Posts by Ian Yates
768 posts • joined Tuesday 12th June 2007 08:17 GMT
Re: Really?
From someone who isn't a Firefox user, is this story true? Seems like a glaring omission to have been lacking this feature for so long...
Re: They'd be wise to let this go
But then people would start looking in to all of the other software patents (not just Apple's) and someone might realise that it's a completely stupid concept
Re: Do not want, and in fact this kind of thing is a fucking 'orrible idea.
They'll have blackboxes to record if/when the autopilot is engaged.
Updates
It doesn't help that the updater is such an annoying little **** and seems to always have a new to apply. If I accidentally accept it, I'm then bombarded with UAC prompts at random intervals.
At some point (for me, years ago) people choose to be blind to the constant nagging and just ignore it.
Re: The ability-
Once you plop...?
Re: Doesn't Nokia have a point?
A land-grab using a codec that they open sourced... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/20/google_confident_on_vp8_and_patents/
Apart from their name recorded as the original owners, what do they gain from owning the codec? Their plan seems to be about having a free universal standard, which I'm all for.
Re: Don't blame Apple for the price drop
"There is no fundamental difference between the above and any of those on-line gambing sites"
On an almost related level are the "analysts" who publish annual recommendations on hedge funds. I don't have it in electronic copy, but there was a brilliant article in Private Eye covering the success rate of these hedge fund recommendations in London over the last 5 years and how only one analyst has been able to make suggestions that would have given an investor a positive return.
Re: Doesn't Nokia have a point?
Except that Google has VP8 under a royalty-free public license in order to promote a single, universally supported format.
"Now everyone will use the single standard of H264 and H265 and the market won't be split by Google's proprietary bs....."
Quite right! We should all conform to the MPEG LA's "proprietary bs" (payign for licenses for products that encode or decode) and ignore the open alternative that was being offered for free to promote innovation and universal sharing of videos!
VP8 might not be perfect, but at least anyone would be free to provide support for it without worrying about a legal tap on the shoulder.
Re: The point of this is?
Err... Friday?
Re: Sounds like they asked for it...
On camera, natch
Posted in Joyent tools up for Amazon battle
DBaaS
So, what is a normal database, if it isn't a "service"?
(icon: it was that or troll)
Re: Really...?
I was under the impression that it wasn't actually in the Google Play store, users needed to download it specifically and install it, which would require them to have already turned off the secure sources option (a stupid thing to do, unless you're dev'ing or pirating).
I won't argue over the legality, that's for the courts to decide, but there is a major difference between a "harmless" piece of code sitting and ping a network before disappearing completely and physically depriving someone of a banknote (whatever the size).
@JDX: May be I'm a minority, but I fail to see how eugenics is unethical, assuming consenting participants. Murdering people who's genes you dislike is unethical, and only vaguely related to eugenics (as I assume that's what you were referring to). Or denying non-consenting people the right to breed. Both of those add a definite unethical action.
"Probably lots of malicious malware is written to be efficient too"
Which is exactly my point: malicious. His code likely went entirely unnoticed without leaving a trace of its presence, which is exactly what I meant by "intent".
Had it scrapped network traffic or garbled config files, yes, unethical; but it did (reportedly) none of those things.
<weak metaphor>
It's akin to seeing the front door of a house open and sticking your head in and shouting "hello, did you know your door was open?". Is that unethical?
</weak metaphor>
"Using insecure configurations and default passwords to gain access to remote devices and run code on them is unethical"
Garbage. How is it unethical? The ethics are in the intent and this guy had no malicious intent of any kind. He purposefully designed it to eat the fewest cycles possible.
Re: Death to the cloud
Talking generically: The cloud is a tool to be considered for each possible application. It doesn't have to be the only place you put your data, and it (third-party) certainly isn't right for critical/sensitive data, but it has many uses that make it convenient.
(icon: cloud)
Posted in Build a BONKERS gaming PC
Re: Bonkers? Yes... Overpriced? Most definitely
It was an interesting read, but I agree with blcollier.
I know it wasn't the point of the article, but if you still wanted the same "premium" parts and were willing to sacrifice a few % in performance, you'd probably save a huge amount of cash.
Annoyingly, though, the only i7 Extreme currently seems to be the 3970X mentioned... the next enthusiast chip down is the 3930K unlocked, but at over £300 saving for just 0.3GHz drop, you'd need to be doing something very specific (such as competitive overclocking) to care about the difference for the cost (IMHO).
Posted in Trip the fight fantastic
Re: A few comments
"The difference is the abstraction layer. A PC has to go through OS, Drivers, different communication protocols etc etc. The console is specially built with the same hardware every time. Effectively what takes 20 steps for a PC to do, may only take a console 5 because it has to work through fewer layers."
I'm sorry, but this shows a distinct misunderstanding of both PCs (which give low-level access to hardware) and modern consoles (that now have both an OS and HAL), especially since the hardware in consoles is getting closer to standard PC hardware (especially for XBoxes).
I'm not saying that they're equal, but it's probably closer to 3 and 2 layers for most things.
Posted in New nuke could POWER WORLD UNTIL 2083
The delays to the current increase in nukes (regardless of their type) is almost nothing to do with safety, it's the companies willing to invest in building them negotiating (demanding) a higher market energy price.
Unfortunately, since there's only one company left at the table, the conversation is mostly one-sided as we know we need a future energy supply and have almost no either viable options.
"Fine"? Find only goes in one direction without wrapping, and neither will limit to word boundaries. This is stuff so basic that it's been in every other MS product for more years than I care to remember.
And that's just ignoring that for something that does nothing more than display text, Notepad collapses in to a black hole the moment you try to load a file of any significant size (i.e., a log file).
Portable Notepad++ for me.
Re: Google+ over Facebook any day of the week.
"since you only see your friends on either of these services"
Minor point, but G+ is more like a cross between Facebook and Twitter, so you actually can "meet" lots of other people (unless you disable it).
I find G+ is better for following content creators (bloggers, photographers, videos, etc.) than Twitter, as they can directly share their content rather than just link to it.
Or a functional find/replace?
Re: Classic Shell?
I was coming on to say exactly that. My girlfriend's brand new laptop had Win8 and I put Classic Start (part of Classic Shell) on it.
Completely skips Metro (or whatever it's called) and works exactly as she'd expect it to.
Re: He has a point about privacy
Being caught, I think.
The Wifi sniffing one is different in that they were recording information being leaked to their current location, while this would be a product in a consumer's hand.
Take a look at the number of people who monitor and investigate exactly what an Android phone is doing. While they certainly could take surreptitious photos, someone would notice and the shitstorm would be epic.
Not a reason to not be vigilant, but I think it's fairly in the tin-foil hat end of the spectrum.
Re: No imagination
They're geeks, so surely YABT (Yet Another Big Telescope)?
Re: Because
Any citation for that? I cursory glance over the construction proposal shows that ARUP (UK) and another UK company have already been involved in the design and prototyping of the dome.
I can see Germany, Belgium, Spain, UK companies mentioned.
Seems like a good thing to me.
Re: @JohnSmith19
Sorry, but I call bullsh*t. The errosion of liberties is a gradual thing because it is not a concerted effort to hoodwink a whole population. The fact that we actual have more personal liberty than 100 years ago always seems to be forgotten (not that I would ever defend any attempt to attack the liberties we have).
No one becomes a politician to further some grand conspiracy; be that the death of democracy you speak of, or the immigration and social cleansing the older generation warn me about.
Governments are inept and pass laws almost by random; legislation is almost always a reaction to some current situation or change in public opinion. They are pandering to what they believe the masses want, in order to secure their next vote. Occassionally they'll create a short political play in which they propose something horrible in order to pass something less horrible, but if their schemes are planned more than six months in advance, I would be utterly shocked.
In this particular case, a bunch of doctors/physicians are lobbying to reduce public health problems from alcohol. Even if they have a hidden agenda, historically it has always been shown that reducing the public's alcohol intake produces a less docile populace, so what could they hope to gain from it?
Personally, I can't see any reason to be upset by the advertising ban. Some of the adverts are amusing, most are boring, and people drink what they want to drink anyway. I've never heard anyone order a "SoCo", no matter how (cringingly) hard Southern Comfort tried to push that phrase.
But if they touch my ale, they'll be hell to pay.
Re: Internet should be free from meddling by the media cartels
No one will benefit if the only people able to release music are those with a massive pot of money to fund the time and effort. It'll just be corporately-sponsored music acts everywhere.
Personally, I don't copy music because I can afford to pay for it. Although, I do have a personal limit of £5 for a typical album and will happily wait until they hit that mark.
I also equate the effort the artist put in to producing the album as the same that I might in to creating a piece of commercial software; if I did, I'd want to get paid when someone wants to make a copy for their own use.
Opera Turbo, then?
Re: Off-the-record company comment
Ha! "Tyranny"... whatever next. Perhaps they don't know what the word means? Bless.
Re: The Best That Can Be Said
Well, my view is that is creates consumer confusion unnecessarily ("Was that joebloggs.uk or joebloggs.co.uk?").
I can't understand why anyone would be so desparate for a second-level .uk domain. I'd rather see them create sensible second-levels (though I can't think of one right now) and continue "selling" the third-levels at additional cost.
Re: Bad enough
Not sure what you're getting at... Federated logins (SSO) shouldn't reduce security in real world terms.
Most people (anecdotal, but I'm sure you'll agree) use the same or similar passwords on everything, because they get bored of coming up with new ones (or just don't care, until something gets hijacked).
The question is, do you trust Jim's DIY Forums (yes, yes, "Fora" is the plural) to hold your password securely and deal with any external attack, or Google? Using an open standard (OAuth 2.0) means that they shouldn't be in a position to abuse the trust and access the accounts you link in, and they provide an easy 2FA from the bat.
I'd say that it improves most users' personal security by a large amount.
They had (and still have) Google OpenID and OAuth 2.0 endpoints (https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OpenID), which are something I've made heavy use of for a number of projects.
The news is about making available additional abilities and access of information to the user's G+ and other services.
If this allows reading private posts and filtering by circle, I can retire my homegrown G+ RSS feed at last!
Posted in SimCity Classic
Re: SimCopter
I really enjoyed SimCity, SimAnt, and SimTower.
I also had some of the other Sim games, but most felt pointless or flawed.
Re: Last nail in the coffin of Opera's irrevelance
Just because they use WebKit? Surely the same could be said for Chrome or Safari, then?
Posted in You can help fix patent laws … now!
Re: Prior use rights don't help much
That's where I'm confused... what situation could occur where someone has a valid claim on a novel patent but somebody else has prior use rights?
Is this just to cover dual-invention situations, where party B came up with the same idea after party A but before the patent was filed?
Re: <rant>An unused /24?!
I guess it's: ?"(
Re: @thegrouch (Internet Explorer?)
I know from work that IE8 does the same (pity me, please), so I assume that this isn't removed from IE9 and IE10?
Not personally a fan of Chrome, but the process thing isn't really a reason to not use.
François Marie Daudin called from 1803* where he came up with the genus name.
How can anyone take a trademark on such a common word? *cough*Windows*cough*Apple*cough*
* (a) Yes, I did have to look his name up; (b) and I know the telephone wasn't invented
I agree in principle, but there is no excuse for the way one of my friends makes tea: she pratically whips the bag out of the water as soon as the life-giving brown infusion has begun to seep out. The result: slightly brown milk.
Re: Agreed
"enter pin code"
But if NFC only works while your phone is unlocked*, why enter another PIN?
* I don't know that it does, but it should.
(Paris: bonk)
Re: <rant>An unused /24?!
wowfood has a point.
Given the <rant> tag, I would assume some kind of transform declaration would handle the uppercase. In CSS terms, something like "text-transform: uppercase".
What's that? Oh, don't worry; it's not that cold out.
Re: Obi Wan...
Does that mean the Light side and Dark side argue about using Vim or Emacs? I'll let you decide which is which ;)
Posted in Apple refreshes MacBook Pro range
Re: Please stop moaning about transat differences
"Cost of living has nothing to do with it and to think otherwise is an indication of a feeble mind."
Nice ad hominem...
Re: Another one down
"Opera's rendering engine being killed off in favour of Google's - that's most definitely a bad day. It doesn't really matter if Opera's renderer was good or not, it matters that a genuine alternative is going (or gone)"
Rubbish. As a long-time Opera user, I can't see any real downside to this, as long as they integrate all of the current features properly.
The rendering engine is insignificant, as long as it renders HTML, CSS, JS, etc., as the specs say. How else are we ever going to leave the current round of hacks in order to make a simpel webpage appear the same on all browsers?
I dream of the day people no longer need to check a user agent string.
Re: There's porn? On the interwebs?
Can't do 'tube (geddit?) from work, but I'm hoping that's Avenue Q.
Re: Yes, but...
Most of the time you just have to change the agent: F12 > Edit Site Preferences > Network, then change the Browser Identification to Internet Explorer (or Firefox).
Not guaranteed, but I've found a large number then let you just carry on without issue.
Not sure I agree... Opera's advantage (for me) isn't in the way it renders but in the way I use it: hotkeys, tabs, gestures, addins, My Opera, etc.
Almost all the browsers now offer a similar set of features, but the way they implement them is different enough to attract different crowds. And that isn't going to change just because they use the same renderer.
Although I use Opera for 90% of my browsing, I still have Chrome around for things like GDocs, due to a couple of annoying glitches. Hopefully Opera's shift to WebKit will mean that I don't have to.
"vehicle logs from Broder's Model S contradict his account of the journey"
Oh good. Now your car can dob you in
Re: Writer was intent on high risk of failure
It's a fair point, but he states that TWO THIRDS of the charge disappeared overnight. Effectively meaning that the Tesla S needs to be plugged in while not in use, which somewhat diminishes its use for overnight runs away from home.
