* Posts by ryan

19 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Aug 2007

Reg readers rage at comment icon outrage

ryan
Flame

Icons

@ Simpson:

If there was a coffee/keyboard incident icon I would have used it!

@Francis Vaughan:

If you want a deadly icon I think it should be a bio hazard icon. It could have a lot of uses.

@Mad Hacker:

I wasn't sure of a "welcoming our overlords" icon but Kent Brockman would be genius.

I think there should be a Chuck Norris icon to counterbalance Paris. I also loved the Valium icon idea. A Playmobil icon is necessary for those stories that demand further journalistic coverage. Finally, I'm surprised nobody is asking for a Prez. Bush icon -- It would get a lot of use even though his days are numbered.

My votes in order:

Coffee/Keyboard incident.

Beer (Beer/Keyboard incident?)

WTF.

Old dead vulture.

Pair of quote marks.

Chuck Norris

Pedant.

Playmobil

Tinfoil hat.

Google (maybe good and evil in the same icon becouse of their moto.

Bio hazard.

Valium.

<-- The flame because it could double for the Valium icon. It's a flame, but it's a happy peaceful flame. I feel happy when I see it. (... at least in its current incarnation at time of writing.)

Cuil confesses 'serious file corruption'

ryan

Cooly?

I like Anonymous Irish Coward's take on Cuil but not being Irish myself I keep reading Cuil as Cooly. Ya, I know it dose not match the spelling but the word is so unfamiliar that at a casual glance I don't quite know what to do with the 'i'.

I'd be curious to know how others are pronouncing this word to themselves as they read it.

Sun may or may not be about to obliterate Oracle and Microsoft

ryan
IT Angle

@madra

Your frustration at language usage begs the question: why can't you cope with the fact that English is an amorphous dynamic thing that sometimes dosn't follow logic.

To believe that your way is the right way is a fallacy because language is suppose to have multiple meanings in different circumstances.

-- with love from America.

Mozilla Screaming Monkey offers freedom from IE 'millstone'

ryan
Gates Horns

@ the MS apologists

It's not so much that Microsoft hasn't ever created a good idea, but rather their abuse of a monopoly position to create artificial barriers in the market. Sure, they came up with an idea or two that pushed AJAX along, but they also sat on their asses and let IE rot. If it hadn't been for the emergence of Opera and Firefox we still would not have tabbed browsing, something I find fantastically uesfull.

Without competition all company's will stagnate. Even if you do think Vista was Gods gift to computers it still would have been fantastically better and cheeper if there had been a strong competitor biteing at their heals. Heven forbid they should implament ODF and have people acutualy choose their office products based on marit allone.

I'm With Bemi Faison. Screaming Monky aint no silver bullit but a little bit of presher on MS aint no bad thing ether.

P.S. How in Gods name, in this day and age, can an operating sistom be released that can't get file moving right. I'm looking at you Vista.

Futurists predict a world of IT fairy tales

ryan
IT Angle

They are proud of their non- innovation.

I was amused to see this quote displayed prominently on the pdf.

“ Every intelligent thing has already been thought.

You just have to try to think it again at the right time.“

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

(Goethe lived 200 years ago. I'm glad not everybody latches onto this particular quote.)

<-- the IT? icon because the '?' means "when?" not "where?"

NZ charidee cybersquatter fears burning in Hell

ryan
Paris Hilton

@ Chris McKay

"... renamed their rubbish dump after the man."

That's pretty funny. I like that. Don't know the place but that has got to be at least 1 point in there favor.

(Paris, I bet SHE wishes she had a rubbish dump named after her.)

Vote now for your fave sci-fi movie quote

ryan
Coat

5 more comments?

Just because this article deserves 300 comments (currently at 295 at writing.)

And, because of my fond childhood memories and decades of moves; Godzilla deserves an honorable mention in these comments.

Of course I can't think of a single memorable quote -- DRAT.

Of course if I could think of a memorable quote who knows if it was an actual quote or a cheese English translation. -- Double DRAT.

All right. Lets just say Godzilla's roar should be the memorable quote.

(The guy in the icon is getting into his Godzilla suit.)

ryan

Worst Quote

How about a worst quote: [Paraphrased from memory] "We traveled at the speed of dark, which is faster then the speed of light." -- Never Ending Story II

ryan
Thumb Up

Another Tremors fan

First: I was torn between Blade Runner and "My God, it's full of stars." Both are acts of poetry. Ultamitly I chose the latter because it seems to come to mind at odd times for no reason what so ever.

Second: I am glad to see there is at least one other Tremors fan reading these pages. I choose the quote from Tremors 3 "... we should name them. ... Blast Offers or Butt Launchers, oh oh Ass Blasters. Hows that?" Then the Rugged hero -- "Sounds like a porno film."

Bert Gummer is almost as quotable as Hudson.

P.S. Fantastic article for so simplistically drawing out of us the nerd deep with in, the sleeper must awaken!

Hard drive replacement sparks singed disk situation

ryan

@Hmmmm

"From the smoke marks it looks like the hard disk was vertical with the connectors at the top - an unusual method of mounting."

I had an old dell where the secondary hard drive was mounted vertically.

BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

ryan
Paris Hilton

Managment:

The only fair way to manage p2p networking is with caps and throttling AND being up front about it. I can easily see how p2p could put huge strain on an isp but if they as a buissness can't make money by giving customers unlimited access to the internet, then don't sell unlimited access. Tell the customers what they are buying and let them decide where they want to spend their bandwidth and when. If there must be throttling at peek usage hours, tell the customer and let them decide whether they want to maintain their torrent activity or postpone it so they can get some decent web surfing speed. If there must be a cap let the customer decide what is more important; 24h of voip to that new russian wife they ordered, or the latest version of every linux distro out there.

My isp switched from unregulated bandwidth to one with a monthly cap. They sent me e-mail explaining what they were doing. I wasn't overjoyed but I knew I was using far more of the pie then most of their users and all in all it seemed fair. There website gave me statistics on my usage, and I managed my activities according.

Ultimitly, they probably just don't like torrents because people are watching downloaded movies instead of comcast's on on demand movies.

Paris, just because everyone uses her and explains why at the end of their post.

MIT in pedal-powered 'super' computer stunt

ryan
Black Helicopters

Kid-powered coal mines?

Screw the coal mines. Work the little buggers in the nuclear power plants. We might get some really cool mutant super-villains to make life a little more interesting.

Americans can swear at toilets, judge rules

ryan
Go

@Herby

"I've taken those "Intel inside" and "designed for Microsoft Windows" stickers and placed them on toilets"

Pure genius!

Microsoft wireless keyboards crypto cracked

ryan
Unhappy

Banks?

Every time I stop by my bank I notice the tellers use wireless keyboards. I've always wondered how secure they are. Who knows, maybe its safer to bank on line these days.

B3ta served DMCA notice for Photoshop Prince challenge

ryan
Stop

To sum up...

Did I follow this right?

Laywers are using a US law to attack a UK website for doing something that might be illegle in the UK but is likely legal in the US?

It makes ones head spin.

NASA gives jet-setting Googlers the presidential treatment

ryan

privacy policies

Dose anyone else relish the fact the nasa will be able to amass large amounts of information about google's personal habits by archiving the data collected during these flights? Maybe nasa wanted to one up the master. (I'd like to compare the privacy policies of the two organizations.)

p.s. Loved the "boeing-enhancemnet" bit

NZ parents may lose battle to keep baby '4real'

ryan

It's the end of the world!

Names with numbers? And we thought y2k was bad!

On a side note (true story):

My grandfather hated his name so bad that he refused to name his first child. They just called him Bud until he was old enough to choose a name.

Yangtze river dolphin is an ex-cetacean

ryan

Moral problem?

If it is at all possible to strip out emotion and look at fundamentals: Yes, life on earth will go on with or without us someday. Sure, even that life will be doomed in the distant future. Humans are a species that are a byproduct of the environment just like every other species and we are dependent on the system for prolonged survival as a species. The rules haven't changed. New animals migrate into an area, or else some subset evolves beneficial traits for survival and other animals go extent as a result. Nature made us what we are, and what we are is causing extinctions.

However, we are different because our effect on the system is greater then then any other species the system has ever encountered. If we can not strictly say that current extinctions are non-natural, we can say that they are non-normal. We are throwing the whole system out of balance. It will regain balance one way or another regardless of our actions. That balance may be an ecology of humans, rats, pigeons and cockroaches only, or it could be a world with no humans and rich biodiversity. The curious thing about the current system is that we, as the major predator, can understand the system (to a degree) and modify our actions to effect the eventual balance point (to a degree.) We have the potential to mitigate our effect on our environment.

This potential is why extinctions are a moral issue. We are choosing to do things that we know negatively effect life around us, be it human or animal. From here we can endlessly argue morality, but we can't shrug of responsibility. We can not wright off species because they did not evolve quick enough when we make decisions that modify their environment faster then process of evolution can cope with. We can not ignore an extinction because they would have died out tomorrow, when our choices made them die out today. Above all we can not abdicate our responsibility just because we ourselves are products of the ecology. It is the traits that evolution bred into us that have allowed us to dominate the environment, and it is those same traits that allow us to mitigate our own destructive tendencies.

Ultimately I see my own hypocrisy. My standard of living is the product of a lot of environmental destruction. But, I won't excuse myself ether. We are diminished when a spiecies goes extinct and we have only ourselves to blame.

My $.015.

Firefox update fixes bug brace

ryan

web 2.0?

What was that bit about Opera being web 2.0 compliant? Is that a W3C thing, or dose it simply appeal to the social collective conscience?