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* Posts by Pookietoo

145 posts • joined Tuesday 20th March 2012 13:06 GMT

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Pookietoo
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If I were the power companies I'd be doing the legal minimum ...

... to counter these "attacks", while watching closely and planning strategies for when they become more of a threat. This rather than increasing the challenge to hackers beyond what it appears to be at the moment. If they're not probing my actual defences or testing my full resilience they don't know where any weakness really lies.

Pookietoo
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Re: MS have said a permanent connection isn't required

Which is of course not the same as saying that a connection isn't required for DRM management.

Pookietoo
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FAIL

Re: resolve the problem, or they won't release the product

Like iOS 6 maps, you mean?

Pookietoo
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FAIL

Re: There's a parallel with the move from pocket watches to wrist watches

Except that a wristwatch is big enough to display the time, a display smaller than a smartphone is going to struggle to display much more with any degree of usability. Remember calculator wristwatches? The interface was just about usable, their appeal was limited to geeks, and everyone else carried on using their pocket calculators. If you want a wearable smart device you can just hang a phone around your neck.

Pookietoo
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Re: I like to see the other streets

I expect they'll still show the streets you can see from your route, just not those farther away.

Pookietoo
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Angel

Re: Why rotate?

So it's just a modification to the slot, rather than replacing the whole card reader mechanism?

Pookietoo
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Re: Just leaving this here for the few who haven't experienced it ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKAWBNl4MeA

Pookietoo
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Re: I still can't understand why it wasn't done though.

Windows 8 on the PC is all about getting those tiles in front of users, so that when they come to buy a tablet or phone it's an easy choice to stay with MSFT.

Pookietoo
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Re: An insect net on a ten-foot pole

Probably easier to stick a few tinnies in a cooler box and carry that, than try to manipulate a ten foot pole in a crowd.

Pookietoo
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Linux

Re: I really wish that the major distros would get together ...

LSB goes some way toward that, but if they were to standardise everything then there would be little point in having different independently developed distros.

Pookietoo
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Re: The idea was that things like folders and file paths would become meaningless

Was it, or was it just a UI abstraction that worked like a desktop search e.g. Unity Dash? Because I'm pretty sure the underlying OS is going to want a hierarchical file structure, regardless of how it's presented to the user.

Pookietoo
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Re: installing NT4 Workstation on to my work laptop and laughing at everyone else

It was undeniably stable, but not exactly speedy on my P166MMX with 32MB. I multibooted with W95OSR2 and Slackware.

Pookietoo
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Re: I would love to know how I ended up with four thumbs down

Because your list was incomplete?

Pookietoo
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Re: I'm pretty sure it's not "telemetrics"

ITYF it's just "at some distance" rather than "at a great distance" i.e. they're following user behaviour with a network app rather than shoulder surfing.

Pookietoo
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FAIL

Re: A big list of all the installed programs? Great!!!

You do know you can arrange them hierarchically to suit your own needs?

Pookietoo
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Re: What I am really asking for is separate desktop and touch version

But that's not what marketing think they need - remember this isn't about making a good desktop OS, it's about leveraging MSFT market share to gain an advantage in the tablet and phone markets.

Pookietoo
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Meh

Re: do not understand open source ... prefer not to be honest about it

I expect a substantial portion of Reg readers are selling Microsoft products, or perhaps more significantly selling support for Microsoft products - their livelihoods depend on users not realising how effective open source solutions can be, because they don't understand how or just aren't willing to update their skill sets to work with "free" stuff.

Pookietoo
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Re: Nothing new

But they left the touchpad in front of the keyboard. I think the R7 touchpad position makes for a more convincing design solution, although i) I'd be using my trusty trackball anyway and ii) I like the screen to be farther away, otherwise I need my spectacles.

Pookietoo
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Re: "goldilock zone"

"Goldilocks zone"

Pookietoo
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Re: We define hospital zones

... as places where only ambulances are allowed to park?

Pookietoo
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Re: My chem teacher demonstrated the sodium-water reaction in front of us

Mine tossed a large lump into the outdoor swimming pool while we watched from the balcony. The sodium propelled itself around the pool a couple of times then sat fizzling until it expired with a loud bang.

Pookietoo
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Re: not being able to save a page for off line viewing in it is a pain

What;'s wrong with File -> Save Page As ?

Pookietoo
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Re: Am I missing something here?

You visited a page earlier but didn't read it all, now you want to finish it but the interwebs is down ...

Pookietoo
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Re: Check out the photo of the home

Eating squirrel pie doesn't make you a lesser person.

Pookietoo
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Re: a pop up would appear allowing you to claim services and benefits online

Did you go through the whole process? Because the warning is not that it will not work at all with some software, but that it will not work in a complete and correct way.

Pookietoo
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Re: This won't level the playing field, it will favor brick and mortar businesses

So what does the fuel cost, to get to Home Depot and back?

Pookietoo
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Re: Um you do know that Puerto Rico is US territory and subject to federal law

Um, I did write "I have no idea whether US/PR law creates a situation analogous to the UK one". The comparison was geographical as much as anything - the Channel Islands are British Crown Dependencies but not part of the United Kingdom, Puerto Rico is an island that is part of the United States but not a state.

Pookietoo
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Re: Very strange and I don't understand it but true.

That's classic Pavlovian conditioned response.

Pookietoo
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Re: Sales taxes are not going to make a company set up an international presence

It already happened in the UK - some major online retailers have benefited from offshoring their tax liabilities for several years, although more recently the loopholes are being closed. Imagine large US companies leaving the USA for Puerto Rico (I have no idea whether US/PR law creates a situation analogous to the UK one, but hopefully you get the general idea).

This post has been deleted by a moderator

Pookietoo
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Re: 5 million ... not reflected in the sales of 6.1 million

I assumed that was a typo, and should have been 0.5 million.

Pookietoo
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Appears Amazon now supports Welsh on the Kindle:

Books about the Welsh language, not literature written in Welsh. A big clue is that the titles are in English.

Pookietoo
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Re: I know that the international dateline runs through London

The Greenwich Meridian passes through London, the International Date Line runs down the middle of the Pacific.

Pookietoo
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Re: Mobile flywheels

Why do so many people seem to be fixated with vehicular applications? This project is not about vehicles.

Pookietoo
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Re: gignormous wheel spninning very slowly

You want it to spin as fast as safely possible, because energy stored is proportional to the square of the speed.

Pookietoo
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Re: "What happens when you want to go up a hill?"

It's easier to build the house in situ than it is to build it first and then locate it.

Pookietoo
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re: Apparently there are folk working on

I wonder what happened to the mammoth/elephant splicing that was announced a year or two back?

Pookietoo
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Re: At least it's a break from horse

Horse is tasty. A pub near where I used to live got done for serving horse, they had a reputation for serving excellent steak at reasonable prices.

Pookietoo
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Rather like the lost wax process really. Is this significantly better than MRI (apart from the bit where you remove the brain and dissolve it, obviously)I?

Pookietoo
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Re: NORK: Latest news exclusive

They ate the dogs already.

Pookietoo
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Re: F = 1.8C + 32

I find the mental arithmetic easier as "divide by five, multiply by nine" rather than "multiply by 1.8", but in these connected days it's too easy to type "convert -40 fahrenheit to celsius" into Google ...

Pookietoo
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Re: Cobalt

+1 for Cobalt machines. I also rather like some of the later Sun Ultra boxes like this one.

Pookietoo
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Linux

re: Umask is your friend.

Just running "find . -perm /007" occasionally to see what files you have kicking around that have any sort of "world" permissions isn't an onerous task. Presumably that's going to be popular with SourceForge admins this week.

Pookietoo
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Re: forty year old hifi components still work perfectly

I suspect the hi-fi components aren't running as hot, or for as long, as many PC and network components.

Pookietoo
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Re: well...

Yes, that's the sort of thing that IT-aware users can set up to solve the problem, although many would probably just stick the content in a password-protected archive in an obscure folder on their ISP-provided web server. This Yahoo thing is catering to the sort of user who doesn't know how to find the size of a file, or having found it doesn't know whether it's a reasonable size to send by email. Having had to telnet into a mail server to shift the blockage caused by a large attachment on a slow connection, I appreciate moves to stop naive users from causing that sort of problem, but I'm not sure that enabling big uploads by other means is really the way to go, especially if said naive user might not be sure quite what he's uploading, and to where.

Pookietoo
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Coat

re: Mad Downvoters

Sorry, I just couldn't resist. :-)

Pookietoo
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Re: Does Birmingham have a direct flight to London?

I see you can get B'ham-London return flights for £150-200, via Belfast or IoM. :-)

Pookietoo
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Re: cooling the water before sending it to the super

There's your heat source then - the refrigeration plant pre-cooler.

Pookietoo
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Re: as the guy in front "dragging", *you* use more fuel.

No, the vehicle behind you is effectively acting as a spoiler for your air flow, because it occupies the space where your turbulence would otherwise be creating a low pressure zone.

Pookietoo
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Re: big rig suddenly stops

You're so close behind it that there's very little speed difference at impact ...

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