* Posts by wim

202 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Apr 2007

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Tickle my balls, stroke my button and blow the fluff from my crack

wim

Engelbart's name

I think a better / other explanation of his name would be

"bard of angels" as in an singer / teller of tales, who traveled around. They were highly respected in their time.

Mint 15 freshens Ubuntu's bad bits

wim

mint support

I use windows xp. I was given that PC as it is. I mainly use it for skype and steam (both should work under linux)

My main system uses an out of date ubuntu and then I have a small laptop that runs mint.

Ubuntu has become too bloated in my opinion and hiding all the options in the recent releases is just annoying. For some reason even a network restart using the command line does nothing. So I am left with the windows trick of 'have you tried turning it on and off' to get a network connection. Upgrading did not work and that is why I am stuck with this unsupported release.

Mint is nice but has some annoyances and the forum has not even bothered to reply to any of my requests for help so I don't know about that. One problem I have is that the webcam works under the admin account but not under a normal user account another problem is the Japanese language support. On my Ubuntu system the switch between languages just works. On my mint system I have to go mess around in the settings panel every time I power down / boot up the laptop. Libre office on Mint crashes on an hourly basis. I never lost data, everything gets recovered but it is not something I can accept to sell to friends / customers.

On the Ubuntu forum I always had (even sometimes good) help.

I am more and more drawn back to Debian because things just work on there and that is for me the most important thing. I use my system for work so I want things to run stable.

Is there a commercially supported stable linux that does not charge an arm and a leg for private use ? The coorporate red hat prices are a bit steep I think.

Meet your new martyr: Edward Snowden

wim

some as celbrities

For me I regard Snowden the same as celbrity actors.

I really don't care about their personal lives. I just care that they are good actors.

I really don't care about the smear campaign that will try to paint Snowden as a traitor/enemy/whatever.

I only care that he had the courage to do what he did and that is enough for me.

James Bond inspires US bill to require smart guns for all

wim

facial recognition

Here is how to make sure it passes.

require a facial recognition of the target and make sure if the target is a politician the gun will not fire.

All politicians will vote for this.

And then see how long it takes to hack it.

Review: HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook

wim
Joke

Re: "virtually every laptop running Windows "just works"" as a

paperweight, frustration management training device, doorstop, health and safety approved training weight in the office.

See there is a lot of things you can do with a windows laptop.

BlackBerry's Q5 QWERTY gets flirty with buy-curious teens

wim

Re: Still waiting for a torch replacement

have an upvote for mentioning a sliding keyboard.

Thongs of praise: Slip on Japan's skimpy mobe knickers

wim

Re: Uh ... didn't ElReg report on this a few weeks ago?

they where another set of pants. larger if I recollect, mainly to cover up the button on the Iphone.

App gap flap: New York's e-cabbies FOILED AGAIN

wim

share a drive app ?

I have this idea for a long time where private people would share their cars. Couch surfing for cars basically.

The driver uses his navigation on his smartphone to calculate the route. Then publishes this route and gives a parameter of detour willing to take (say 500 meters).

If you need a ride you enter your destination and send this with your current coordinates and how far you are willing to walk/travel on your own (say 300 m) to the server where all the routes are published. The app checks if there is someone driving close to your position and matches you up.

The passenger pays a fee for every ride (distance based) and the driver gets 50% or another percentage.

Of course if something like this would happen I guess all taxi companies would be howling.

You will need good authentication and I don't think a lot of people would be comfortable letting strangers into their car. Some good security would be needed.

10-day stubble: Men's 'socio-sexual attributes' at their best

wim

Maybe if the beer belly has a 10 days worth stubble it is acceptable ?

One of the world's oldest experiments crawls towards a fall

wim

quotations

you know this thing called 'search engines' ?

I think there is this small company froogle or something similar who has one lazing around.

http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C01/C01Links/www.ualberta.ca/~bderksen/florin.html

What work? Tablet owners prefer to slack off with their slabs

wim

sharp is14sh aquos

This is why I have this sharp phone.

Everything is bad about this phone but it has a slide out keyboard.

Basically the only smartphone that I found with a keyboard. The keyboard itself is also crap (buttons too small).

touch screens are OK (not great) at navigating sites / menu's but for input you really need a keyboard.

I win against all my friends in speed of inputting a mail message / text message with my feature phone against their touch screen phones.

Ready for the car 2.0? Nvidia preps UPGRADABLE car system

wim

insurance app

run our insurance app.

(that logs everything) and get 30 % discount. If after an accident we can prove with the data that you were in violation of any rule you are not insured.

alcohol checks that refuse to start your car if you fail the test.

a national database that knows where your car is every second of the day (of course to build better road solutions / send you speeding tickets / fight terrorism)

a rentable car app: you login with your credentials and the database of the lease/rental company knows it is you and will bill you accordingly or install a credit card reader in the car itself.

The possibilities are limitless and scary at the same time. I hope the positive wins out and I really hope that they make it impossible to watch a movie / TV while driving (like they do in Japan)

Amazon: We cut prices to scare ourselves into innovation

wim

If only a few more politicians / governments / countries had the balls to do this.

Netbooks projected to become EXTINCT by 2015

wim

I would love to get my hands on a decent laptop with some normal specs

play hdmi content on a television

have a screen with minimum 800 pixels height

around 11 inch

preferably mat display

works with linux

I have now a vaio vpcx11alj on loan from a friend and it would be perfect except that the screen backlight flickers under linux. Running the thing under the installed windows is perfect if you want to do some meditation while you wait for your webpage / program to open.

Oh S**T, here comes a robot to take my job

wim

Re: made themselves unemployable, made poor decisions

"No doubt some people really are nearly hopeless and actively make them unemployable, and deliberately make poor decisions. However, I suspect that such people are vanishingly few; and that really the so-called "unemployable", and those who made what seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision which turned out wrong, were actually just doing the best they could."

don't you call those people politicians ?

Congress plans to make computer crime law much, much worse

wim
FAIL

Re: There is a very rational solution

funny you post this on a forum anonymously, a crime in the newly proposed law if I am not mistaken.

NASA chief: Earth is DOOMED if we spot a big asteroid at short notice

wim
Joke

you got your facts backwards

it only took 2 hours and a small space rock to destroy a Bruce Willis

Brit web biz waves white flag in Python trademark bout

wim
Joke

stress test

it was just a good marketing ploy and a cheap way to stress test their servers.

Bottomless, unsatisfied Xbox widow cuffed after boyf flees nookie

wim

women

seem to have a problem with accepting refusal.

On Amazon, cloud service companies put themselves at risk

wim

Re: Limited time offer perhaps?

I thought the whole cloud business goal was so that companies do not have to manage their own hardware.

Truck-maker CAT flogs smartphone spawn to butter-fingered fondlers

wim

Re: Meanwhile...

Maybe they should expand as their core business is obviously not being able to stay at the same level ?

Or maybe, just maybe the Belgian taxes on labour are a bit on the high side.

CloudFlare's Railgun protocol gets buy-in from web giants

wim

ironic

that the link provided to the reg page gives me a 404 error

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/22/azure_problem_that_should_never_happen_ever/%22

Apple, Samsung patent judge: 'I feel like I'm in Groundhog Day here'

wim
Joke

trial by tech

let both companies build a robot.

both robots enter ring.

one robot leaves. The most innovative leaves and thus the case is settled.

Samsung may have an edge since they are more involved in death tech.

Annual reviews: It's high time we rid the world of this insanity

wim

non smoker

I gave myself a 10 for following the smoking guidelines as I was a non smoker and was told that 10's are not to be used. Why are they even in the process then ?

this was working as a grunt hauling luggage on the airport. Utter waste of time.

BOFH: Hasta la Vista... luser

wim

Re: Browser bars and Antiviruses

"Even the former 2 you get "You still working in IT? My laptops running a bit slow....", so after the wake / reception (delete as appropriate...) you take a look."

I counter that with.

I am sorry I do everything with linux now. The latest windows I used is windows 2000. But if you have a linux system I ll be happy to help you out.

No takers after that.

Global notebook sales tank in recent months

wim

Linux laptops

When linux laptops will be easily available they may impact the numbers.

I am looking to buy a new laptop but been postponing it for about 2 years now because I would like to buy a linux laptop without having to pay for the MS software. Preferable a netbook to carry with me and if possible at about the same price (or cheaper) than a MS laptop. Asus have (had ?) one model of the eee pc that was certified for Ubuntu so my guess was that it would also work with debian since I am not liking the Ubuntu upgrade system (current laptop was found unable to upgrade maybe because of some symbolic links or whatever)

My problem is that I left the "I have too much time on my hands so I ll research for a few days to find what I really want" state and that I am now am looking for something that will work. I don't think I have excessive demands.

light enough to carry around, if possible HDMI output, linux, LAMP and that is about it. I live in Japan and buying from system76 will almost double the price in shipping so that is not really an alternative.

Take away bad drivers' mobile phones, they still crash their cars

wim

Re: Elmer Phud

don't you mean the cone of silence ?

Navy devs cook up Android spyware to map your location - in 3D

wim

aural ?

how long before they can map your surrounding with sound?

the popcorn shooter mentioned in another reg article can pinpoint where your mouth is with the use of one word.

I am sure that some one could develop software that maps your surrounding by listening to the echo of your own voice if they can make the microphone sensitive enough. Hello batman mobile phone application.

'Google strangled Acer phone using Alibaba Android rival at birth'

wim

ubuntu

Is there someone else waiting for Ubuntu (debian would be even better) or some other big shop to release a truly open source phone OS ?

I dream of a day that I could have one source for laptop / tablet / phone and hopefully that those three devices (and maybe a smart tv thrown in the mix too) could be synchronized.

Patent flame storm: Reg hack biteback in reader-pack sack attack

wim

patent office

Maybe the patent office should be made (partially) liable to the quality of patents they award ?

If an awarded patent turns out to be without merit through prior art the patent office will have to pay a certain amount of money to the applicant. But if the patent office finds prior art for something that the applicant tries to patent, the applicant has to pay a fine.

Just a thought

The dead reanimates as HP ships Open webOS beta

wim

Re: Not tablets?

Can't agree more.

I would love to have a linux tablet so that I can have the same OS on my laptop / tablet. If both could sync/cloud-backup without handing all your data to some want-to-know-everything company that would be even better.

Google loads Moto Mobility cannon, fires patent shells at Apple

wim
Joke

Re: A fair price?

and everybody knows the answer is 42

Disney sitcom says open source is insecure

wim

Re: Well

You forgot Marie Antoinette. You know that benign, tender, caring person.

New MPEG format paves the way for UHDTV

wim

3D

did that last part of the 3D explanation read a bit like holograms ? creating the 3D image by moving your head around .

RIM: We can't flog phones, would you like our nuke plant OS instead?

wim

Re: Good stuff

I don't know anything about QNX but I wonder if most of the people care.

We (the IT industry) have grown a generation of "switch it off and on again if it stops working".

Even my ubunty install sometimes freezes. To convince people to buy your phone you have to have or a much easier to use OS or something "cool". Don't know how QNX fits in there.

Neal Stephenson on swordplay, space and depressing SF

wim

Re: Age?

Maybe 3 MB of hot RAM is enough if you system is well coded with a future hyper efficient coding language or quantum computing of whatever. See you can upgrade the surrounding in your imagination.

Heard that kids ? Imagination, it's the thing you use when you are not watching TV.

iPhone 5 poised to trounce Android, devastate BlackBerry?

wim
Linux

no love for apple but considering an Iphone

after the disaster that is my current android phone.

every problem and question I have about this phone is countered with "there is an app for that".

yes probably there is but wading through a dozen of applications to finally find a decent calender has left me with a sour taste of android. I use my legacy phone's calender instead. Having google access all my data is also something I do not desire.

Also every app seems to want to access everything. Why does my Japanese keyboard app need to be able to read/write all data and also be able to send everything I enter with that keyboard app to its developer ?

android no thank you very much

I really dislike apple's i phone but I guess I don't have a choice unless some linux wonder phone pops up. But fat chance of that happening.

Foxconn daddy: 'Don't buy Galaxy S III, wait for iPhone 5'

wim
WTF?

hahahaha

Japanese direct style of communication. Where has he been living ?

Japan where yes means yes but can also mean no.

EU gives Google till July to offer fix for search dominance

wim

Re: Really couldn't care less

Here in Japan google launched a big media offense with TV adverts.

I don't watch a lot of TV so I can not say how many times a day the adverts are shown but I have seen it a few times at friends places. They could not really figure out what the meaning of the adverts was (they are Japanese so they would not have a problem understanding the language). I just noticed that they showed google being used for searching stuff on the net.

Pint-size gizmo shoots X-RAY LASER for first time

wim
Joke

Re: New math fail

well no this is New math, just like New Labour. It does not have to be true as long as it sounds nice / spectacular.

'Biocoal' fuels steam train comeback

wim

processing process

cellular material processed into a solid fuel

did they say how much energy is needed to process the cellular material into a solid fuel ?

I love all the green talk about how alternative fuels seem to magically appear without any energy cost.

VW STUNS WORLD+DOG WITH REAL HOVER-CAR!

wim
FAIL

design fail

who would put the controls in the middle so that the passenger can correct the driver as seen in the video ?

US trade commission: Xbox 360 violates Motorola patents

wim

irony ?

"until the court has decided whether or not Motorola made its intellectual property accessible and available on reasonable terms, which Microsoft maintains it has not."

I wonder if the same could be said about the standards Microsoft puts into their software and the documentation it makes available to make sure that other programs can work with their software.

'I'm no visionary': Torvalds up for $1.3m life-changing gong

wim

Re: So ripping off MINIX and giving it away for free counts as "innovation" now?

I thought originally linux did not use file extensions

Elsevier's backpedalling not stopping scientist strike

wim

online

Why do scientist not publish/peer review their papers online like suggested by Bob 18 ?

Laser boffins blast bits onto hard drive at 200Gb/sec

wim

density

any news about how much information they could write per square cm ? (or whatever el reg measurement is in use now)

Phobos-Grunt 'crippled by US aurora station', 'is a bio-weapon'

wim
Joke

batteries

well who's job was it to replace the batteries in the cattle prods ?

Let's question that person with the aid of cattle prods

Repeat until you have attained the efficiency of any large governmental organization.

Star Wars 3D holo displays becomes a reality

wim

concert lasers ?

Are you referring to lasers used in clubs and on concerts ?

They generally rely on a smoke component (smoke machine or cigarette wielding customers) to display their images. Also I doubt that the lasers can project complicated object as shown in the video here. I also think that most of the lasers shows are simple shapes and not 3D (circles, squares, triangles and so on)

Eleven - if you will - rocktastic music movies

wim

shounen merikensak / brass knickle boys

Japanese movie about a punk band.

It is one of the funniest movies I have seen this year.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1313146/

Russian probe engines crap out on way to Mars

wim

re entry ?

would the fuel tanks survive re entry in the atmosphere ?

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