Posts by Stephen Sherry

This is a new thing?

Umm, this has been going on for a long time, but not put into these exact words... Most Malware infections include a combination of rootkits, trojans, and other variants of malware by the time many users bring their systems to the shop. If they can get infected, and not break the PC, then they technically work together. Much like some times you can have 2 antiviruses on a computer and have it not break windows, you don't call that Mega-protection. The fact people are pointing out the fact malware can combine if they don't break each other, seems kind of strange to me on an IT site. It would make some kind of sense on the mainstream media, because they are about 5-10 years behind reality when it comes to technology and science.

But don't listen to me, just a filthy peasant :P

How easy it must be

To only have to read headlines for news, and ignore the governments themselves stating how horrific, and how the issue has not been resolved in Fukushima. Stick with IT tech, and stay away from hobby news, you all do not do enough research to be pushing these purely subjective opinions.

Sorry but the register is pretty useless when it comes to non-IT news, at least when using this article as an example. The complete lack of information behind the articles like this, makes the good articles that aren't IT related have a harder time standing up.

You guys do know the reactors are still criticle, right? Based on your local nuclear genius, the kinds of radiation given off is only from an exposed core melting down... and after that article last year, you all finally admitted something worse was happening, but still played it down. So there is not danger unless it melts down, and until there are signs of certain radioactive isotopes, there is no need to panic... OK we found traces of these elements, but please, don't panic... and if you even show a slight hint of worry, we will ridicule you until you either kill yourself, or give up completely. Merry Christmas.

Plutonium detected in the southern hemisphere from Fukushima, what are the implications of the detection of such a material? You know, but I'm sure there's going to be superstitious people who believe Plutonium is a freaking vitamin.

Good Luck.

Creating APIs in secret...

It's not just APIs that need to be done in secret, but just about any solution to business problems that can't be put into MS project or something similar. If management doesn't understand the why's and how's of what gets done, and what needs to be done, they end up demanding a solution out of frustration, but often time subconsciously sabotage any attempt at resolving the issue due to their apparent need to understand that which is far above their heads, and will make the actual problem solver have a nervous breakdown form all of the imagined issues brought up by management. So yeah, if you want to solve any problem these days, you have to do it in secret, or it will never get done. The main reason I believe this is the case is because management will take full credit for solutions, and scream about taking responsibility for the mistakes of their decisions and their underlings "lack of ability" because this is a side effect of taking responsibility for something that the managers had no input in other than saying it needs to get done. Suffice it to say, when things don't go as the manager imagines, they DO NOT take responsibility, as they tend to stay employed, and their underlings either lose their jobs, or have the ever looming threat that the slightest mistake could bring down the wrath of the company, while their uncountable accomplishments are lucky to get a nod of approval, as the superhuman ability to solve problems is now the expectation.

So yeah, that's my opinion on this industry ruining topic, idiot geniuses in management positions who know and understand so little, that no matter what is accomplished, the businesses eventually fall, as their promises to the investors do not match up with their ability to manage a group of tech experts. And while the managers move on to other high paying jobs, IT professionals like myself are instantly getting less and less pay, and are expected to perform miracles on demand.

My message to them is a big FU and I honestly cannot wait for their generation to die off, I know that sounds bad, but they have made my life, and those of others, a near living hell of stress and depression, having no ladder to climb anymore, each year I find my field getting paid less and less... while what we are expected to accomplish grows...

Am I bitter, fuck yes!

Nuclear FTW

I had a acne, and put nuclear on it, and it cleared right up.

But seriously, DARPA is pretty good at what they do, I'd be willing to bet that whatever they come up with will be quite interesting, and make us all go, "why didn't we try this before?" Though usually the answer ends up being, because the energy industry makes less money if they always do R&D, than just re-marketing what they are already selling (thing that make fire, GOOD!). In fact, every industry tends to do that right up until there is competition in their market.

A few years ago they proposed to the congress under Bush 2.0 that they were interested in releasing secret tech in the hopes of benefiting the general public, and the economy.

Best news I've read in a very long time.

This is the first article that has informed me, and not subtly called me stupid for being misinformed at the same time... anywhere outside of comedy fake news outlets.

The apology for the fellow news individuals was technically not needed, it did make me feel a lot better, so thank you Lewis.

The media is virtually consistent at insulting "civilian" intelligence without apology. Especially when we need their work the most. Then insult us for giving in to conspiracy theories. We're smart enough to know when the media are inaccurate, but not informed enough to know what to do about it to inform ourselves. This leaves us open to misinformation that sounds more honest than the ones who are supposed to inform us, throwing us into fits of anxiety from the complete lack of assurance in our lives.

With some of the articles about the safety of nuclear power on this site (and others), doing everything but calling those who disagree stupid, I was ready to respond with a scathing remark. But as they say, the truth will set you free.

I wish the BBC had some reporters writing articles that are as objective as this one, the ones they do tend to be very hard to find again... the one explaining the stigma of the Hibakusha was very informative about why nuclear threats are very unnerving to the Japanese, but now all you find are articles more or less stating, "told you everything was going to be safe, stupid." Which has been how the U.S. media has handled the "civilian" populace since at least Bush 2 was first "elected" to office. Hind-site being 20-20 does not apply to the time when things are actually happening. And the argument "I told you so" is not a sign of intelligent reporting. Telling people they shouldn't worry, without a reason why, doesn't help anyone except people who have brains that don't work right, or people who don't like making their brains work.

This article is of the quality that it should be reprinted by all of the major news outlets, and should be at the top of the headline section, as an example to other media leaders of how news is done.

While not giving me my faith back on the media as a whole, I'm not agitated by the prospect of getting it from The Register any more.

Thank you for that, Lewis Page!

HOLY CRAP, no they didn't

The government is using whatever means they think is necessary to do whatever they feel is necessary... is this new? It's because we're lead by filthy humans who are guided by emotions. How dare they do things we might disagree with? They should have taken their sweet time taking down those child porn sites, so as not to disturb those innocent webizens, forcing them from their web homes, out into the web cold. It was web raining. When the world loses access to a web log, I mean blog, for 2 days, an angel dies.

How dare they use the technology they have told us they have, "Carnivore" to keep an eye on EVERYTHING that passes over the ether, and an off switch built into every device? Doesn't anyone pay attention to the things the government says they are doing... 10 or 20 years ago? Or was I dreaming it all?

You think Egypt, or Iran, or China invented the technology? If this is what makes people stand up and shout, I'm going to join the alien overlords in the thinning of the human race by just sitting back and watching everyone crazy themselves to death.

I do understand the hypocrisy and contradictions in politic speak, but that is politics. It is like supporting one party over another, then screaming about how your team is acting like politicians. I'm not saying there isn't something wrong with the brutality of how things are being implemented in the name of progress, but no one seems to have a perspective on what to actually get angry about, or if it is worth the effort to be more than annoyed at the lack of a "heads up, things are going to suck for everyone the next couple decades." Though I can't say they haven't done that, because all we've been getting from politicians are warnings of bad things coming, they just don't give specifics on the time and the nature of the bad things. As far as I can see things have sucked since the 80's, looking at history, things have generally sucked for millenia.

What is the future supposed to be, and what isn't it supposed to be? That's what I want to hear answers for, not a lot of bitching and moaning, and NOT a lot of killing and raping. People around the world who think they are being abused by their governments only seem to take it out on each other. Where I live, it's all "down with the government, bomb all the Arab countries," or "Down with the socialist nanny state, but keep your hands off my medicare," People need to focus and chill the hell out. If it is judgment day, we're not doing enough to pass the test, we're failing fatally and taking everything around us down along with ourselves.

There are some people who run governments that legitimately disrespect their people, and all people in general, enough to abuse them to nightmarish extents, but taking a domain down???

WTF?

When the sun goes all crazy active, do we go to war with it for taking out all our tech? That will make the domain issue seem as unimportant as whether it is cloudy or not. More likely we'll fight each other, as usual. That's what we seem to do when we fear the future, there's no pause button, no undo, so we panic and become angry and violent (Grrr, change BAD!). Change is the result of the passage of time, not just a slogan used for political rhetoric. It is inevitable, for better or worse. This NWO ball has been rolling for decades, and some countries want to clean house before things get too bad. If we expect the worst and hope for the best, maybe we'll be ready for a best case scenario, instead of reacting angrily ahead of time to a not yet reached worst case one. As far as I'm concerned, we're in the middle of the worst case, but it could always be even worse if we let it. If civil war becomes popular enough, everywhere will become part of the nightmare.

Maybe they set the government up to become so unpopular that we force them to disband and ask for the constitution to be removed, while welcoming martial law as an improvement to the current system. But if they said that out loud we would immediately oppose it and promote the government that doesn't work instead. It's no wonder they don't tell us anything.

I have a better idea, if the sun does go bat crazy on us, the government should just sit back and wait till it happens, then try to help us with no working infrastructure while we fend for ourselves like cavemen, because most people don't have the skills to survive without technology.

Or even better, they could tell us now the sun is going to go bat crazy and we all have to move to city-states and go to rationing resources and immediate population control due to the lack of ability to support so many people. Yeah, with a population that thinks the world can't end except by the hand of God? Or that "ending" means no one survives, and the world explodes in fire or something? I'd say most people would be violently skeptical, to say the least. Remember, Change BAD! Then if we find out they weren't lying, then what? "Sorry for trying and/or successfully killing and/or raping so many people. Thought it was the rapture and I was left behind and had nothing to lose, my bad."

Maybe if enough people got together to try to find out what they would do in the governments situation and then gave the idea to the government they would take it, but with all honesty, and the few pieces of the puzzle I've been able to collect, I'm hard pressed to think of an alternative, if it is the worse case that is coming to us. And again, worst case doesn't mean no survivors, but probably a LOT of suffering, and a lot of people not surviving. If we HELP each other instead of fighting each other there is a statistically higher chance for the most people to survive as possible. But we're already fighting each other... based on what we think are secret government decisions we don't understand. People will fight each other because they disagree on the basis of their "conspiracy theories", regardless of the possibility they could both be wrong. With as much conviction as a religious war.

I need medicine to live myself, so if the tech system falls apart, and they cannot make pharmaceuticals, I'm pretty much screwed. But I'm not going to go on a hedonistic, hate-fueled, rampage just because things aren't going my way. The next generation is actually important to me, and I'm willing to make the sacrifice if it means that they will be taken care of. I'm not immortal, and I'm not going to act like I should be treated like one. We live for the next in line, we should start acting like it. We've been able to be self centered to the point many parents can't even relate to their children anymore. They and, through their example, their children believe it is normal to not be able to understand each other, which is crazy.

God help us from ourselves, because someone has to. We've lost our minds.

Read above

I think everyone pretty much said it all ;P People like that guy pretty much managed this economy to where it is today. And as far as egoists go, I think from him that would be the pot calling the kettle black, except most engineers actually have the ability to solve problems that back up such egos :P

I just hope no one important actually listens to this guy, because the kinds of people tho eat his crap ideas up, are also the kind of people who would never read a site like this to hear any real criticism for what this guy is saying. And their assistants, who are supposed to look into stuff like this and inform the decision makers, well we can see how well they've been working by looking at the state of the world :P

And the best managers for hard projects that are being worked on by engineers tend to be engineers also, or have an understanding of the engineer's purpose and methodology, but again people like that tend to be engineers anyway, or else work solo in the services fields. They solve problems for a living, and if there was a set way for solving problems, then we wouldn't need engineers.

Try keeping up with the tech sector...

...and all of the politics, lobbying, and other frustrating aspects of the tech sector, and then criticize Ted for being a little critical of Google's attempts at, well, anything that doesn't appear to have a purpose for the public sector? Just because they aren't actually out to dominate the world Dr. Evil style, doesn't mean they are saints either. They are humans with a lot of influence, and most people don't realize how much a lot is...

The most uninformed people out there are the noobs to the tech world, barely console junkies, and far from real nerds, who complain about big corporate bashing (tends to be those who either know nothing and think everyone else is as ignorant as them, so how could the criticizers know better, or people who's first FPS was Halo, absentmindedly giving MS head because they got off on it so hard). The good Corps don't get bashed, but no one pays attention to them, they don't make enough money, or aren't media hogs.

If we have learned anything, it's that we have yet to run into a big corporation that has stayed trustworthy as they grow. Especially when the $$ they see keep getting bigger and bigger, and since humans are involved, sometimes a little power and/or social influence too (however you want to state it). Anyone who doesn't realize this may as well keep their heads in the sand and shut up and let the rest of us try to fix it by pointing out the flaws of the way systems are being run. It's all one can do with the written word, it's not like any of us jaded are going to storm the Google or MS head office. But it won't keep us from being critical.

Also, the comments made by those criticizing the critical nature of the article seem to miss their own ironic acts :P Everyone should try going around saying how great they are and see how many people actually can keep their criticism about you to themselves. There are people who criticize Jesus for Christs sake (pun intended).

And reviewers ARE a kind of critic. This site reviews tech, therefore there is a lot of criticism of tech on this site. Holy crap, what a mind blower!

When a toddler calls a piece of dirt gold it is cute, when a supposedly successful company does it, they shouldn't get the same treatment. (ESPECIALLY ones who get public funding for secret projects, but of course I would never be critical of such things. GO USA!!)

But what the hell do I know...

Mine's the one that says, "When you're a Nerd, you're a Nerd all the way from your first cigarette to your last dyin' day."

The internet isn't free...it's damn expensive!

I dropped my cable subscription due to financial reasons, plus many of the shows I watched were offered already on Hulu, or were cancelled. I wasn't that concerned about not seeing things when everyone else saw them, because I don't care that much about talking about mindless crap. ALSO, most of the tv shows I watch are aired on their home web sites... for free to the user with adds? So them making me pay to watch shows I could get at blockbuster at a better quality, and able to watch them in the comfort of my living room, or just get my friend who has cable and DVR to record it for me like I used to before I discovered HULU. I'd go over to his place and watch anything I missed, while giving us something to do while hanging out :P

Oh yeah, my internet connection that HULU comes over costs money. In my mind, functionally speaking anyway, this would be like paying for premium cable service, then having to make micro payments for all the shows you watch. Those who run companies, who have never really been consumers a single moment of their lives, would never be able to wrap their heads around this concept. All they can do is figure out how many times they can charge us for the same thing as often as possible, like federal and state taxes :P We LOVE those, so obviously, we're going to be paying for what has turned into complete crap (TV/CABLE).

The real problem for them is that they cannot come up with programming people are actually willing to pay for and they don't understand why. They blame downloading (which many of us do because there are some things that are just not good enough to pay for, though enough of us pay when we can when the content is decent and priced right, these payments are far too rare for their cash bins). Mainly they blame downloading because they are told it is a threat, not because they actually understand it as one. If copying was a huge issue it would have started a long time ago with magnetic tape. (it pretty much comes down to older people who run the companies not understanding... well... not understanding the present and last couple decades or more)

I'll give HULU whatever time they officially give it before they pull the plug. Whenever they put a plan like this in motion they wait for things to fill some expectation, but most of the time with entertainment programming nowadays, they have no clue, so their expectations can be anywhere and everywhere. We can assume the plan will fail, and they will in fact pull the plug. As far as the facts they see, all they know is the adds aren't set up right because the advertisers aren't taking the internet seriously enough (and they don't have the cash in advertising anymore to advert everywhere they really should be in this new media age), and all the owners see are the number of individuals hitting their site and it's probably getting close to a city sized load of people who they see as freeloading (even though they are already paying a large monthly fee for internet. Not everyone is rolling in cash you know :P )

There's a lot of competition on the internet for fee based entertainment, and I have to say, Hulu is literally on the bottom of my list. I get more shows chipping in for my friends expensive service and asking him to record crap for me. Remember when Napster became paid for? If Hulu is to realistically succeed, they would have to make the payments so low no one cares, and that's just not enough money for a company like news corp, or else they would beef up their adds. What companies that advert need to do is go around and see who they should be advertising with, instead of taking their lead from media companies. The 3 or 4 shows I watch I can only get on cable/satellite/or hulu, but I can live without if I can't afford it. Honestly, if I were the cable stations, I would try to get into the digital TV market as fast as possible. The traditional media cash hungry monsters just can't pull it off anymore, too many customers have taste, or individual tastes, that generic crap just can't fill anymore. And let News Corp own the cable ways, like Howard Stern owns the satellite radio business. I can count everyone I know who listens to satellite radio on one finger :P

Not saying it isn't able to serve the people who spend a long time on the road, I'm just saying it is too damn expensive for the casual drive to work driver. And that is pretty much where cable tv is headed if they keep carrying themselves like they have been (not just cable tv, but any media stream, or product for that matter). No matter how great you think something you're selling is, if it's too expensive you may as well just horde it for yourself because no one is going to buy it, and they will just resent you for letting them know about whatever it is that is supposedly cool, and that you're holding it over their heads basically saying "look what you can't have" like a mean older sibling :P

The Worst part is, the media companies actually want you to have what they are selling. They have this insane need to be exclusive, like they can pick their audience, and yet they also want everyone to buy what they are selling as well. They don't realize that when their audience is very small, the rest who might download what they have are treating the content as a curiosity, not something they can't live without. It's more like, "I wonder why so-and-so likes this show so much? oh no it's canceled, nap time." That's what actually goes through most people's heads when it comes to most shows. Watching TV is like watching the circus. People actually get on fine after it is gone. And when they keep canceling everyone's shows, why would people feel the need to keep watching to see what they are coming out with next. A lot of good shows get missed because of this dynamic now, the people who would be getting into the show aren't watching it. Media companies should just go to the public tv model like the BBC, it can only help :P

With taxes paying for entertainment, I don't think there would have been so much crap on television. Boring is more tolerable than crap, and the parts that are actually entertaining are already about even between our two models (only due to the few big budget shows produced over here in the States). The random good shows, unlike on the bbc, don't come back after they leave, with few exceptions. Who wants to get into a show anymore if they are just going to end it abruptly because they know it's going to be canceled, or never end because the writers hoped they would get the budget for another season. That's why HULU is so popular, no risk to the customer, and in some cases, the ability to watch a whole series uninterrupted so you don't forget what is going on. Or see movies you might never have even bothered to get from the library :P

But I'm in IT, so what do I know. Just that no matter what happens, I'll fall back on the library for entertainment if they keep going in the direction they are heading (everyone else will go back to sitting on their porches and watching traffic). But for the moment, whatever is included in my monthly fee for my ISP is good enough for me. If they start charging for the shows I like on hulu, I'll just go back to watching it rerun on Korean websites :P ugh The price has to be really low. When people have billions of dollars, it's hard to know what they mean by "micro-payments."

Mine's the one that says "AAAARGH, WTF?!"

When RAMBUS first came out...

They sounded good, till you find out everything they "do" was basically taken from someone else's schematics/plans. Their investors, the ones with morals, didn't find out until it was too late, and no one likes losing lots of money after the promises of huge profits, which is all RAMBUS was selling to their customers (investors). After first hearing about the rambus tech (which Intel was pushing, giving it backing you could trust), I spoke with an investor with Mass Mutual who was also a tech head and I talked rambus up like crazy as the next new thing in memory (this was right before DDR info came out to the public). I've regretted it ever since, I'm pretty sure he put money into it too. So far they have been making money, but then it will end, and it won't be anything for their investors to brag about, because it's a shoddy way of making cash, and most of the investors were tricked into buying into it... like the dot.com bubble, or any bubble for that matter. Not to mention the investors were expecting to make money from licensing arrangements, not litigation, which have so far only shown rambus for the company it was.

Plus I know a bit about computer tech, and the technology they described in the patents, and implemented in the product, though it was said to scale better once you get into large amounts of ram, still seemed like most of it was using architecture from a decade earlier, mixing it with modern ram tech. Cutting out a lot of the logic built into the silicon that made the switching of read and writes fast in standard DRAM, focusing almost entirely on streaming speed. Which in a standard computer a home user would use, is totally pointless and actually slows down the computer in every way, especially with how much windows loves running random things constantly, and how it multitasks within the operating system and how that effects the read/write delay. Therefore, unless you are streaming huge files over 50% of the time the ram is being used, there is no benefit to using RDRAM. Everyone who evaluated computer performance, and all the other techies out there, learned this as soon as the first Intel board was made with RAMBUS. The intel CPU was faster, but the amd system performed better, because of the ram :P RDRam was hot, and eventually were outrun performance wise by developments on standard SDRam tech. Once the SDRam guys began outperforming rdram in every useful application, except maybe hardware designed for streaming data, like closed circuit camera systems that stream their data to a PC. But even now most of them are more efficient using SDRAM based tech since they usually run windows :P Most people still don't even know what RDRam is except us techies, no one else I've ever talked to have ever heard of them, even when they show up in the news. It's about computers, who cares? :P If people actually cared, rambus would have been shut down a long time ago. I have a tech friend in a small town that ran into a home pc with rambus in it and had no idea what he was looking at, I had to tell him the story of rambus just so that he would understand what he was seeing if he ever came across it again :) hehe Paired up, and terminated bus, so there might be a fake chip there to terminate the bus :P I think there was a crank and a couple levers too you needed to turn to charge it up ;P Oh wait, I remember, it got it's power from the souls of the dead. It was the first ram that required heat sinks though. Of course, even without rdram, it was back when every computer was a small space heater. Its simplicity could have been useful for a time if it was cheaper, but now more sophisticated tech can be made cheaper.

I hope the guys behind rambus get sued by their investors... the joys of self regulation :) But they won't, more than likely, because they'll make more money if they wait till rambus is really screwed first, then they'll sue :P I'm sick of companies like theirs giving us techies a bad name, because the general public lumps us all together :-P This rambus story is like The Song That Never Ends, it just goes on and on my friends, some people invested in it not knowing what it was, and then they started suing everybody just because, this is the song that never ends!!...

Yeah, I'm crazy, sue me :-P

Mine's the one that says, "I'm a Giant Nerd" on the back and "Kiss Me," on the front ;-þ

WTF? Or is Apple just afraid of money, still...

This is a Friday article, right? I'm pretty sure this exact issue had been settled in courts in the US a couple decades ago in Apple's favor, right? One of the many things that made software licensing so successful and last so long. I'm pretty sure MS had to modify their OS license a lot of times over the last decade (back when they tried to own the computer the OS is installed on), but their license has kept all MS (OS) clones from coming into existence. Though it is possible, that if one puts together a hardware clone Mac/Apple/Whatevertosh, which is easy now since Apple's are PC's inside (x86-etc.0), anyone should be able to find out what they put into those things and just buy it all, then get the Mac OS for that particular clone and it should run fine, assuming no bios issues. Pretending I'm a fan of MS, I could say that Apple must now allow anyone who purchases it's OS to be able to install it on any hardware they can get it onto, just as MS has had to over the years while Apple has stood by laughing at them (justifiably so, MS tried to steal my computer with their license! :-P). When Apple used obscure, and proprietary, hardware it was easy for them to keep people from putting the Mac OS on anything other than an Apple. But now, there really isn't any reason I shouldn't be able to install Mac OS on my PC right now, assuming I had the proper drivers, and no bios issues :P.

I hope they get Apple to change their licensing terms. This company, that has no web presence but for some reason needs scripting on it's page, could win a case to let Apple sell them the licenses legally so that they can install them into their clones. Which should have really happened back when they went PC and Unix inside. Now it's just the competition of the user interfaces, it's the horribly flashy, and confusing, in all the made up acronyms and lingo (I blame the marketeer's who were made management for everything wrong with the governments and economies of the world, those idiots). But they have to justify the black-hole of wasted good developer talent, and user cash for something they don't need except to run something that should have run just fine on their last version of ./whatever.net.com.bubble/burst/illusion.snakeoil

Based on all this, we're paying for the interface of the Mac OS, since I believe it is run over their version Linux. I think MS should do the same thing, freaking scrap Windows OS, and modify an OS interface that runs over a Linux kernel, instead of trying to inch their way towards the "our does every thing theirs does, anything else we'll add eventually", and I don't mean end user interface bell/whistle crap, I mean stability, security, and efficient functionality behind the curtain. Everyone's pretty much caught up to MS in the interface side, all are annoying in different ways. User's are demanding actual upgrades for the cash they shell out for everything nowadays (so annoying, needy peasants :P). If Apple has to open up their OS to any hardware the user can get it on, then that will make MS's life a lot more difficult since they currently are working so hard to fight Linux. Most of their arguments to the common users against Linux will not stand up against the Mac OS, so the Mac OS can slip in nice and quick, zip past Linux, and start finally smacking MS in the face like it was the 1980's again, except with roles reversed with Apple trying to do things like MS has been to increase access to a larger customer base, which is hysterical :)

SO I guess this article did have a lot of implications I didn't think about when I first read it. The copyright thing is almost a joke, well more than almost, it was funny to think someone would actually open a clone shop inside the US, but more so because I was trained to think that way when it came to Apple esp after the 80's and the clones that never lasted due to litigation or whatnot (it's exactly why PC's became dominant, competition between "clones" brought prices down to where I have a supercomputer here to browse the internet :P). Almost every other piece of computer tech either are proprietary, or what are effectively clones based off standard licensed tech, which is insanely common.

So it is about time for Apple to change it's license, they won't really have a choice since they've been using PC tech for so long now. They should have at least stuck with the OS on the EEPROM thing, that would have kept them safe ;P i.e. proprietary. Again, it is why MS only has control over the OS, and even there the user has a lot of rights as well as to what they can actually do with it. I'd be shocked to find rules in the MS license that says anything about what I can't install it on, they just want me to buy the license. I think Apple is just afraid of money, as usual. They've got the popularity thing down finally, but they're still afraid of the cash. I know a lot of people who would install Mac OS on their PC's if they could.

If this does go the way I think, in the end it will be cheaper, and standard computers for everyone, where all the programs made will work on any computer type device even though different OS company and PC companies exist, competition has them finally be interoperable, so utopia-esque. Of course this includes all the standard interoperable big brother back-doors, tracking, and logging mechanisms. Everything of course using almost no power, durable, blah blah blah. Stuff they really should have had 10 years ago if everyone wasn't so greedy :P

Good lord, what a comment, sorry for any misspellings and inaccuracies, I'm just one of those peasants with a weird obsession with trends and why organizations don't make decisions when they should. Instead of innovation in technology, they innovate how to drag out development so they can release slowly and maximize profit. If it wasn't for the marketeer managers buying the whole Moore's law thing we'd still be using computers with the power of 486's, then again we'd probably have the whole unified standard interoperable thing by now too since they would have been able to put cash into developing more infrastructure on the tech at a normal speed :P AND prices would still have dropped due to clone competition.

Well, I say we just skip the whole "should we allow Mac on our PC's" question and get them all together to come out with a real computer that costs at most $200 that does anything anyone would expect a computer to do, then work from there. Maybe something the size of an old Walkman that has a touch screen on it, and if you want to have a bigger screen or input devices, that's what the plugs are for, dock it, or plug devices into it. Isn't that the design they're going to anyway eventually? Something like an iPod you can hook up and use as a real computer with a keyboard, mouse, or big flat touch screen as it's interface? Power sources a problem for something so small, because good batteries explode? Make the power supply external. Not really a big deal with a device of that nature. Portable external battery packs don't have to be that big to power a hand-held sized computer, they have one for the iPod.

This whole idea I hereby copyright, the reg can use it and patent the Regomatic, or whatever they feel like calling the real computer of the future. I'm pretty sure a lot of hand-held manufacturer's have copyrights that cover such computer devices and overlap, but none of them are making a real hand-held standard computer, not even the cell manufacturers, and the cell-co's have already asked them to, and they haven't been around as hand-held computers for that long, that part of their functionality is wasted more often than not, or are insanely expensive for no good reason. Not really a good model for a micro computer that you want to saturate the market.

Bah, I'm done, can't wait to see how it all plays out. I'm betting on the Chinese or the Indians making this computer first, or maybe the UK for old times sake. Well, after WW3 is over, with the way things are looking, lol :P It would be hard for anyone to make a new tech for the public when the public can't use it, too busy cleaning crap from pants.

I agree with the above, who cares about web 2.0?

It's the gimmickiest gimmick since the "dot.com fiasco". A bunch of big headed nerds believing that if they describe current technology in an easy to package way (i.e. confusing it all to heck by summarizing a complex and changing system into a catch phrase and acronyms), it must then be superior. But every reason the gov can't use web 2.0 (whatever the hell that is compared to the web before web 2.0, hype-less maybe? Nope, there's been hype at least since MS got into the web browser market.) seem like good reasons for me not to use them too. Just one example, if it's my fault for watching something illegal on someone's site, when I may not realize it is illegal, or even real (in the case of violent acts or whatever), where does the justice fit? Seems like a huge waste of resources by the policing units to crack down on the bystanders, than to just get the evidence and go after the actual perpetrators of whatever injustice is posted on the web, ALONG with having the provider of the web space take it down, who in this case, while they can moderate their own site (assuming it isn't hacked), they are apparently faultless completely for anything they have on their page, as long as they take it down when they are told to.

It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me, so therefore, anytime anyone mentions web 2.0 in public, which has yet to happen to me (and I'm an IT nerd to the extreme), it will just make me hate the hype monsters even more. They're the ones that seemed to educate Andrew McLaughlin, and left him floating in a world that doesn't really exist the way he was told to imagine it. The gov needs big picture people, not people who package everything unexplainable or ever changing, into a permanent sounding idea. When I went to college for IT, about 1/2 of the people there were cheaters and full of crap since they were taught to sound confident in what they say even if they have no clue what they are talking about. There were actually courses dedicated to those things. The few of us with actual curiosity for technology fought an impossible war against people believing all IT people were trying to cheat them and doing shoddy work, or overestimating the ease at which they could do something, leading employers to believe IT was something kids would soon be trained for in High School, making our incomes drop like stones. That's what I thought of when I heard Dot.Net, and especially since things have only gotten worse in IT, Web 2.0.

I wish things would just go back to the basics, without all the BS ;P I can't think of a single web based thing that wasn't done before web 2.0, other than huge media companies ignoring it until their usual markets started getting thinner because the consumers decided to go a different way than the companies planned.

But hey, what could I possibly know, it's not like I'm Web 2.0 certified or anything, I just have an IT degree ;P

In case anyone is using a version the directions MS gives don't work...

Such as my Windows Vista Home Edition x86-64 OEM I just installed a day and a half ago;

after applying the patch and noticing nothing else in the instructions work, just go to help and search for autorun, one of the options shows a link to open autorun features (and that's from the help program, not the search box). There's a check box right at the top to turn it all off. Or you can go through the effort and select what you want to do with each media item. But due to the security issue with ANY device loading something from autorun, it's probably best to just turn it off.

Apparently they must have sent out some patch that made the process of turning it off a little easier after installing the Windows6.0-KB950582-x64 patch.

Hope this helps those few of you who found the fix directions went no where ;-P

Funny how this works

Not a week after responding to a CNN "reporter" bashing facebook hype (which I agree with), one of his complaints was that facebook was threatening to start tracking users (gasp of surprise). I had to remind him that CNN heavily uses Google analytics and, you guessed it, Google Doubleclick, as does about 95% of the "mainstream" web. It's funny too, because to respond to his "article" (sorry for the heavy use of quotes, but I'm trying to be as non-insulting as possible), one needs to click a "blog" link, which was his BIGGEST complaint.

And they all wonder why we, who know what we are doing, use Firefox with as many add/flash blocking tools as are useful. I long for the good ol' days where all we needed to worry about was GIF image worms/viruses/trojans/another-term-for-virus-no-one-can-comprehend-because-people-only-use-them-out-of-context-now.

Personally I feel adverts and most blogs are more intrusive and annoying than viruses, the way they intrude on my peaceful browsing experience.

But what do I know? Oh wait! I'm credible now, I Twitter! But Mine is actually informative, Of Course!

Oh, the good ol' days of development and testing

I remember when Beta was the release used for testing before it was ready to ship (as in, honestly ready to ship), and release candidates were honestly ready for potential release. And of course everyone knows, the Alpha testing phase that was the "beta in-house" version that no one outside got to see. But I think modern software developers, MS is a good example, have created a new post beta-beta, and have semantically rewritten the release terms to suit their PR angles (and to save money on real, experienced, Beta/Alpha/whatever testers).

As far as I see it Beta now is really what Alpha used to be, but it is no longer in house. Beta now is what RC used to be, and RC is just another phase added that they didn't want to make a new name for, so they just shifted the terminologies back.

Most old developers don't care as they wouldn't touch Windows since Vista was release, and most new developers are MS drones who wouldn't know better it it hit them in the head and shouted "look at me, I'm rewriting the past, and you don't have a clue because you're a NooB that let us train you!"

I'm one of those old developers that really doesn't care because it's the same thing MS has been doing for about a decade (at least!) and the fact hardly anyone has picked up on it actually amuses me a little :P

But hey, what do I know, I don't Twitter, and didn't waste my money on a MS certification, and didn't take a pundit course on cursing and insulting loudly to prove my pointless points. So don't listen to me, because I obviously couldn't possibly have a clue.

Mine's the one with "I'm With Stupid <--" on it

Was gona say, what is there to complain about, but...

Even though using Hulu is free, and the annoying trackers can be blocked while still watching the shows (with Firefox and add-ons), the fact it is only available in the US is kind of... stupid. The only justification for it is that ALL of the advertising are US centric, which is extremely easy to work around as most internet sites do a fine job of telling me who's single in my area with ease. Plus at least half of the adverts I see could easily be applicable to other English speaking markets, as charities, I'm almost sure, don't care if the money is coming from the USA AND others.

Though this could just be the fact they don't have the server bandwidth, and willingness to upgrade their bandwidth (as so many companies don't reinvest in infrastructure, leading to recessions, but that's a little off topic).

The potential good news of this is that it is possible, with the popularity of Hulu, now that so many are trading in their TV sets for streaming TV now that everyone here has(n't) gone digital, they may be getting ready to set up international Hulu sites, so that it all doesn't have to stream from the same servers.

Considering the complete lack of awareness within the US, up until recently, of the existence of Hulu, I doubt they will be any more informative of their creation of an EU, African, or Asian equivalent unless all of their TVs become obsolete too. Mine is now just my DVD/VHS/PS2 display system.

$50 for the digital box, plus another $50 for the antenna they were going to try to sneak on us after we all bought the box (HARR-HARR!), now all rotting on the distro's shelves.

SO chin up, and just wait a month or two for the UK/Euro Hulu to go online, then it won't matter.

I'm just waiting for you guys in the UK to let us here in the USA to pay for the Beeb player, IT Crowd season 3 please, PLEASE!

Mine's the one with the "WTF is going on anyway??" on it

Anything Red Dwarf is better than it never ending

I can't wait till whatever it is they make comes to the US market, will probably have to wait a year after its original broadcast, as usual :P

Re: Charles King: Im an American Stupid

Not all of us fell in lust with Halo and believe MS have a clue because we don't, because some of us do. After working with Windows almost exclusively since Windows for Workgroups was running on DOS, I'd like to think that I'm not just full of hot air.

SO what is your excuse Charles??

Maybe if Windows could get me off, I might be on the same page as you, but it always leaves me disappointed after hearing all the hype.

Maybe if you could have a point to your argument based on evidence and logic, instead of just being insulting, people like me would be able to shut up because we would have nothing to say.

If MS hadn't strong armed all of the software development companies through the 80's and 90's to only write programs for Windows, I wouldn't even give a crap, but since I have to suffer through using windows, then I feel like I have a right to complain.

It was the dispair squid!!

The goat should have used the blasters on The Esperanto, I mean, it was a blatant clue!

Awesome!

Especially the bit with the escaping US businessman, priceless :)

Using light as a measure of reality at a distance

Light is so flexible in its ability to be scattered, diffused, and outright bent, by anything with a gravitational field or magnetic field. Even if dark matter existed, it would only prove that any light reaching us from a long distance being used to accurately determine the form of the source would be like someone saying they can accurately read a sign at 100 meters with beer goggles on. Now we're learning that there really is no empty space, and dust, and even red dwarf stars surrounded by dust rendering them invisible in many cases, are so common that to still believe being able to "see the edge of the universe" seems very strange to me. The more we learn how complex the universe can be, it seems the scientists that study it are trying even harder to make their old theories truth, but hey, why break a trend for pop science. They need to justify their budget with provable things nowadays, not more questions :P Who would keep buying their books? Or funding them for that matter?

Time to put on my surprised face

*GASP* No way!

Obviously no one realizes the problem are still the ones who point out that there are flaws, fire them and hire and idiot quick! It's done so many wonderful things for the industry so far, and people who know what they are doing ask for too much :P

its like corporations

If the people in charge don't know how to use it, it's obviously useless

Already using ask.com

After hearing that they have people customizing the search results and now this, it's just too annoying. The believe they are Microsoft and are functionally irreplaceable.

Wish they didn't destroy altavista.

Another example of an IT related business that has no IT related expertise

The least they could have done is hired a security/privacy consultant, with IT experience. It's not like we're everywhere or anything :P Oh wait we are! 'Cause we all got laid off because no one wants to pay more than $10/hr for work the people who need us don't understand.

Also, parent's who put themselves into positions where they are the ones who keep their kids secure from technology seem to be the ones least able to do the job, but they find it so hard to trust anyone who knows how to use a computer just because most of them don't. The way I have people hover over me while I fix the computer their kids use, it's like I'm some kind of guilty before innocent perv, since I don't have kids of my own. In my experience, when it comes to tech, parents do more harm than good becuase they're unwilling to learn what they're kids enjoy and the basics of how it all works. Can't look stupid by asking questions now, can we? ;P Oh yeah, and spying on the kids behind their back do great things for the family unit :P <-(sarcasm)

I do admit, a lot of IT help tend to hate being asked questions, so they're part of the problem too, but the kids shouldn't have to suffer for it. IT help are like doctors, if yours is an asshole, find someone else. I personally enjoy letting people watch what I'm doing on their computer and answering their questions about what and why I'm doing what I'm doing. Why? Because I know what I'm doing :P There's no reason people should be led to believe there isn't a lot of guess work in troubleshooting, otherwise it wouldn't be called troubleshooting, you'd just be fixing it since you're obviously psychic ;P

Holy hell I went off topic. This kind of company just drives me nuts, and so do a lot of parents who let their kids grow up in front of TVs and computers without any kind of supervision at all, because of all the freaks, assholes, and perverts out there, and parent that won't even warn their kids of them becuase they're too young to know?? It's almost like they want their kids to be victims, it's insane, or just ignorance is bliss syndrome. The real world has never successfully catered to the ignorant, just victimize them while making them think they are being catered too.

Holy crap, a wierd sounding study that explains a LOT

I am very sarcastic, and find it necessary to more often than not to explain I'm only joking. They should see if toxin quantities in the food/water supply correlate with the higher amounts of FTD, becuase being an American, you're a lot more likely to be punched for being sarcastic because people get angry when they are confused and assume you're trying to make them feel stupid. And while many sarcastic people are often insulting, I like my participants to enjoy the joke too ;P Some people are just assholes though, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if FTD might be related to the number of assholes in a given population, like bored people with broken dreams vs. ADHD ;P

But what do I know, I'm off to collect mud on my mud farm with the other peasants.

With my time machine...!

I have trademarked the words the, and, or, an, and but... but only in the arial font. Where's my money MS!? I know I'm owed trillions, but I'll settle for mere billions. I'll have my lawyer call your lawyer army commander and we'll work something out.

I only know of one reasonable use for cloud computing...

I only know of one reasonable use for cloud computing on a large scale, and that's with MMO(RPGWXYZ) servers. Times such as when a "sub-server" is not necessary, it wouldn't even need to be loaded and can save resources for where users actually need decent response times. Perhaps educational servers, or web site that are literally HUGE (I don't think they exist unless you count the whole internet). Of course the obvious thing to most of us is that if MS servers weren't so unstable, there wouldn't be a need for virtual ones, becuase when a hardware system goes down in a stable environment, you don't want more than one service to be effected if necessary, or in future cases, entire web services going down for those who don't have the millions to have server warehouses with multiple blades running multiple virtual servers that spread across multiple servers to manage load. Who exactly need this yet besides the ones who already use it? I honestly have no idea. But as long as IT management continue to be migrated across from HR departments with the "anyone can manage IT" mentality, we'll continue to be overwhelmed with hype and bells and whistles, while functionality, efficiency, and reliability are sacrificed.

But hey, why break a trend :P It's not like the economy can't handle it, IT is full of cash <-(sarcasm) The great Moore's law will solve it all, along with world peace and world hunger, and the vacuous debt void the governments keep tossing money into. The future isn't bleak, it's just stupid.

Someone call MS a waaaaambulance!

Oh to be the victim of their own crappy coding they even admit it, that after so many years of "making programming easier" it's hard to program for IE. They might want to cut their suggested market share closer to 60-65%, since most of us (weirdos) only use it when we update windows :P

How do you know if your addon has security problems? It's written for IE! Harr-harr!

FYI

Edexcel has a nice little "ask us" section where you can ask them how they got so behind in their IT department to have a list of formats that are now known to be as insecure as .doc

You have to register with them, but if you're not too sarcastic and insulting I think they'll take good advice when it comes, usually problems like this arise when someone who used to be in HR says, "I can manage an IT department better than they can!" Then things like this happen. I mean HTM and Flash? more secure than .doc? really?? Since when? Only back when people had no clue, like when they created their acceptable formats list :P Thanks to windows, almost anything can execute anything now, they should just bite the bullet and have everything sent to them in paper form becuase they are not an IT specialized company, just an education helper with delusions of cyber-grandeur, i.e. completely dangerously clueless.

And when the shizzy hits the fan?

They'll be offline like everyone else nowadays that don't need high tech expertise :P

All levels of IT and tech will be in obscurity because there will be no one left that can actually say WHY things are going wrong, all they can do now is just say, "the system is down and we're looking into it."

But I'm not bitter, not like I'm worth more than $10 an hour since I merely have a degree and over a decade of hands on experience, and the basic history of IT over those years in my back pocket. We're being managed out of existence by people who don't have a clue how to manage; housing, banking, IT, support, auto manufacturing. Is the end just to make us all accept we really ARE just peasants with the illusion that we are easily replaceable because that's what the people in charge wish the world to be? Happy to burst their bubble, but that's about as likely as using the banks bailout to give everyone $900,000 which would have literally taken the US out of its slump for at least 20 years. But apparently money has no value if it is in the peasant's hands, for some insane reason (manager greed? Class elitists needing to feel elite and not average?).

But I digress, we're doomed unless some people with skills get together and make their own company based on sense and purpose. If they do, I'll join! :)

Investors and Profits vs. Product Usefulness

If it wasn't for investors in ISP's not knowing anything about what the networks need to do to work (as in: advance with the rest of tech and world) and maybe look at it more as an infrastructure than a business model, maybe all those unused fiber in the backbone (which is the current bottleneck today) could be turned ON. But prices continue to go up, while investment in infrastructure has stopped, and investors pockets get heavier. This is very similar to the rest of the IT field. The management and investors (most of which don't know anything about IT at all) cut out what needs to be around to keep the system running efficiently, like people to support the infrastructure's growth, because doing so allows them to take a larger share of the profits every year.

To be blunt, instead of having a hideously huge OS on each of our personal supercomputers that just does the same useful things as the more efficient version previous (vista vs. xp, GAG! sorry, had a bit of vomit in my throat), maybe more TCP should be converted to use UDP, and have the applications handle the traffic control, since computers are so fast it won't be a problem for most people. Doing this would free up a lot of bandwidth universally for things that everyone actually wants to have transferred over the networks, DATA.

This stupid war of idiots over who's using too much bandwidth is an issue at the backbone level, since the users are only making the most of the connection they have been sold. Even if everyone had only 2Mbits max, instead of the 10 that is constantly advertised over here in the US, the backbones would still have trouble if everyone was streaming at the same time, even if it isn't torrent, because the data goes over the same infrastructure regardless of protocol. And since the port used by TCP or UDP are generally randomized after the initial connection by the OS, there is no reason the people who throttle the connections cannot do the same, it's just "harder" to program traffic control on the UDP level in the infrastructure side, and the TCP one has already been developed, WAAAAH! I cry for them.

I almost wish I didn't know anything about network application programming, or server/client programming, because then maybe this article would carry more weight with me, but it just sounds like more user vs. user bitching, when the fingers need to point at the controllers and implementers of the infrastructure. Where the hell is the investment going? Into marketing trying to prove no investment is needed, period. Unfortunately, this bubble is too important to burst like the others, so there will be no going back to reality any time soon, much like the media industries war on the user becuase they don't want to lower their prices to reflect the average income drop of their customers, and why? Because investors NEED to make more money next year than the last or they will stop investing, even though doing so destroys the industries they are supposedly the masters of (in their shortsighted minds).

But what the hell do I know!? I'm just a consumer-peasant that's as dumb as a box of rocks because I'm not rich enough to invest in my own misinformation campaign to pit people against each other and make sure they stay ignorant of what I'm doing behind my curtain.

Not really too odd

The only graphics company Intel has a shot at competing with on "performance" grounds in the graphics space is VIA, and I do not say that lightly. Now, does anyone in tech news remember VIA has integrated video tech though their purchase of S3 (a loooong forgotten time ago)? Fortunately VIA(/cyrix/s3) doesn't have the clout to throw around in order to make their tech "appealing" so they continue to silently innovate. The tech intel's 3d graphics are based off of were very good for about 2 months after it was released, but back then 3dfx (yes this is going waaaaay back) also came out with the first GOOD 2d/3d card (I'm only counting the ones that did 2d/3d on the same graphics processor, and understand others were doing this before, but not for the gamers). Ok, for the money the Real3D card wasn't too bad, on par with Matrox's add on 3d card, but again, these technologies were quickly surpassed by 3dfx (a looooooong time ago). Intel's only selling point of their current iteration of their integrated graphics is that it's so damn cheap they can only give the stuff away, like most embedded techs until relatively recently (when nvidia and ati started getting serious with their embedded tech.) Anyway, long story short, Intel is getting way too much press for something so mediocre. In fact, they have very little that isn't mediocre, or at least, they have very little that makes them stand out against the competition (unless you count bad press *ZING*). Their competition currently have very full tech portfolios, and most that have tech that stand out trump those techs (VIA's silence is a great example of what to do when you have to compete with the low tech space), this I believe is something Intel should do more often when they talk about thier "side projects", ie. not at all. They seem to be playing the Microsoft press game when in reality they really aren't bad at all when it comes to tech innovations, it seems they just forgot how to compete.