people who ordered machines from Dell during the September-November time period. One of them got his laptop (a $5000+ Alienware gamer special) six weeks late (not six weeks later; that would have been only four weeks late, but six weeks late, two full months after making the order) and not the way he wanted it (they were out of some special screen he wanted, he could have got the special version if he'd been willing to wait another three weeks; in addition, it had half the memory he'd ordered, 'cause they were out of the special RAM he wanted, too...). Three others canceled their orders after waiting for up to 5 weeks without getting their machines. In all four cases Dell charged their credit cards almost immediately, so they were without their money _and_ without their machines. The guys who canceled had serious problems getting Dell to return their money, and had to threaten to go to their card providers and have the money retrieved that way before Dell gave it up.
James O'Shea
felony stupidity → #
Posted Wednesday 30th December 2009 15:20 GMT
In X-Box 360 theft suspect busted after online gaming sesh
This twit isn't quite as bad as the idiot who took a pic of himself not knowing that the device was set to call home, but he's close.
The prosecutor should tack on some extra time for felony stupidity.
James O'Shea
Then don't bloody buy it → # ↑
Posted Monday 21st December 2009 11:32 GMT
In Hackintosher goes titsup
If you don't like the EULA, don't bloody buy the product. Seems simple.
Oh, you want the product, but don't like the restrictions? Cool. Change the law.
Oh, that's not gonna happen? Sucks to be you...
I haven't purchased a Sony product for _years_ (and that includes music or movies from Sony-owned sources) because I don't like certain aspects of Sony's behaviour. If enough people did that, perhaps Sony would change its ways. I'm not holding my breath waiting.
Your problem is that you don't like some things that Apple does... but just as Sony doesn't care about my opinion, Apple doesn't care about yours. And you simply can't get enough other people to care enough about your opinion to make Apple care. In this particular case, Apple is completely in the right according to the law, and has enough (more than enough) support from the public (expressed in cash flowing their way) that they simply don't give a damn about your opinion. If you want things to change you have to:
1 change the law
2 cut off the money supply
or 3 both
As things stand you're not going to be able to do any of that. Sucks to be you.
James O'Shea
that looks legal → # ↑
Posted Sunday 20th December 2009 19:33 GMT
In Hackintosher goes titsup
Seems to me that not only would that be legal, but it would be impossible for Apple to stop without putting something into the OS X installer that looked for something specific on Apple hardware.
James O'Shea
undead zombies → # ↑
Posted Sunday 20th December 2009 19:33 GMT
In Hackintosher goes titsup
The site's still up 'cause while they were stealing the tech behind the Rebel EFI (still available for $0, oops, out of stock, but a great value for the money) they also stole zombi tech from local Haitian immigrants. Which means that they're about to have _much_ bigger problems than Apple's lawyers.
I wonder how many $15 tee-shirts they have in stock? That's the only other thing available on the site. Hmm. I mean, the only thing available...
James O'Shea
Forcing?! → # ↑
Posted Saturday 19th December 2009 18:16 GMT
In Hackintosher goes titsup
If you don't want to buy a Mac, then don't. If you want to run OS X on non-Apple hardware, you can do that too. Apple won't stop you.
What you _can't_ do is _sell_ non-Apple hardware with OS X.
But you knew this.
James O'Shea
Low-rent Miami Cowboys → #
Posted Saturday 19th December 2009 01:09 GMT
In Hackintosher goes titsup
Welcome to South Florida, boyz'n'grrlz. The further south you go, the worse it gets. Mark 'turn over the page' Foley was born here in Palm Beach County and represented a district from just north of here. Here in Palm Beach County (a.k.a. Corruption County) multiple former county officials are currently guests of the Feds after being caught pulling fast ones. Lots more Broward County officials, including the previous Sheriff, either are or up until recently were, guests at Club Fed. Pretty much the entire Dade County government, especially including Miami city management, were with them. Bermie Madoff lived in Palm Beach. Since ol' Bernie came to light it has been revealed that he was merely the biggest Ponzi operator around, multiple others including one ol' boy who tried to skip town for Morocco in a private jet (no, I'm not making this up, look up Seth Rothsteien in Fort Lauderdale...) having been pulling similar, though smaller, schemes for years. (The ol' boy who tried to skip town in the jet was also the ol' boy who hired the ex-Sherrif once he got out of Federal stir...)
Pikers, they were. Small potatoes.
My only question: who was bankrolling them? My money's on a certain chair-throwing gentleman who really likes his developers.
James O'Shea
worse, actually → # ↑
Posted Thursday 17th December 2009 14:41 GMT
In MoD does everything right for once in Xmas shocker
Yes, a total of 7 attack Tornadoes were lost... out of 46 deployed. Literal decimation would have been 4 or 5. IIRC, 3 of the loses were directly combat-related, two of the three on very low level anti-airfield attacks. 3 more were 'operational' losses... problems while going to or getting back from an attack. IIRC one was due to flying into an obstacle at very low level en route to a target, and one was lost on the way home as a result of battle damage sustained over the target. Depending on how you count it, that's 4 to 5 lost out of the 46 available due to the type of mission they flew right there: literal decimation. The last of the 7 was shot down by a US Army Patriot missile battery.
IIRC 0 out of the 18 interceptor Tornadoes were lost. But then interceptors don't fly very low level very high speed attack missions.
Also, IIRC, the loss rate incurred during the very low level strike missions was sufficient to convince the RAF that perhaps they shouldn't fly any more of those missions any more... However, this goes back to vaguely remembered articles in Flight International dating from the time of the Gulf War, so I may be mis-remembering. i kinda doubt it, though.
James O'Shea
anti-flash → # ↑
Posted Saturday 12th December 2009 23:32 GMT
In Last splash for Flash support on elderly PowerPC G3s
If you use AdBlocker (currently at 1.4) all kinds of ads, including that one, go bye-bye.
James O'Shea
thanks → # ↑
Posted Saturday 12th December 2009 23:32 GMT
In Last splash for Flash support on elderly PowerPC G3s
I'll get it, and if I actually want to access the Internet from the beige I may even use it. It can't be worse than MSIE 5.2.
James O'Shea
why even bother? → #
Posted Friday 11th December 2009 15:51 GMT
In Last splash for Flash support on elderly PowerPC G3s
The Power Mac G3 dates from January 1999... just short on _eleven years ago_. In those days Win98SE and WinNT4 roamed the landscape... It has a maximum (supported) OS of 10.2.8. (Think Win2K vintage...) If you put XPostFacto on a G3 you could run 10.3.x, but you might not like the results. (I certainly didn't. I put 10.2.8 back on in very short order.) Running 10.4.x would be painful, running 10.5.x out of the question, and 10.6 runs only on Intel. I'd say that Flash support on a 11 year old machine would be the least of your problems...
And, yes, I have a beige G3. 266 MHz. 768 MB RAM. (officially Apple supported 192...) 6 MB video RAM using a ATI Rage card. (Yes, 6 whole MB video RAM, it shipped with _2_ MB...). I've replaced the original 4 GB hard drive with a slightly larger 80 GB drive (note that it's impossible to install OS X onto a partition larger than 8 GB on a beige G3, to install the OS I had to put the drive onto another, newer, Mac and run the installer from there; it'll run just fine once installed but simply won't install). The only browser I have on that machine is MSIE 5.2.something, and I've not even tried to access the internet from it for _years_. I suppose that FireFox 1 might work, if I could dig up a copy...
I have this vision of trying to watch a YouTube vid on it....
James O'Shea
more idiocy → #
Posted Wednesday 9th December 2009 16:11 GMT
In UK air traffic control goes after Wikileaks
1 If they hand't run their yaps I, for one would never have known the recording was on the site. Congrats for vastly increasing the number of people who know about the recording and where to get it.
2 They don't seem to have a legal leg to stand on for this.
3 I'm certain that lots of people have now downloaded it just in case it does get removed, even though it seems unlikely that it will be taken down. this means that they have _increased_ the number of copies floating around.
4 the recording in question appears to be quite straight-forward.What's the big deal, anyway?
James O'Shea
massive idiocy → #
Posted Wednesday 9th December 2009 15:39 GMT
In RatemyCouncil site launches, falls over
What are they using to transfer data on that site, carrier pigeons?
And how do I go about getting a contract for setting up a site to replace it? I'm cheap, I'll only charge half what the last lot did.
James O'Shea
double bah → # ↑
Posted Tuesday 8th December 2009 18:34 GMT
In Service cracks wireless passwords from the cloud
something memorable.
James O'Shea
Bah, humbug → #
Posted Tuesday 8th December 2009 14:14 GMT
In Service cracks wireless passwords from the cloud
My WPA2 code is, errm, unlikely to be cracked using a dictionary attack.
1 I used a phrase, not a word.
2 I picked a phrase which was significant to me, but not necessarily to someone else.
3 I picked that particular phrase 'cause i knew its transliteration (_NOT_ translation) into a certain obscure language, one which doesn't use the Latin alphabet. (Good luck figuring out which one...)
4 I then deliberately misspelled all the words in the phrase, in a way that made sense to me.
5 I sprinkled in a few numbers and symbols and changed some caps to lower case and some lower case to caps.
Result: a 18-digit phrase which is absolutely guaranteed to not be in any dictionary and which will make no sense to anyone else. And which I tweak every ever so often by adding or subtracting a number or a symbol or changing the case of a letter. Or some combination of the above. It used to be a _15_ digit phrase. I could have achieved good results by simply using the same phrase in English but adding the variable caps, numbers, and symbols.
James O'Shea
They're dead, Jim → #
Posted Tuesday 1st December 2009 22:04 GMT
In Hackintosher Psystar to pay Apple $2.7m in settlement
Finished. Kaput. History. Apple's killer sharks are closing in to rip chunks off the carcass.
James O'Shea
candidate → #
Posted Monday 30th November 2009 12:02 GMT
In Should you lose your religion on your CV?
" a candidate belonged to a group of people so evil that right-thinking people would not only kill them but also make sure their bodies didn’t pollute the Earth". So he was a sitting Labour MP, then?
James O'Shea
Think of the children → #
Posted Monday 30th November 2009 04:49 GMT
In Cartoon smut law to make life sucky for Olympic organisers
Clearly those responsible for this outrage are all paedophiles and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
And those who try to give them cover are just as guilty and should be prosecuted with them.
And the law should follow the trail of responsibility wherever it may lead.
Hmmm.... Mr. Brown, those nice policemen would like a word with you. They think that you could assist them in their enquiries. Now, Mr. Brown.
James O'Shea
heartwarming, alright → # ↑
Posted Thursday 26th November 2009 23:40 GMT
In Police smoke out 300-pound frozen turkey thief
he'll have lots and lots of free meals at the local Sheriff's Stockade for about a year before his trial and then lots more in the State Pen.
James O'Shea
easily → # ↑
Posted Thursday 26th November 2009 23:05 GMT
In Police smoke out 300-pound frozen turkey thief
we can easily fit a large turkey in our main freezer. One year, when we were having the rest of the family over at Christmas, we fit _two_ turkeys and a ham in there, and our freezer is on the small end as things go locally. (We had turkey and ham leftovers for a month after that...)
To give you an idea of the size of the larger freezers, there was a CSI episode where the Bad Guy (well, Bad Girl in this case) hid the body of the victim (her mother...) in one of the larger chest-type freezers. The freezer was large enough that no-one noticed...
James O'Shea
there's no doubt → # ↑
Posted Thursday 26th November 2009 22:48 GMT
In McNealy's inflatable 'blimp' pleasure-dome angers neighbours
They're envious.
James O'Shea
Cue the rants → #
Posted Thursday 26th November 2009 21:08 GMT
In Apple ramps up share of US retail PC sales takings
Stand by for ranting about how overpriced Apple products are...
James O'Shea
Not the ankles. Somewhere higher up → # ↑
Posted Thursday 26th November 2009 15:35 GMT
In Replace Bulldog gridiron mascot with robot, PETA demands
And ol' Uga should get a nice doggy treat if he bites it clean off.
James O'Shea
Sic 'em, Uga → #
Posted Thursday 26th November 2009 15:07 GMT
In Replace Bulldog gridiron mascot with robot, PETA demands
Unfortunately the dogs used as the UGA's mascots (named Uga I, II, etc, the latest and now deceased one being VII) are mostly too well-behaved (unlike the University of Texas' longhorn steer mascots, several of which have demonstrated that Very Large Cattle with Very Big Horns are not the safest of things to have around, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevo_(mascot)> and note that UT Austin originally had a bulldog mascot, too...) to properly deal with PETA. May I suggest that Uga VIII be trained to be somewhat more aggressive and to bite the nearest PETA moron and _not let go_?
May I also suggest that schools which currently use students in fursuits for their mascots (you know, Bears, Cougars, Lions, Tigers, Wildcats, Huskies, Wolves, etc) get The Real Thing and hold them in readiness for PETA attacks... and then counter-attack. North Carolina State, for example, is the Wolfpack; get 'em, State!
Tombstone 'cause there's no 'devoured by wolves' or 'stamped flat by enraged cattle' icon.
James O'Shea
final solution → #
Posted Wednesday 25th November 2009 18:02 GMT
In Feral dromedaries besiege Oz Outback town
take off and nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
James O'Shea
@NoggintheNog → #
Posted Monday 23rd November 2009 18:49 GMT
In Savage roo mauls Oz man
He's an Aussie. They're used to being attacked by assorted vicious creatures (including other Aussies) and this one wasn't that bad. Certainly not as bad as a drop bear drunk on Foster's.
Mine's the kevlar one with all the holsters for multiple pistols, thanks.
James O'Shea
@ last time I came into the UK → #
Posted Saturday 21st November 2009 01:14 GMT
In US immigration dodge is permanent
Just think of it as Gordo's way of trying to keep undesirables out of the UK.
You see, UK residents are likely to be voters, and would therefore be likely to vote _against_ NuLab in the next election, and so are undesirables.
Simple when you think about it, really.
Just before the next election a kind benefactor will send mailings containing tickets for free overseas vacations to residents of safe Tory and LibDem seats... and then passport control will keep anyone who took the offer up out of the country until _after_ the election. And no, you don't get an absentee ballot.
I'm going, I'm going...
James O'Shea
@Chris Harrison → #
Posted Friday 20th November 2009 19:27 GMT
In Lawyers pursue banned Xbox Live gamers
Actually, I _do_ back up my DVDs. The first thing I do when I get new software is to generate a copy and then install from the copy, keeping the original in a safe place where it won't get scratched, warped, or broken. Any software which can't be copied is immediately returned to the vendor. If I can't make a backup, I don't want it. This also applies to movies and music. Let's just say that if I _didn't_ follow that procedure at home, I'd have purchased at least four copies of one recent (and highly popular with pre-teens) cartoon movie. Instead of buying another copy, I merely ripped a new copy from my original, and put the original back into the child-proof storage area.
There are certain products which are difficult to back up; I have made a note of the vendors of such products, and no longer buy from them. If they make it difficult to protect my investment, I will decline to give them my money.
And, before you ask, yes, that's why I don't have a Blu-ray device anywhere on the premises. Blu-ray is a giant exercise in copy-protection, and those who indulge in it will not get any money from me until after there is a safe, simple, reliable, method for backing up my purchase.
James O'Shea
I don't believe the last two → #
Posted Friday 13th November 2009 11:22 GMT
In Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide
Those two are fakes. Gotta be.
James O'Shea
@simple solution → #
Posted Sunday 8th November 2009 05:56 GMT
In Animal lovers say no to radioactive NASA monkeys
volunteer, hell. Grab the nearest PETA idiot and use him instead. Monkeys are far more intelligent and useful.
Mine's the one with the cobalt-60 irradiator in the pocket. Give it to the nice PETA worker over there, please, I want to see if he knows what the phrase 'Cherenkov radiation' means.
James O'Shea
@Pablo → #
Posted Saturday 31st October 2009 16:24 GMT
In P2P snafu blows lid on secret Congress probes
That's 'cause you have sense and actually RTFM. Certain other people 'keep things simple' and share the desktop or the entire home directory or even the entire bleeding drive. No, I'm not joking. I've seen it happen.
James O'Shea
Space opera → #
Posted Thursday 29th October 2009 22:18 GMT
In Brit space agency to probe 'crackpot' antigravity device
It seems that someone has been reading some old (1950s and early 1960s) H. Beam Piper sci-fi. Piper's 'countragravity' worked something like what this guy says he has, only as Piper was writing fiction in the days before Star Trek he had to at least try to make his techno-speak hang together semi-plausibly. The ships in Piper's stories about the Federation appear to have been better thought out than that 'demonstration video' thing. After all, Piper _was_ writing for John Campbell at Astounding, and Campbell was notorious for wanting to see the rivets on the hulls of the spaceships before he bought the story. (Campbell would have bounced most of the stories put on the air in Star Trek, for example. Not least for the outrageous biology behind Spock...)
On the other hand, Campbell _was_ a big supporter of the Dean Drive, which this also somewhat resembles and which also didn't work. IIRC Lee Corey perpetuated a Dean Drive story or two a few years after Campbell's death. It wasn't nearly as well received without Campbell there to push it. I expect that this 'device' will go tits-up RSN.
James O'Shea
Idiot → #
Posted Monday 26th October 2009 00:24 GMT
In California pair charged with multistate credit card fraud
He put _illegal_, _card-forging_, devices _into checked baggage_ on _Southwest_?! And then when the bag went missing, he didn't scarper himself, and instead _called in to claim lost baggage_?!
And it all could have been avoided if he'd driven to Phoenix instead. At about 11-12 hours it'd have been a long road trip, but quite doable either as a single long run or as two 6-hour or so runs over two days.
James O'Shea
there ain't no justice → #
Posted Friday 23rd October 2009 05:20 GMT
In Steve Ballmer's Windows 7 dance party
If there _were_ justice, then Monkey Boy Ballmer would get arrested for child abuse.
James O'Shea
errm... → #
Posted Thursday 22nd October 2009 12:00 GMT
In Raytheon unveils Linux 'Insider Threat' rooter-out routers
and exactly what is stopping our would-be miscreant from doing something like, oh...
1 printing out the page and putting the paper into a briefcase and walking out the door?
2 getting out his cell phone and snapping a pic of the screen?
or
3 getting out a sheet of notepaper and a pencil and <gasp> <shock> <horror> writing down the info?
Why, depending on his job, the miscreant may even be able to produce a valid reason to do (1) or (3), though explaining away (2) may require creative thinking.
I'm sure that Reg readers can think of several other methods of abstracting info from 'secure' systems, even systems secured by legions of rabid attack penguins.
Pirate icon. We really need a blood-thirsty Attack Penguin icon.
James O'Shea
Silverlight is cross-platform → #
Posted Thursday 22nd October 2009 11:18 GMT
In Windows 95 to Windows 7: How Microsoft lost its vision
It's available for Windows and Macs. I don't have it installed on either platform locally, but it's available. Every time I go near a Microsoft website using a Windows or a Mac browser the site pops up a window begging me to please install Silverlight.
The current Mac version of Silverlight, 3.04something, can be obtained here, if you don't want to go to Mickeysoft directly: <http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26623/silverlight>. You'll notice that it is not highly thought of. Gee. A Mickeysoft imitation Flash bloated plug-in thingie that's disliked by Mac users. Who'd have thought that such a thing was possible?
James O'Shea
Bah, humbug → #
Posted Wednesday 21st October 2009 13:35 GMT
In Windows 7 - the Reg reader verdict
I got an RTM version of Win7 (from the MS Alliance) and installed it on my Toshiba laptop.
1 it took well over an hour to install (3 GB RAM, 2.2 GHz core 2 duo, good hard drive, so I don't think it's the hardware)
2 it wouldn't do the update install, I had to do a custom install. That, of course, stuck all my old data and apps into the Windows.old folder. And, of course, my old apps don't work anymore.
3 Mickeysoft has a way to move your old _data_ from the Windows.old folder. But not your old apps. In theory you have to delete the Windows.old folder once you've moved your data (so that you can have some space on the system) and then reinstall your apps. All of them. Alternatively you can attach the external USB drive that has your full clone backup and use one of the various 3rd-party system migration utilities (approx US$50-100, depending on which one you pick) or Mickeysoft's own heavy-duty migration utility ($260, and you'd better have an Active Directory server hanging around) and move your apps over. Or you could do what I did: clone the clone back onto the laptop and go back to Vista.
Feh.
James O'Shea
it's back → #
Posted Tuesday 20th October 2009 18:10 GMT
In Apple Store down - new cultware coming?
New iMacs, new MacBook, new mouse, new keyboard, new Mac minis, probably other new stuff.
James O'Shea
@ James O'Brien → #
Posted Monday 19th October 2009 19:05 GMT
In Apple Time Capsule catches plague
No flames, bro. Those who read USENET will be able to see that I posted something on this very subject on Sunday on comp.sys.mac.systems... and was met with disbelief that it could possibly be Apple's fault. I've taken six dead TCs apart so far, and _all_ of them have had bad caps, demonstrably killed by overheating. It's a design problem. Simple as that. The built-in fan does sweet damn all, the system heats up and then the caps die. There are several fixes for the problem, including retrofitting an external power supply to the unit. If you go with the external power supply the TC is _much_ cooler. There is also at least one mod which can be made to the fan, which allows it to actually do something. If you _both_ do the fan mod and the external power supply mod then your TC will be immune to this... but your warranty will be void, and your TC will be both noisy and ugly.
There is also a method by which you can turn existing hardware (HFS+ formatted drives only, so far as I know) into a NAS and have Time Machine use that to back up to over the network; you have to turn on a software switch that Apple has turned off _except_ when you have installed a TC, but that's not difficult. I have an existing OS X Server setup with 3 TB of RAID 5 storage which will be available as a TM network backup starting next weekend when I have some time to fiddle with my server.
And no, I don't personally have a TC myself. I thought that they were too damn expensive for what they did _before_ they started to die left and right. Apple would have to pay me to take one off their hands... and the first thing I'd do, warranty or no warranty, would be to mod the fan and the power supply. 'Working' beats 'pretty' any day so far as I'm concerned.
James O'Shea
thinking too small → #
Posted Monday 19th October 2009 16:36 GMT
In Sony designs 360° 3D TV
y'all are thinking too small. If they can get this to be _true_ 360 3D, so that a viewer can see different angles of the object depending on where he is (and I say 'he' with malice aforethought) and if they can bring the costs of actually producing such content down to a reasonable level, then the porn industry will have lots of fun with it. 360 degree 3D rumpy-pumpy!
Shortly after that George Lucas will re-release the Star Wars movies in 360 3D WrapAround You-Are-There-Vision. i feel a disturbance in the Force...
And then there'll be Halo 3D from Your Friends at Microsoft.
Paris for obvious reasons.
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