Re: Balmer is safe because...

"Much as I dislike Ballmer and all the cock-ups he has presided over, simple fact is that MS revenues and share price are on the up."

As noted in the article, it's Microsoft's channel partners that are feeling the pain at the moment. Those box shifters will only take so much, no sane company would willingly allow itself to be frogmarched towards oblivion. Eventually they're going to have to experiment with shipping different software in order to flog some of that hardware mountain that is depreciating in value by the day. There will be a lot of dead ends in such an experiment but eventually somebody is going to find a winner, something the public will buy en masse.

When Microsoft eventually notices a dip in its profits it'll already be too late.

Re: Got off lightly

[Citation Needed]

If that were true though I'd hazard a guess and say they'd get a longer sentence because of their disregard for other peoples' safety. Judges tend to frown upon the endangerment of life, even if it wasn't intentional.

Re: 10.04->12.04 heads up

"I had a machine on 10.04 ... ran nicely although I had to do a *lot* of research and trial-and-error stuff to fiddle with the Polkit stuff so you could actuall administer it remotely (I don't like VNC - prefer to use NX but that comes with a whole hatful of sorrow).

Finally pushed to upgrade as I wanted a couple of new features in some apps that wouldn't install because the kernel was too old. Never again. Everything broke (machine failed to reboot !) and even trying to run the retrofit GNOME package wasn't stable - loads of apps crashing every few minutes."

Ubuntu Desktop Edition isn't configured for remote access by default. It's aimed at mainstream consumers, the vast majority of whom will never use SSH or any other form of remote management. Is it really so hard to walk over to the computer, delete / and do a fresh install (presumably you have /home on a separate partition)? If you're running it on a file-server or something similar which has no monitor or keyboard then you're really just using the wrong distro for the job, that's hardly Ubuntu's fault.

Re: All very true, but..

"That is true but that pretty much removes the panty twisting aspect of 'OMG, it's undetectable by HomeBoy Security! Oh the huge manatee!'; doesn't it?"

I have to admit being confused by the hysteria of people making such comments. If we assumed for a moment that the Liberator was actually a well functioning plastic gun and could be brought onto an aeroplane without detection, what use would it be without ammunition? I've yet to see reports of 3D printed bullets and casings.

For the last time Dougal, that money was just resting in my account!

Re: Four sprung duck technique

"...OK so it will be similar to DRM and single-player gaming then? What happens on a morning when the net connection is down, but an inescapable deadline is looming? If the suite is already running from yesterday, maybe there's no issue. But if you have to launch the suite anew or a reboot happened, what then?"

CC software will run normally for 30 days in between check-ins with Adobe's licensing server and will run for another 30 in 'Trial' mode after that.

Re: Photoshoppers....

"Not ALL the same results with the same level of efficiency of course"

This is key. Whilst GIMP can be used as a substitute for PS in some core areas, it will quite often involve a much greater number of steps to achieve the same result. The GIMP's UI has clearly not been designed by someone who works it in the industry. It might be acceptable for amateurs to be able to replicate PS's functionality in 10 steps rather than 3 but when you're using that function dozens (if not hundreds,) of times per day, then it slows your work-flow enormously. This just isn't acceptable for a commercial operation.

Re: It looks like an old school multimedia thingy

Just what we all need. Yet more shite clogging up our ISP's already creaking networks because a bunch of people on them thar interwebs have an inexplicable fear of dedicated music stores...

Re: Battlefield 3/4 - Star Wars ???

El Alamein with AT-ATs?

I'd buy that.

The only good news I can see is that Disney have retained the rights to the online games. The naive side of me hopes this means that EAs future Star Wars releases must be playable without an internet connection.

Re: two points i disagree on...

" I am, forever, an advocate of the principle that everything publicly accessible on the web should be free to be used ... except, of course, for commercial use."

Sometimes value is defined by exclusivity. Imagine a situation where I sell images for commercial use. In order to sell them in the first place I need a shop-front somewhere online that offers previews of these images. Now, why would any business want to licence the rights to the actual actual image if every Tom, Dick and Harry has used the preview image as a modern equivalent of clip-art?

Re: OOPS!

As part of my primary school physics lessons my teacher let all the kids in the class create their own rockets using a 2 litre coke bottle, a rubber bung, some water and a foot pump. I'll grant you that there's no chemical reaction involved but the results were probably very similar to what this girl achieved.

As for your ridiculous comment about 9/11, most people on these forums were likely conducting their childhood explosive experiments at the same time as the IRA was conducting their multi-decade campaign of lethal fuckwittery.

Re: Maybe

My knowledge of the history of the handshake is admittedly extremely limited but I had thought that (at least in it's modern incarnation,) the handshake was a Western greeting. It's a very peculiar situation we have here then, for a Westerner like Bill Gates to be lectured by the Korean press for incorrectly performing a greeting from his own culture.

As others have noted though, it's likely the only people kicking up a fuss are the Korean equivalent of the Daily Mail.

Re: And yet, and yet ...

""I've been doing so since 2008 or thereabouts. My business is photography with many associated design activities..."

No way you are running a photography/design business without Adobe products. Yeah, I know there is gimp, but it's not even close to being in the same league."

You have a point, there really isn't any OSS that matches Adobe's Creative Suite. The likes of GIMP and Inkscape are improving constantly but they're still a fair way from matching the amount of features in Adobe's software.

That's why I'm currently running my design business atop Xubuntu with Wine handling Adobe CS software. Installation wasn't as smooth as it could be (I actually had to copy some of the files from an installation on Windows,) but the software itself runs very smoothly. They only major niggle I had was that Wine for reasons known only to the developers does not currently support pressure sensitivity from any graphic tablet (even though Linux itself does). There is a patch some generous soul has made available that enables this feature but it meant I had to compile my own patched version of Wine.

I doubt we'll ever see a native version of Adobe CS on Linux but once the Wine team sorts out the installation problems I'll have no qualms about recommending it.

Where on earth did you get that market share percentage from? I realise measuring browser usage is an incredibly difficult task but most places put IE's (all versions combined) market share at below 30%. The only place I've seen different was a report by Net Applications that put IE market share above 50%. That's so wildly different to what everyone else is saying I have a hard time believing it.

Re: Kicks to the what now?

IE8 has dropped over a percentage point of market share in the last 3 months but it's still the most used version of IE. Sticking with it for another 6 months seems prudent. Being on the bleeding edge and encouraging users to upgrade their browsers is a noble cause but clients don't often appreciate lower page views, regardless of the reason.

Re: Have we turned into El Graun?

It'd be nice to have an explanation for the removal though. Perhaps a sign that reads "The article has been amended. This comment is redundant."

Re: "may cost gigantic corporations a tiny fraction of their revenue."

"Artists only ever got a tiny cut on CD sales. They have always made their money mostly on tour (not sure about economics of boybands and Disney acts these days but you did say artists which they are not)."

Can you lot please stop reposting this bullshit? Tours are used to drive album sales, not the other way around. The cost of touring sucks up most of the ticket sales with the lion's share of the profits going to the venues.

Re: If TPB dies

I suspect there would be virtually no increase in sales if the Pirate Bay were closed. Despite protestations to the contrary, I very much doubt the majority of TPB users would ever pay for their content, regardless of what price it was offered for or what format it was in.

Re: "But an Art History graduate is ideally suited to burger flipping, ..."

"Or my nephews advanced degree in Irish History...in the US...for which he has absolutely no job prospects...but plans to go on for his PhD in the discipline anyway."

Heaven forfend that people should get degrees simply to expand their own knowledge. When did learning things simply for the sake of expanding one's own mind become such a terrible thing?

If all you want is a piece of paper that will help get you a better job, surely a vocational qualification is the better route?

Haters gonna hate...

Could you lot be a bigger bunch of grumpy old bastards? It's just a bit of fun.

Re: Fucking Disney

As much love as I have for Lucas Arts, their heyday was definitely the 90's. The SCUMM games and Grim Fandango were brilliant. The only decent Star Wars games produced in the last 10 or so years have all been licensed titles though. You're only kidding yourselves if you think the studio that brought us Force Unleashed II was ever going to stay afloat, Disney takeover or no. They weren't even that great as a publisher, Star Wars Kinnect makes the Ewoks look like fucking shaft.

Re: We need a relay

"and of high speed transfer preferably!"

<scotty>Ye cannae change the laws of physics!</scotty>

Speed of light in a vacuum and all that...

Re: The Web

I would never have guessed that Angelfire still kept websites that were so old. Thinking about it though, we are given several GBs of free storage simply for signing up for an email address. The cost of keeping ancient websites with a size of a few KBs online is probably so low it may as well be non-existent.

I'm tempted to go search for some of the hideous Angelfire and Geociies websites I created in my youth, if only I could remember their names...

"Thought there was a chance they could have played ball with this service since it does ensure the original item was deleted."

It's a fairly dubious defence though. It isn't very difficult to copy a duplicate of the mp3 to a usb stick, sell the original mp3 and then once it's been deleted by ReDigi's software, copy the duplicate from the usb stick back to your hard-drive.

I've been saying for years that if you don't like the license agreement attached to a film, song or piece of software that you should simply not buy it. When the entertainment cartels' income dries up they'll be forced to sell their wares under more favourable terms. Usually I get downvoted by people with the mentality of 14 year olds though, whilst they spout crap such as "lol I'll just download it for free, yarr!". They seem to be under the impression they're 'sticking it to the man' whereas what they're actually doing is screwing over the artists and providing 'the man' with a handy scapegoat.

Some of the probably do do, but those Americans that don't believe the propaganda aren't likely to be shot because of it...

Re: Are you sure it's Photoshop?

"10 quid says they just forked the gimp"

Yup, although now it stands for Glorious Image Manipulation Program. Say what you like about communist dictatorships but they do have a wonderful flare for the dramatic.

Re: The Difference Between Communism And Capitalism

Surely that should be Totalitarianism and "Democracy" rather than Communism and Capitalism?

Re: Am I missing something?

"Finally, it is arguable that the Manchester device was the worlds first programmable digital logical computer, rather than a calculating machine which is what all previous devices were (and mostly analogue)."

I thought the Germans had a computer that was Turing-complete at the start of the war? It may not have been digital though, my recollection is hazy.

Re: multimillionaire seeks funding?

"Are you sure about that? Did you even both looking at the site? Getting a free copy of the game/CD is pretty normal on KS assuming you pledge a non-trivial amount... in this case $25 gets you a copy of the game as well as access to the beta program."

Yes I'm sure about that. If you donate less than $25 you get nothing. If you donate $25 and you're one of the first 5000 to do so, you get a free copy of the game, otherwise you get nothing. Likewise, if you donate $30 and you're one of the first 5000 to do so, you get a free copy of the game, otherwise you get nothing. You can still donate all the way up to $5000 and get a free copy of the game but the rewards for paying over the retail price are spurious at best.

Re: multimillionaire seeks funding?

"I'm personally getting tired of this kickstarter shizzle.

Plenty of companies with existing wads of cash and publishing history and wealthy people are using it essentially as a way for getting up-front public funding for products that they could well-afford to finance themselves. It's rather destroying the original point of the idea."

I agree, but I have to wonder; do we blame businesses for seeking free cash when they're legally beholden to their shareholders to reduce costs and risk wherever possible, or do we blame the fools handing over their money with no strings attached to already rich companies/entrepreneurs?

Re: multimillionaire seeks funding?

"Well done for showing your utter ignorance of "the business world". A sizable business venture will typically require tens of millions, and no sensible businessman would put a large proportion of their money in one project."

The difference being that most business ventures seek investors who will expect a return on their loan. Lord British is seeking hand-outs from people who will still have to pay for his product once it's completed.

Re: let's be completely honest

Dove's campaign may be a bit of a stretch, but calling it "a crock of hypocritical bullshit" is just as big a stretch. These are "real" women. As someone else pointed out, they aren't necessarily "typical" women, but that's not what Dove is claiming now, is it?

Your point makes no sense. Supermodels are 'real' women, they just aren't 'typical' women.

"The women in the Dove adverts are wearing make-up." And your point is what, exactly? Women wear make-up. Many "real" women wear make-up. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that (at least in my experience) the overwhelming majority of "real, every day, meet 'em on the street or at the supermarket" women wear make-up. So how does that make Dove's models disingenuous?

I'm not suggesting the model's are disingenuous (after all they're only there to have their picture taken,) I'm saying that the advertising campaign is disingenuous. To answer your point though it is because there is a vast difference between make-up that women wear for work, or even a night out, and that used in a photoshoot. One is put on with a brush, the other may as well be put on with a trowel.

Their bit is entitled "the Campaign for Real Beauty." The inferred meaning is something akin to "realistic beauty achievable by regular folk, not some hyper-dolled-up professional stunner."

They probably shouldn't have used a professional make-up artist as well as a host of pro photographic tricks then.

My point is that the photographs in Dove's advertising campaign are no less an idealised representation of the human form than the photo of whatever twiglet is appearing on the front of the glossy mags this month. It may be a more politically correct representation but it is not real

Re: They will use any lie in the book to get you to buy.

Advertisers as a rule try not to lie. That sort of thing causes expensive lawsuits.

They will however tell you the version of the truth you want to hear. It's up to you to find out what they've omitted.

1) The camera always lies. There is no such thing a 'real' photograph.

2) The women in the Dove adverts are wearing make-up. They're clothed in white underwear to disguise their silhouette. They're lit up like a Christmas tree to make the models appear slimmer as well as to help mask things such as cellulite. They're usually contorted into odd positions to hide flawed areas and to make it harder for the viewer to compare their bodyshape to that of the 'ideal'.

Does that mean these women aren't beautiful? Of course not, but it does mean Dove's 'campaign for real beauty' is a crock of hypocritical bullshit.