Posts by Aubry Thonon

Dub-dub-dub?

'round here we use "wub-wub-wub". ^_^

Phenonomen?

"I know people complain about the name, but it's a good handle for a set of phenonomen."

Surely he meant "phenomenon".

<doo doo doodoodoo>

Phenomenon?

<doo doo doodoo>

Phenomenon!

<doo doo doodoodoo doodoodoo doodoodoo doodoodoo doo doo doodoo doodoo>

...with appologies to "Muppets Tonight"...

WTF?!

Yet another example of a government bureau forgetting why it was created in the first place... the reason you registered your TM is to make sure nobody else was using it. Otherwise, that's f*cking point?

Oh, yeah... I forgot... reading the last few paragraphs, it's obviously to raise more money by offering *for a fee* the same service you were supposed to originally get when you paid for your registration in the first place.

Re: "Aubrey Thuron"

<sigh> I don't mind my comments being quoted (that's why I post them publicly)... but I do wish you guys would spell my name correctly...

FFS!

I'm doped-up to the gills with anti-flu drugs, and even *I* could spot the tongue-in-cheek humour of the article! Bit of a shame he stopped about 2/3 of the way through. As for the "turtles", the concept predates PTerry by quite a few centuries. ^_^

Too much iPhone...

quote: "IANAL, of course, but it's not *quite* as easy as they make it out to be - they could land themselves with a new EU headache before their old one has even stopped"

You know you've been reading about the iPhone too much when you read the first word as "iAnal" and wonder why Apple went into the suppository business.

(IANAL, btw, means "I Am Not A Lawyer", but it took me a couple of seconds to switch my brain to proper geek mode)

Re: "He must have finally received his Vista upgrade disks from Dell".

The funny thing is, I live in Oz and the radio just ran an add for a laptop running Vista but "easily modified to XP".

I kidd you not.

So what?

A new control is installed and - guess what - people get caught! Wow.

I'll be more impressed if these numbers are still that high in a couple of months, when the terrorists have figured out how the control works and come up with a way around it. Of course, the UK Government will turn around and proclaim the drop in figures as proof that "People of Interest" are no longer trying to get into the UK.... ^_^

Re:Why the US isn't giving in - Part 2, the Response

Mr A. Nonymous: "To the summarizer – If you really have such a poor understanding – my condolences. If (as I believe), you simply let your anti-Americanism overpower logic and you didn't even try to understand – I would like to know : How does your foot taste?"

Wouldn't know. What I *was* doing was pointing out the inconsistencies with the USA's Federal Government's recent stances. I *really* don't understand what has happened in the last few administrations... I mean, this is a Fed Gov which gave us the Moon Race... and yet has spent the last few years trying to break the Guinness Book's "amount of egg on face" record.

As for being anti-American.... <laughs> yeah... right... feel free to believe that if it helps you sleep at night... me, I'm anti-idiocy - which at the moment makes me anti-US Federal Government. (just recently saw the "commuted sentence for Attorney General" speech by the President and wondered if he had any idea what he was actually saying)

Not surprised.

I'm not surprised the author returned the iPhone (and I am certainly not surprised to see the person attacking the author posted anonymously). I have had a smart-phone for years now and when I read the list of so-called features the iPhone would sport, my only comment was "yeah.... and...?" I simply couldn't believe that there wasn't an "..and..." to this list, considering how much of a "new paradigm" this phone was supposed to be.

Oh, and before someone posts about my being an "Apple-basher", I'd like to point out I refuse to upgrade to Vista for exactly the same reason... I read the list of features and... well... was utterly un-enthralled. I am now working on downloading all of the MS patches I can make myself a XP SP3 CD before MS cans XP support to force us to upgrade.

EUA

"Sony BMG now says the Amergence Group violated its deal with Sony because its software did not perform as it was meant to. The lawsuit accuses it of negligence and unfair business practices."

I, for one, am looking forward to see how Sony fares against the typical Software "End-Usar Agreement" where basically every software company declares that this software is not "fit for purpose" and if it crashes it's your fault for buying it, nyah nyah nyah.... (sorry, that sentence got away from me)

If Sony manages to win the lawsuit, this would make comanies like MS open to a WHOLE lot of litigation from people who are sick and tired of the constant PATCHING of an OPERATING SYSTEM. Might even get MS to finally split the OS from the UI.

Goose/Gander

First of all, I do not condemn rape, murder, etc... I just *know* someone is going to go off the rails and present a knee-jerk argument...

BUT...

It's funny how most of the people who advocate releasing the teenager do so because "what they are doing in their country is wrong and I find it offensive and we should step in and stop it."

Reeaaaalllly????

So if (say) a muslim country decides that by letting women walk around bare-headed we are promoting a wanton society and they should step in and stop us... would we say "what a good idea" and let them? No, we would call them terrorists, war-mongerers, etc...

The way to change a country is NOT to get on your high horse at the slightest thing that offends your delicacies... this will not help (see Iraq), it will just make a lot of people pissed-off at you. Like all social changes, this is something that has to be done quietly, level-headedly and (unfortunately for the poor teen) over a period of time.

The only time radicaly change was implemented in a short perios of time has *always* been via uprising from *within* the country itself... anyone who tries to affect change from without has not learnt from history.

You got to be f*ing kidding

Two MAJOR problems with this new fee:

1) Why are webcasters paying a different fee than aircasters?

2) I thought "retroactive fees" were awarded by courts as punitive damages?

Re: Re: rephrasing and large patches

Michael: "So it's now Microsoft's fault you have remote sites with inadequate infrastructure?"

Yes, actually, it is. I have several MS machines and a couple of Linux machines at home... and an ADSL line. But I'm one of the "lucky" ones in Australia. In a country as large as the continental US but with only a fraction of the population, many live in areas where dial-up is the only way to go... and if you get above 28.8, you're doing well (thanks to Telstra's "we only have to provide lines good enough for voice" attitude). My parents - who live about 1 hour (by highway, admitedly) from the centre of the state's capital - regularly get barely above 14.4.

Not everyone has access to T1, cable or fast-ADSL. And MS is hard at work selling Windows to Mr and Mrs EveryDay. So, yes, it's up to them to make sure that their product can eb upgraded by the very same people they're foisting it on.

Sprint Nextel customer base

so, 2/10000th of 1% is 1,000 people. Which makes their customer based (hang on, carry the two...) 50,000,000 customers.

Shit! 50 million customers... that's over twice the estimated population of Australia as of the start of June 2007.

Fraud?

I wonder... could this be considered fraud on the part of Tiscali? Follow my reasoning:

- Tiscali charges the user for their download, including limits (caps or extra charge).

- Tiscali has now forced a new "service" upon their user which adds to the download quota.

In other words, Tiscali is now knowingly chewing up their user's download quotas. Fraud, surely.

The problem is with both...

A downcheck to Microsoft for allowing the internals of IE to be corrupted to pass a bad command...

A downcheck to Firefox for allowing a piece of external data into its internals without first checking it.

While I have not written anything for a Browser, I write for quite a few database systems that have to interface with various other systems; and the first rule is - external data is *always* suspect (internal data is potentially suspect).

Re: ¿que?

(25C / 5 * 9) + 32 = 77F (roughly).

amanfromMars

I think someone at one of the Australian Universities (possibly Victoria?) is trying to fine-tune an Eliza engine. And why not, I ask you... if you can have computers write impromptue children's tales (for *very* young children), why can't you have them automatically respond to a geek forum. ^_^

Who else can we hold responsible?

Let's see...

the Post Office, 'cause people buy DVDs and CDs from overseas and get them shipped to them, making the various local music/movie companies mad.

The telephone company, for not regulating the late-night nuisance/abussive phone calls and not back-track them immediately.

Heck, anyone in the transport industry... I'm sure they're involved in some "carrousel" scam at *some* point in time. Doesn't matter if they knew it or not, they should have properly inspected they goods they ship.

No-one would even think of allowing the above... and yet, they are proposing the same concepts for ISPs...

... can't... resist...

Does this mean that Google is being datal retentive?

I'll go fetch me coat now, yerlordship.

Re: C is for...

"Charlie!"

I nearly snorted Diet Coke through my nose when I read this! Love it. Wonder how many people know where the quote comes from?

Missing cable...?

"I'm not a Dell fan, but why were they singled out for this when HP/Lexmark/Canon/et al don't (as far as I've ever seen) state on their printer boxes that the cables are not included?"

Must be something peculiar to the UK... I'm in Oz, and I have three Canon printers (an A3, an A4 and a multi-function) and all three came with the requisite USB cable. So did the 400D camera. So did the scanner. (yes, I standardised on Canon because it's much easier to only have one set of drivers/apps)

Yes, Minister...

I just had a "Yes, Minister Moment"...

"It's a typical political response: 'something must be done, this is something'..."

"...'so, this must be done'?"

"Very good, Bernard! We'll make a politician out of you yet."

<shudder>

The man hasn't got a clue...

We've had "agile/extreme programming", now we have "agile/extreme DBA"... well, AP/XP doesn't work in large projects, and I have a feeling neither will AD/XD...

I am a programmer... more importantly, I am a relational-database programmer - I write applications that interface with SQL databases. And I am good at it because I studied the damn things! Come on, it's not that hard... You don't expect your Ford mechanic to be able to fix a Ferrari without first having boned up one it, surely? So why do people think that you can be a DB programmer without knowing how to properly write/implement a database?

As for the database schema, I personally use ORM rather than ER... I find that ER has what I personally believe to be a major flaw - it requires the person wirting the ER diagram to decide what makes up the entities (tables) without any real guidelines. At least with ORM, the tables flow out of the diagram rather than the other way around.

(I fully expect a ER/ORM flamewar to start now... I'll go get my asbestos underpants)

Re: Insurance linked to mileage.

"4. Compulsary 3rd party insurance would be linked to mileage, drive 1000 miles a year, pay 1/10th of someone who drives 10,000 miles a year. Drive less, be rewarded by reduce insurance costs."

There's one little problem with that: I drive a lot, and my driving skills are pretty good (two accidents, only one at-fault, in 20-odd years). Compare that to a Sunday driver (my favourite is the blue-rinse old ladies taking the Volvo out to play lawn-bowl... <shudder>), drive behind one some day... their road-behaviour is attrocious and they are very likely to cause an accident by that same behaviour (over-cautiousness is just as bad as reckless driving).

And yet, you would have me pay more for my insurance than one of these idiots? Dream on.

No, I agree that dropping the price on Car registration (by removing the "road maintenance" levy, for example) and incresing the tax on petrol (and making sure it *is* used to maintain the roads) would be fairer... leave the insurance costs the way it is - based on proven road behaviour (no-claim for almost 20 years, and getting a nice discount because of it, thank-you-very-much)

Re: Onscreen keypad

"...I couldn't compose text messages, or even type in phone numbers, while walking along" ?!?

I have a HTC Hermes (rebranded as an iMate JasJam) with a touch-screen. While it has a slide-out keyboard, I rarely use it except when I am sitting down - I find the touch-screen much easier to use when walking. Yes, I am quite capable of putting the phone in front of me and typing the number in (or mucking around with the media-player program) while walking WITHOUT crashing into anything.

And yes, I have also mastered the art of reading a book while walking down the street (but I do stop when crossing the road - I'm not suicidal). It's just a skill, like anything else; you simply learn to become aware of what's happening around the object you are focusing on.

City-based TLDs are a mistake

"The city TLDs, such as .nyc for New York..."

Surely, New York should be using "*.nyc.us"? Or better yet, "*.nyc.ny.us" since technically New York is in New York.

Bloody Americans. Once again ICANN shows it has no idea what the world looks like outside of the US.

BCE

The terms BCE/CE (Before Christian Era/Christian Era) have long since the terms BC/AD (Before Christ/Anno Deo) in historical circles. This is due to the fact that MANY cultures have MANY different calendars and it was felt that none of them should have a nomenclature which makes it sound like it is the "one true calendar system".

The fact that this... person... was not aware of this fact makes me wonder what the... heck... he is doing teaching.

The rest of his statements (ie, no mention of God in a golfer's Bio) removes the wonder. This is a person which tells us the Truth will set us free and then contradicts himself by ofering us the existence of God as fact. Erm... sorry, no such things - What we have (at best) are facts which can be taken as evidence that there is a Deity. Note the wording - EVIDENCE. Unless God appears in public, evidence is all we have.

No, I am not a Believer in any religion - never saw the need to believe in a Deity... I really don't care how the universe was created (curious, granted) as it will not affect how I live. Neither will any post-death reward of Heaven/punishment of Hell - I consider anyone who is "good" in this life because they hope to get rewarded/afraid to be punished (rather than because they truly believe this is the proper way to act) in an after-life to be the worst of hypocrits.

I thought...

..."BAAPS" stood for "Bulgarian Airbags Appreciation and Poking Society"?

Yes, it's BETA

And obviously a lot of the people writing these comments have no idea of what Beta is *supposed* to mean.

As an ex-Application Programmer (now Architect), Alpha and Beta can be equated to Integration and User Acceptance testing. Or in other words:

Alpha: We *know* there are bugs in it and we are testing it to find where they are. Don't show this to the users. Ever.

Beta: We *hope* to have gotten all the major bugs out of it. Product should work pretty much as advertised, but let's have the users test it - they'll come up with something we forgot about.

Based on what I have been reading, Apple released an Alpha version of Safari and did it badly. Appla fans keep on harping that it works fine on their Apple machine... that's all right and good, except this was supposed to be the release of a WINDOWS-CAPABLE version of Safari... and Apple f*d up big time on this one.

Someone in the PR department obviously failed to talk to their counterpart in the IT department.

Re: Rather than resort to insults...

"Now to see how long before someone cries 'OMG FAKE!!!11'"

OK...

OMG FAKE!!!11

Happy to oblige ^_-

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

"Sixty-six per cent of shareholders rejected the proposal..."

It would be interesting to find out if this was 66% of shareholders, or 66% of voting stock... which is NOT the same as 66% of shareholders.

Re: Not all Tesla...

"Just because the great man came up with a way of wirelessly transmitting power doesn't mean that he has dibs on all mechanims for doing this."

..he would if he had taken a US Patent, given how lax the USPO is with regards to restricting scope. ^_^

Re: Google should pay more in wages to the hire the right workers

"The google billionaire boys are asking the US to let in high tech workers to depress the wages of the current workers."

I don't know about "depress the wages". I am an Australian IT professional who was hired to do some work in the US (Chambana) for 6 months back in '98. And I *guarantee* you that I was well paid. *WELL* paid.

And why was this? Because the skills I had were not available locally. It's that simple. Yes, Universities can turn out .Net or Java developer like cookie-cutter factories - it happens here as well. But most of them, and here I speak from experience, couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag. I make most of my money now providing an "after-care" service to clean up the crap left behind by these "experts".

I still don't get it...

"It's about collecting taxes. You don't think the winners report their winnings to the IRS"...

You guys in the USA must have one hell of a population base whose means of support is professional gambling. It wasn't until I had to fill out an IRS form (worked in the States for 6 months) that I saw a "gambling winnings/losses" section in a Tax form.

Can anyone explain WHY it was placed in there in the first place? Wouldn't it be simpler NOT to allow gambling as a tax loss?

Oh, great...

... visual AND audio polution while I walk down the street or wait for the bus. Joy!

BTW: "re: Oh Well" What does this have to do with "talking paper"?

Remember "Doom"?

First of all, I am NOT a Microsoft proponent. I personally dislike their products and avoid them as much as possible.

Having said that...

Remember the game "Doom"? ID Software made a free version containing the first few levels and only a limited number of weapons. It then made available FOR FREE a level-maker. The only restriction placed on it? ID asked the people using the free level-maker to make sure their level only worked with the full version of Doom (easy enough to do, just add a BFG somewhere in the level where the players can't reach it, like behind a wall).

In this case, I think the developer is in the wrong. Maybe not legally, if he found a loophole in the MS legalese (more power to him), but certainly morally.

Egads. I never thought I'd ever hear myself defend MS on moral grounds.

Big Whoop.

Is Apple to become the new Microsoft? There is nothing new about the iPhone - HTC and others have had "smart" phones for quite a while now. And yet, Apple is claiming a "breakthrough" in Phone Paradigm the same way that MS recently claimed a"breakthrough" with it's new concept of the "touch-sensitive" table.

Someone get me a bucket, this glory hounding is making me sick.

Little test...

Let's do a little test here, shall we? How long do you reckon the funding'll last if IMHE decides to install Macs and/or *nix boxes in their labs and offices?

Re: Counterpoint...

"Asbestos ceiling tiles, Radium glow-in-the-dark paint, and leaded gasoline were once cutting edge tech"

George, I am afraid that you chose poorly in your examples.

Asbestos Ceiling tiles are perfectly harmless... if properly maintained. The problem comes when the tiles are damaged and left to "rot".

Radium glow-in-the-dark paint was, again, perfectly harmless... in the recommended "for fun" quantities. And then idiots decided it'd be a good idea to go beyond the recommendations and paint their entire flat with it.

As for leaded gasoline... funny... I never heard anyone claim it was "safe". The only claims I ever heard about Leaded Fuel was that it improved the performance of the vehicle. It's noxious effect were known, hence the catalytic converters fitted to car exhausts.

By the light...

So... MS expects the Zune to have shipped units to the tune of 1million. By June. So long as we fudge the figures.

Mmmm...

Zune's June Tune Rune!

CC-ing won't help

If the problem is that e-mails will not leave the Mail server and head out in the big wide world, then CC-ing yourself will not indicate any problems whatsoever.

Your e-mail will reach your ISP's mailserver, which will notice that one of the recipients is someone local to the ISP and simply deliver that e-mail to their (local) mailbox. The copy that is received never left the ISP and is therefore no indication as to whether or not the e-mail ever left the ISP's confine... the only thing it tells you is that the ISP's mailserver received the e-mail.

Cybersquatting

If ICANN's stance on domain names was correct, we wouldn't have this whole bunch of professional cybersquatters who sit on "obsolete" domain names and charge an arm and a leg for them.

I recently tried to acquire a domain name (as an individual) only to find that someone already "owned" it, had established the usual worthless "search portal" on it and was willing to grant it to me... for the measly sum of US$8000.

So if they don't own that domain name (accoring to ICANN), how came they can effectively hold people to ransom over a domain they are not using?

Pot & Kettle, anybody?

"Clearly, the sub editor at the BBC was struck but the utterly obvious nonsensical nature of this idea, and so struck a blow for the forces of good by removing the word "not" from a Home Office spokesperson quote:"

Surely the ElReg sub-editor(s) should have caught the spelling mistake? (hint: it's after the word "struck")

Dihydrogen Monoxide

What about the "silent killer", Dihydrogen Monoxide? http://www.dhmo.org/

So may people die from it each year that it should be banned, or at least placed under "controlled substance" status. And to make things worse, if it doesn't kill you, you will spend the rest of your life hooked on it and suffer potentially fatal withdrawal symptoms if it is withheld.

Ban DHMO! Get the Government to admit what they've known all along!

PS: ^_- <-- for the humourly-impaired.

Re: Tonne

"What I have always wondered is, why isn't a tonne (= 1000kg, and embarrassingly similar to a ton [= 20 cwt = 160 stone = 2240lb = about 1016kg]) called a megagramme"

Wasn't a "tonne" originally a container of some type? A barrel containing amounts greater than 350L?