* Posts by blofse

65 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Oct 2010

Page:

Torvalds turns to Sir Mix-A-Lot for Linux versioning debate

blofse
Linux

What an arse. Boom boom.

WORLD CUP TRAUMA? Just Streaming Stick a Roku in it

blofse

Re: Me too

Agreed. Android stick + normal apps (=great) + android games support (=really cool) + XBMC (=ultimate).

Shame 4oD doesn't work for Android but xbmc plugins project free tv + 1channel +mashup fix this, without adverts.

Beat that!*

*Just make sure you get a stick with an aerial, my JUSTOP K9 (or MK809) had to basically be taken out of it's case and dangled down out from the tv to get the WiFi to work properly... I would go for the more recent versions of the stick and use a nice ROM like NeoMode.

'World’s dumbest' suspect collared in Facebook sting

blofse

I saw this story ages ago...

...on Mr T's World's Craziest Fools. So I am confused - is this another man who has done the same, was the MrT version made up or (most likely) is this re-hashed news?

MIT boffins build 36 core processor with data-traffic smarts

blofse

My CPU is...

...a neural networking processor, a learning computer.

In this case, I am sure you could modify the router to choose the routes depending on synapse weight, then the decision at to which CPU could be done depending on how often that type of command comes through the CPU.

What the use of that would be I have no idea!

Happy Birthday Tetris: It's flipping 30

blofse

I am not sure anyone remembers...

..Tetrinet!

This was released at the same time I was at my UK college, and was responsible for my very first search on google, in 1999. I needed to download the .exe file and google was much better than AltaVista at getting specific file names.

Anyway, Tetrinet was great against six players on local lan - and the game mechanics was the same as normal, however as you cleared certain squares you got certain powerups. These could be distributed for each one of the other players - which meant you and your good friends could gang up on the guy you 'hate'.

It was amazing fun, and I have not really played a multiplayer version like it since.

But then that died and we then all started playing drug wars, which is another game I miss!

My friend an I also enjoy playing the Atari Arcade version of tetris - which gets stupidly hard without a decent controller. We used to drink while playing and basically gave up after a couple of hours because of a lack of ability to play. Fun times!

Ancient telly, check. Sonos sound system, check. OMG WOAH

blofse

Thanks for the post - makes sense.

Sonos pricing structure still does not however, I will stick with floor standing speakers for now :-)

blofse

I'm obviously being dumb and as I don't have any Sonos components - do you need any other components for the Playbar to work or can you just buy this on it's own?

I think for the £600 price tag, you can do a lot better in terms of what kit you get for your money...

Soundbars are generally inferior to proper speaker systems and, if you can put up with not having connected WiFi and various other 'toys' on top, then you may as well ignore Sonos. Sorry, just my opinion for over priced WiFi lego bricks!

Universal Music mulls 'all you can eat' buffet of song downloads

blofse

Er, have a missed something? Is this missing 'downloadable service' not Google Music?

Google convinced me to convert and now I love the service. I also love the album download option when running a song track radio and I find something new and exciting.

There is a problem with specific companies creating their own stream services - fragmentation. As a customer, I only want to pay one fee a month for all the music I want. So if every record company creates their own tool, then no one will want to subscribe as they are already subscribing to something else. This is the same with film streaming, or any other type of streaming service - customers want one subscription to rule them all.

So how long will it be before someone creates a paid streaming service aggregator?

*awaits sky to do this, charging £40 a month like normal*. Please someone else do it before Sky gets the monopoly on it!

Devs SLAM UK.gov's JavaScript-astic, 'shoddy' security education website

blofse

The cynic in me thinks this is just because they want to censor the internet.

By 'advertising' that the web is insecure and you should be more savvy, it makes filtering easier to swallow. We have had months of media about cyber stalking, bullying and paedophilia and this is the next step toward acceptance.

It's all a lovely organised ecosystem of information control and censorship don't you think?

It's funny how the system works. Global warming (as another example of a government hot topic for manipulation) has moved into a strange state at the moment - it's now barely mentioned, it's just implied. I have not seen many news articles blaming the 'extreme' weather on global warming, and yet a year ago that's exactly what they did and ten years ago it was bad to even mention the idea!

Happy Friday everyone!

Google Glassholes, GET OFF our ROADS, thunder lawmakers in seven US states

blofse

Thinking about it, you will probably be wearing your google glasses while being driven in your google driven car, on the way to work for google while searching on google about google.

G+/-, all hail!

(In other words, you wont be driving your car anyway, so you can be distracted).

blofse

I'm awaiting the first person to get pulled over wearing normal funky glasses as opposed to actually wearing google glasses.

How can a policeman tell from a small distance away?

We see ya, Ouya, you tasty Android games console gear

blofse

Everyone seems to have missed a little point

... and that is you can play emulated games from the MD, SNES, PSX, NeoGeo, N64 etc.

With a back catalogue of retro games and the occasional new one with the media centre attached - surely it is worth the £100 just to have a decent device which can play all your old carts and cds?

'Copyrighted' Java APIs deserve same protection as HARRY POTTER, Oracle tells court

blofse

I think you may have missed my point and slight sarcasm, the key word was interface :-)

blofse

Oracle, please don't make people leave Java, as that is my main source of employment!

But seriously, using this argument by Oracle, you could say that all shop facades could be copyrighted. Sure, they all sell different products and have different staff, but they all have windows and doors as an INTERFACE to the outside world and the inside shop.

So basically Oracle wants to copyright an open interface? So does that mean that anything that uses the entityManager in Java could be claimed to be infringing Oracles copyright? I hope not!

Taking the piss indeed.

Beam me up? Not in the life of this universe

blofse
Happy

Re: To teleport, in theory..

Thanks for your comment. Thing is, all the points made in the original post are my own conclusions and I was not aware of the names of published/accepted theories, but I suspected there would be ones out there already :-)

Now, if you don't believe time exists then that is where things get interesting and I agree with the term 'instantaneous snapshot'. I do believe time is not a time line in the common sense but it is a series of individual snapshots of the universe, and the time line as we know it (i.e. the sequence) is a series of bonded snapshots (not too far off a single negative image in a film, except n dimensional, like the human brain). I believe everything in the universe exists at the same time, and the bonded snapshots are chosen on atomic conditioning, but are loosely random (chaos).

So, to stop time in my mind you would either have to travel faster than the speed of the universe, which in effect is faster than the smallest possible atomic movement (you would have to move so fast that no atom could move while transporting), or somehow pause everything else in the universe (i.e. stop the next atomic instance bonding). The former is most possible because the latter would possibly take an amount of energy greater than all of the energy in the universe, although in theory you could borrow that energy from the previous atomic instance.

I still have not sorted it out in my head what happens when you suddenly get plonked somewhere else in the universe though, because in theory the atomic particle structure that was there has to go somewhere (assuming you can't make something from nothing and that everything exists at the same time). The only thing I can think is that you have to be constructed from the particles that are already there and that the original space you were occupied gets converted to the atomic structure to where you are going too (duplex transport).

So maybe the amount of data in this report should double!

So, I think unless a new line of thinking is formed or a new science is found, something which realises how to travel in time and transport at the same time, transporting looks off the cards.

By the way, I was not assuming the transport would process you like a photocopier - 'blood in your legs will be spraying everywhere' - I was assuming it would be like terminator and you travel in a sphere. Except without the lightning. Possibly.....

blofse

Re: To teleport, in theory..

Well, that is if you believe infinity exists and by my statement that the fact that the universe is not infinite implies that infinity does not exist. So in my head, you cannot create infinite numbers or universes.

blofse

To teleport, in theory..

..would you not need the ability to stop time?

I mean a person can't exist twice in the universe otherwise you have created something from nothing and that can't happen.

That is, if you believe the universe is finite, which I believe it is!

(ps. please translate my layman terms, please educate my ignorance :-) )

Scramjet X-51 finally goes to HYPER SPEED above Pacific

blofse

Re: X-51

I was referring to the fuel costs, which have to be lower thanks to this tech surely?

The missile is an accomplishment, I agree, it's just a shame it's primary use (or only use) would be for warfare.

The fuel tech I would hope would be sold to the rest of the world I would hope for general commercial and public use.

blofse
Mushroom

Re: X-51

Great, another device to blow us all up faster, more accurately and cheaper than before!

Official: Sky to buy O2 and BE's home broadband product in £200m deal

blofse
Mushroom

Ahhh this is a good excuse...

... to move to a smaller ISP which does not block any websites!

Good news, probably worse connection, but worth it for net neutrality!

Nuke for the destruction that Sky taking over will cause to O2's customer numbers! Bye bye, RIP a great connection for years... now to take the plunge to find another.

JBoss is juicy, but Vert.x could bring sexy back to Red Hat

blofse
Thumb Down

Re: How does rollout of openstack

That's what I thought, Jboss is a J2ee container and ec2/openstack are vm's like you say...

so according to Gavin Clarke, you can just bung an ear onto any web-server, lets say Apache and it will know what to do (implied by this report)!

Whoops. Wrong. Your fired!

I suggest deleting this report otherwise it may create a bunch of student ignoramuses, it's simply misinformation!

Blizzard blasts 'frivolous' security lawsuit

blofse

for the sake of....

...something for $6 or £9, why shell out so much money for a law case? It does not make economic sense!

I imagine the judge to say:

"....ok Benjamin, you win. Here is you $6 and a bill from your lawyers for $10,000. Well done you looser."

Surface more profitable than iPad

blofse
Thumb Up

Surface more profitable than iPad

Great! Now all they have to do is actually sell one...

Google swims with the fishes

blofse

The use of this is?

So oil barons can find where to next dig? So we can quickly find where to get endangered species?

Quite cool, but I really cannot see the use of the cost of this one...?

Oracle woos open sourcers with free Java web framework

blofse

Are they going to provide tools to bring across our app's from Seam or Spring?

Otherwise, only new projects need to consider this. Which is probably much, much smaller than currently running projects.

Saudi oil giant seals off network after mystery malware attack

blofse

Shut down network...

"The state-owned firm said the computer security incident is having no effect on oil production."

... so do they need to turn the computer system back on then?

Boffins say Vodka Red Bulls make you sensible

blofse
FAIL

Booze and caffeine cocktails reduce likelihood of risk-taking behaviour

... er isn't boozing and drinking caffeine itself a risk-taking behaviour?

Is this statement not an oxymoron?

Fail.

Microsoft reveals Windows RT OEMs

blofse
Angel

Re: Slavish Copy

Did apple not copy star trek though? They have rounded corners and 'pads' the same sort of size. Or even Firefly, they had quite big pads which were used with finger swiping?

Surprised the "Gene Roddenberry"* foundation has not got involved in the suing slang match....

*made up. Possibly.

BeBook outs Kindle-beating e-book reader

blofse

A bit like this report....

...surprisingly small!

(and this msg)

Facebook touts gambling to 'responsible' Brits

blofse

"vulnerable people"

... er isn't anyone who gambles essentially vulnerable as you will loose over time?

and how will this effect the arcade market - this could be (a step toward) the final demise of amusements around the country...

In any case - I am glad I am no longer on facebook!

Japanese fanboi builds FrankenPhone from 'bits of iPhone 5'

blofse

It is true and I do agree with your points.

I think this was more a ill placed protest as the main front page of the reg was plastered with apple related stories. But this is nothing new for the reg, they used to do that with M$. Now it's apple. Next it will be someone else I dislike.

So I should probably just quit my jibber-jabber and stop verging on trolling! If nothing nice to say then don't say it I guess..

Santander's banking website craps out

blofse
FAIL

Nice careful wording

"We are aware that an isolated group of personal banking customers had intermittent problems accessing Online Banking for a short time earlier today. We are sorry for any inconvenience this caused and we can confirm that this has been resolved"

In other (exaggerated) words:

We have been told by all of our users that a very small group of a small section of users had very rare problems with a small section of our website which only shows itself for a very short period and in rare occasions when the moon is blue and the earth is at 200degress and the solar system has collapsed, for a very small period of time.

Fail. Tell us you have been hacked, go on! I am moving mortgages and paying huge sums of money out of my account - you have picked a great time :-)

Microsoft 'didn't notice' it had removed Browser Choice for 17 months

blofse

Should apple not get the same treatment...

...as they have monopolised every techy review site for the last two years!

:-)

Tosh handed $87 MILLION fine in LCD price fixing case

blofse

Re: How...

Yes! I bought a LED tv in 2007 for a whopping 1.6k, so if this was fixed, can I get a refund of the difference? (Something like 1.2k's worth...)?

European Parliament prepares for crucial ACTA vote

blofse
Thumb Down

This will probably now get outvoted as they have managed to do something much worst, start censoring the web (which satisfies those lobbyist (such as the BPA)).

In theory, there is no need to deal with this expensive legislation any-more.

At least, that's what I hope they think. But then it is a sensible approach, so probably they wont :-(

Study fingers humans for ocean heat rise

blofse
FAIL

“Although we performed a series of tests to account for the impact of various uncertainties, we found no evidence that simultaneous warming of the upper layers of all seven seas can be explained by natural climate variability alone. Humans have played a dominant role,”

But what about unknown unknowns? Surely there is a billion of those, due to human ignorance and arrogance. E.g. Sun radiation, moon cycles (i.e. 19 solar years), astoriods etc etc and they are just solar, what about earth tectonic plate movement etc?

Does this guy think he has studied everything (in the universe) and he has enough evidence over billions of years (to get a fair stat)? I don't think so IMO!

“a dozen different models used to project climate change”, making it “the most comprehensive study of changes in ocean heat content to date.”

But what if they are all wrong? :-)

What proof do we have that they are accurate for so a period of a million years?

Sorry, I don't like all of these conflicting reports coming out - they are just conflicting global warming pandering and propaganda. Believe what YOU want to believe,,,

Prime Minister faces grilling at Leveson Inquiry

blofse
Thumb Down

God I hate these enquires.

Generally nothing happens after any of them except a scapegoat is found and slaughtered while all those who were actually involved or were responsible get away with it and the politicians promise they had nothing to do with it.

Politicians and the people involved should have a special exception when giving answers - they use a lie detector so we know they are not supporting perjury. This should only apply to cases where public interest is high and everyone votes to do this. At least that way, I feel we would have some proper justice.

Bah

Hard disk drive prices quick to rise, slow to fall

blofse
Pirate

It will be interesting to see a graph of sales of hard drives when they start properly blocking torrent sites (other than just one), I bet sales will plummet as people have nothing to fill their 2TB hd's with (as it would cost a fortune on iTunes to fill)....

So in other words, they are shooting themselves in the foot by not taking as much profit right now (which you can do if you lower your prices you know!)

Governments may hit social networks with cyber attacks

blofse

I thought the arab spring WAS caused by the US government. In fact I thought all the riots were caused by them - otherwise why would we have a brand name 'Arab Spring'?

UK's '£1.2bn software pirates' mostly 'blokes under 34'

blofse
Linux

"BSA president and CEO Robert Honeywell reckoned: "Governments must take steps to modernise their IP laws and expand enforcement efforts to ensure that those who pirate software face real consequences."

Yes - by going open source!

Study reveals high price of porn addiction

blofse

I wonder if we are going to see more and more studies like this over the next year or so, with a miss-mash of information (to confuse), which then results in a government official quoting these reports as a way to argue about blocking web sites or white listing porn?

That is the government way after all!

But I hope not! I like porn! It keeps me from going ape-like mental when I see women (being single and all)....

HP loses MoD payroll and pensions deal to CSC

blofse
FAIL

pensions deal to CSC

Oh good, looks like no one will get paid then!

CSC are frigging useless from my experience. They make 100's of obvious mistakes and then charge you, the company (who is paying for their service) for that. I swear that was their business model - keep within SLA's but go over the SLA 90% of the time because it means more profit.

Good luck to them, guess they don't want to pay civil servants in normal ways anymore.... time to find a new social club ;-)

Ofcom puts UK VoD regulator up for review

blofse
WTF?

Er - obviously I am missing something

But if the internet is near impossible to regulate, what is this organisation actually doing?

I don't seem to see any consistency with VoD or IPTV (even the names are not regulated) - so it seems to be there is no regulation.

So are they doing anything or have I missed something?

Colorfly Pocket Hi-Fi C4

blofse

minidisk anyone?

Can pick them up cheap off ebay - much cheaper than this device and they are of equal quality and if you have many disks - equal capacity.

No?

Olympics volunteers urged not to blab online

blofse
Facepalm

Mixed messages from the report?

So they say they want people to be careful when talking to media etc and they don't want to post any details online BUT they have said '...they would not be forced to do so'. Surely this is a oxymoron?

If someone does blab then the uk gov might go after them, but if they have been advised they CAN blab then how can anything happen later on to that person?

Just make them sign a security clearance form and be done with it. Although this might be at cost, it can be reduced by having someone on-site who can process the forms.

As for cost and cynicalism, I think people have a right to this view. We are going to have to go through mega amounts of adverts mentioning the Olympics 24/7 and we are going to get sick of it, not to mention the retarded mascots which will be everywhere, and that's before the opening ceremony where borris falls over setting fire to his hair....

It's going to be embarrassing and enormously costly to the tax payer and very profitable for the few. It's the contradiction that every government states the Olympics none-profitable and makes a massive loss and yet someone has made a massive amount of money thanks to VISA and other firms who have monopolistic opportunity during the Olympics....

I don't want it but I had no vote. I have a right to moan due to this fact alone!

Happy birthday, Apple QuickTime

blofse
Facepalm

Man I hated using quicktime in the past. It was bloatware yes, and in the really old days it used to be about 25meg, which when you had your 500mb disk that was fairly huge.....

It was a toss-up between this and realMedia (realmedia had 1000 options you had to disable to stop it connecting to the web if you remember), so it was a really dark time for media.

realMedia also became bloatware fairly quickly.... but I always kept my old version (think it was real5 or something).

But thankfully everything was solved when winamp allowed you to play video and now obviously we have vnc or mediaPlayerClassic if you have to use windows.

Anyway - why do we have a report about this piece of software alone? It would of been good to have the entire story involving all the companies (real, winamp, windows media player etc) and comparing players. Instead we have something which feels like the work of mac fan boys saying Apple made video first....

No?

Using virtual particles to get real random numbers

blofse

My thought about this - true randomness cannot exist if space is finite, as space itself (and everything in it) could be considered a constant. I.e. everything and nothing exist at the same time (matter and anti-matter and there is no concept of time other than reference points, because everything exists at the same time) and everything is equal. So I reckon there is no point bothering unless you can create a universe...

If space is non-fininite (I am not sure infinity exists), that randomness is possible.

There - my own thought blurb which makes no sense. Does anyone have any thoughts on these comments?

Put down the Java manual

blofse
Stop

poorly written, but I thought quite good..

(not saying I am brilliant at English language structure (this for example) but I think I have a right to point out that this report needs smoothing over!)

anyway, continuing from the header.

... and I have been thinking of the idea of the death of Java for a while. Not since Oracle took over but only recently with all the companies bitching patents at each other, with Java being a core part of many physical (none-java) objects and software it's likely that because of the patent war we could all loose out (due to cost of using it or getting sued - THANKS ORACLE!)

So is C# the answer? I hope not, I hate M$s way of thinking a lot of the time purely because it always contradicts itself and I have OCD of consistency in code.

But as one poster put - 3 days and you can learn the syntax of a new language, 3 months and you should be confident, especially if your in industry as your 'life' depends on it.

So while there is demand, stick in that field until it starts to dwindle. While there is demand, you may as well keep switching jobs every couple of years until things start to dry up. You should of made many pay rises to keep you happy, then if there are less/no more jobs in that field then stick with what you have for as long as you can until the project dies, then just update your CV with the new language you have learnt in that less-intense time of the project and move on....

At least that's the way I have planned it.

IMO, specialist jobs are good/great money but are in poor/less locations so I would not advise to jump to that without serious consideration. You could end up at a dead end where for your next job they ask what have you been doing, then you state X, which they have never heard of and chuck your CV in the bin. So nice idea, but I would be a bit cautious... but if it's a custom open source JVM then I think your probably in an even better place... maybe,... how long is my string method?

Ministers kill off failed £12.7bn NHS IT revamp

blofse
FAIL

"We need to move on from a top down approach and instead provide information systems driven by local decision-making."

Err, wont this be worse if you have a bunch of local managers with no/little IT experience deciding contracts to small contractors/suppliers? Wont this lead to many small expensive problems rather than one big expensive problem?

Surely it should be contractually defined by small group of IT people (and staff, no managers except for the cost) for the whole of the NHS then outsourced to a local software warehouse with well defined scope and requirements? No? Am I in a dream world?

Onto the next project failure at huge expense to the public....

...on a side note, is it not true that conservatives always create white elephant projects that last about 10 years and go tits up with one of the future governments, but not before a few people have made a huge sum of money...?

Page: