* Posts by JC

194 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Sep 2007

Page:

Asus N50 15in laptop

JC

Little Point To This

With such a short runtime, you'll not be able to use it on the go for anything demanding so you might as well have had a lower performance laptop for lower cost. With the 15" screen, it's not quite fit to be a desktop replacement either.

Finally the price - outrageous. £300 should get what you're after in a short running 15" laptop, at least in the States that's a retail price with regular discounts below £250.

Granted at that price you dont' get Bluray, which you don't need since it can't do 1080p, and you don't get the discrete video chip, which is of little point since the short runtime again forces one to be plugged into an AC outlet, where one might as well have spent the difference in cost for a proper desktop gaming system video card upgrade and a 20" or larger monitor if these weren't already owned.

US mulls clicks for cameraphones

JC

I agree with that 100%

No good reason why people should be sneaking around taking pictures. When civility fails, law has to intervene. If it's a problem for a camera to alert the subject that they're having a picture taken, the problem is the user of the camera.

Those who don't like this law, lead by example in your life so it isn't necessary. Apparently as mentioned they do have justification, or at least a perception of it. If it truely isn't necessary then it would be folly to consider it compared to repeal of other laws that are far more detrimental to societal freedom (or whatever illusion of that you hold when it seems a click sound is important to disable).

To Parax who tried to equate this to guns in America. Silencers for those aren't quite legal either, fortunately so, as this means it is a bit more likely someone snapping pictures stealthily might be pummeled instead of shot.

Easy updates best for browser patching

JC

Beside the point

Their theory is that if only you are running the latest version, you are somehow magically secure. Hardly true, patches for each successive version are quite often from known exploits to that (then) latest version.

Personally I don't mind the firefox updates so much, but some of the add-on updates like noscript come out so often it becomes annoying after a point. Seems like every other day a page doesn't load because noscript wants to stop the show and do it's thing, then firefox pops up the window telling me about it, then noscrip takes firefox to it's webpage, then all this nonsense is closed so the original goal - loading a frikkin' webpage, can finally happen.

IMO, they need to consolidate these updates and release them 1/3rd as often. Conflicker for example, isn't spreading because someone doesn't have version 3.0.x of Firefox.

Microsoft's Windows Vista 'Capable' bill could hit $8.5bn

JC

What the fuss is about

MS advertised Vista features, then did not clearly state that Vista capable systems could not use these features (regardless of what OS happened to come on the system).

If an automobile manufacturer advertised a car as road-worthy, would you accept that it can only hit 20 MPH on roads, or would you assume it can travel at least at the legal minimum speed limit on an interstate highway?

Robot 'Spider-man' casts net to nab burglars

JC
Gates Horns

@Can't see the video

Why would we disable what we've deliberately enabled? All it takes is to click on the video, no disabling for the whole site is required.

This robot is just the beginning. Won't be long till our overlords equip them with taser darts too, should be a fairly trivial retrofit. The next logical step is installing windows, so nobody's to blame when they go berserk.

Acer intros 10in Aspire One netbook

JC

Close, but not close enough.

I welcome the screen size increase, are you all very small people who can't even manage to carry something the size and weight of a book? How do you exist in this world if a kilogram and a dozen cubic inches carried (even for miles) matters? Do you not weigh dozens of Kg yourself?

Then there's the keyboard. What sense is there in making it more difficult to use just so it's smaller? Same with the screen, whether it be 10" or 12" isn't nearly as important as it being 800 vertical pixels, 600 is simply not enough for people proficient enough on a computer that they would be working at higher speed if not scrolling around so much.

As for a comment about why it should have 7 hours runtime, the answer is obvious. You don't want to have to constantly stop using it and recharging it, the idea we should have to recharge anything after mere hours is wrong. Give it at least an entire day, 24hrs of runtime even if that means the weight is doubled. I don't recharge my phone every day, nor gas up the car. Thank goodness other products aren't so crippled as laptops are when it comes to frequency of replenishing the energy storage.

AMD's dual-core Neo set for 2009 release

JC
Thumb Up

RE: Desktop board

Why bother releasing for AM2+ HTPC or desktops? You can already get a dual-core AM2 processor for $30-40 delivered in the States that is reasonably low in power consumption, readily available, and even o'c by about 50% without elaborate measures if you care to do so.

As for the market for this, it makes perfect sense. I consider a 12" (if thin enough) notebook to be ultraportable enough, there are too many concessions in use with a netbook. The keyboard and screen are the main two interfaces, many people would rather carry something ~ 20 cubic inches larger so when they get to where they're going, they have a more usable system - not to mention that once the form factor is large enough they don't have as many incentives to use a lower capacity battery to reduce the size.

The cost difference merely going from a dual-core Atom to Neo shouldn't be much at all relative to the total price the laptop running it. Look at it in the same context as a CPU upgrade when buying a Dell et al, if the total cost difference were a mere $20, lots of people would pick the faster processor but in this case doing so with a Neo opposed to Atom may put the performance at just high enough you don't often notice the sluggishness relative to a contemporary notebook like you would with an Atom under the hood.

In short, this CPU makes perfect sense for most people, IF the 'book has XP instead of Vista or Win7 on it.

USAF cops seek netflinger rifle to down ultralights, paragliders

JC

Quite Unnecessary

All they really need is a huge can of silly string.

Desktop integrated graphics shoot-out

JC

@! Desktop integrated graphics shoot-out

But of course, ATI & nVidia long for the day when they can give away the farm cheap instead of having quad display gamers buy a video card. Perish the thought of paying more for more features.

About the CPU, these boards really should've been fitted with the slowest CPUs that weren't completely castrated with less than 1MB L2 cache, otherwise it's a bit silly talking about power consumption and someone cheaping out on the video tends to do the same on the processor. Regardless, at least we had more than a small amount of assurance the processor (nevermind the memory bus??) itself wasn't a bottleneck for the video benchmarks.

Conficker Autoplay ruse gets teeth into Windows 7

JC
Gates Horns

@ Microsoft bitching

There certainly is something wrong with autorun when the average PC user, thinking their own flash drive is a trusted source, is allowed to infect the system via the default actions of an operating system specifically marketed for improved security.

MS has done what they always do, add more things to click that annoy and slow down general computing, instead of disabling insecure features out of the box so that only those savvy enough to be mindful of what they've actively enabled, will be those who seek out and enable that feature.

You really shouldn't have to take responsibility for clicking on what the OS pops up, it should not pop up any self-destruct buttons at all! It's like putting a "dump the oil pan" button in a car then not labeling it, with your mechanic arguing that anyone should take the time to trace that button through the dash to see that it's wired to a valve under the car, regardless of what the button is labeled to do, like "open trunk"... or folder in this case.

Stop making excuses for defective software. Windows is targeted at the noobs, the interface changes speak volumes enough about that. With that target userbase, at the very least as much attention should be paid towards preventing self destruct buttons as the # of different looks for a clock on the sidebar.

If you want autorun, by all means enable it from a default disabled setting.

Corrupt cop abused police database to blackmail child abusers

JC
Paris Hilton

Bit Of Fun

... this chap is going to have in jail when cellmates find out he was blackmailing ex-cons.

Paris, because it's rough in jail when you're the princess.

Mozilla hastily shoves Firefox updates out door

JC
Paris Hilton

If I want

If I want ur pass...

Browsers are designed to tell it.

Paris, 'cuz being designed for something ain't all bad.

Biz travelers howl over US gov RFIDs

JC

Sad Day

... when those in power claim it's important to erode real freedoms in order to "protect" imaginary ones then attack if you don't agree.

RFID should never be imposed on anyone unless they ask for it, in which case they made a choice, freely.

Windows internet share drops below 90 per cent

JC

Demographics

I don't believe these figures, even in the technologically repressed culture I endure, Linux is over 1%.

Employees sue for unpaid Windows Vista overtime

JC
Gates Horns

If it's that bad

If those PCs are either so misconfigured or so underpowered that it's taking 15 minutes, can you imagine how much time they waste all day long trying to use same system(s)?

Bill G., for knowing it's better to grab your coat than be handed your hat.

US stocks up on semi-automatic rifles

JC
Paris Hilton

Morons

I've never fired on another person outside of military directed orders. I'm a US citizen and will own an assault rifle if I bloody well want to. Who the fork are you to decide I don't need or shouldn't have what I have demonstrated all my life that I am reponsible enough to have?

Perhaps you anti-semi-gun morons think that because you are irresponsible and unable to choose right and wrong, that everyone is? Hardly, it's about experience. If you can't have it, you are the inexperienced one who is unfit to make new decisions with more firepower than you are accustomed to.

For the rest of us, it's not about what weapon you have, it's about the prior intent, how you end up using it. Firearms don't kill people, people kill people. If it'll make you happier to have some goon kill you with a stun gun, hot pepper spray, and a spoon, by all means go ahead and good luck to you!

BitTorrent Inc. amputates half of self

JC
Paris Hilton

@Shame its not

By all means, don't use it. Oh, you thought Bittorrent going under would suddenly cause P2P to cease? I'll leave you in your bubble.

(with Paris)

Facebook rattling tin in Dubai?

JC

@ and soon it will be time

advertising space of course, didn't you know the entire world is Google's billboard?

Ballmer stirs excitement with Yahoo! comments

JC

@ MS Should Wait

It seems you've missed the point, which was not to get Yahoo out of the market but rather, leverage their brand name to pile more sheep onto the MS search engine and advertising campaign. Yahoo going under before MS can get any market share out of it = utter fail. Remember MS is already paying people to use their Live Search via cashback rewards, meaning they are quite desperate to reign in Google and with good reason.

Google demanding Intel's hottest chips?

JC
Paris Hilton

Shooting themselves in the foot

All Intel has to do is provide a spec spread where towards the upper thresholds for any given clock frequency, those parts have a higher voltage spec. Voila, a mere 5C higher is attainable even in worst case. All Google has done is fail to see the science in what it requires to meet their spec and how it would ultimiately effect the parts offered under this agreement (if it is true at all, frankly it seems foolish because the CPU is not the most heat vulnerable part in a server if your plan is to allow ambient temp to rise).

Unless they're overclocking, it is rather trivial to slap a stock heatsink on and have it stay cool enough with 80F ambient temps. At stock speeds most of Intel's products would stay cool enough even at 90F ambient unless these servers were ill designed, with especially bad airflow.

Paris, because even if she doesn't know what the "C" in 5C stands for, she understands pushing the limits.

Western Digital sees future written on disks, not clouds

JC

Depends On How Literally You Take It.

Mechanical hard drives won't as a majority be replaced tomorrow or the next day, but they will be replaced before too much addt'l time passes except for fileserver or backup purposes. It may take 5 years but many people hold onto a system that long so if yours is newer today, your next might have an SSD or at least the option for one.

What it will take is a return on investment by SSD developers so the prices fall some, another couple doublings of per-chip capacity so we're getting 4X the capacity for the same dollar, and completion of much of the current development on next-gen flash controllers that can fully exploit SATA150, let alone 300.

All this will eventually be cheaper than a $50 mechanical hard drive, the only remaining question being how much capacity everyone really needs in their client systems. 802.11n and GbE just don't make distributed storage very reasonable, people want centralized even if that's on-site instead of in a cloud.

Tiny MyCar named electric vehicle of the year

JC

You folks don't get it.

It's "A" car, not supposedly the world's answer to an energy crisis, pollution, long range travel or high performance.

Everyone acts as though it has to meet every one of their ideals as if there is any other car that could do that and equally well meet the ideals of the next person on the road as well.

It's a fun little limited purpose toy car. Nothing wrong with that unless you try to thrust your own misconceptions of what an electric car "must" be onto it. Who wants all vehicles to be the same anyway?

Should it have been EV of the year? Probably not as there's nothing particularly revolutionary about it in an era when so much work is being done on EVs but it's also good to see alternatives that don't cost 50% more than an ICE vehicle.

US boffins: Laptops will be as hot as the Sun by 2030

JC

The opposite will happen

In the longer term the overall performance per watt will keep climbing but the need for the most performance possible will be reduced. There won't likely be any truely revolutionary new battery technologies so what we are left with is the other problem laptops have, their short runtime.

Laptop heat levels will be reduced because people will want longer runtime more than a performance level that allows doing exotic things with their laptop. They'll want other factors that coincide to less heat and more runtime. Smaller, lighter, cheaper, a basic terminal to interface with the cloud is what everyone will be using instead of today's crude mobile version of a desktop PC.

Texas National Guard site disappears after malware attack

JC

Seems pretty clear

... that in today's world the military needs more redundancy in it's IT sector, that you can't be sending all the folks qualified to handle the website, off-site where they aren't effectively handling such problems.

GM shows off production electric car

JC
IT Angle

@ In response to several - et al

@ In response to several of the preceeding posts

No the range will not be the same at 100 as at 40 MPH. Drag (air resistance alone) increases with the square of speed among other factors.

@ Let's see

It's fully electric just like any fully electric car can only drive X number of miles. Don't want to use the gas engine? Just stop driving when the battery gets low, same as any other fully electric car.

Cost per mile doesn't dramatically increase because you'd have to have more or higher capacity NiMH cells for the same 40 mile range, thus adding weight, thus requiring even more battery power for the same range, thus increasing car size to hold the pack, thus increasing weight again.

You won't be replacing the pack on a regular basis, figure that over the average lifespan of an automobile it will need replaced one time.

@ Solar panel enthusiasts

No point in putting a solar panel on the roof, it wouldn't provide a significant % of power for recharging even if it were light out 24 hours a day. What it would do is increase cost, weight, and be more vulnerable to the weather unless additional weight is added for a protective cover over it. I suppose the entire roof could be made of a transparent material but then cost goes up even more as well as weight.

About the car styling, it looks like a Chevy. Go figure.

JC

@ battery size

Tom I'd love to hear your explanation of how doubling the battery pack will come near triple the range. Even using accessories while driving to offset the extra weight, most would claim it's near double as we might expect.

Hilton documentary reveals hidden side of Paris

JC
Gates Horns

Paris Dear,

It's quite too late at this point, don't you know everything has it's price and yet not everything can be bought?

Bill G., for giving it a darn good try anyway.

US Senate wants answers on soaring text rates

JC
Happy

@ Michael

I did not, would not, vote for anyone knowningly who had the intentions to let things slide as they have in the US.

I will indeed vote for someone else, but that is not likely to cause the laws to be repealed. We the citizens have been betrayed and should speak up. Your idea of how things should be has historically never worked, it just allows problems to be perpetuated.

Kevin's so-called rant was about the President, as the figurehead he does have the ability to sway opinion and pretty much pushed for things you suppose were the fault of the other party in congress, or didn't you ever hear any of the speeches he'd made over the years? Apparently not.

Parents plant spyware to snare sex predator

JC
Paris Hilton

It's not the monitoring that's the problem

... it's doing it in secret.

Want to monitor your child? Go right ahead, just don't give them the expectation of privacy then betray that. Even if they had it, don't sneak around without telling them you will be monitoring from that point forward.

Paris, because children are people too.

I was a government guinea pig, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

JC

@ Steve Evans

It's not a big steak that's the problem, it's loads of greasy carbs. You have it a bit backwards that if those overweight primarily ate high protein and some vegetables, they'd retain the muscle mass needed to burn stored fat and ingest enough vitamins to keep a healthy metabolism.

88% of IT admins would steal data if fired

JC

Who has seen the survey questions?

Given the biased nature of the survey originator, it's no surprise if the survey questions are misleadingly engineered to draw a conclusion that more would steal data than actually would.

Intel adds cheap dual-core, quad-core chips

JC

What you're missing

You're missing that these aren't OEM prices. OEMs get better deals on Celerons even though the % of total system cost is so low you won't typically want one unless they only offered the otherwise low-end bundle only with a Celeron and no opportunity to upgrade to a better processor.

I do suspect the Celeron name will absorb some of the other E2xxx and E4xxx soon, Intel does have too many product names at the moment.

Emails allege ATI-Nvidia price fixing conspiracy

JC

News Article Left Out Crucial Detail (if same suit)

From what I recall, this suit is a class action only for those who bought the cards directly from ATI or nVidia's website, not the overly vague onto the point of potentially being misunderstood phrase "everyone in the US who has bought a graphics card from either ATI or Nvidia from December 2002 to the present".

If the card was bought anywhere else you aren't a member of the class, which is unfortunate as I lost track of how many dozens of cards I and others had bought elsewhere during this period.

Some video cards have certainly been at good price points but others were ridiculous. It's just plain excessive when a card costs over $250 for example, even if gold plated and wearing baby seal slippers.

Welder in DIY penis enhancement nut mishap

JC
Paris Hilton

Don't Give The Kids Ideas

... now everyone's going to want one.

Paris, because she wouldn't know any better either.

PC Gamers get Bill of Rights

JC

After the first step comes the second

Now we need a Bill of Rights (BOR) symbol that can be placed on game packages and websites to denote adherance to these principles so the buyers can have confidence and decide for themselves.

Anatomy of a malware scam

JC

I've seen this

Recently had a PC brought to me that'd been running Win2k and IE6. In addition to this fake scanner, it or additional malware had done such lovely things as disable control panel, disable Task Manager, hook something into Explorer and hide all drive letters in My Computer.

Probably more I didn't notice, at that point my only concern was yanking the drive out to get a few of the client's files off on another system then wiping the drive to put a new image on it.

eBay changes anger smaller sellers

JC

Good thinking Ebay

Gradually do away with the only reason you became such a big hit. Ebay you're in big trouble soon if your Buy-It-Now prices aren't lower than everyone else's.

Microsoft to protect furtive web searches

JC

Doubtful

I don't believe it, MS is probably doing what they always have, trying to create a perception and belief about something that isn't real.

I think what they mean is "we're trying more than ever to hide access to an owner's system, but the data is still there as always".

Past track record shows this, you can't even browse history or cookies like normal files because they deliberately too steps to prevent it.

Sorry MS, don't feed me your BS, fix your past mistakes before you can ever expect confidence in future (anything).

Dell to launch 'Eee PC beater' today

JC

Wow, tough crowd.

All it has to do is compete in the same market segment to drive down prices. It's good for all of us even if you want to make an excuse not to buy one.

Filesharing teen gets damages reduced in ignorance claim

JC

Not if she knew, only what she did.

The law was broken, whether she knew should not be mitigating. The damages shouldn't be so high either way, she is not responsible for someone else breaking the same law. Until it is proven that she has distributed enough copies of the songs to justify under $1 per, she should only be liable for what was actually proven to be distributed.

It's the equivalent of saying "ok, you were speeding in your car and the fine for that is $100 but since you were speeding once we have to assume you have sped 400 times and we're going to fine you for 400 instances to make an example out of you."

In rare cases making an example of someone might be required but not for sharing a mere MP3, which isn't even rare.

Did YOU vote for anyone who supported these outlandish penalties? I certainly didn't approve of them and can't recall anyone who even tried to make a good argument that they were fitting. This is not what a modern society considers just, the law itself should be repealed then let everyone come to their senses to work out a more reasonable alternative.

Tiffany demands reappraisal of eBay counterfeit decision

JC
Paris Hilton

No that simple

I few people have expressed the thought that if it's ridiculously cheap, THEN the buyer should beware. What if it isn't ridiculously cheap? Are we saying all someone selling a fake has to do is charge more?

The answer is for any company producing anything of (excessive?) value to now begain manufacturing goods with a better tracking and identification system. To learn from their mistakes that if they want a 3rd party to authenticate something, they have to provide the reasonable means to do so and having not done so in the past they can't reasonably expect anyone else to authenticate for them.

If they facilitated this then ebay should make at least an attempt to work with the fraud department of such companies. I can't feel too badly for Tiffany though, that's the kind of situation a company places themselves in when something really shouldn't have the value a few obscure buyers place on it, and it's the cost of doing business today that Tiffany is welcome to lower their prices if they feel the need to stay competitive.

Certainly eBay would much rather auction everything they can to skim off their profit but almost anything could be a fake even if the profit isn't so large. To a seller it could be a pretty big incentive even to make 40% addt'l profit with fakes of lesser valued items. eBay isn't going to give up profits, so do we want them to more actively police everything at a higher cost to sellers and buyers? If anything an auction has to be a buyer's market.

Paris, because being the real thing is overrated.

Yahoo! recounts! votes!

JC
Paris Hilton

@Chris

You're aware it was Broadridge, not Yahoo that failed right?

@D!A!V!I!D! Yes, but so what!!

Paris, because math is highly overrated.

McAfee slaps Trojan warning on MS Office Live

JC

Quite Right

Code doing what you don't want it to, downloading more code that potentially takes control, interferes with your use of a system, and breaks things. A rose by any other name ...

Profs: Teacher-student relationships key to sex education

JC

Who are they kidding?

These days if you're waiting till high school to teach sex ed, you're already a few years late. Of course they were comfortable about it when the teachers taught in a friendly way, that's the proper way to teach anything if there were the time and small class sizes to make it possible. Can't speak for the state of many OH schools but down in most of KY outside of the metropolitan areas the school funding is fairly low, and teacher student ratios have as much to do with number of students in the geographic area as anything else.

US court liberates Cablevision 'remote DVR'

JC

Bad deal for some customers.

I'm glad for the court ruling but not the off-site storage.

I for one would rather pay for my own hard drive and retain the copy of the video. Under Cablevision's proposed system if the cable goes out you can't watch any of your shows, and if you want to quit your cable service, whether it be due to switching providers (someday it's bound to be more possible) or having to move to another residence outside their area, you have just lost all your recordings.

What would the hard drive cost, maybe $50 in bulk when the cable service itself is probably as much or more?

American man too fat for execution

JC
Gates Horns

Easier Solution

Give the fellow a gun, a room with meals delivered, and a record player just out of reach behind bulletproof glass playing the same Barry Manilow tune over and over.

Online cult decides federal court case

JC

@Rich

If wear and tear doesn't consider failure while the equipment is used in a proper manner, then someone is always left holding the bag when the well-worn rental equipment eventually and inevitably fails. Then the company renting it has no incentive to ever maintain it or replace it until they can knock up some customer for the bill.

Privacy watchdog hoists Google by its own petard

JC

@ Ironic

Someone surveying the area for the best way to sneak around might well pose as a nature photographer. With an entire park, to have backed yourself up to the perimeter of the campus would seem suspicious to me, even moreso if you then seemed to be taking pictures of anything but the campus as if you were trying to hide your activity.

I've never worked as a security guard, let alone being the one who stopped you, but I know well enough that when it appears that someone is trying to hide something, more scrutiny ought to be placed on them from a security perspective.

So you didn't like being suspected of wrongdoing. Fair enough, but until that could be determined how would a guard catch anyone who was actually up to no good without waiting till that person had caused more of a breech or damage?

I'm not suggesting the guard should've said anything at all since you weren't on Google property, but perhaps kept an eye on you till you left the area.

AVG update nails down stability bugs

JC

So when does the free version get it?

This has only been released for the paid version, my free version updated today still reads program version 8.0.138, not 8.0.156, as does their full AVG Free, application installation download link.

Google: 'Even in the desert, privacy does not exist'

JC

Boo, Google

Arguing that there is no 100% privacy on earth as an excuse to invade someone's privacy is a bit offensive. Wanna bet how quickly they'd argue the opposite if they felt it more financially advantageous to do so?

Page: