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* Posts by asdf

6570 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Apr 2007

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BAN UK tax breaks on patented tech, fumes German finance minister

asdf
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Re: Germany musnt have many

According to the east germans I worked with Bavaria is not really Germany (main Catholic region). Sometimes they would have to put subtitles on the TV news whenever a Bavarian was speaking with their heavy accent. It was also amusing see how the east germans treated Merkel's party (Christian Democrats) whenever they would show their right wing (for Germans which means left of Democrats in US) faces in the area. But yes the Catholics in the Alps do tend to be much wealthier than any other Catholic region.

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asdf
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Re: Germany musnt have many

The southern mostly Catholic half of Europe made their own bed by using Germany's strength and name to allow them to borrow money they normally couldn't for their politicians to spend on patronage.

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asdf
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Re: @A Non e-mouse

>So nice of the gov to offer to take less from those who earn it, but it comes with conditions.

Also so nice of the companies to be able to take advantage of things the government offers like enforcement of the rule of law, protection from invasion by another country that believes in nationalization, police and fire protection, schools to educate their future work force, courts to handle business disputes, etc. Here's also a hint about all those "lazy" federal government employees you probably complain about. In the US and probably UK also the majority of them are soldiers.

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Android sig vuln exploit SEEN IN THE WILD

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Windows

Re: yep

>The best mobile security model at the moment is Windows Phone (completely uncracked)

Notice how the Windows folks brag about their security when their market share is tiny. Isn't that why they say things like OpenBSD have far less critical CVEs than the beloved Windows is because of tiny marketshare?

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asdf
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Trollface

yep

>The best mobile security model at the moment is Windows Phone (completely uncracked)

Yep even the blackhats have never seen a Windows Phone or know anybody with one. The only reason to crack a Windows Phone would be to punish Microsoft and Nokia employees which are the only ones with the devices.

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BlackBerry's Heins beams: We WILL make some cash, just you see

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yep

Nokia has shown clearly the hardware is more important than the OS. (some) People will put up with a somewhat dog shit OS if their phone looks slick.

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asdf

hmm

Long term for the company looks bleak but they were smart enough in good times to stash several billion in the bank which they still have so short term they look to be alright. BB also has more money shorted against it than any major firm I believe ever (over a third). Short sellers aren't usually patient over the long term so the stock may see a pretty big bump if it can do anything right.

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US public hate Snowden - but sexpot spy Anna Chapman LOVES him

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Re: of course

Yep because the boomers never said anything bad about their parents (Greatest generation) who saw what a train wreck their spoiled selfish kids were going to cause down the road.

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asdf

of course

>Older people are particularly angry at the former IT worker

I.E. Baby boomers desperate to keep the whole house of cards from falling before they can cash in all the entitlements they gave themselves at the expense of their grandkids.

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Intel rumored to plunk $10bn down for Israeli fab expansion

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really?

Wow Jewish bosses must really suck all around then. Least bad choice kind of thing. Intel's reputation stateside as an employer is crap.

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asdf
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Re: they deserve it

One caveat I forgot to add before edit period is Intel doesn't single out the Jews. They are kind of infamous for treating all their employees like crap especially the H1B visa holders here in the US.

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asdf

they deserve it

Many people don't realize it was the folks in Israel that saved Intel's bacon from the P4 Netburst fiasco. If the Israel folks hadn't decided to take the P3 design and optimize the crap out of it and thus turning into the core line (for laptops initially) this article might have been about AMD (buying ATI was real smart there guys) instead. The worst part is from what I heard not only was Intel upper mgmt not all that grateful but that they really take advantage of their Jewish work force and their work ethic (ie overwork, underpay, force holiday work, etc). Typical sociopathic upper management I guess. Every last penny for them no matter the cost.

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Decade to 2010 was hottest, wettest: WMO

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Re: sadly

Yeah China for instance uses much more than you would guess based on the income of their people but they are using a large portion of it to make stuff for the developed world.

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asdf
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Re: sadly

My mistake Spain had as much GDP as all Arab countries combined (stats before the recession) not all the middle east. Unlike many Americans I understand there is a big difference. Farsi for instance don't much like being called Arabs. Still most in the region still suffer from the disease that is Islam (which is a GDP killer) but off on a tangent now.

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Re: sadly

I think you will find if you look around the world energy use by a nation has a strong correlation to GDP. Its more if you don't produce much (and no commodities don't count for much GDP, they just look flashy in that part of the world because they go to handful of people) you can't afford the energy. This is true even though many in the region produce energy. They have had to cut back greatly on energy subsidies to the commoners as they want/need to sell it on to the rich countries for full price. That and of course Islam and nuclear energy go over about as well as a turd in a punch bowl.

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asdf
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Re: sadly

>nuclear reactors in say Africa

Or even worst the middle east. I guess its a good thing that they produce so little GDP (all of middle east minus Israel produce less GDP than Spain) so they don't really need that much energy.

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asdf

sadly

A sobering fact is that unless there is some miracle breakthrough with fusion or some other technology it will be virtually impossible to live anything like our current lifestyles nearly carbon emitting free without nuclear fission. The other even more sobering fact is right now its mostly the 3rd world doing most of the carbon polluting and I am not sure how I feel about more nuclear reactors in say Africa.

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Bolivian president's jet grounded so officials can look for Snowden

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Re: Spy on board

Sad but true regardless of party.

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Ubisoft admits major hacking breach, advises password change

asdf

>As Sony has shown, there's a lot of market share to be gained by not assuming your users are pirates

Wow they want you to believe that now but they are still the biggest DRM patron and peddler in the world. Microsoft was just even less subtle about it and got caught.

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HP confirms it's back in the smartphone business

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Re: Quite Clearly Android.

Yep when you go from 0 to even a small number your growth looks amazing. What few percent of market share WP has earned has mostly came from the brand of the phone (Nokia, HTC) or the hardware and not because its a windows phone.

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asdf
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Re: Quite Clearly Android.

Don't forget the other stillborn OS Ubuntu touch.

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asdf
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FAIL

Re: "better to use an OS people actually want to buy"

>"better to use an OS people actually want to buy"

Wait this is the company that sells HP-UX right? Hahaha fail.

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Something's going on with Google Reader but nobody knows what

asdf
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Re: my recommendation Pulse reader

Hey it looks like you can import all your google reader feeds into it as well. From what I understand though Pulse is not the best solution Web wise on the desktop I guess. Tend to consume most of my news through my phone.

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asdf
Trollface

my recommendation Pulse reader

Its technically not a simple lightweight text only RSS reader but my recommendation for a polished news scraper on your phone or tablet is the app Pulse reader. Of course its only available for Android and iOS but considering the rest of the mobile market is a rounding error that shouldn't matter.

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Oracle cranks up SuperCluster with Sparc T5 engines

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Re: Bussiness head

>But, it is probably better to use cheap Intel x86 servers in a large cluster

Or soon ARM but yeah the world has largely moved to commodity boxes where it can. Big iron UNIX is now a very niche market. IBM will probably continue to put out their own chips due to them also being used for the gaming consoles and just plain ego and tradition but one has to wonder how long Oracle will stay committed to SPARC.

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asdf
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Re: hear those crickets

People ported when they could off SPARC not just because they didn't trust Oracle's pricing going forward but because the platform is truly burning (how much are SPARC sales down even from its dying days at SUN?). Even now you will find the vast majority of SPARC boxes out in the wild haven't been refreshed in quite some time and are now slower than the commodity x86 box you have sitting under your desk.

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asdf
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Re: hear those crickets

>It is funny to see how IBMers try to tackle Oracles benchmark records.

Have nothing to do with IBM and in the one shop I had to use their stuff was impressed with the boxes but not the prices and definitely not the support. Then again the end customer was IBM themselves and there is nobody they support less than their internal departments.

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asdf
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Re: hear those crickets

>and threw a Solaris system administration manual in your face.

Solaris is not really the problem (although there is an argument to make for that as well) SPARC is. If Texas Instruments who are comfortable using a 1980's mainframe for control of their manufacturing systems are busy getting away from the bag of hurt that is SPARC you know not all is well in the kingdom.

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asdf
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Trollface

Re: hear those crickets

Oh look based on the 10 downvotes I guess the entire Oracle SPARC sales staff didn't like what I had to say either.

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Trollface

hear those crickets

I guess the 5 Oracle customers that still buy SPARC boxes will be rejoicing. The rest of the world ported everything off SPARC a few years back and is amused to see Oracle still trying to pretend to be a hardware company.

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Sony Xperia Tablet Z: Our new top Android ten-incher

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lol Sony Velveeta.

Hey look Sony has released the true Vita killer (did it really ever live?).

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PRISM leaks: WTF, you don't spy on your friends, splutters EU

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merkin bashing

Not even worth reading the comments on this one as the usual Merkin bashing will be in full force even if well deservedly earned by our government. Still remember their are merkins like this one that might not think Snowden is a hero but definitely are enjoying him making the badly bloated out of control post 9/11 Stasi agencies of the US government squirm.

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BlackBerry BB10 devices refuse to leap off shelves

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Headmaster

yeah

Saw after I posted they do have 3 billion in the bank with low debt so they will be around awhile (lol perhaps longer than Nokia). Its not Microsoft's money but its more than I expected. Still to be passed by Microsoft in market share has to sting.

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FAIL

>BlackBerry turnaround after the once-leading smartphone platform fell into fourth place behind Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android and even lowly Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500).

Wow and unlike Microsoft they don't have billions in the bank to play the long game. Stick a fork in em sadly.

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Windows 8.1: So it's, er, half-speed ahead for Microsoft's Plan A

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Re: I look forward enormously to the restrained, thoughtful and cerebral debate we can expect.....

The advantage to capitalism is you don't have to say a word nor does it matter really. The market has spoken and will speak going forward.

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Sean Parker: 'My fairy-tale wedding harmed no trees'

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Trollface

douche nozzle

>being hated on because he's rich

Getting rich stealing other people's ideas and intellectual property basically makes him no better than Kim Dotcom and if possible he is even more unlikable.

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Dancing Sepp Blatter on 'World Cup site' creates security flap

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Trollface

well

Not to defend the horrible organization that is Fifa and the in general lame sport of soccer but ole Sepp did have one valid point. The Brazilians weren't forced to host the world cup (unlike Greece and the Olympics, great move all around by Europe on that one) so in general should be mad at their own leaders more than Fifa.

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asdf
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Re: FIFA...

>The only sporting organisation where bribery to the top officials are considered gifts until the organisations paying for the 'gifts' gets caught out in a bribery scandal

Check out American college football and basketball for the only real competitor corruption wise. Granted they are not as flagrant about it and pretend to have rules but even Fifa can't get away with not paying the athletes.

Edit: Duh forgot about the other obvious competitor The Olympic Committee

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Mint 15 freshens Ubuntu's bad bits

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Megaphone

the rumble is on

Mint 15 is finally a competitor on my Mac Pro desktop to Mac OS X which are in a death struggle for which I will use as a daily driver (to steal term from Android world). Apple are actually doing everything they can to push me to Linux considering they are actively trying to obsolete my machine and require me to use hacks and 3rd party bootloaders in order to upgrade their yearly OS shake down (which usually aren't much more than service packs). It so sad that Linux will support my machine for a decade after Apple who made the damn thing.

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asdf
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Re: Alternative to Windows?

Not to defend some bugs being ignored for far too long in most operating systems and especially in Oracle's software but the ntfs bug if I remember right might have to do with problems reverse engineering NTFS as Microsoft doesn't believe in interoperability and wouldn't think of doing anything but making it harder for their stuff to be used outside their fiefdom.

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Report: Android malware up 614% as smartphone scams go industrial

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Re: oops

The Linux kernel itself has had a hell of lot less critical CVE lately for it than the POS Sunoracle joke JVM crap implementation. As for Dalvik I think its considerably less. Still I should have figured I was going to get down voted hard by all the butt hurt java developers who still think one of Java SE strengths is its security. Unbreakable my ass.

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Trollface

oops

Guess that choice of using java even with a different not quite as crappy virtual machine implementation in retrospect wasn't the way to go.

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Quantum transistors at room temp

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Re: Impressive, certainly

Today's breakthrough in fab techniques were often initially the past's lab breakthrough.

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Snowden dodges US agents in Moscow, skips out on flight

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Re: Just a supposition on my part

>is going to cause the NSA to implode

I wish but alas dream on. The name may someday change but short of a collapse of society this route is set.

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asdf
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Re: It's just a matter of time

Because he is just another Assange. Falcon and the snowman all over.

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asdf
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Trollface

Re: The Rule of Law

Yes yes everybody knows. We get two shitty choices come election time and even when we don't vote for the whiter than white corporate shill this all goes down. Perhaps we should be doing what the Brazilians are doing but for me with it 45 Celsius outside where I am right now the protests better be at night. Ok just kidding but Animal Farm did a good job of showing how most revolutions turn out.

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asdf
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FAIL

Re: It's just a matter of time

Might have happened already if the US government bureaucrats weren't incompetent and would have revoked his passport sooner or even more important put him on interpol lists. Not really taking a side in all this but the US government reaction to this has been very strange if this guy really was a big threat as they are making him out to be.

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Can Microsoft's U-turn stop the Xbox 360 becoming another XP?

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Re: EA threw Microsoft under the bus?

>Where does it say EA and Ubisoft were pushing Microsoft?

Those were the rumors going on behind the scenes. Microsoft looks even dumber if they were putting those restrictions in place without prompting from their 3rd party buddies.

>Why would EA and Ubisoft be pushing for this if they didn't have a post-poop plan?

Their post poop plan was to release a statement saying they didn't plan on restricting their games using Microsoft's DRM tools at this time (before U-turn) If Microsoft went ahead and took all the flack I am sure by release they would have been tightening the DRM on their titles as much as possible. They hate the resale market.

>What is your post-poop plan?

I am indifferent as hell to all the console makers. They are all going to be a big bag of hurt in their own ways.

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asdf
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Re: No.

The PS2 I believe is still the biggest selling console in history though I think the DS was very close.

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Michael Dell: 'Cash in your shares, we are in a mess'

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Re: Shakiness of Dell

>Just makes other vendors look better.

Not if their main business is selling x86 gear (Lenova aside for now). That market is cratering before everyone's eyes.

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