Posts by Raumkraut
186 posts • joined Wednesday 12th August 2009 12:43 GMT
Re: Common sense !!
> Some jobs will always have a natural tendancy to attract more men than women and vice-versa.
I'd suggest rather that some jobs have a cultural tendency to attract more of one gender than the other. I strongly believe that cultural norms and peer pressure can trump biology and genetics in almost every case of workplace gender bias.
Rude is as rude does
You're meeting the president of a country (which happens to be very favourable toward the company which is the source of your staggering wealth), and you either don't seek, or ignore, any advice about polite protocol? I'd most certainly call that rude, and arrogant to boot.
Should you invite someone from Elbonia to dinner, he may throw mud at your wife, fart in your face, and dry hump your daughter. If that's just a normal welcome in Elbonia, surely it couldn't be considered rude, right?
Re: BBC
> If I had managed an absolutely historic shot somehow, I'd be negotiating the rights properly rather than just sending it in free.
By definition, nobody knows if an image will be a "historic shot" or not until many years after the image has been taken.
Would you be happy if a photo, which you had sent to the BBC for free, got included in a top-selling compilation book, with the note "copyright BBC" or "public domain"? Or would you be demanding recognition and remuneration?
Re: How to address skimming?
> ATMs are designed to be tough, hard to smash and easy to clean. Perhaps they also need to design them so that it's hard to fit a false front? Any ideas?
If ATMs are so tough to smash, maybe we should be equipping each one with a sledgehammer, and encouraging customers to wail on the machines before use? That should sort out any false fascia - or at least increase the costs significantly for the crims making them.
Re: Read
> Pretty sure even if Google did successfully negotiate terms with Nokia, it wouldn't extend to making VP8/WebM truly free in the way Google intend.
Yet if the terms don't extend to making VP8 truly free in the way Google intend (ie. royalty-free sublicensing), then Google would not have successfully negotiated terms with Nokia.
Re: Huh
> Guys... H.264 is the best, get over it and move on please.
h264 cannot be used for an open web, because it requires royalties to implement - thus locking out any new browser with little budget (open source, from a small company, etc.) which wants to adhere to any standard which mandates h264.
It also requires royalty payments from content creators (meaning anyone with a camera) if they want to create h264 content for anything other than "personal use". Check the license agreement which should have come with your camera/smartphone/tablet/etc. if you don't believe me.
These are why the MPEG-LA, and most everyone who receives payments from them, are pushing so hard for h264 to be embedded in any and every standard going.
> Part of their defence (from the linked Wired article) appears to be that because of regular server reboots the card numbers in their server log files would have been overwritten before the hackers got to it
Looks like what we might have here is a case of chinese whispers: You say "card numbers", the Wired article says "card data", but the actual statement from Genesco's complaint (as quoted in the Wired article) says "data relative to those accounts" - which could mean anything from DNA samples to simple HTTP user-agent strings.
Re: Linux Desktop ? Yes
I've been using Linux full-time for about a decade; exclusively for most of that time. Not once have I felt the need to compile a kernel. For that matter, I could probably count the number of times I've compiled anything just on one hand.
Re: Who cares
Platform relevance matters not a jot. Microsoft had a legally-binding agreement, and they broke it - intentionally or not.
Bust a deal, face the wheel.
Re: NPE haven't lost anything, so why damages?
> So ARM gets nothing because it doesn't produce anything?
How about if the "company doesn't produce anything" clause only comes into effect if ownership of the patent is transferred from the original holder?
* Invent a widget yourself; sue XYZ corp for patent infringement: you are not a troll.
* Invent a widget yourself; sell the patent to XYZ corp, who produce the widgets: XYZ corp is not a troll.
* Invent a widget yourself; sell the patent to WXY corp, who don't make widgets: WXY is a troll if they sue.
* Invent a widget for XYZ corp: XYZ is not a troll.
* Invent a widget for XYZ corp; patent gets sold to WXY corp, who make widgets: WXY is not a troll.
* Invent a widget for XYZ corp; patent gets sold to WXY corp, who don't make widgets: WXY is a troll if they sue.
Re: Still Hope for Nokia
I'd bet dollars to salmiakki that one of the requirements of Nokia's "favoured partner" agreement with Microsoft is that they remain bound tightly to WinPho for the duration of the agreement. Any move to platform agnosticism will likely result in Microsoft withdrawing their regular support payments, and probably an increase in the WinPho licensing fees as well (or at least a "warning" that they may "have to").
Re: Master Hacker ?
I don't think he was referring to McKinnon himself as one of the "master hackers", rather as an example of the US government/legal system's general attitude toward the technologically curious.
Firing your shotgun toward someone who was just playing in your garden without permission, is likely going to make the elite players think twice about coming to visit.
Re: "Ballmer is the best person to lead Microsoft"
> You can criticize Ballmer for many things but "award themselves" isn't one of them. His salary's the lowest of any tech CEO (including stock options and other cheats) by his own choice.
AFAICT, "lowest [salary] of any tech CEO" is right up there with "most honest politician".
I'm skeptical
A single throwaway comment, on a single pocket-lint article, posted last Friday. Where's the statement from someone at Opera? Has anyone even thought to ask?
Perhaps there's something more substantial in the video (I have no audio on this machine), but at this point, AFAICT, this is just more baseless rumour-mongering.
Re: ooops
Ah, for a minute I thought Wired had once hired a Morrowind character to write articles.
Re: I'm no expert, but...
Depends what it is they're wanting to "lead" in - sales, innovation, trends?
I believe that corporations are supposed to maximise profit - not (necessarily) market share. Apple have, so far, been doing quite well for themselves, by not using the scattergun approach of many other manufacturers - even as their percentage market share falls.
Disrespectful to investors
> when it comes to running a multibillion-dollar company, you have to behave a certain way.
Lie, cheat, steal, and run your company into the ground while making out like a bandit? Is that what he means, perhaps?
I could see Zuck getting a mention for the Facebook IPO fiasco, but to criticise him because of his clothing? That's a pretty weak and shallow criticism, even for a "top 10" list. I would hope any serious investor would be able to see past any frippery, to judge the actual business they invest in. Personally, I'd rather invest my money in hoodie-adorned Zuck's Facebook than suited-and-booted Elop's Nokia, for example.
This is more about refining the definition of "opt in".
Currently, we (usually) have "the customer opted in if this box is checked". What is being proposed is more like "the customer opted in if they manually checked this box".
You can sign up any time you like
> If you have a Facebook account attached you can always go back to uplay.com and take your account back because the user cannot unlink this account.
So you'd better be damn certain you want to associate your gamer account with Facebook.
Re: A good question
Another explanation could be that Canonical are trying to move away from having a "desktop environment", to having a "computing environment". Beyond tradition, is there any reason why an OS search field shouldn't also search the internet? Why should people have to open a web browser to perform a search, when there is search functionality built into the standard UI? I see it as a step toward a ChromeOS-like experience, where "the network is the computer".
The problem that Canonical have is that, unlike ChromeOS (but like Windows 8, as it happens), they're trying to alter the core experience of an existing product, whose current users have ingrained expectations.
Re: Mint FTW
LXDE and LMDE are two completely different concepts.
LXDE ("Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment") is a lightweight alternative to Gnome, KDE, XFCE, etc.
LMDE ("Linux Mint Debian Edition") is the standard Linux Mint stack built on top of Debian Testing, rather than Ubuntu. It's a rolling-release distro (with large update packs every ~6 months), and something of a gateway drug to running pure Debian Testing (or it was for me, at least).
Posted in 2012: The year that netbooks DIED
> these days if you need that level of portability you would be better off with something like a Macbook Air / ultra notebook
For the price of a netbook, though? You're more likely to find yourself with a box of spuds.
2,100 sex offenders now have more time on their hands
Caught peeing in public? No online computer games for you, lad.
Ever.
Been sent to jail, you say? Paid your debt to society, you say? You're still on The List, sonny.
Forever.
Re: Malthus was right, sort of...
Yet, if nobody was concerned about future resource constraints, there would be no market nor motivation to develop those technologies which mitigate future resource constraints.
Re: I think they're trying to paint
I also was trying to work out where exactly people would be "clicking through", and can think of only two possibilities:
1. Software from your ISP which you need to install (eg. AOL floppies)
2. A forced redirect the first time you try to access any web page
Given MPs' general experience with technology, I suspect Herr Cameron was thinking something like the former, whereas the latter is the only actually realistic option.
Had enough of El Reg's moneygrabbing bull****, I QUIT!
> They never just leave quietly and permanently
The ones who post in forums, perhaps not; they will be the ones with a significant emotional investment in a game (otherwise they probably wouldn't bother with the forums). But for every person publicly ragequitting, there will likely be many more leaving with no fanfare.
Don't assume that, just because it is noise, it is not also part of a signal.
Re: I agree gmail sucks now.
As someone who has in the past written a server to support ActiveSync, I would not blame Google for any "bugs" in their implementation of the API.
Re: Nice
Weren't they doing this same thing with that famous wind-up radio, years ago?
Re: But for one reason or another...
They're probably in a huff because neither Spanish nor Italian made it onto the list of accepted languages.
Re: Time Google got a taste of this medicine
CyanogenMod not enough?
Re: Huh?
"...it left only the possibilities that the cosmological constant was [either] a fixed number, or variable."
Perhaps that can help the hard-of-parsing understand the wording. I thought it was pretty clear, given the next sentence begins:
"The latter, however, he finds deeply problematic..."
Re: The value of Free Software
Despite it being as long as most proprietary EULAs, the GPL is far superior on this issue because:
* It is written to be a general license, so the exact same text is reused for innumerable projects. Read a version of the GPL once, and you can honestly say that you have read (if not understood) the license for any project which uses it.
* It is static. There are new versions occasionally, but you don't have to re-read "GPL v2" every six months, on the offchance that it's been modified in some way.
(Similar things can be said of any FLOSS license, of course, I just use the GPL as the prime example because of its combination of verbosity and popularity.)
The open-source world had something similar to this for a while, we called it "license proliferation". The community as a whole saw this for the problem it was, and (mostly successfully) urged projects to use one of a smaller set of licenses, rather than everyone coming up with their own.
Proprietary software vendors need to recognise this as a problem, and engage in something like the Creative Commons licensing project; to create a set of simple, discrete, modular, reusable, terms, which any site can adopt. But so long as the lawyers are making bank, I don't see this happening.
Re: Waste of money
> System would be a waste of money
Perhaps someone should ask her:
"How many lives is it estimated that this £1.8bn project will save? How many lives do you think that £1.8bn would save if it were invested in NHS neo-natal care units instead?"
Re: Moot
Actually "Windows" is not a protected word. Neither is "Apple" AFAIK. Pictures of apples though...
Microsoft paid a lot of money to Lindows, to make that trademark dispute go away before it hit a court judgement....
Do you seriously think that Apple haven't trademarked the very name of their company? You're clearly a lot madder than the Apple legal team (and that's saying something).
Here's a handy trademark list provided by Apple, and here's a similar list from Microsoft.
To the victor goes the license
"I think that these estimates are baseless and very, very wrong. It is a outrageous number, but I'm not going to comment anything on a specific number. I believe we have a very, very happy settlement and a good ending,"
Does that really sound like a statement from a company which came out of negotiations behind?
Who was it that suggested HTC were paying Apple anyway? An "analyst" - someone paid to make wild guesses, and not anyone associated with the settlement, the negotiations, or either company.
So here's my "analysis", as an industry watcher: HTC won. If anyone is paying out hard cash (and I doubt anyone is), it's Apple.
Re: In Ottawa, you say, the boring city on the Rideau Canal? Will keeping them talking for months!
Boring is just what you want for a seat of government.
Over-excited parliamentarians are a danger to themselves, and their country.
Posted in Ten Linux apps you must install
Kate in a bottle
I happily used Kate for many a year; until the premature abandonment of the KDE 3.x series by distros. But Kate just doesn't feel right running under a primarily GTK-based DE - it's just too much a KDE application for that.
So if you're using GNOME, XFCE, or the like,I recommend trying out Geany instead.
Re: duh
> If Windows was so bad then industry would grind to a halt. Given the 90% plus marketshare of Windows on the desktop...
"Industry" does not run on desktop computers. Those parts that do, are generally not real-time processes. Windows does not have "90% plus" marketshare on servers, where stability really matters.
> Many organisations have tried to move their office desktops to Linux and have ended up going back to Windows.
And many organisations have successfully made the transition from Windows, and not looked back. But those organisations don't get paid by Microsoft to make press releases about it.
Re: Sounds like Nemesis all over again
The red dwarf alternative is much more difficult to dismiss since a nearby red dwarf to all intents and purposes looks identical to a much more distant red giant. To distinguish between them needs full spectroscopy of each candidate star individually, which is both costly and time consuming.
Wouldn't distinguishing between a nearby dwarf and a distant giant just need two observations to be made, approximately 6 months apart?
"These stars are small. The ones out there are far away."
Alternatives
When I go reading reviews, it's generally not because I want to know if something is worth buying, but because I want to know *which* something to get. So, for me, comparisons with other similar products are important (especially in the introduction/conclusion paragraphs, which are often the only parts I read).
Doesn't apply so much to game reviews, but I don't care much about those, because modern games all suck anyway.
"kill him if found" may be a teeniest bit of exaggeration...
Given that he apparently has a passion for firearms, and currently seems to be feeling a bit out of sorts, I wouldn't be surprised if he would refuse to go quietly if confronted; making it something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I wish to register a complaint
"Faull had filed a complaint about McAfee's recent behavior on Wednesday"
Filed a complaint with whom? The police? Are we supposed to just take their word on that? If the authorities really are out to get a guy, manufacturing a "complaint" to provide probable cause could take all of five minutes.
Re: Charm bar thing....
If your UI requires a tutorial, you have a bad UI.
The start menu, while perhaps mysterious in its function to the uninitiated, was at least *visible* for exploration. If you can't see a UI element, the only way to discover it is through chance.
The world has not grown up expecting "magic corners" on devices, so there needs to be some indication that these areas are "active zones". Any half-decent student of UI/UX could likely give you half a dozen workable suggestions, just off the top of their heads.
Or perhaps he could re-emerge under a pseudonym...
"unless you’d been able to construct an entire globe-spanning comms network unnoticed."
"Zorin" is only a few minor changes away from "S. Brin"
Re: I'm confused...
By my reading, we're not talking about a "ping spike", we're talking about a sudden and unexplained persistent increase in ping times.
You don't get to be #1 ranked in any popular sport or game without taking it seriously. Serious gamers, just like serious athletes, do everything in their power to optimise their game.
If an F1 car suddenly starting taking six times as long to respond to steering or throttle - even if for only a few minutes - they're damn well going to find out what just happened, why it happened, and how they can fix it.
Posted in Linux-based Tizen mobile platform lives!
Re: Need Apps
Depending on how linux-y it is, it could have hundreds of "apps" straight out the door.
Linux developers haven't spent these past years twiddling their thumbs, waiting for "marketshare" before they wrote anything.
Re: Patent System Is Broken
You're talking about design patents like they are utility patents; the two are rather different animals.
AIUI Apple's grievances against Samsung are about Trade Dress (design patents, trademarks, service-marks, etc.), which boils down to a company attempting to piggy-back on another's success by cloning their product - rather than doing their own homework, and coming up with their own designs.
Re: patents = profits
But if you are a "man/woman in a garage" type inventor who wants to build a business from a good idea then the patent system is the way to protect your idea. If you don't protect it then a huge company will just copy you and you'll end up bust before you've even started.
So this small inventor gets a patent, and a huge company infringes it. You inform them; they ignore you; you file suit. The company counter-sues for all of their patents which your product infringes, and you end up bust.
If you're really, really lucky, and the infringing company cares about improving their product more than killing the competition, and have cash to throw around, they might buy you out.
The only small "inventors" that generally thrive in such a climate as the US patent system are those who don't actually produce anything other than lawsuits - NPEs aka Patent Trolls.
Re: and not a peep about the ARM version of Windows 8 causing this
I suspect Doug's point was that, on an ARM platform, Microsoft can likely no longer rely on reusing decade-old Office code, which apparently was embedded in later releases to maintain (limited) backward-compatibility (this is why the OOXML spec included things like "render like Office 98", rather than actual specifications).
Porting decade-old, Microsoft-quality, x86 code to an ARM architecture is probably more trouble (time, cost) that it's worth to them.
Re: With the BSA on your team...
If you accept the Microsoft Windows EULA, I believe that gives them (or their representatives) authority to audit your premises any time they like, with or without notice.
I could be wrong though, it's been a long while since I last read or accepted a Microsoft EULA.
