Flying while talking

If using your mobile phone while driving causes an accident, I wonder how dangerous it might be for the pilot to answer his phone:

- "Hello? Oh yes, I'm about to land this .... OH SHIT! >CRASH<"

Also, while inflight mobiles are supposed to be too weak to interfere with the airplane instruments, a phone right inside the cockpit *can* interfere with them!

Flames because the pilot was talking on his mobile while flying...

Increase Ridership!

Of course, that is the goal they're pushing for!

Re: patent '626

I'd be very careful with that patent. Don't give it coffee unless you want to unleash real mayhem!

Mine's the one with the blue Elvis impersonating "dog".

Feeds for free

My oh my ... is this article for those born after 1990? Satellite dishes were very very common back in the 80's, and the first half of the 90's over here in Mexico. Most of them had motorized solutions, and were programmed with the preset coords for the good satellites. It was only a matter of having two remotes; but then again, SKY subscribers these days have the same problem.

@AC 14:10 - Hmm... I see you read your Bruce Schneier well. ;)

Mine's the one with the geostationary orbit satellite coords in the pocket...

Link exploit?

I've yet to see an exploit of that kind for the BlackBerry, especially as the BB has JavaScript *disabled* by default.

Anyway, as some of the others have pointed out (and the article's author as well), Obama may not be using his BB at all, but the Sectera Edge. I just hope it isn't the Windows version he's using. Oh man, a Windows box with SIPRNet access is a worse thing than having Obama use a Blackberry...

No more non-OEM XPs, remember?

It seems to go over most of these commenters' heads that XP Pro is *no longer* available outside the OEM channels; and even then, OEM's can't sell XP by itself. They are *forced* to sell Vista Business, which has downgrade privs and guess what; that one isn't the Vista version used for "home" computers.

So the extra charge isn't Lenovo's, it is either an MS tax or the "price differential" of buying a Vista Business OEM license and allow the user to downgrade.

You can't just go 'elsewhere', MS dictates that no OEM shall ever sell XP again, except those lucky netbook manufacturers.

@Obama has no clue

He might cling on his BlackBerry... but that small piece of equipment is safer than the stupid Exchange server that Bush put in the White House.

Given how easily McKinnon 0wned military systems, cybersecurity might mean removing all Microsoft stuff from critical applications; otherwise any script kiddie will be able to crack in through someone who left blank passwords on their PC.

Bring it on!

I actually bet my money on Psystar. Power Computing was late in the game, but it was the only chance Apple had for its Macintosh OS to reach the cash-strapped market; that possibility was destroyed after the Second Coming of Jobs.

If Psystar wins, either we will get Apple to sell OSX to everyone (and actually take a nice bite on the disgruntled Fista users) or it will return to good hardware, say, PPC and send Intel hardware where it deserves to be ... in the trash bin. OSX will never gain a foothold as long as it remains tied to Apple hardware. For example, the iPod didn't take off until the "Mac-only" restriction was lifted.

I wish someone sued them for their non-user-serviceable batteries as well.

Re: That good old time internet really is gone, isn't it?

That internet has been going away for the last 10 years.

- I used to be able to telnet into the campus' RS/6000 workstations. Not anymore.

- I used to have *public* *routeable* IP addys at my campus, work, or wherever I had internet access. Not anymore.

- I used to be able to finger most UNIX/Linux servers on the net, and even "talk user@somewhere.edu" every now and then. Finger was one of the first services blocked for "security reasons".

- I used to see people who blocked port 23,25,110 from the internet as rude people. Now *I* have to block them down, as well as port 22 to keep the botnets at bay.

The Internet lost its "interconnected" appeal the day we started using the "private" IPs; which are basically a stop-gap solution to avoid running out of IPv4 space. Now with this DNS exploit, it seems that DNS servers are going to lose their adaptability: if root servers change, I should be able to ask any DNS for this. But it seems that thanks to the botnets, this will be blocked as well.

I want my 1996 internet back.

Slow Reuters.

Geeze, Reuters seems to be a bit slow on this news. The law got approved months ago.

It is also retarded; the second-hand phone business is larger than the "new phone" one; common users can't be arsed with registering their cellphones, let alone fingerprinting them!

This will lead to either a gigantic DB that will be out of date pretty fast, or mobile users simply giving up on their cellphones. This will only increase mugging for mobiles, as robbed cellphones are rarely reported.

"Comedy" programs

Given the quality of TV programs of late, I think the mere act of watching TV will depress me anyway, HD or not. TV is the opiate for the masses, and this "study" just shows that off. HD doesn't add anything.

If anything, buying an HD TV right now will only *increase* my depression when my next credit card statement comes. Really, there are more important things to spend on than HDTV.

Missing the point

Most commenters are missing the point: it isn't that IE is included with Windows. It is the fact that ever since IE4.0, it is *impossible* to remove IE, and that some critical systems actually depend on a fricking browser! (Windows Update)

And because MS has a guaranteed install base of "everyone who has Windows" for IE, they can shamelessly lock down their Web Application solutions to Windows by making them IE-only (*cough*Silverlight*cough*) when there is no credible reason to do this; websites are multiplatform by mere definition.

Re: I'd be happy...

If you think Spanish is the "role model" of languages, you haven't used it much, especially outside Spain. It isn't even standardized, it thinks "ch" is still a letter, and some countries still use the dog-ugly "vos" or "vosotros" person that makes me think of 17th-century Spanish. Thank God we got rid of that annoyance! Also, its got the silent H, the multiphonetic X (also a reason why Spaniards insist on misspelling "Mexico" as "MeJico") and the overcomplicated grammar we have.

Spanish is even more "unstandardized" than English; at least the English-speaking world only has to cope with US English and UK English. Spanish has different grammar/spelling rules by region! Not to mention that even simple words like "coger" (to grab/to catch) have other meanings (to fuck) in certain countries. So much for sensible languages...

@What I object to... - NUCULAR is exclusively from the Bushtards and/or US Southerners. "Yanks", that is, Northern US people do pronounce "Nuclear" correctly. ;)

Hm....

"Steve Wozniak, minor computer designer and coder"

MINOR??? Jobs would be nothing without him. Oh wait, I think that was the whole article's point ;)

Anyway ... it is sad to see that Wozniak doesn't get enough credit, while the egomaniac jerk that is Steve Jobs gets all the credit.

Re: Hmmm

I think you might add "rape" to his felony rap. I doubt those kids actually wanted to engage on sex.

This is interesting, as it seems that this "kid" was able to use both the threat of making their pics public (embarrassment) and the "child porn" nonsense laws against them.

Also, it serves as a warning to those who send nekkid pics to a "girl".

Re: Yeah right

Man, I wholeheartedly agree with this. In fact, we are also victims of the Chinese offshoring! Mexico was *supposed* to benefit from NAFTA, only to find that most "maquila" stuff suddenly moved to China, leaving a bunch of Mexicans out of a job (and swelling the lines of border jumpers!) just because of greedy corporations who couldn't even keep the NAFTA deals.

The other side-effect of the "maquila" economy has also hit recently, as most of the "maquila" industry is geared towards the automotive industry. Oops! Basically, tying our industry to depend on the US market means that when the US goes down, it takes us down as well.

Anyway, the "Buy American" clause goes for infrastructure projects. It is only fair for US projects to benefit US taxpayers!

Dodgy battery?

Hm.... China ... "new" battery ... why does this sound like this guy bought one of the "local" cheapo batteries? If this is the case, well... this guy found out exactly why you should not buy batteries of dubious quality, and it's really sad that he didn't survive to learn this lesson.

Also, it looks like putting your cellphone on your chest is as dangerous as carrying a grenade! Maybe I should stop carrying my cellphone on my belt-clip...

@Darryl Parvin

"Sorry carrot-head; PC's DON'T HAVE public IP's, you can't scan for them."

Can you attest to that? I distinctly remember my college having public IPs for every single PC, workstation and whatnot on campus up until 2003. "Private" IPs found increasing use only because most orgs couldn't keep up with the expense of maintaining large blocks of IP addys which basically served only one useless PC; couple that with the IPv4 shortages and you can see why most orgs have switched to private IPs.

However, I do think the US military might have public IPs on their systems; however, the most you *might* get into would be NIPRNet boxen, which won't contain "sooper seekrit" stuff like McKinnon claims to have found. And if he did find it, well, some heads would roll, as it would be a violation of security protocols.

I'd be more concerned about McKinnon being able to get there without a firewall blocking him out. Meh.

Re: Hate to disillusion you folks

You just reminded me of that Spanish song called "Mi Aguita Amarilla" (My Yellow Water)... which describes precisely how the guy takes the piss, and his "yellow water" makes its way to the sea, passing through the water YOU drink, drunk by the cows YOU eat, and eventually the fish you also eat.

Even here in good ole Earth we have to filter our water before drinking, otherwise we would still get cholera from drinking tap water. (Ok, in some countries you still have to filter tap water as well, but that's another story.)

Kill the XBox instead.

I'd rather have MS kill the XBox, its reputation is bad and the only reason they're still selling is because they've slashed the prices... which also means they're *losing* money on the turd. I'd rather have SEGA or even Atari reviving consoles than MS bringing out another console.

However, the Zune... well... meh. My old SE W300 was enough for me, as well as my current Blackberry 8300. I don't need a shiny mp3 player so I can get mugged. But still, I do like the idea of MS *attempting* to beat Apple on the mp3 player biz.

Mine's the one with the DualShock 3...

Re: Lame answer from Pony boy

Hm... that kind of mentality is why we're stuck using sucky x86 processors when we should all be on 64-bit PPC's.

- HP killed its PA-RISC arch, and switched over to Intel trash. Farewell to the HP9000's, the only good thing they had left. HP-UX on Intel isn't just as good anymore.

- IBM's basically juicing up its Power chips, they're actually doing improvements on their chips. Oh, and their Cell BE chip is also an innovation with its SPE cores.

- Mac... doesn't even sell servers (?) and also went to the Intel arch. Losers.

Sun is actually innovating, and making a bold commitment with its Rock chip, which deserves a lot of respect in my eyes. Their current SPARC servers are also in high regards, as I've seen a lot of x86 chicken-boxes fall down under high loads, but the almighty E25K still stood rock solid under similar loads.

I really, really hope Sun succeeds with this project; its about time we had something really new and not yet-another-rehashed x86 arch.

Oh, and Sun... bring us back the SparcStations!!!

Remakes aren't always that bad.

The most ironic thing on this article is that it is slamming the mere idea of a remake/reimagining, while at the same time admitting that the 1982 remake is a classic. Of course, remakes have earned a bad reputation, but it has to do more with idiots leading the remake efforts. Even good directors screw up every now and then, see Tin Burton's "Planet of the Apes".

I find it funny that the War of the Worlds remake was bashed everywhere, mostly because of Tom Cruise... while my real annoyance at that remake would be the idiot kids (especially the Dakota Fanning character!) turning the "lone character" into a fleeing family. Other than that, at least this one tried to be truer to the book. Maybe if Spielberg hadn't rammed in "teh family" it might've fared better...

Re: Safety

I thought the same thing as well. Airbus planes float!

I had a Mac Plus

... but I strayed away from the Mac around the Performa days. That said, the original, pre-iMac era was pretty good. I never used the PowerBook 170, but did have a PowerBook 180 and can attest to it being a damn good machine! In fact, it was originally my dad's laptop (circa 1992-93) and passed to my hands around 1996. It remained as my main portable up to 1998, when I switched to the Windows world. I'd still have it, had my dad not given it away sometime around 1999 :(

Our last Mac, however, is still chugging away at my mom's house; one of those Performa thingies (I really forget the series number, but something tells me it's one of the ones mentioned here as "worst"). Yet, it still works, and I still can run my 15+ year old HyperCard apps in there! :)

Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Tech

I remember my dad pondering on buying the EB waaaay back in 1995.

We had just recently bought both an external CD-ROM drive for our Macs, and an internal IDE one for the lone 486 PC we had. We had finally given in to the CD-ROM because these didn't require the ugly caddy anymore. Of course, with CD-ROM came the promise of a "rich multimedia experience", and of course, the possibility of having an Encyclopedia on CD-ROM. We got it, in the form of "The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia 1995".

However, my dad pondered on the idea of having a real, big name Encyclopedia on both the book and electronic forms. So when we went to one of those "book fairs", we checked out EB's stand, where they showed us the EB in all it's ... paper book glory.

When my dad asked for a CD-ROM version, he was shown the smaller Compton's Encyclopedia ... and told that the Encyclopedia Britannica will *never* be available in electronic media. Cue my dad sodding off the EB purchase. We stuck to the Grolier, and then switched to Encarta.

Fast forward some years ... and the EB is finally released ... on ONE CD. Because they had to cram all the EB into one single CD, the thing had a dog-ugly text-only interface; Grolier and Encarta still had the upper hand. I think that by the time the EB finally released a decent digital version, the market had already been won by Encarta, at least up until Wikipedia 0wned the common people's reference list.

Basically, Britannica got left behind because it feared for its printed editions... and those are declining in sales anyway.

Younger Readers?

Should I feel old because I've actually watched Blue Thunder??? That one was kind of like K.I.T.T.'s whirlybird cousin. Looks like someone's aiming to merge both concepts here...

Meh.

So political sabre-rattling is going to stop NASA's space projects? It looks more to me that the big aerospace corps are crying 'coz they didn't get the juicy project. Come on!

I wonder if Boeing would also break a tantrum if the next Air Force One is decided to be an Airbus. Given last week's A320 water-landing, it seems to be safer for emergencies than the Boeing craft.

Bad career mistake - Remember NTP?

These guys added RIM to the basket, who already have legal precedent for something like this; NTP tried to get the Blackberry banned and switched off in the US... only to find that Congress asked for them *not* to be shut down, and the USPTO to strike down some of the patents.

RIM's got a pretty strong standing on this, so Saxon is risking a USPTO patent revision with this. Good!

Flown in an A320 before

... and now I am grateful for that. Especially since two of those flights involved flying over water.

Hats off to the A320 designers, and to the superb pilot who managed to water land the bird!

Doom 3 actually had a story.

Those of us who played the first Dooms knew there was a story ... vague, but it had one. In fact, someone made a four-part book series based on the story; granted, they explained the Hell demons as "genetic creations" from some aliens to give it credibility, but the series was good anyway.

Doom3 doesn't even need that. It has a well thought storyline, and the game plays more or less like Half-Life. The only thing I miss is that the original games were set on Mars' moons, Phobos and Deimos, while Doom3 is set on Mars itself. Then again, a Mars Base does seem more viable...

Mine's the one with the blue UAC logo.

Khaaaaaaaan!

One of the most memorable villians in Star Trek history.

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!

One by one, the original ST crew has gone away; this time it is one of the best villians on the ST franchise.

Mine's the one with the NCC-1701 keyring in the pockets...

Jobs is Apple, kind of

Some argue that Jobs isn't Apple, and that Apple will go on without him. Others say that Apple is Jobs, and Apple will die if he dies.

I think that Jobs is Apple *in its current incarnation*. That is, the Apple that goes on the "I do things my way! If you don't like it, f**k off!!" policy, the one that says "We are always right. The customer doesn't know what he wants, we know!". I much prefer the pre-second Jobs coming Apple as it had been more open back then. Innovation would've come into Apple anyway, with or without Jobs, as some have mentioned. Look at Microsoft, it still goes on even without Gates at the helm.

That said, if Jobs does have a second cancer reappearance, it is not going to be easy on him. I personally have seen the effects of a *third* cancer reactivation with metastasized tumors; if this is Jobs' case, he will reach a point in which he won't have strength to do even basic stuff, let alone run a company. And this will happen regardless of him surviving this or not. I really hope he doesn't suffer.

Geeze...

I think these guys are talking about Norton Ghost. Or Powerquest PartitionMagic. Both of which have been out far longer than 2002.

Isn't this an x86 limitation?

I'm under the idea that all these studies seem to be on the stupid x86 arch we've been stuck with these days. Cell seems to cope well with its 8 SPE's, and RISC processors in general seemed to be doing well on the multiprocessing area. Not to mention those other chips mentioned here (the 40-core one, for example.)

The real problem is that we're still using 80's tech (x86) with the equivalent of "patchwork" all over it, when we should've moved on to better technologies. Instead of improving the arch, x86 is getting more and more cores without any real improvement. Cray had it right: better to have 2 oxen than 1024 chickens.

It's about time we switched over to a better arch.

Re: Linux = fail

Hm... may I introduce you to my good ole HP Pavilion Laptop. Windows has some weird driver error with my Intel M830 graphics card, which causes the damn thing to have a 10% probability of rebooting whenever I try to watch a video. No such problem on Linux.

And for clueless women ... I had one use my PC, who insisted on me to turn off ZoneAlarm as she couldn't use IE. I went to the PC ... and found one of those "Security Alert" popups saying that IEXPLORE.exe was trying to access the internet. Click "Allow" ... and it works.

Some people can't be arsed to learn simple stuff. Be it Linux or Windows.

Re: Rats to humans?

One of the reasons I can easily navigate in the central Mexico City area is because there are a bunch of arterial roads called "ejes viales" which cross the inner city like a cartesian map. Kind of. And most streets are laid on a grid, so I don't end up running in circles.

Some areas, however, are a total NIGHTMARE as the streets run in weird circles and you end up in the same place, even if you didn't take any turns. Eeeek!

Mine's the one with the "You are Lost" City Map.

Smash the windshield

The idiot should've actually smashed the windshield if he wanted to give some credibility to his claim. Even better: just crash the plane in some mountain without warning everyone ... then it might be possible to make everyone believe he's dead.

Oh, and don't use your dead man's ID as well. Idiot.

Yeah, right.

With the credit crunch, the smartphone market will certainly shift back to the big corporations ... who buy Blackberries.

The common people will either buy cheap mobiles, or some of the "nice features!" handsets like those from Sony Ericcson. Those who were impressed with the iPhone ... might end up buying the LG lookalike.

The iPhone's boom has ended, and I've only seen 3 of those. The masses aren't impressed.

Huge-ass phone?

Really ... if you're trying to go for the "iPhone killer", size doesn't matter. The iPhone *itself* is a huge-ass phone! I mean, the damn thing is larger than my Blackberry 8300, and I still think my Curve is big!

If anything, I prefer clamshell phones. However, now that I've been sold on the Blackberries, I think I'll have to wait until a QWERTY clamshell model comes out...

@Robert E A Harvey

I think the feature you're asking for is called "Do Not Disturb" in some handsets. I know my Blackberry has that setting; only email / texts will go through, any incoming calls go directly to voicemail. I usually set the thing on "vibrating mode" instead, with a special profile for really really important calls (say, my boss is calling) but the rest will only be answered if I'm not driving. And no calls are answered if I'm not using the hands-free device!

The spazed-out effect during a phone call is real. I usually slow down when I actually answer a call, and even then I once almost slammed against another vehicle while driving 80 km/h on a highway a year ago; fortunately my earlier decision to "go slow" made me prevent this crash, as I was still far enough to avoid the collision.

I wouldn't enforce a hands-free ban, but the risks of DWC (driving while calling) should be included in driving courses.

Retarded

This is stupid. Online services shouldn't have the power to delete local info when you cancel them ... and in fact, you should be unable to log in after cancelling.

In fact, I think affected users *might* sue Apple for that; any TOS protection Apple might have is void as the service has already been cancelled. The subsequent data deletion could be classified as "unauthorized".