Silverlight

"Silverlight is widely used as an alternative to Flash"

Not really:

http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cp-silverlight/all/all

R

I really believe that the public outrage for this suicide is pointing to the wrong person.

A civil servant has several duties, the first among them is to withhold the law.

Because of that, Mrs. Ortiz could not turn a blind eye to the acts of Mr. Swartz and let them slip under the radar.

The real problem, in my opinion, is that the law needs several adjustments to be really useful in protecting intellectual property while still allowing access to it.

So, if the Americans really are enraged by this sad story, please do something concrete.

Call, write or email your representatives and pressure them to change the law.

Stop complaining while doing nothing.

R

Not the first, I think

The first thing to note is that America != USA

So, with that in mind, there are several Windows XP in aboriginal languages, including Quechua (Bolivia) and Mapundungún (or Mapuzungún).

https://www.microsoft.com/chile/mapuzugun/

R

Somtehing worst than greasy fingers...

Is when the cleaning staff, well, "cleans" my desktop monitor.

They use a... I don't know what it is, would say rag, sponge, paper towel, really don't know.... with some kind of liquid.

The next morning I usually spend at least fifteen minutes getting the opaque, nasty and disgusting residue from the screen.

My solution: put a letter-sized warning on the screen, kept in place with scotch-tape.

R

Is also available

In Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

This email warning will surely make a great job of lifting staff moral.

R

Pen and paper have a great lot of advantages over electronic voting systems:

- cheap: incredibly cheap.

- Does not need technical personnel

- Is portable. You don't need to wire remote locations just for the elections.

- The ballot boxes are usually transparent or with big windows, which make vote stuffing hard

- political parties and common citizens alike can watch the vote-counting procedure

Last week here in Chile was a big election. Each city elected their mayor for the next four years.

And there are several cities where the process has been objected.

Solution: have a manual counting of ballots.

The confront that account with the data held by the officers in charge, the voting local officers and the political parties officers present in each voting local, who in almost all the cases took pictures of the voting totals published in each local and of each voting station, in addition to their own manual counts.

Is a simple process, with many observation points.

True, is boring and sometimes just plainly disappointing. Especially if, as is my case, in charge of a voting station for 9th time.

But, as your Winston Churchill said:

"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

But for that sentence to be true, a very secure and tamper proof system is needed.

R

distance

What have always baffled me is the distance.

If you put a big laser in space, which as pointed in the article, is a major engineering challenge, would it be useful?

Doesn't the inverse square law applies to the laser beam?

At a distance of, say, 2000 kilometers, for a low earth orbiting satellite, you need a lot of power to inflict damage.

And that is assuming the target is right below the satellite. Add to that the atmosphere.

And to that, add the precision of the mechanism to keep the beam on target... mmm.

Nope, laser beams orbiting the earth are, in my opinion, worthless as weapons.

"Google believes that voters have a right to use the internet to freely express their opinions about candidates for political office, as a form of full exercise of democracy, especially during electoral campaigns."

That's a funny one.

I'd like to see Google try the same in China

R

I think it would be nice to include a link to the source, to check the data for ourselves.

http://www.webfoundation.org/

http://thewebindex.org/

R

He obviously doesn't have a medical degree nor medical training or biological knowledge.

Of course, a lot of illnesses can be deduced from watching a set of data and the "mental process" of a doctor is very akin to that of an "expert system".

But medicine is much more than prescribing drugs or handing treatments.

There is a no minor part of doctor - patient relationship.

There are a lot of problems that are more psychological than physical, yet still produce detectable symptoms that if observed just by themselves would yield a completely different diagnostic.

Speaking of MDs as "voodoo doctors" shows not only ignorance, but a lot of petulance.

https://www.xkcd.com/793/

R

Apple was accused of something similar, not exactly the same, but similar.

Will they be suing Samsung?

R

Maybe Google is going for the same strategy used by Teddy Roosevelt ar the beggining of 20th century: speak softly and carry a big stick.

R

Surprised that no one has mentioned "Greek fire"

R

RIP

I read "Martian Chronicles" when I was about 7 or 8... can't remember for sure.

But it contained two stories that gave me a perspective that for a child were astonishing: "August 2026: There will come soft rains" and "April 2026: The long years".

They both talked about the fast and brief time that is human live, how we can be survived by our creations and the incredibly ridiculous that our problems can be when they are seen from that point of view.

"There will come soft rains" contains a very brief and powerful poem by Sara Teasdale, that gives its name to the story:

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

R.I.P. Mr Bradbury

Thank you

R

"and has signed a deal with Gree"

Sorry, but read that as "and has signed a deal with Greed"... and I think is more adequate.

R

What I really liked...

about this camera (or whatever this is) are the status lights .

I suppose they will work as well as a pedal powered wheelchair

R

https://xkcd.com/743/

It looks like and XB-70, just need a canard ...

"Apple told El Reg"??

That would be the second time in the last year that Apple spoke to El Reg, if my memory serves me well.

You must be doing something wrong.

R

"Nevertheless Google has implemented the tweaks and defended the move by saying that halting it at this stage would "confuse" the firm's userbase."

No, not confusing at all. A simple text saying something along the lines of: "We can't implement our new policies on Europe until they adhere to EC law".

Of course, that would make the users think that Google may not be the technological knight-in-shiny-armor they pretend to be, so this is just wishful thinking.

R

I don't see LibreOffice passing the approbation process necessary to be accepted in Apple's appstore.

Apple will argument that LibreOffice provides functionality already existent, that they use too much battery or something like that in order to avoid people jumping from their own payed apps to free ones.

R

"and the speed of the raid raised questions about Apple’s relationship with the local police."

Well, if you check the presentation Jobs gave to the Cupertino city council last june, you will see that he was pretty much loved by local authorities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtuz5OmOh_M

R

"Filling punters' pockets before Apple can"??

May be this should be written as: "Emptying punters' pockets before Apple can"

R

cultural differences

In this part of the world (South America), or at least the Spanish speaking part of it, some of the words we use to describe men with "big balls" are not intended to flattering.

In Chile: "huevón" or with another spelling "güevón".

In Argentina, Uruguay: "boludo".

I'm sure there are other countries with some local equivalency.

Both cases have the same meaning: someone stupid, lacking understanding, an imbecile.

I believe the closest word in English slang would be "moron".

So if here someone hanged a plastic set of testicles to a bumper, or any other place, it would be recognized at least as a self derogatory statement... and most possibly, as a clear indication of the mind set of the owner.

R

as Larry Niven said..

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

Larry Niven

There was another quote, which I can't remember nor found, it went something like: " the universe is filled with the remains of civilizations that made the logical, economical decision of not going into space... discovered by those who made the insane one."

But as I said, can't remember who said it.

R

(untitled)

"The Wall Street Journal has joined the Great iPhone 5 Rumour Fest"

... and you want to say that El Reg was first on that bandwagon?

R

earthlight

By Arthur C. Clarke (first published in 1955, according to wikipedia).

In this book, great deposits of valuable minerals are found inside our Moon, but as they are too deep for a mining operation, it is believed that no one can reach them.

Which of course, is wrong.

I can remember the exact quote, but it goes something like "Scientists should have a better imagination".

R

R&D

May be IBM "plays it safe" according to Wall Street creed, but they also have spent greats amounts of money on research, and sometimes that research is well beyond pure business.

This research have allowed IBM to get a lot of patents, that may be what helps them to go through another 100 years.

R