Posts by sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
1133 posts • joined Thursday 9th July 2009 13:58 GMT
Maybe I hope too much...
What I hope this will mean is that we will eventually see an alternative architecture ie ARM in the desktop scene.
So, I am for this. Besides, masochistically enough, I've gotten used to writing stuff for windows.
I would never really use a tablet I suspect, nor a windows ARM netbook - while I take your point about battery life, I suspect your average non-game, non-compute intensive windows app would probably run acceptably fast enough if the emulation is somewhat decent.
Of course, I take the point that might be your definition of 'dog slow' ;) Remember macs had a similar predicament moving on to PPC from 68k and then again from PPC to intel. The emulation I saw there was... acceptable.
In fact, I still run some PPC apps on my intel mac because I'm too scabby to shell out for the new intel ones.
And then we have Android and java. Not quite the same thing, but obviously it's predominantly on low power arms, and on 2.1, there is no jitter and stuff still runs ok-ish.
Posted in Microsoft embraces ARM with Windows 8
Probably a good thing.
Unlikely but perhaps we will see the ARM move into traditional x86 dominated niches like desktops and laptops. Time will tell. If this happens, I suspect it can only be good.
Given windows is a reality I have to deal with:
I would like to ask M$ at this point in considering making win 8 as modular as possible (ie we get much more control of the bloat, if that's possible).
I would also ask M$ to ensure we have something like the win32 api left in it, some of us still do stuff in c or c++ calling win32 and directx directly and not that net stuff.
Java...
I still wish to god they hadn't... but it's there and I have to deal with it.
Have an android phone because it was way cheaper and devoid of Apple-badness (and unfortunately quite a bit Apple-goodness too)
/shrug.
/deals-with-it.
Until Steve decides to play nice I ain't getting an iphone so there.
Sadly this is what Israel has to put up with.
This kind of story sounds like a joke but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, not in the least. Someone wise once said, the problem about Israel and the Arabs is simple to see but hard to sort out.
One side just appears to want the other side dead.
Who wants what?
Consider these 2 separate and unlikely events and their likely aftermath:
1. What would happen if Israel laid down all its arms and said, I don't want to fight any one no more? What would its Arab neighbours do?
2. What would happen, conversely, if all of Israel's other adversaries did that instead? What would Israel do?
Who would take advantage of whom?
You only have to think back to 1967, 1973. This is why I have nothing but utmost respect for the state of Israel, its people and their fight and struggle to exist.
(And no, I am not Jewish, I love my bacon too much)
This is a breath of fresh air...
A child's sense of wonder being encouraged.
A proud father's love.
We need more of this in this world today.
Let not the words of the cynic sway you. They, that have lost the ability to see things as a child would, through their jaded adult eyes, might do well to contemplate this.
We need more of this in this world of ours today.
Happy New Year!
will have?
A pedantic 'had', if you're referring to that specific nova relative to our point of view in time, but yes it may well be a possibility that elsewhere sometime now some fledgling civilisation is being wiped out, just as it has just perhaps discovered, sadly and just much too late, how to FTL.
Our sun is not massive enough to nova as I understand it but one can never tell who or what will brush by us aeons from now.
We have some time yet to develop some means of getting off this rock, before our sun dies. But of course something else could yet still wipe us out. Vogons etc... Surely _WE_ wouldn't wipe ourselves out out of sheer stupidity now, would we? <grin>
Posted in Motorola Milestone 2 Android smartphone
Say no to unrootable phones.
If this phone truly is unrootable (or effectively thus, say if it restores any changes made by the enduser on reboot).
What is happening...
You apparently do not like ubuntu. Me either.
But... in all fairness, it's done a lot for the linux cause, that's why I thought I wouldn't bitch about it too much.
I know, it's full of kruft... but...
In all fairness as well, it's still somewhat debian at heart, and I dunno about you but I do use debian quite a bit, and I would imagine the process of errr... debloating is still similar and thus quite possible if one was motivated enough.
As an aside, I took a look at a windows phone 7 device the other day and I was quite impressed by the UI in all of the 5 mins I had with it.
However, I don't know how win 7 proper would be like on a touch device - since a lot of relevant apps would have been written originally just for mouse/keyboard - I believe in the new win api there are new messages you can handle for touch 'events', just haven't looked into them yet, at least I remember some post from M$ reminding me to take a look at new w7 features. And if so far, I've cbf'ed... I am not sure a whole load of other people have. As let's face it, w7 touch devices at present are few and far between, and windows phone is just starting to debut.
I can see why this company is hedging bets and going atom, to get w7 and linux.
Don't like it, but I can see the rationale.
Posted in Make your iPhone patriotic - for free
Oi, watch it you!
I've just taken a picture of your post and sent it at threat level Red "Mind-buggeringly Insane".
The neighbour's cat nosing through my rubbish only just got 'guarded'
So, har, har.... That will learn you when the black helicopters come.
Posted in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
This is where they've got you by the balls...
Personally I don't care for the levelling up experience. Maybe like yourself, I don't care for the "kill x gobos" or "bring y to z" or "find theta" quests. I don't care for bloody pve instances either.
I just care about hosing the other guy.
So yeah, I hate levelling up etc but it's gotta be done, for better gear and abilities so the xpac purchase in my case is a foregone conclusion - either that or quit wow. I did toy with both options seriously.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, there is no other MMO just out there at the moment that comes close. Be willing to listen to options however.
Maybe guilwars 2... dunno
Posted in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
A few additions.
I believe the Tauren were the result of a diablo joke that got out of hand.
I think (but cannot confirm off the top of my head) the current new races were the result of 'customer research'. I'm not sure whom they polled but rumour has it the reason we have worgen and goblins is due to some end-user survey. I certainly was not polled, else I would not have voted for wolves or gobbos. I would probably have voted for Pandas though.
Also I'm not sure if putting pandas in the game would cause it to be banned in china. As far as I remember there used to be a limited edition panda cub pet.
But yeah, the Chinese government can be fussy. Apparently the Chinese censors did not take too kindly to 'skeleton's though the last time they tried to launch an xpac there.
Posted in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
A few points.
1. Battlegrounds are slightly more fair. Brackets are now 5 levels instead of 10 as per previously.
2. 'Nerf' to heals - I thought I' suffer really bad as I play all healing classes bar shammy (lowbie at present). I think priests probably got it the worst. My pally is ok, druid is ok. Tendency is to OOM more especially in PVP when you're really under the pump. Survivability of the latter two are stll good. Can't say the same for the priesty though although they are looking into it I believe.
3. I take your point about the gear. I play on a pvp server however, and the horde outnumber us here. My resi heavy gear helps but I suspect as I climb upwards, I'll have to swap more and more of it out. We shall see what happens.
4. Flying around in azeroth as you rightly say, is quite something. I especially recommend it if you've got flightform.
5. Overall, this game is now extremely noob-friendly imho. That's not a bad thing in someways but in others... the problem is between the keyboard and chair.
6. Only bad things about the xpac I can't stand are too many races have too many class choices. I mean, troll druids? Dwarf shammies? They should have left druid races the way they were.
This year's best...
Anti-virus software.
I know this will necessarily be windows biased (LOL) but come on, El Reg, do the story !!!
I'm _deadly_ serious.
Make it an interesting in-depth article. Or heck, it's probably quite a deep area, why not do a series of articles on it. Perhaps not just the review windows AV programs but an overview of windows and its security issues.
Save it for early 2011 as I guess it's probably too late to hack something up and yet do justice to the subject.
I'd say I would be most interested as I'll be the first to say I have significant gaps of knowledge in this area. Currently I'm not even sure what the biggest threat out in the wild is against windows systems.
Just an idea
I found it helpful.... Here's why...
The recipe was posted on a Saturday. I guess the weekend had something to do with it.
I'll see if they've started moderating the site.
I'll wait till the weekend.
Come Saturday morning I'll go post a picture of Nigella up on it. It's just got to be done! The trouble I'm having is thinking of a good recipe. English Tart served with whipped cream? Mmmm... I think I'm going to have to sit down and have a good long hard think about it.
0k nUF4gs u Kn0s w4t 2d0
L3t5 63t t3h f4pp3r 4641n!!!!one!!!11!!!!eleevne!!!!
Eh... bloody good idea...
And not just people. You could try dogs and cats, cows, pigs... Homer simpson etc...
DMCA is evil
what is considered cheating here is defined by Blizzard and should so be policed by them. Not the legal system. It's their servers, their game, their own byelaws.
*** What does the DMCA or legal system have to do with it? ***
Basically this - blizzard has found out it cannot deal with botters and gold farmers to the extent it'd like to and so has gone squealing to the law. Lame.
I'm siding with Glider on this one as honestly, I can't see what they are doing that is *illegal*. Violating blizzards TOS yes.. but illegal? What sort of legal system would that be then?
For the record, I dislike gold farmers mainly because they spam chat you ...
... but the 'actual' bots are less of a problem.
They are mostly an annoyance when they queue battlegrounds ... but farming bots in the wild... well... I play on a pvp server with toons on both factions... If it's a farmbot, I can kill it.
I also find the bot-ted 'acrobatics' in SW and Org quite amusing.
Blizzard, FFS just deal with it, don't go crying to the law. It's lame. FAIL. Epic. No... Legendary.
WTF?
"The bots go around an area simply killing any creatures/mobs present which are frequently required to complete quests"
Ignore them or just kill 'em... Never had much bother with farmbots.
On a pvp server I can't off hand think of any non-lowbie zones that are not contested.
So, just kill 'em.
Free honour. If they're the same faction, just get on your other opposing faction toon. Or I'm sure you have a guildie or mate with one of those.
Not proof.
I don't see how glider proves that WoW has failed anyone who doesn't want to race to high end content or do PvP. Truth is that there are just a whole load of lazy f#$kers out there.
If anything blizzard has made WoW more noob friendly in the past year.
Don't believe me, give it a try if you have time and money to burn. Would not recommend you try it otherwise because WoW as you know is still a terrible time sink and .. ultimately just a waste of time when you seriously think about it.
If you do try it...
You don't actually have to raid, you know? I hate those things personally. Time wasters.
Lots of other things to do. Control the AH market. Level other toons. Do LFD heroics. Or my personal favourite, pvp, from duels to going around picking fights with the other faction to all out capital city incursions. Find the right group and you can have fun and not do boring pain in the ass PVE raids...
Pre-cata I got quite a decent gear score which got me into raids (well I got pulled and cajoled into them by a few mates - hate those pve things) by just doing pvp.
Honestly these days, WoW isn't that hard as it was at the start.
/shrug.... Honestly, I'd say you'd do better trying to prove WoW is a total waste of time (it is! Definitely)
Or...
put it in a turret that will track fast enough to knock out a variety of threats ranging from (possibly multiple) low flying low visibility missiles/planes to descending MIRV's...
Posted in Geeks Guide2 Christmas 2010 - Part IV
Geek wannabees, you mean.
Aside possibly from the superfreakonomics book, I can see no way in hell any true geek would want to buy any of the other titles for it implies lack of basic knowledge (ie the guide to HHGTG and WoW book) or irrelevant knowledge (ie the sex one)
Posted in Asus Eee PC 1015PEM
"why the Asus - and other netbooks, to be fair - are so darn thicker."
Hard disk. Battery.
Incidentally, how hard is it to swap the HD on this thing?
Who?
I'll bet it's Motorola. Just a guess.
"insignificant details like noise and pollution can be ignored."
Bit like Paris then...
(Both Parises actually, come to think about it)
To add on...
If this is not an issue, Mr. Bill Ray, I would advise you to wear the usernames of all your accounts on your t-shirt. There's no password there so that's not an issue isn't it?
Posted in The year's best... PC games
I guess I'd better get with the program...
TBH, SC2 and MW2 have been keeping me from levelling my 80's up.
I can see why Bliz have not released diablo 3 yet. I expect they won't do it till they think Cata is safely a fair distance aways.
rash.
Maybe they were a bit rash and hasty. But maybe they have a plan.
Do you think a fork is in the cards?
I would say if that were the case, we're up for interesting times. However I don't know if Apache on its own will be able to fork with enough support. Who will back them? Will their JVM's remain competitive? And if the fork starts to diverge very significantly....
Where I work...
A laundry.
Nothing more, nothing less.
And that is _all_ we do at our shop, contrary to popular speculation.
Nothing more to see here, move along.
Posted in Visa approves wireless payment chip
Here's another link
http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-hack-rfid-enabled-credit-card-steal-money-for-cheap-287775/
Some have suggested solutions from frying the RFID chip to Faraday cages. I believe some guy actually markets Faraday cages for your credit card.
Posted in Visa approves wireless payment chip
was about to link something like this.
But you beat me to it. Thumbs up for that. Thumbs down for mo' RFID.
There is _nothing_ submerged under the Persian Gulf.
I would advise closer study of the other literature available at hand.
The Pnakotic manuscripts are wrong! I would also add that the G'harne Fragments are a clever hoax. There is NOTHING there of any value or relevance to humanity.
Just leave the area alone!
As you can imagine I'll bet it happened.
In fact, it happened to me.
I had a sandisk usb stick that went through the exact punishment you described and came out none worse for wear. Well not exactly the same punishment. Worse. It got pasteurised in a _hot_ wash actually, then baked in the tumble drier.
It still worked flawlessly but I duly copied the data out of it and subsequently condemned it as I figured the safest thing to do was not to trust it anymore with any important data since it had probably been in 'out-of-spec environs' for a good 2 hours or more.
(While I understand the actual silicon is fairly tolerant of what we would consider temperature extremes, I did not and still cannot make the same assumptions of the actual pcb, tracks, contacts, solder etc)
RoTM: Hegemonizing Swarms One Day?
fly="fly=%c%s%c;main(){printf(fly,34,fly,34);};";main(){printf(fly,34,fly,34);};
I vote Iranian ninjas..
Dont they have those super surface effect ekranoplan skimmers?
BTW, on the pirate v ninja issue, I've always traditionally gone ninja.
Why? Ashida Kim would totally pwn Captain Feathersword.
Are there really ninjas these days?
I don't know that anyone can claim lineage to those shadowy warriors of the past, let alone claim to be one of them.
Ninjutsu schools apparently still thrive. Even if their claim to lineage is true, I believe they do not, at least as far as what can be publicly learnt, replicate training necessary to be an extremely hard man the way they did before in feudal Japan - I believe the equivalent level of training would be like what the SAS boys do. There are many reasons for this, of course, many practical reasons (safety, time and 'real life' etc).
However, I concede the training a terror cell in the middle east may well be just as intense as what our best soldiers go through albeit lacking maybe in finesse. Perhaps they have nothing else to do, perhaps they are motivated by other concerns and are less concerned about safety.
The upshot is, if one considers oneself "hard as" and completely imba as some do, please remember, knowing the 'apparent theory' of how to do something isn't the same as having done the equivalent things, in a more practical manner, a million times over in real conditions under pressure especially when one's life depends on it, for real.
FUD?
The OP has a bit of a point. When a new netbook comes out, there is often a scrabble to find drivers for linux. It's a bloody PITA. I remember the old days trying to get drivers for the Eee 701.
It's a lot better these days, now that we are aware of just what can go in an atom netbook but it will be interesting if the chrome netbooks are ARM. I don't believe they've sorted out all the open source linux drivers for the Tosh AC100 for example.
The chrome thing could be a good thing if somewhat decent ARM netbooks are delivered.
Obviously the thing to do would be to junk chrome and put something else on, but how easy this will be as stated will depend on how available drivers are and in what form. And if not, how much info they will provide for us to build them.
Let's hope the big players that build decent kit (like Asus etc) recognise that there are people like us out there and make things easy for us.
Why...
...would anyone write a script on a webpage that would take 1 minute to execute in the first place?
"Java will no longer be seen as fashionable."
I dunno... Android's fairly in the fashion at the moment and gathering momentum.
I say give Oracle just a little bit more time to reconsider its approach. I dunno 3 months more stick waving?
If it still proves recalcitrant, fork Java, imho. Take it where it wants to go, call it something else if needs be, and leave oracle to do whatever it wants to do with its version. Competition could be good here.
It lived off memory leaks...
..And then it tried to eat off page zero...
*WALLOP*
*SPLAT*
*"Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal...
Oh my god...I thought I was old. You remember that one. You must be ancient! :P
Posted in The year's best... laptops
New Netbooks vs Old...
" the newer netbooks didn't really deliver any significant benefit over older ones."
This is probably true. It is almost true for me, but I have a pretty tooled up Eee. That said depending on what you use it for, any one of these may (or may not) be significant.
1) Most other makes have improved their battery endurance
2) More cores, 64 bit capable.
3) GPU (Ion has 8 CUDA cores).
Personally, I'd like a 1015N, Points 2... and perhaps 3 look tempting.. But... hey're optional extras since I can always get to another machine.
Battery life on my Eee is great even after a year. 1024 x 600 is quite usable - I'm not pushed but would welcome bigger but in about 10 inche's... really, 1024x600 is quite ok.
What I'd like to see in these machines is
1. more memory, 4 Gb would be nice. The option to expand to 8 would be nicer. 2 Gb is usable but ... swap is always annoying.
2. matte/non-reflective screens.
3. Easy access to HD and ram.
4. Options of a beefier GPU ( ie Ion) or NOT. Asus did a nice thing with the 1015 line.
5. Don't care for this myself, but some folk want internal wireless broadband modems.
6. Some sort of high speed external expansion. eSATA or if USB3.0 takes off, that.
7. Linux drivers for all bits released (ideally with source)
8. Err... ARM? PPC? :P
9. 3D Screen. Ah no.. Just kidding :P
Posted in Sony sells Playstation-packing TV
Hmm...
My first DVD player was a PS2 that still works today. Of course, there may be some truth in what you say, but I have fortunately not had to go to seek it out.
Shame this TV only includes a PS2.
Oh wait. I forgot... I'm supposed to be boycotting Sony gear since they canned linux on the PS3
Yah Booo @ Sony. Down with that sort of thing etc.
Barbie@work. Brillant!
package test;
public class paula^H^H^H^H^HBarbieBean {
private String paula^H^H^H^H^Hbarbie = "Brillant";
public String getPaula^H^H^H^H^HBarbie() {
return paula^H^H^H^H^Hbarbie;
}
}
Nope...
But I'll bet she outsources her own work assignments to India!
Posted in 'ALIEN' LIFE FOUND in California
California? Nah...
Nah, I believe New York is the Mecca of Alien migration. Ask WIll Smith or Tommy Lee Jones.
*clickety* Hell, it's even in The Guide. I quote "Tips for aliens in New York: Land anywhere. Central Park, anywhere. No one will care or indeed even notice. Surviving: get a job as a cabdriver immediately.... etc"
Hands up
Who's buying this kit? Could you tell us why? Ta.
Posted in Dell rings up spin-screen Duo at £449
IF...
If it's as good as an Eee 1000HE it will be worth looking at.
BUT... I hear early reports say the battery is crap.
I'm still getting anywhere from 6-8 hours on a single charge on my 1000HE which is a good year old at least. And I use it daily, from reading El Reg on the bog to visual studio stuff.
Only gripe I have with the 1000HE is that it's solely 32 bit and I've got to build and test 64 bit code on another machine, no biggie just yet but one day I expect windows will be predominantly 64 bit, which is why I'm following this Dell thingy with some interest.
Been trying to find an upgrade candidate (don't need to, but hey, don't we all like looking?) but so far, I've found nothing. So, slightly off topic but if anyone has any good ideas, go ahead and post 'em :)
dumb question:
but what do apple run their servers on currently anyways?
Posted in How to kill your computer
Foxconn
I wonder what the people at Foxconn have to say about all this mayhem.
"Jesus Mary and Joseph.... Gian Mai, lookit what they're after doing to that iPhone! FFS... all our blood sweat and tears put 'to making these yokes and would you ever look at it, all those yanks want to do is destroy them? For art it would seem. Jesus Christ on a bike....God help us all here."
