* Posts by Pooper Scooper

39 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2007

Native-Linux music player Amarok gets major overhaul

Pooper Scooper
Happy

WIN

Amarok roks. That's all there is to it.

Run Mac OS X on a PC

Pooper Scooper
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@AC re pirating

"The real difference is that software publishers are so afraid of being pirated they refuse to produce linux versions. If they do, 30 sec. after they are released, they are everywhere. Zero sales potential. So there are no linux versions of photshop, autocad, ...."

Right, because no one pirates them on Windows or Mac.

Pooper Scooper
Unhappy

@AC re bundling

"why bundling Windows Media Player (for instance) with Windows was an abuse of antitrust legislation, but bundling iDVD (for instance) with OSX is what makes the Mac wonderful?"

Dunno, never figured this out. They bundle iTunes, iDVD, iPhoto, Safari, QuickTime, Garage Band, Mail, on and on and on. And every time I reboot they revert all of these to be the default applications (some bug with FileVault that Apple refuses to admit).

Apple patents OS X Dock

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@Dave

No...if Apple takes someone to court over this patent, prior art is *very* relevant.

uTorrent for Mac leaks into Pirate Bay

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KTorrent on Windows/Mac

Personally I can't wait for KTorrent to finish coming out on Windows and Mac. Integrated search, lots of tweakability, built-in IP blocking, plugins, and seeding ratio caps make for a super fast client that does everything you could want it to do.

I did try uTorrent once and gave up after it proved to be ass-slow at downloading things, even with the same settings as KTorrent.

Mission Impossible: Restoring Exchange in 30 Seconds

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Mail servers crash?

It takes about one and a half seconds to bring my Postfix and Dovecot daemons back up, including full user data, plus maybe another second or two for SpamAssassin and Amavis.

If they were to ever crash, that is. Five years down the line (ok, originally using Courier instead of Dovecot), I've never had a crash, not once.

What's this Exchange thing then? Sounds pretty poor.

US judge decrees open source licenses valid

Pooper Scooper
Boffin

"In non-technical terms"

Right.

Apple skewered over missing DNS patch

Pooper Scooper

@Maliciously Crafted Packet

The majority of all security issues you see these days -- including those on Windows -- are theoretical/lab/black hat convention exploits.

The majority of Windows issues people still have in terms of viruses propagating everywhere are unpatched systems.

The whole point is that by not patching systems when these flaws are discovered, you leave yours as the vulnerable one, so that when exploits do come out for those that didn't bother patching, you'll be the one suffering.

Lateral thought saves sizzling server

Pooper Scooper
Paris Hilton

It took you that long?

How long have you been in the industry?

Paris, because you seem to have little more IT clue than she does.

New York threatens Comcast with anti-porn suit

Pooper Scooper

Dear Comcast

Grow some balls. If you don't know what those look like, search through your newsgroups.

Tesco causes couple condom catastrophe

Pooper Scooper
Stop

Do it

Dump her. Dump her now.

Christian Bale signs for Terminator trilogy

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McG?

Fuck.

Apple tops tech support success poll

Pooper Scooper
Alert

90 days

So you should buy a support contract if you travel frequently or own an Apple.

I'm sure the folks at Apple are very happy to hear that. That's why they set their warranty at 90 days in the first place. (Also because their products break/catch on fire/melt so much.)

Firefox and Safari updates tackle alternative browser bugs

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@AC

Because Mac users are getting checkboxes ticked by default which update products they already have installed.

Windows users are getting checkboxes ticked by default which update products they *don't* already have installed.

One is sensible, the other is FUCKING ANNOYING.

Oldham murders owl with whalesong

Pooper Scooper
Thumb Up

I'd go shopping there

I love Target. Great prices, and it's not Wal-Mart. Oldham *is* just becoming one big Target store, right...?

Google's Great American Wireless Auction 'game' annoys US lawmakers

Pooper Scooper
Stop

Who cares?

If Google had been the top bidder, they would have won the spectrum, and they would have done something with it. Verizon stepped up because they were willing to pay more than Google was.

It doesn't matter if Google just cared about triggering the open access requirement. They made a binding bid, they got beat out, and they decided not to make another bid.

It's called an auction, and this is how it works. Doesn't matter one whit what your motives were. In the end, it's all money.

Pano Logic gives VMware case of VDS 2.0

Pooper Scooper
Stop

Windows only

Fuck that.

First 'Facebook harassment' defendant cleared

Pooper Scooper

Your options

1) Deny the friend request

2) File a lawsuit

I guess it's a statement on our society that she chose the latter.

Microsoft! snuggles! with! Yahoo! on! OpenID!

Pooper Scooper
Coat

I don't want a single digital identity

I don't want the same identity everywhere. If I want to berate idiots on some forums, and have serious discussions on others, I want to keep that separate. Not to mention porn.

Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo spiel spied on web?

Pooper Scooper

Of course it's fake

All you have to do is look at this section:

iPhone

- Sales beyond our wildest dreams

- Much more than the 1% market share we asked for in January

Total horseshit. Everyone knows that it's been selling like crap, there's no way they're at 10 million devices. Unless they're counting devices "sold" to Carphone Warehouse and the like, who are totally unable to move them to end-users.

Apple keeps critical security fixes to itself

Pooper Scooper

@David Simpson

Because some of us find QT an unfortunate necessity for online media, but don't want the turd iTunes on our hard drives, which is most definitely *not* a necessity for any type of online media.

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@Paul

"Having said all that, why Apple seem incapable of securing QT is beyond me."

It's really easy...their coders are crap. All the stable stuff -- most of their OS, that is -- they got from much better coders at various other projects (FreeBSD, Apache, Postfix, KDE, etc etc).

All of their in-house products have proven to be messes of insecure crap, because their in-house coders are crap.

Motorola: Apple will not open the iPhone

Pooper Scooper
Stop

Yahoo's "telling" stat

I think what this actually means is that no one was using Yahoo! anymore before the iPhone made it its mail service provider.

Toshiba to field HD DVD-equipped Xbox 360?

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Stop

@Ian

That promotion, of course, is only because of the Blu-Ray promotion where buying any Blu-Ray player (including a PS3) nets you five free movies. They didn't come up with it first, they're just copycats.

Apple iPhone is AT&T's top-selling handset - analyst

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@Giles Jones

"It's the ideal platform for creative pursuits"

And I'll bet you wonder why people call you a fanboy.

Big media gangs up on pirates, file sharers

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@Svein

Since when do I need to give a solution to make fun of you for being a moron? I have neither the desire nor the time to get into a convoluted discussion as to the ins and outs of getting back at the RIAA, especially when they're doing a damn good job right now of proving themselves incompetent, irrelevant, and boneheaded.

I did however have both the desire and the time to make fun of your continual mis-acronym-ing of OpenOffice.org, since you claimed to have been a long-time user of it.

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Stop

@leslie

Buy a low-powered graphics card and a low-power chip and stop complaining. No one is forcing you to either have a huge power hungry machine or to play games.

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Stop

@Svein

One of the many reasons you show yourself to be a total moron in that post is your mis-acronyming (if that's a word) of OpenOffice.org as oOO. Considering you've been using "oOO for several years" you haven't seemed to grasp that the various O letters in the title turn into OOo, which is what everybody else uses.

North American cities go green under LED street lights

Pooper Scooper
Go

Sweet...darker skies too maybe?

Since LED light is more directed and focused than normal light bulbs (subject of course to whatever reflectors are used), perhaps this will lead to darker skies as well for those cities that make the switch. Seeing the stars again would be so nice...

Apple opens up iPhone to app developers

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@Scott

You're right...on the Mac platform there is neither a free for all nor shite available and everything is reliable, since XCode is tightly controlled and you can only find DMGs and packages to install applications from official Apple distribution channels.

Wait...

Facebook flotation 'years out', says Zuckerberg

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Go

My thoughts exactly

I love that first sentence...

Ubuntu goes 3-D

Pooper Scooper

@Shad

Hey Shad, before you respond to someone's comment, you may want to bother reading it, because my facts are perfectly in line.

The Reg article talked about Tracker as a desktop search tool. My comment:

"So while it might perhaps be true that Ubuntu is the first distro including Tracker specifically (who cares, having software you develop appear in your distro first is not news), it's certainly not the first to include desktop search."

So again -- it's not anywhere near the first to include desktop search, so them having it is really not news. It is the first to include Tracker as a desktop search tool, but who cares, that's not news either considering that they're the ones developing it (and besides, if it didn't have issues they wouldn't have been the first to include it anyways...so they're the first to include buggy software that doesn't integrate well across desktop environments...good going, guys).

Pooper Scooper
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Fact checking, please?

'"I believe we're the first (Linux) distribution to deliver that out of the box," Shuttleworth said, during a conference call with reporters.'

But would it kill you to actually check things before printing them verbatim? Beagle's been included in openSUSE since 10.1, and I doubt it was the first distro to do it. So while it might perhaps be true that Ubuntu is the first distro including Tracker specifically (who cares, having software you develop appear in your distro first is not news), it's certainly not the first to include desktop search.

Besides, in typical fashion, it's duplicating work that's already been going on for a long time elsewhere. See Xesam, Nepomuk, Beagle, Strigi, etc etc etc.

NBC unveils self-destructing, ad-addled anti-iTunes service

Pooper Scooper

More of the same

'The company is also planning a "closed peer-to-peer network" for video downloads, and at some point, it may allow users to rent and purchase videos.'

How exciting. Because if I'm downloading ad-ridden, DRM-ridden videos, I'll of course vastly prefer to waste my fellow consumers' upload bandwidth rather than NBC's.

'The service isn't likely to be accessible outside the U.S. Our overseas always get the long the end of the stick. '

And Linux users, of course. Windows-only for now, Mac later. As usual, us Linux users will have to turn "elsewhere" if we miss last night's episode of (some_show). Oddly, we'll get it in much more convenient formats and without ads and restrictions, too...

Light Sabre wars for your Wii

Pooper Scooper

Uh huh

"The concept of a Light Sabre for the Wii was first penned in December 2006, when the MacSaber’s developer, Isnoop, announced the WiiSaber – no explanation needed"

Really? Are you sure it wasn't first penned by, umm, EVERYBODY, which was the number of people thinking exactly the same thing the moment that the pointing/motion sensing ability of the Wii was revealed? I know I did, I just didn't care enough to write an app that makes swishy sounds when I wave my Wiimote around (wow, exciting...MacSaber was lame too).

Sony shakes up PS3 controller market

Pooper Scooper

Yeah, spend more

Besides, it'll probably be at least $50 like the current Sixaxis controllers. I suppose spending $50 or more each to upgrade controllers just to get rumble is going to win big with the gaming crowd.

Sorry, I'll be grabbing two Wii Zappers and a Wii Balance Board for cheaper than two of 'em.

Vista attacked by 13-year-old virus

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@Dr. Vesselin Bontchev

Vista may not have noticed that the MBR was changed if the machine had the boot sector virus before Vista was even installed in the first place. I know that Vista writes its own MBR entry, but the virus seems to change the location of the MBR, letting an OS write its entry there in the wrong place.

To Vista there may not have been any changes to detect.

Compact Disc: 25 years old today

Pooper Scooper

MP3 sound quality

People always seem to forget that colloquial MP3s usually describe CBR 128kbit/sec tracks, which have a lot of loss. But the encoder makes a huge difference -- 128kbit/sec encoded by LAME within the last year or two sounds just as good (according to double-blind listening tests, see Hydrogen Audio forums and wiki for info and links) as the "superior" formats like WMA and AAC at the same constant bit rate.

Using LAME's new VBR method, with the highest fidelity setting, you get tracks that are transparent (cannot be distinguished from the original source material; all FLACs for instance are transparent since they're lossless). In fact, tracks are transparent below that setting, but a bit of paranoia isn't a bad thing.

In order to save space (HDD may be cheap these days, but if you're like me and want backups of your music collection just in case...) I recently converted my FLAC collection into MP3s using LAME's absolute best VBR settings; the file sizes shrank significantly, and in all my side-by-side listening tests (which I ran before deleting the FLACs) I can't tell a lick of difference. Maybe if I had $4000 speakers connected to a $3000 amp coming via optical out of a $800 sound card, but I don't, and won't have that kind of money to spend on this...

Jobs chucks Leopard titbits to Apple masses

Pooper Scooper

Re: It's more than just *BSD

"As for the price it's not much more than many Linux distros cost."

Exactly $129.00 more.