Posts by Arkasha
248 posts • joined Wednesday 9th September 2009 13:05 GMT
Awesome
I actually think I have tache envy and I don't even like taches.
Rosy specs
No, it really was smooooth with the glide patch on my machine. Only trouble was I moved to Mexico 3 months after getting the game and my computer (and everything else I owned) went "missing" in Mexican customs when I had it shipped over so I never got to play it again. *sniff*
Posted in Twelve... classic 1980s 8-bit micros
CPC6128 for me
with colour screen. Couldn't be doing with all that tape malarky. I got all the gadgets too like lightpen, mouse, and the CD ROM reader thingy that (I think) Codemasters produced.
I modded it a lot too with switches to for hard reset, enabled/disable the ROM banks and I even got a 5MB hard disk running on it.
Finally, I tried to get a Z80H (8MHz!) to work in it but fried something and it never worked again :-(
ID Ten Tee?
@AC
Wowfood may well have been wrong and you are perfectly entitled to correct him/her, but do you have to be such an arse about it? Seriously?
And if you're going to be an arse, at least be brave enough to put your name to it.
Posted in Life on Mars found – in 1976
Or to mangle some dead dude's quote
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistical analysis.
It does smack a bit of wanting to find a particular answer and finding a way to arrive at that answer. You could probably apply the same techniques to stock market data and prove the LSE is sentient.
I use this
Still getting used to it but it is great on a train. You can turn off the predictive bit and just use the mobile connection part which automagically reactivates the connection should it drop.
It's kind of like using SSH with screen but without having to reattach to the screen session after logging in again.
Local echo on SSH is okay but doesn't work so well with things like vim. Also, Mosh never predicts an Enter keystroke.
Could have done with this 20 years ago when I was trying to do remote support over a modem on international phone lines to systems in Saudi Arabia... 300 baud and constant drops didn't make for quick ticket resolution!
I agree with most of this
I work for a small privately owned company that's been growing itself organically for the past 10 years. We've never had VC or bank funding and have never made a loss. 90% of profits have been ploughed back in to growth and the other 10% kept in the bank to build a healthy safety net.
It's really tough because you are constantly having to do the same or more than your competitors with next to no money. It can be difficult when you see your competitors splashing out big bucks on expensive kit or premises, etc. but then we're still in business and most of them have folded.
We really focus on giving our customers the best support and professional services we can and pride ourselves on being responsive and flexible.
Episodes
Valve tried episodic gaming with Half-Life 2. I liked the idea.
Re: So....
This could have been written by a software company at the behest of an intelligence agency. There are plenty of software companies founded by ex-Mossad/CIA/NSA/etc staffers who could be tapped up for this kind of work.
Re: Re: Over to you
I read the claims. They are patenting a multi-touch capacitive overlay for a display device along with the DSP algorithms, methods and computing hardware to process the raw data from said overlay. In short: a multi-touch screen as found on hundreds of different devices.
It makes me laugh: one of the claims is an Analogue to Digital Converter. Another relates to DSP techniques that I was taught in university 20 years ago.
Oh, and here's some prior art for you:
http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1266588/files/StumpeMar77.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8lCetZ_57g
http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/w/Wellner:Pierre.html
Re: Re: Do people *really* not go and read these things?
John: you've hit the nail right on the head there. The patent offices just don't care if what they grant is novel and non-obvious or not. They've got their money, justified their existence and it's someone else's job to figure out if it's valid or not. There's also no comeback on the patent offices if patents are consistently proved to be invalid, and there's no oversight of what is essentially a monopoly business.
I also confidently expect that in the next 10 years we'll see evidence and possibly a conviction or two for bribes taken by USPTO staff from companies such as Google and Apple in order to lubricate the passage of patents.
Posted in O2 to balance work, life on smartphones
If this goes down to the level of separate billing for work and personal calls then it'll be a perfect. No more redacting lines of the bill before sending it in to claim back on expenses.
Re: quick....
seriously? you may not see what's so bad about Google deliberately bypassing a user's privacy wishes but I'm pretty certain pretty much everyone else won't agree with you.
Just as well I use neither IE or Safari.
@Peter2
Oh really? What about Frank Abagnale Jr then?
I know of one person who was given a choice of being charged or working as a security consultant. He's now a very respected member of the security world and gives many lectures and talks on the subject of network security. He did it because "he could" and because he had nothing better to do. There wasn't any malicious intent and he's one of the most trustworthy people I know.
As he put it: "would you rather your security was designed by someone who knew the theory of security or the practice?" Using people who've been caught in the act is more common than you'd imagine and has to be the ultimate definition of rehabilitation.
Re: Re: Err...
Nope: it still looks like Lisa Simpson giving a BJ. I'm surprised Matt Groening hasn't sued yet.
Re: Jeez
It's not the responsibility of a judge to look for evidence of prior art. It is the responsibility of the lawyers to present that evidence for the judge to consider in his verdict.
Posted in Canonical kicks Kubuntu to the kerb
So...
One Unity hater says "Most users want to USE their PC, not play with it" and another says it "[doesn't] allow users any customizations!" This just goes to show that you can't please everyone and that if Canonical had left the interface as-is and not introduced Unity you'd have a whole set of people moaning about how dated and tired it looks and why couldn't they be brave like MS are being with Win8 and do something different.
On the point of not allowing customizations, if I were introducing something new I would allow as little customization as possible because, by definition, things are going to change radically over releases and letting people dick about with the set up creates all sorts of possibilities for upgrade snafus. Furthermore, you don't want to be deluged with the "I fiddled with this and it broke" types of bugs that drown out the real bugs in the core components.
Like I've said several times now: if you don't like Unity then switch to Ubuntu Classic or install something else.
Posted in Canonical kicks Kubuntu to the kerb
@Paul
Mostly good points, however I haven't found anyone transitioning from Gnome 2 to Unity who has taken more than a couple of days to get used to it.
There are some rough edges (as I said: it is young) but nothing that won't be fixed or can't be teamed. I don't like the scrollbars for instance but it took about 30 seconds to find out how to switch them back. And if you really don't like Unity it's simple to switch back to Ubuntu classic.
What Unity does give you is an easy to use clean looking interface with very little clutter and screen real estate requirements. If you mostly use sub-14" screen laptops then that's a real bonus. Plus it stops Linux displays looking like they were drawn in crayons by a 5 year old. Something KDE, Gnome2, et al spectacularly failed to do. The first thing my dad said when he used my laptop with Ubuntu 10 on it was how much it reminded him of WinNT.
If you don't like change then don't use it - there are plenty of other distros out there with more conventional interfaces - but change and experimentation is exactly how new and interesting technologies arise. Personally I'd prefer to be looking forward rather than looking back.
Posted in Canonical kicks Kubuntu to the kerb
Disaster?
Unity does what Unity is supposed to do and does it well. It's young so there is room for improvement of course by adding features but so far it has proven as stable on all the machines I run it on as any other window manager.
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it a disaster. Taking that attitude you could say Linux is a disaster because some people prefer Windows or OSX.
Thank you Ian Davies
for giving me such a good Friday laugh. I especially liked the irony in the statement "...every sloppy hack with an axe to grind or a point to score who can't be bothered to do any research."
I'm sure your iKnighthood is in the post.
MAC Address?
1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino isn't it?
Having demonstrated my awesome IT knowledge I'll be applying for the job then...
@Eagles
Personally I think I wouldn't be too embarrassed if I rocked up next to an orbiting Eagle in the Liberator. That was a damn cool ship.
I was going to have a pint or two anyways, but I guess I have an excuse for an extra one
Was the tech guy an Indian called Yama Tough by any chance?
RE: Glad to see
I tink You shoUld"ve used a : and not a - betWEen 'applies' and 'any',,,
British Bulldog spirit?
Apple tip toe around suing everyone BUT Google even though Google is the one they want. BT just go right for the jugular... either that or BT have lost the will to live and are trying to commit suicide.
And what are they doing...
about the huge jump in volume for ad breaks? I'll be the first to admit I don't watch much TV but when I do I find it highly annoying that when the ad breaks come on the volume suddenly goes really loud on some channels until the ads finish (Dave, I'm looking at you.) I swear I read somewhere doing that was illegal.
According to a book on 3D graphics I had at Uni many moons ago (can't remember the title), the human eye is capable of discerning detail down to about 8,000 dpi.
Posted in CERN: 'New physics starts now'
RE: bootnote
I think you did a great job of explaining it in lay terms. Much better than most other publications where they either give one sentence explanations that tell you nothing, or über-explanations that leave you feeling like your head will explode.
So presumably, no cache means it doesn't work. I never have a cache turned on. It generally doesn't bother me if a page loads in 1 second or 10.
"techies sat in a corner"
Really smart techies would have arranged to be on holiday that day, leaving the most junior techie on his own to hold the fort. It's a newb-techie right-of-passage thing.
@macrorodent
so far I haven't found it on my phone: HTC Desire originally from O2 UK.
Apple first?
So I was just imaging MS Voice Command on my XDA back in 2000?
I'm sure there were others before that even.
If Cameron wants a British Apple...
he should also make sure first refusal for all IP generated by UK universities goes to UK companies.
seriously?
So you have one PC with their software on it and store copies of all your music elsewhere. This will never work as there's too many ways to circumvent the checks.
if I must...
Noob and Newb are two entirely different things: http://urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Noobs%20vs.%20Newbs&defid=4307260
(Sorry: not normally a pendant but I've had a long day and the cat wasn't nearby to kick.)
when do terrorists bomb an underground train in MW3?
I remember them using a train to escape the SAS and said train being derailed by hitting one of the trucks driven by the SAS... don't remember it getting bombed though.
If Vaz et al can't even get the plot line right, how much do you want to bet they've never even seen the game?
Didn't the Xindi try this already and it ended badly for Florida, or am I getting Star Trek and reality mixed up again?
Seriously though, this could end badly in so many ways if the wrong people were in control. You wouldn't want the downlinks anywhere near populated areas, air routes, bird migration routes, etc. Presumably as well, the downlink stations would need to be in the equatorial region which doesn't leave too many bits of land in stable countries to choose from.
BF3 is going nowhere near my machine until EA get rid of that piece of crappy spyware you have to install with it.
Yes, done before
My company did a research piece on Twitter Mining during the Swine Flu epidemic. We were looking at tracking the spread across the world as well as people's sentiments towards various things like vaccination, media reporting of it, government response, etc.
We also applied the same techniques to the UK general election as well as the live debate between Brown, Clegg and Cameron.
Currently several pharma companies are using the service for research purposes.
Posted in China to take women to heaven and back
Am I the only one
to have read that as "two female talkonauts"? If they're anything like my wife I hope they have a good mobile plan as the roaming charges from space could be astronomical!
I've also heard
that if you shake your Kindle vigorously for a few minutes all the data compresses down to the bottom and you can fit even more books on it.
Posted in Boffins whip up SELF-WIRING chip
hmmm
I got told off by my GCSE computing teacher for writing some self-modifying Z80 assembly code. Now you're telling me I can have self-modifying hardware to run my self-modifying code on too?! Cool!
Posted in Virus infects killer US air drone fleet
Firewalled?
I'd hope by "isolated" they mean no physical connection, otherwise all bets are off. One slip on the firewall and it'll get out.
wow
A lawyer that speaks the truth. Is his name really Fletcher Reede?
I remember Tomorrow's World reporting on such a pill in the late 80's. I wonder what happened to that?
I reckon this is HTC hedging their bets in case Android goes tits up because of all the court cases going on.
What are you on about?
ITV 1 is Terrestrial Channel of the Year!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14700111
Oh dear...
Posted in Chinese bloke gets eel lodged up todger
Now that the title is optional I'm going to use it all the time
Is this one of those "How *exactly* did you get the hoover stuck there?" A&E stories??
It seems
what is happening is this:
* a user logs in using a valid username/password
* the username/password is authenticated against the LDAP server which says yay or nay
* then, the user requests access to some other resource that requires LDAP authentication
* at this point OSX Lion doesn't bother requesting that the LDAP server authenticate the credentials given.
This means anything with client-side LDAP authentication is wide open. As OpenLDAP server by default allows at least read only access to most of the tree that probably means most of the directory is available for perusing... but then any sysadmin worth their salt should have locked down access to the directory.
