* Posts by Tom 13

7544 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

New Apple move against Galaxy Tab on Euro front

Tom 13

I'm surprised that got through.

I mean, even if Jobs wants to tell that to the court, most lawyers are smart enough not to say something that is likely to perturb the judge and make him more adversarial to their case. I've never met a judge who is unperturbed by being told how he has to handle something before he has heard the case.

Star Wars fans offered Blu-ray deals and previews

Tom 13

But will the original episodes be released as shown in theaters,

or will it only be the remastered crap where Han steps on the tail and shoots second?

Icebergs measured in Manhattans: Official

Tom 13
Coat

Manhattans and ice?

I suppose I should just be glad it wasn't Muppets.

Fort Knox military cops disgusted with solar patrol carts

Tom 13

Damn Pedants.

comment or post needed here.

Traumatic scenes for car geeks as forum falls over

Tom 13

I'd go with greyhat.

Blackhats would have just compromised the site to steal passwords and credit card numbers from an iframe exploit or some other such.

iPhone users richer, brainier, more tasteful than Android-ers

Tom 13

No following the crowd is by definition following the crowd.

If you've looked at the market, considered all the specs, and determined that a particular phone is the one that best serves your needs, you haven't followed the crowd even if you wind up buying a phone that is the most commonly bought.

You are only following the crowd if you bought a particular phone because Paris bought one too. Which seems to be more in the i[fill in the blank] crowd way of thinking.

Just 0.2% of Facebook flogged for $133m

Tom 13

It does not mean the value of Facebook is $66.5 Billion.

It means with shares being that limited, 0.2% of Facebook is worth $133 million. When more shares come on the market, the value per share will drop. That why they bring in special accountants to value tightly held companies - you can't do simple maths to find the value of the company. And yes, I don't really trust the special accountants, but they are the best we can do at the moment.

Facebook flashplodder to appeal against 4-yr cooler stint

Tom 13

People who kill someone as a result of reckless driving

are not engage in an attack on the fundamental foundations of society. Successfully incite to riot too often without appropriate counters, and soon we're all back in a true Hobbesian age.

Shuttered SETI reboots ET pursuit

Tom 13

Agreed.

It's a damn shame to have the facility mothballed, but I'd rather have them doing real astronomy than looking for ET.

Tom 13

I guess real facts never quite penetrate your tinfoil hat.

The Defense budget was already cut $350 billion as part of the debt ceiling bill and stands to have another $600 billion cut when the super committee can't agree on a plan to cut $1.2 trillion to meet the release numbers for the next round.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/08/debt-ceiling-deal-and-the-budget-cuts-in-defense-spending

People don't want tablets, they want iPads

Tom 13

It's simples: Nobody is offering what I'm looking for in a portable.

Something in the 12-14 inch range, with a decent display, a built-in cell connect, a real keyboard, Flash support, a decent processor/memory/drive combination, and a price in the $600-$800US range.

But then again I'm guessing that rather like the unicorn, they don't exist.

Kabam! Facebook gamers fume after script deletes fake stuff

Tom 13

I expect that wouldn't really work either, but at least it is getting closer

You need a hybrid - if before date xx, keep, else check purchase record. Keeping purchase records beyond a certain time frame is likely to entangle you in PII laws.

From the way the complaints are being voiced, not sure they even went with the before xx, parameter. Might have just nuke all the stuff that could be sent for free.

Probably plenty of posers posting about stolen stuff on the public forums too.

Full disclosure: I dabbled in Kingdoms a while back but gave it up. I'm not overly fond of MMOs in the first place, and there's just something WRONG about it in a social networking environment.

US Air Force in a seriously stealthless state

Tom 13

True, but 20 old jets

beats 0 new jets every time.

London rioters should 'loose all benefits'

Tom 13

Make it two 6 hour shifts separated by a 2 hour break,

and you've got yourself a deal.

David Cameron turns water cannons on social networks

Tom 13

Oh I expect it's possible for today's flatfoot to easily do that,

I just expect that he expects it will be tossed by the courts as an illegal search and seizure because so many pikers who post here on El Reg have posted that it is for other instances.

Tom 13

Not that I like the idea of shutting any of them down,

but the reality is, post to a web page and you notify dozens, hundreds, thousands, or millions. Make a phone call from a mobile and you communicate with one. Yes you can setup phone trees, but that takes pre-planning, shows malice, and requires a leader against whom leverage can be applied. So there is some logic in what he is proposing.

A better idea would be to use social media to mobilize the population for self-defense and real community self-policing. The problem there is, you Brits are about 20 years ahead of us 'Merkins on the march of Progressive Fascism to the soft totalitarian communist state, so that concept is anathema to anyone in government. Although I will give the citizenry fair marks for the other night: actually engaging in just that sort of self-policing seems to have broken the cycle. A bit late so I can't grant good marks, but better late than never and if you build on it, you just might start taking the first steps away from economic stagnation, possibly even leading Europe to recovery.

Heavily-looted mobile phone barns issue 'safety first' missives to staff

Tom 13

Nah. Better to let it go forward recorded by police but unimpeded,

then pounce in 3 to 6 months when things have died down and more jail cells are available.

Rootkit gangs fight for control of infected PCs

Tom 13
Coat

Of course they are.

Even Steve Jackson knew hackers have a 1 in 6 chance of booting improper accounts whereas legitimate admins only have a 1 in 12.

SQL survives murder attempt by mutant stepchild

Tom 13

Actually, he's looking at the wrong market segment,

and you are confusing what Windows is, with what MS was when it came out. Back then it was:

Option 1:

Buy a mini-computer from IBM/DEC/Wang. Sign a 5 year contract for service and support. Pay IBM to develop an accounting application for your company. Spend 6 to 9 months customizing installing and debugging the software. Repeat for changes as necessary. Cost: [classified, but rumored to start at $50,000K and known to run into the millions depending on the size of the application and length of contract].

Option 2: Buy an IBM PC, preloaded with DOS. Buy Lotus 1-2-3. Cost: $5,000-$10,000. Have your accounting staff create the spreadsheets necessary to support your business: sunk cost so it counts as free.

The software developers and their problems never really entered into the picture.

BlackBerry blog hacked with riot-related threats

Tom 13

And it's not like the riots

were going to HELP Blackberry in anyway. In fact quite the opposite.

GE brings holographic storage back from the dead

Tom 13

Have to disagree.

Any backup which requires more than 24 hours to create is doomed to failure.

10-year old hacker finds flaw in mobile games

Tom 13

If the joke needs explaining, it failed.

Frankly, until I read your post I had no idea what the hell he was trying to say.

Tom 13

Changing the clock no.

Repeatedly changing the clock in small increments so as to circumvent a programmatic method implemented to stop the abuse, yes. Just because it is simple doesn't mean it isn't a hack. In fact, if you go all the way back to the earliest definition as in "an elegant hack" the simpler and more obvious but not thought of, the better.

Tom 13

If you can't be arsed to fix the settings on your Facebook profile,

don't bitch at me for your own idiocy.

Whether this means just blocking the postings like a geek, or unfriending the people who send you the messages is entirely up to you. Or perhaps you should go in and remove yourself from the game settings. Because the last time I checked, I'm limited to 50 messages to people for a given session, and I sure as hell try to make sure I'm getting something back for the messages I'm sending. Which means they only go out to people who are listed in the game as playing the game.

Google fights to hide incriminating emails

Tom 13

Sadly, Annihilator has a valid point.

Courts routinely exclude hearsay evidence. Unless the court deems it appropriate for Oracle to discover the document through legal means, that is what the email would be.

The argument over the email being questioned in the title is interesting. If it was in Drafts and never sent, is it actually a communication? Lots of people write drafts and toss them or greatly modify them before sending the actual communication. Moreover, if it was addressed to a bigwig and he never received it, there is no proof he actually heard the argument being presented in the email. So I'd say legally this should be excluded. While the draft gives plaintiffs cause to dig deeper in email looking for other messages similar to the draft, the draft itself is meaningless.

All that being said, I'd say the more problematic email would be the other one mentioned in the article. That one I would say does show willful intent to knowingly violate IP law, and it IS coming from someone who is both in charge and ought to know better.

Shagbook won't take Facebook thrust lying down

Tom 13

Most if not all of the charges

should be summarily dismissed, and with prejudice: appending "Book" to another word is NOT an infringement on their Trademark, assuming their trademark should have been issued in the first place, which it probably should not have been. There could be "look and feel" issues, and there might possibly be core engine issues. Of course, given what FaceBook have tossed back into the freebie bin, that would really be getting down into the muck.

A mixed bag for IT jobs in July

Tom 13

He did sort of fess up to that in the middle of the article.

It's only the "mixed bag" bit in the headline that is misleading. Spinning for the Liberal fascist in the White House I guess. I mean after all, he's not the hand that feeds IT, so there's no need to bite it right?

Apple sues NYC mom & pop shops

Tom 13

If it's a "mom and pop store" in NYC Chinatown

I'm surprised it's not a combined vendors sweep. Most import illegal and so grey it is almost black merchandise from Hong Kong and sell it at discounted prices to unknowing dweebs (and I'm probably being generous with the "unknowing" bit). Apple may be the devil incarnate, but this is just a case of the bad guys eating each other.

'Missing heat': Is global warmth vanishing into space?

Tom 13

What is the falsifiable premise

of Evolution?

If you can't produce one, it might be right, it might be wrong, but it isn't science.

Mainframers drop EU antitrust complaints against IBM

Tom 13

What do you mean "on the verge of death by x86 since..."?

They've been 'on the verge of death' since they were invented and the very first computer geek profoundly announced "there will be no need for more than 3 or perhaps 4" computers.

GOP darling Newt Gingrich accused of Twitter fraud

Tom 13

Newt ceased to be a GOP "Darling"

about the time he divorced his wife who was dying of cancer so he could marry a staffer.

He's still an egghead and can be interesting to listen to, but like most eggheads, is very hit or miss on ideas. The good ones are great, but the bad ones are truly horrendous. And without the restraints of being the GOP leader in the House, his hit to miss ratio has massively decreased.

HCL discloses 'email deletion' requests from News International

Tom 13

So then it's "innocent until proven guilty, unless

you don't agree with my politics" huh?

Um... No.

If it isn't covered by a discovery order, it's fair game for standard email practices. And like it or not, those read like standard email requests to me, at least as far as the vendor handling the support issues is concerned. Especially the bit about deleting umpty-squat thousand "message delivery failed" error messages.

Tablets will overtake consumer PCs, says Fujitsu CTO

Tom 13

Well, it looks like

it is time to short Fujitsu.

Good news: A meltdown would kill fewer than we thought

Tom 13

Hmm...

While recognizing the paucity of data points, given that two of the three meltdown failures of which I am aware were NOT the result of a power loss, the new model seems, shall we say, a bit CRUish.

Obama drops Twitter bombs on debt-ceiling foes

Tom 13

Figures. You need to Google the proper terms to get a valid result:

"White House Debt Reduction Plan" or possibly "White House debt ceiling plan". Neither of those produce links pointing to any actual plan. Which is rather the point which is starting to be made by reporters, and which seems to get James "pants on fire" Carney's knickers in a twist.

As for the document you found, it's part of the reason we're in the current mess. The other of course being that for the 2 years of 100% Dem control, there were neither budgets, nor increases in the debt ceiling. They could have done it then and avoided the mess now. Of course, that would have let the tax and spend cat out of the bag.

Tom 13

Well, unlike the most recent plan to exit the House,

it had 22 Democrats and all Republicans supporting it. As opposed to say Reid's plan which can't even seen to garner all his Dems for support.

I'm all for cutting about 2.7 trillion from the current baseline, but Dems don't seem to want to support that, so 900bn seems a compromise.

Sci/tech MPs want peer review, not pal review

Tom 13

The problem is the occasional case,

it's the increasing frequency and the sheer audacity of those committing the fraud. Particularly unbecoming is their Eddie Murphy imitation whenever they are called on it. I'm quite certain it cost Copernicus more as a percentage of the money available to him to make his data available to Kepler than the corresponding numbers for CMU to retain the raw data for their claims.

DHS scraps nukes-in-cargo-containers scan plan

Tom 13

Sadly, I'd say about 80% of what Big Sis is doing

is cosmetic effect (airport grope searches being merely the most visible cosmetic), and I'd rather they were spending more of my money on things that actually worked.

Tom 13

I DON'T work at a dock,

and had pretty much the same thought when they originally announced this boondoggle.

LiveJournal groans under 'immense' DDos attack

Tom 13

To protest a restrictive government,

you pretty much need to stand in front of the tanks as they roll down Main Street. For some odd reason most people aren't willing to do that. All the rest are pikers pretending to protest restrictive government, when they have no idea what truly restrictive governments are.

Russia: 'We'll dump the ISS into the sea after 2020'

Tom 13

Actually, don't go look, go stand by one.

I've looked at pictures. I never appreciated how truly, hugely, titanically, humungous the Saturn V was until I stood looking up into one of the nozzles at Cape Canaveral one day. I think I stopped looking at it about 15 minutes later. Just the nozzle mind you, the rest of the booster took far longer.

Fed budget cuts, lower mainframe sales hit Unisys

Tom 13

I was under the impression that much like IBM,

they are now more of a "services" company than a hardware vendor. Mostly pursuing inside the beltway bandito type contracts.

Anonymous, LulzSec go legit with PayPal boycott

Tom 13
Headmaster

Here's a thought for you:

Use it or based on whether it suits your purposes, not on how it relates to this or that other social cause.

News leech loses appeal on High Court copyright case

Tom 13

Have to agree that the decision is questionable, and I haven't even looked

at the details. If headlines are now absolutely copyright protected, then Google need to stop including them in searches too, because Google is just a scraper on steroids. If there's some sort of safe harbor provision for Google, then we no longer have one law for all.

Legal expert: Letters can be evidence, so can Facebook

Tom 13
Facepalm

Facebook might,

that doesn't mean the judge was aware of it.

Tom 13

um,

expectation of privacy =/= privileged conversation.

The mere fact that it is occurring on Facebook invalidates privilege.

Tom 13

You can't let the defendant keep the password either.

If he has unfettered access, he can delete the incriminating evidence. The site has to be frozen by a third party, possibly even an officer of the court, for purposes of the trial.

Tom 13

Better a civil trial in which at most

you go bankrupt because of fraud, than spending time in the pokey with Barney and Igor because you thumbed your nose at the judge.

Suspects in PayPal web attack not so anonymous after all

Tom 13

I guess you haven't notice Congress is investigating

that government sanctioned gun running operation with an eye toward changing some wardrobes to wide horizontal stripes.

....

Oh, that's right, those hearings are being run by gun-toting Republican cowboys so you're assuming they can't possibly advance civil liberties.

Tom 13

As far as I'm concerned,

the courts ARE fighting to protect MY civil liberties on this one, and the anonymous twits are the tyrants using unethical means to impose their will on everyone else.