Re: Apache

No transcoding/conversion, 'apache support' being trumpeted here is adding the mime type and an appropriate magic signature so that httpd can detect WebP files.

https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=50624

@AC

Utter drivel.

"There's a word for hacking gone black hat, and it's cracking."

No, the word for 'hacking gone black hat' is 'hacking'. 'Cracking' is to remove copy protection or feature limitation from software.

"There's a reason you're not a hacker until, like Writers of Literature or heck Kentucky Colonels, the real hackers welcome you into their select club."

Yes, until you get your union card and/or have done your postgraduate hacking studies, you're not in the club. Get a clue, hacking is a knowledge based game. If you know enough, you know enough.

"There's an art and beauty to the thoughtforms we pour in programs that when done well enough there's a special word for it."

Presumably, this is 'hacking' you refer to? The original, and still commonly used meaning of 'a hack' is 'a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well'. I think most hackers would recognize that sentiment.

<3 apples

"You have no apples. I give you an apple. I give you another apple. You do not give away the apples I gave you. Do you now have more or fewer than two apples?"

Fewer. I ate one of the apples.

Merkin, I presume

At least I hope a European would have a more worldly view. Iran is their country, they can do whatever the fuck they want in there. They don't need a permission slip from Uncle Sam to run and operate nuclear plants.

@MJI

I read it this lunch time on my Times iPad app.

Moderatrix: Is there not some 'smug git' icon I can use for this post?

OS X not based on BSD

OS X is based around Mach, with portions of BSD userland.</pedant>

Re: Inaccurate article title

In crypto, a credential is a token or set of tokens that grant access. It doesn't necessarily mean a username and password, which is one sort of credential, it can quite easily mean a temporary token which can be used to access an authenticated service.

@John

Because you were supposed to fill out the idiot form in 10 minutes, online, rather than ring them up, which isn't exactly spanking the intertubes is it?

TBH, I'm quite glad that they didn't spend lots of money employing a massive team of phone drones to placate people, nor to provide lots of people answering queries via email. The census was just a short questionnaire, and came with lots of lovely instructions.

@Eddy Ito

Awesome font gag

@stuartnz

The consortium, of which Andreessen Horowitz was a part, bought a 70% stake in the company for $1.9bn. Lake Partners were the largest stakeholder in the consortium, paying $1bn out of the $1.9bn. The remaining 30% remained owned by Skype.

What a load of horse shit

Patents exist for a reason, it can take a long time before that genius idea of yours can be successfully turned into a product. By patenting the essence of the process the inventor has protection against large companies stealing the idea and outspending on R&D to beat the innovator to market.

What should happen is that 'patents' like this should not exist at all.

@Fuzzy Wotnot

Incorrect, my good sir. I'm a very sad and very serious IT geek, and still IPv6 is a 'meh'. The *only* people who care about this are IPv6 geeks, who will already have their home network on IPv6 via a he.net tunnel (and love to tell you about it).

Meh

So there is no way to say 'Unity is shite' without being called a Luddite? Good to know.

Linux has a long history of going about things in a half-assed fashion and eventually getting it right*. There's no problem with slating Unity whilst it is still shite, that's how it stops being shite.

* For instance, handling hardware. Linux tried devd, hald, DeviceKit and now the blessed HAL is udev. All change please!

As an ex-meter reader

On the back of the crappy ID card is contact details for the operator you are working for, who will then verify your identity for the old biddy who thinks you want to open up her gas meter for some nefarious reason. Being a temp, I didn't have a uniform at all, but got almost zero grief regardless - only 1 in 50 would ask to verify identity.

That was a pretty sweet summer job actually, meter reading is piss easy, you got paid decent mileage allowance to drive to work, all work routes automatically added to your computer overnight, with all collected data transferred at the same time. Never had to talk to a boss, and was finished by 3pm every day.

Bricks & mortar vs web

When I'm in the popular Tottenham Court Road tech-nirvana that is YoYoTech, I often browse, then order it online through their website on my phone.

Given that everything in the shop is an extra 15% on their web prices, it's only mugs that pay shop price.

What's Linux: encumbered with it's toxic license

Linux is so toxic with it's choice of license that it still cannot yet* use the awesomeness that is ZFS, a completely open source and free to use file system that is the future of all FS. ZFS kicks sand in the face of LVM + software raid.

Isilon/EMC use FreeBSD's NFSv4 server (and contribute back testing/fixes), I don't think they use ZFS as well.

@bugalugs

"Not even a cloak of anonymity"

Your mum must have really disliked you to name you "bugalugs".

@Dan, apply the tin foil hat now

Ignore the fact that this article is about magazine subs, and go into full on paranoia.

Apple don't know how much money I make. Apple don't know how I spend my money. At the most, Apple know where I am, occasionally, assuming I'm viewing some adverts in an app.

My phone knows where I am all the time. Apple don't, unless I'm using an app that sends geolocation info back to them (eg, an iAds supported app).

@Jeremy Bresley: Discworld is not SF

It's Fantasy. I went right off SF once I discovered Discworld though. Thumbs up for Discworld.

@Ol'Peculier

To be fair, BT's shareholders bought the publicly funded network from the government.

Whether they paid a fair price for it is up for argument though.

You have control

Turn off location services on your phone.

On the other hand, even if you do this, the Bill can track your cellphone location simply by requesting the information your telco. Much easier than hiring a forensics guy to extract the information from a particular phone model.

Re: Amazing

Yep, utterly amazing - but it's nothing that our descendants will ever 'see', unless they evolve to see lots of different parts of the EM spectrum, instead of just visible light - its mostly all fake colour to highlight interesting EM radiation, rather than visible light emitting sources.

This is a good read on how they are put together, but we (and our descendants) are unlikely to have a BSG moment when we 'jump' to the Lagoon Nebula - it'll just look black, or maybe slightly grey. Space: its dark.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/index.php

Doesn't make sense? Think about it

A person renting a film from a library provides no revenue for the content creator apart from the initial up front purchase cost, which is small, and paid out of tax. A user subsequently renting that film only ensures that tax revenue is spent efficiently, they provide no strong incentive to content creators to invest in making more features.

Given that this was the basis of your argument to slap down a purported freeloader, I thought I could point out the irony to you without having to lead you down the path. Oh well.