Posts by Jim 59

Re: Still working

The first silicon chip in most peoples' homes was probably inside a calculator, as they predated digital watches by a year or two.

In out house it was a Rockwell in 1977. I remember being confised about the funny "4".

Re: Used to be a fan

Sometimes it is better to have 2 devices doing 2 separate things.

Re: Or you could go USB & have the real thing

Vic 20 re-purposed as USB keyboard. Cool.

Re: Too Limited

I can't agree. Even Joe Bloggs wants more than web browsing and google docs. This is Google going through its "a PC on every desktop" phase. Google thinks it IS the internet, just as Microsoft thought it WAS the computer.

Re: This is why Tor was/is never going to work

"The state is an adversary in any rational threat model"

If you prefer not to have a state, might I suggest Somalia or Afganistan as possible destinations.

Re: Not just beautiful, quiet too

It so is. Recently I was forced to run my business on a 2002 laptop for a few weeks. Slow but silent, running PCLOS. The silence was so restful.

Re: Laserdisc = Human Jaba

Thank goodness somebody else remembers it, thought I was going nuts. I think human jaba might have been in the original 1977 release too. Incidentally, it was not called "Part IV" originally. That was part of the cruft added years later by Lucas's retro-meddling, about which there are many enlightening videos on youtube. Some of the changes he made are daft, you have to think he needs his head examining.

Windows chroot jail

The article suggests MS should introduce "chroot jail" virtualisation to Windows. I am not an expert, but Windows might be too monolithic for that. If Windows is not easily chopped up, neither will it be easy to have "chroot" instances executing the same kernel.

Re: Except Apple aren't giving it away for free.

Free Windows might be sensible but it is just too much against MS culture to ever happen. MS is is a huge organisation, and just not capable of thinking in those terms.

On the flip side, is there any real evidence that the MS desktop is slipping ? The article doesn't cite any. Smartphone sales are not evidence. Business desktops are still MS 100%. And Google Chomebook seems to offer only underpowered machines welded into a monopoly even more complete than Microsoft's.

Re: washable keyboard?

Put my normal keyboard in the dishwasher (not including the internal circuit board). Keys go in the cutlery holder.

Re: Not good enough, Mrs Kroes.

I am sure Mrs Kroes is great, but I have little or no interest in the words of unelected EU commissioners. In this Digital Agenda role, to which she was appointed, not elected, Mrs Kroes has power to pass laws affecting hundreds of millions of people, but can never be voted out. If the EU comission ever wants to get more than a big raspberry blown in their faces, they need to get some democracy.

PCs

Wonder where they got the PC without Windows.

Re: am I the only one...

No you are not the only one. I don't have children but I don't mind having a bit of inconvenience to prevent kids from drowning in goatse & snuff movies.

To those who are enjoying a self-righteous rant about their "rights" - just opt out of the filter and have done with it. It is ticking a form FPS.

No, my main problem with the filter is the civil rights issue - it is like a one way ticket to North Korea. Or it will be, when the next Labour govt. removes the opt-out and expands the filter to include every site except bbc.co.uk and theguardian.com

Nemo

Is that breadcrumb navigation I see there. Yuk. Crazy name, crazy feature.

Desktop developers write a millions lines of undeniably brilliant code... that nobody wants. I mean, all those man hours just to make KDE widgets rotatable, meanwhile the dock is unreadably transparent and can't be changed no matter how long you spend on Google. A rotating file manager for Pete's sake. Sorry about the negativity its not that bad.

Dear Obama and NSA

AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo would like you to stop datamining my ass, so that they can datamine my ass.

Re: Stop wasting the Police & your ISP's time

How does having skills in one field, setting up a private email server, extend to "expert" in another, that is internet security?

Task B requires prior knowledge of field A. Setting up am email server is the hardest job in IT IMO, demanding knowledge in many areas. respect to anyone who has done it.

Re: Acoustic malware

The air-gap thing is fascinating but requires both systems to be already compromised, in which case the black hat can already transmit data over the wire. Did I miss something ?

Hagman could do it any day

An army marksman could do it in single shot mode. Drone would be low, slow, large.

Re: ..."a whopping 80 per cent of crashes ... involved male drivers"

..."a whopping 80 per cent of crashes ... involved male drivers"

No. Men drive more miles, is all. This is why insurance forms ask for mileage. The average number of crashes per mile driven is almost equal between the sexes overall, but actually slightly higher for women.

All arguments about "men are better at X" or "women are better at Y" are rubbish. The sexes' abilities are exactly equal IMO, but their interests differ. Women could do engineering, they just choose not to. Men could be empathetic homemakers, but they have no interest. It makes them a good team.

The "multitasking" comment is particularly daft. It is an typical piece of manufactured opinion designed for consumption by the unintelligent, using an impressive-sounding word borrowed from computer studies to make it sound vaguely scientific.

Re: Er........

As a Linux user, I bought Windows 8 (forced purchase) last week on a new laptop, to go with Vista (another forced purchase) on the previous laptop. I actually like Windows 8, just have no use for it.

Wonder what percentage of these figures were compulsory purchase by people who never boot the software.

Eight Legged Freaks

Worst. Film. Ever. Apart from AI.