* Posts by Keith Doyle

116 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Apr 2007

Latest subject for peer review? You

Keith Doyle
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Huh?

Almost all the rated individuals on the site have photos-- yet very fiew of those actually have ratings, and instead have a single post by "Anonymous" asking if anyone knows anything about the person.

I would think people who write ratings would often not have a photo, unless they're shilling for the person or the person themselves, OR if they're the site admins trying to feed enough names in initially in order to get things started.

Looks to me that they "seeded" the site with names & photos scraped from somewhere else. Seems like they could get in trouble over that. In any event, it looks like more of a scam than anything else.

Also the search is broken-- got a server error...

YouTube blocks music videos in UK

Keith Doyle
Stop

What's wrong with this picture...

Hmm. So the PRS thinks the equation should be:

1. Upload copyrighted video to YouTube.

2. Have your staff spend all day viewing it on dozens of computers.

3. Profit!

Gak. Google shouldn't pay a cent for it. It's a service, and if the PRS wants people to be watching their content, they have to compete with everyone elses (free) content on a level playing field. If Google pays the PRS, I'd better get my check too! For that matter, Google is delivering eyeballs to their content, make them pay for it just like the rest of the advertisers do. In fact, any commercial interests should have to pay to upload to YouTube, it should only be free for non-commercial videos.

Bletchley's Colossus makes beautiful music

Keith Doyle
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Lame grandstanding gimmick...

So lame that I was inclined to call it a twatdangle, but it's just not up to David Blaine's standards...

Perhaps we could take Laurie Anderson and her tape-bow violin along with Pixelh8's and his performance of Obsolete? and hang them both upside-down in an ice rink. Now that, I'd pay to see...

Landmark copyright trial against Pirate Bay gets underway

Keith Doyle

The "suits" will get it eventually

Once they tire of throwing money away playing "whack a mole" with services like this (or their shareholders do).

Windows 7 'upgrade' doesn't mark XP spot

Keith Doyle
Boffin

Here's the real question...

Ok, all you Vista/Windows 7 fanbois-- there's only ONE reason I can see to upgrade from XP to either of these-- and that's for a SINGLE feature that Vista/WIndows 7 is SUPPOSED to have.

Now lets see if any of you fanbois are actually able to make use of it.

Here's the question:

Could you get any useful work done on your system if you didn't know any of the administrator account passwords? (assuming that all the important apps have been installed by someone who knew how to configure it and *did* have such passwords)...

Inquiring minds want to know...

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss

Keith Doyle
Alert

@Aron

Aron, read my comment again. At the very least, note the "when" qualifier. What you claimed I wrote bears no resemblance to what I actually wrote. Here's hoping your powers of comprehension are a little more in evidence when you examine the evidence for or against AGW.

Keith Doyle
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What's wrong with this picture...

When the anti-climate-change crowd goes citing a scandal, rather than new evidence, they have more in common with holocaust deniers than scientists. The way you disprove Hansen's conclusion is you call him on the evidence, true, but that should then leave you in the "I don't know" column, having disproved the conclusion, rather than the "see, climate change is not man-made" column, presuming the opposite case on similarly nonexistent evidence.

Texas profs use AI news-ware to ID terror groups

Keith Doyle
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Open Intel?

I like the idea of open-intel-- let us all know what the spooks know-- and no doubt with increased reliability for that matter. Why wait for some suit to be forced to tell the media what's going on in the world, completely spin-doctored by the latest govt. administration? The equivalent of a public RSS ECHELON feed, that's the ticket. WE ARE the MEN in BLACK....

IBM approves Obama's IT stimulus package

Keith Doyle
Flame

Is it Real or is it Memorex?

It strikes me that the *promise* of a stimulus package is rather more stimulating than the reality of it. Perhaps that's the point. Light a fire under it and hope something catches before someone notices the check is going to bounce...

Accused Scareware mongers held in contempt of court

Keith Doyle
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Symantec & McAffee next?

Seems like the only difference between these guys and Symantec or McAffee is a matter of degree. A scam is a scam, and malware that sucks the performance out of your computer is just as bad when obtained from a more familiar source.

Mozilla hastily shoves Firefox updates out door

Keith Doyle
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@AC

Interesting that the FF3 fanbois are all ACs. At any rate, unlike most people (apparently), I don't depend on the browser for security. And that includes protection against phishing sites, buffer overflows and stealth XML, ActiveX or other such nonsense.

FF3 has resurrected all of the same reasons I stopped using Netscape, Mozilla and, for that matter, IE. The developer's just don't get it. They can't keep themselves from bloating the browser with unnecessary and redundant features such as tabs and databases (and for that matter, bookmarking-- which need to be accessed on all the user's computers and shouldn't be stored at all on web clients). And while they're so busy adding useless features, critical ones they should be concentrating on are completely ignored (like user interruption protection-- THOU SHALL NOT STEAL KEYBOARD FOCUS AWAY FROM ME WHILE I"M TYPING -- and while that may be the OS' job, if they're not doing it, the browser can and should).

I may move away from FF2 at some point, but I can tell you it ain't gonna be to FF3.

Keith Doyle
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FF2 No longer updated?

FF2.0.0.19 will no longer be updated? EXCELLENT-- finally will be rid of those annoying "do you want to update now" popups that always seem to pop up when I'm doing something really important (such as working on my banking site, about to click on a sell order on my brokerage site, or about to snipe something on eBay). Now FF 2 is TRULY perfect.

How Microsoft blew its own RIA invention

Keith Doyle
Gates Horns

We've seen this before...

It's their modus operandi. The NT OS core was a bastard stepchild for years in favor of W95/98 until finally the fact that it was actually a better designed OS (don't laugh, we're comparing it to W95/98 here, remember) forced them kicking and screaming into using it for their flagship products. Read "Barbarians led by Bill Gates," for a somewhat biased history (as if there's any view of Microsoft that isn't biased) of the development processes at that time.

Microsoft insists Hotmail redesign hasn't left users out in the cold

Keith Doyle
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It's not a "free service"

Those who whine about the rights of individuals to complain about "free services" should realize that hotmail is not "free." When you sign up for hotmail, you pay for it in several ways.

1- Your eyeballs are being commandeered by advertisers. Gaining your attention wastes your valuable time, and you should consider that the same as money.

2- You become dependent on the email account when you pass out the address to your contacts. This ties you to a service much like the drug dealer hooks you by giving you the first fix free. They've then got your eyeballs hooked via attaching significant withdrawal symptoms to their absence.

As you become more dependent on the service, you may customize your experience via the ability of various browsers and other services to fine tune things. But hotmail doesn't like to lose control like this, so they will fight this tendency and step on a lot of toes in the process. We should fully expect those bruised toes to yelp about it, and it is completely understandable and justified.

Microsoft is not alone in this, Yahoo recently created an updated email experience that is simply nonfunctional in my browser configuration (Firefox), so I revert to the "classic" version for as long as I can. But I moved to Yahoo from Hotmail several months ago simply because Hotmail changes broke the experience so badly in my environment that it became practically useless. I've all but phased out Hotmail, but it looks like I may need to do the same with Yahoo. I own a few domain names, my next step if Yahoo insists on becoming unusable, is to roll-my-own on a web server. The management of web-based email for me can be a useful service, but only if it remains consistent and reliable. If that is not in the best interests of the so-called "free" services, so be it, they are (or were, anyway) convenient, but not indespensable...

Ballmer on banking crisis: No one is safe

Keith Doyle
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Abominomics on the horizon.

Microsoft's trying to buy up a lot of their own stock and still wants to sink its teeth into Yahoo, and it takes stable banks to get the job done. But regardless of whether Tweedledum Obama or Tweedledee McCain wins, the rich will get their bailout/welfare checks while what's left of the middle class gets the bill. Ballmer knows what side his bread is buttered on, as it's unlikely the Congress yet fears the public more than it fears the corporations. Nice to know they can cough up $700B if they really want to, but it's criminal that they're planning to spend it on junk paper.

R&D tax credits knocked out in Congressional punch-up

Keith Doyle
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A stealth vote up next?

If those Reps don't think the vote tally for a criminal bailout that passes will get paraded out to the voters for this election, they're dreamin'. I predict though that they'll decide to do it via sealed vote in order to hide who did what from the voters. That may backfire though, as we do have the list of who voted the first time, and that may just have to do if they try to hide the nasty business. Their only hope is to find some way to stall their financial "crisis" until after the election, then pass it after it's too late to affect their reelections. They can bluster about people losing their jobs, but they'd better look out for their own job which is clearly on the line here. Both Republican and Democrat voters are pissed off about this, and frankly, have been waiting patiently for these particular chickens to come home to roost. If every Rep who votes for a bailout loses their job in November it'd be just desserts, though that's probably a little too much to hope for.

EFF sues Dubya over warrantless surveillance

Keith Doyle
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Only one "Secret Room"?...... NOT!

Undoubtedly, its not only San Francisco that has a surveillance hub like the "Secret Room." They may not always be in the center of town-- one might ask just what it was about the SF location that was the attraction, and look near similar AT&T points of interest. Or there may be other points where hubs would be useful, such as near significant communications areas where the data collected can be easily forwarded on or the transmission equipment hidden in collections of similar equipment. Some of those multi-billion dollar stealth budgets had to go somewhere. If news of the EFF suit gets around, perhaps some other AT&T employees or ex-employees will decide to spill a few beans about some wheres and whats.

Investigators probe txt link to LA train crash

Keith Doyle
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So what if driver has a heart attack...

Somehow I think a system that can't handle such an eventuality without taking out dozens of people needs rethinking...

Royal Society: Schools should show creationism 'respect'

Keith Doyle
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Gotta teach it...

The thing is, if a lot of kids are showing up in class believing creationism because it's been fed them at home or at church, then you *do* need to teach about it-- that it's complete bollocks scientifically and why...

eBay sues business partners over alleged cookie stuffing

Keith Doyle
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So eBay *IS* capable of detecting frauds...

Too bad they don't apply such diligence to fraudulent auctions...

The Google-isation of all the net's access points

Keith Doyle
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AAARRRRGGH! don't need no stinkin' tabs...

Single or multiple processes aside, tabs are REDUNDANT in Microsoft Windows IMHO-- we ALREADY HAVE A TAB BAR generally referred to as the "taskbar." My workflow allows me with a *non-tabbed browser* in windows to combine browser tabs with any other applications as tabs and not bury things inside of an application's own tabs. I HOPE one can DISABLE tabbing in Chrome in favor of a separate window which then utilizes the taskbar tabs, otherwise I won't touch it with an 11-foot pole.

In addition, I move my taskbar to the left-hand side and widen it somewhat so that I get vertical tabs that I can control the real-estate of, not horizontal ones, as on a widescreen monitor that's a better use of space-- I want as much vertical space for the actual web page as I can get. Pages are often taller than they are wide, in case you haven't noticed...

Computers should be smart enough to conform to *my* workflow, not to force me to conform to its. Tabs, indeed. Creeping featurism at its finest...

Arrest made over data-stuffed eBay laptop hard drive

Keith Doyle
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An upside?

Well, perhaps after this, the story will at least cause criminals to format these drives before passing them along with your data on them...

Dutch unlocked iPhone site takes €700,000 then goes offline

Keith Doyle
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Sombody saw 'em comin'

You couldn't pay me to take an AT&T phone, so I understand the desire for a more open alternative, but a hacked iPhone is only marginally better-- still not worth paying for. The iPhone may be cool, but I don't wear my cool on my phone...

SF's silent sysadmin pleads not guilty

Keith Doyle
Unhappy

Too scared to reboot...

To make use of "physical access" to crack into a system usually means a reboot to some kind of standalone recovery OS. I suspect they're afraid to reboot-- for one, they'd probably have to pull the plug on things to do so, and things that are currently successfully running.

The guy is no doubt holding out until they become desperate enough to let him off the hook for it and possibly is even dreaming of being reinstated and with an increase in salary... But he's delusional-- we know governments really do not like to negotiate with terrorists, data or otherwise.

Clearly though, the admin has little confidence in his own ability if he thinks he has to resort to such antics in order to keep a job. Methinks such positions ought to be subject to the same sort of psychological testing that the GIs sitting on the launch buttons in missile silos do-- it's not a good idea to allow unstable personalities to hold such critical job positions-- someone can "go postal" with your data with far less resistance from a conscience than using an AK47 on his office mates...

Icahn writes another bloody letter

Keith Doyle

It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!

There's a theory floating about that Yahoo has a certain patent portfolio with regards to paid-search, that Microsoft sorely needs to license but Yahoo is impeded from doing so due to a deal that was made with Google-- or something, it's a little hard to figure out exactly all of the motivations and implications. The idea being though, is it isn't about Microsoft wanting to buy Yahoo, but only to put some serious pressure on them over the issue. An interesting article that attempts to explain the ins and outs of all this is found at http://techuser.net/microsoft-yahoo.html. If it makes perfect sense to you, please explain it to me in 50 words or less, as I just start to glaze over trying to see who's interests lie where in such a mess...

UK developer trio accused of game plagiarism

Keith Doyle

Did the publisher cough up an advance?

These guys may have been simply trying to milk an advance out of a publisher I suppose-- if so good luck finding them after this. The publisher may not have any legal liability here but you really have to colour them stupid, whether or not they got taken for an advance...

Dell touts Windows XP to 2009 - and 'likely longer'

Keith Doyle
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Some things never die...

Here's a snippet from my web log stats on hits from various WIndows versions:

reqs pages OS

133383 6704 Windows XP

9604 1100 Windows 2000

2842 493 Windows NT

1723 489 Windows Server 2003

3055 330 Unknown Windows

2287 137 Windows 98

1722 95 Windows 95

857 79 Windows ME

83 24 Windows 3.1

80 22 Windows CE

Note that there actually seems to be a Windows 3.1 user-- though I suppose it could be due to spoofed browser strings. On the other hand, it could be an old 386 CPU still getting some good use or running in a museum or thrift store (though I don't know what ancient browser would actually run on it)... And this list is current but I see no Vista at all (perhaps it's showing up as "Unknown?"). If it ain't broke, why fix it?

God makes you stupid, researchers claim

Keith Doyle
Alien

Well, it proves one thing...

That there are likely as many (percentage-wise) atheists willing to open their mouth and insert-foot making bogus claims as there are in religious communities.

For years, I've racked my brain trying to comprehend just what it is about religious believers that (apparently) makes them unable to countenance the glaring inconsistencies about it that I find all too obvious. But I've come to realize that people believe in supernatural things for a wide variety of reasons and in a wide variety of circumstances, and the idea that it can be strictly tied to a single factor like intelligence or education is a totally naive one.

On the other hand, I still can't help hoping that some day, a simple, factual, and completely incontrovertable statement can be identified that is both undeniably true and totally at odds with religious belief such that its usage would cause a complete cognitive meltdown in believers minds. A statement that would give everyone the same feeling I had in 1st grade when a teacher told the class that Santa Claus didn't exist and it was all your parents doings (my feeling was simply, "oh, yeah, of course, now that you point it out, it's obvious!"). A tantalizing idea, but I have little hope for it-- compartmentalization has long been known to trump cognition, an explanation that believers probably similarly apply to skeptics.

It's just the "brave new world" we live in. I do wish there were outspoken atheists that behaved more like Carl Sagan and less like Richard Dawkins, showing more quiet confidence in their ideas and less of axes to grind.

Windows Vista has been battered, says Wall Street fan

Keith Doyle
Go

MS is right in character with Vista-- antiquated...

That Vista requires more horsepower than the previous OS is EXACTLY what the hardware resellers want, and as that's always been Microsoft's biggest customer base, they get what they want. But that was all based on a time where most end users knew little about computers, were likely as not buying their first one, and would just accept it for whatever it was. Now however, most of those users have grown up and know kludged bloatware when they see it.

But take heart, the future holds ultra low cost appliance computers available at Target and Walmart, which will put the antiquated business models out to pasture where it comes to selling systems to individual consumers. Vista, if still in existence, will either have to significantly downsize and streamline, or be relegated to server closets where few have to deal with its UI at all.

Over half of US HD TV owners blurry on Blu-ray

Keith Doyle
Stop

@Tony Smith: Depends on what you like to watch...

It's only better if you're watching mainstream content-- and since I for one, prefer old movies, foreign films, Anime and classic TV shows, 1) that content isn't even available on Boo-ray yet, and once it is, 2) it ain't gonna look any better because the originals aren't that good.

So DVD is just fine for me thank you very much (cheaper, too!)...

Microsoft urges Windows users to shun 'carpet bombing' Safari

Keith Doyle
Alert

Safari would be good if...

I for one liked the less-is-more interface Safari had on Windows, and tried it for a while. There is reason to want to use it on Windows, as Firefox has become bloatware by now (and I hate tabs), and only the totally clueless or insane would use IE. However, I stopped using Safari when I found that it had trouble with some websites, and insisted on installing QuickTime (which took me some effort to remove so that it would stay removed). Frankly, it seemed a little too buggy so I figured I'd wait through a few updates (which, while it aggressively checked for updates , after several months I never saw it actually *do* any updating, even though it was clear it needed some). Based on that experience, I've concluded that support is so bad on it and I just don't think about it (or use it) anymore. And I've refused to use QuickTime ever since the wars it had with RealPlayer over which would be the default-- both have been permanently banned from any of my systems due to their user-interest-overriding arrogance.

Google kills Anonymous AdSense account

Keith Doyle
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Advocacy against? Interesting loopholes...

Hmm... Microsoft advocates against FOSS and Linux-- guess Google should ban them as well. Methinks this sort of ruling may have some very interesting unintended consequences if applied fairly. I suppose one could create an organization that an existing advertiser could be construed as "against" and then file a complaint. Gillette razor ads are "against" Sikhs, eh? Besides being major idiocy on Google's part, this one has gaping holes in its logic...

Customers give Dell the finger over keyboard screw-up

Keith Doyle

@Ivan Headache

Some of us may remember that the old mechanical typewriters, even in the US, had the " on the 2-- and in fact, had no 1 key as you used lower-case L for that. There was an @ sign even then though, on this model it was over the "cent" symbol on the right:

http://staff.xu.edu/~polt/typewriters/underwood77maroon.jpg

That site has a nice collection of old typewriter images

Many old mechanicals had a 1/2 symbol as well.

For those who really miss the old days, you could make yourself one of these:

http://www.multipledigression.com/type

What I think is the most ridiculous is that we're using asterisk and slash for multiply and divide on a machine that is designed for calculations-- we don't even have proper math symbols and only because the original machines had to adapt available teletype equipment. Most of what's on our keyboard is due to legacy, not optimum design...

FCC tells Comcast to unblock P2P

Keith Doyle

@ChrisCheale

Yes, it's Comcast's service, but they essentially have a negotiated monopoly in cable in their service areas. Can you choose Time Warner cable instead? No-- that's not how cable works, at least in the USA. You get to choose from one cable company, just like you get to choose from one phone company-- but that monopoly comes with some responsibilities to deliver the appropriate service (exactly what that is, is what is in dispute at this point). Comcast can't decide to just provide bandwith for email traffic and web pages and still be able to hold on to their service area guarantees, just like the phone companies couldn't if they chose only to provide phone service at certain hours of the day.

10 ways to improve your code

Keith Doyle
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@Pete

"Hmm, how things have changed. I was always taught to comment my code. Write simple clear and well-structured source and to reuse existing functionality whenever possible.

It looks like these good practices are no longer needed."

-- Actually, the're the *same* practices-- they've merely "made the problem hard".

Web pioneer hits critics with Lisp gauntlet

Keith Doyle
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Evolution is the problem...

The problem with ALL computer languages is developers just can't resist "enhancing" the language until the "improvements" raise the complexity past the sweet spot. With a computer language, often "less is more" but language syntax never gets refactored even as programs do. Perl for example, was a great language several revisions ago, but has now been horribly tainted by the "kitchen sink" mentality. The greatest advantage in a computer language is in the simplicity of its paradigm, but no computer language can sustain that simplicity for very long. And at another extreme, attempts to reduce to "bare essentials" invariably end up with something so rudimentary that it needs megabytes of library routines to become useful.

It's the nature of the beast, as technology is on the march and presents new challenges that so far, no programming paradigm has been able to forsee. Lisp and Forth were near-perfect at a time when the OS was crude or nonexistent, APL when baud rates were 300 or less, and C when good performance was based on knowledge of the resultant machine code generated by the compiler. But times have changed, and while attempts have been made to adapt languages with the times, the results have not been pretty...

Space brains resign over efforts to attract ET attention

Keith Doyle

They might as well resign...

If they haven't figured out the only really good argument for not doing it (the money would be better spent elsewhere) then these guys absolutely *should* resign.

If aliens were able to detect us they'd likely be mostly curious, as we could probably answer some questions they have about the universe their in, just like their existence would do for us. In neither case is direct contact necessary (or likely). Given that, the only thing aliens detecting us would do is possibly elicit some thanks by them for providing enough information to answer a few questions they had, and that's about it. It represents more an act of goodwill on our part than anything else, as the chances it could ever benefit us in any way are extremely remote.

In 1000 years our signals will only have made it through a pathetic 1% of our galaxy, and technology-using aliens would have to REALLY be plentiful to be that close (and as someone else pointed out, such plenty would have to be combined with a universal motivation to keep quiet or we would have ourselves detected some blabbermouth species by now), by the time aliens could see our aged signals we could have grown to be as dangerous to them as they might be to us (and perhaps we are already). If all that wasn't obvious to the "space brains" referred to in the article, they don't belong in the business anyway.

Rather than spend any $$$ on a total longshot that if it would ever pay off wouldn't for thousands if not tens of thousands of years, we ought to use that money to do something a little more immediate-- reduce pollution, or poverty, or disease, for instance. Just about any need that we have seems a little more pressing than almost anything unlikely that could happen thousands of light years off in outer space a few thousand years from now...

Recording industry puts stake in ground with Jammie Thomas case

Keith Doyle

Unequal Justice...

A woman illegally shares a bunch of MP3 files over the internet, gets dinged for 3x-4x her yearly income. Record industry illegally uses hidden "payola" schemes to control radio airplay, and record and movie industry use funny accounting schemes to hide the profits to reduce royalties, and it's mostly overlooked-- and when they have gotten dinged for those things, it's been a relative pittance and just the "cost of doing business."

Record industry touts big cost savings in moving from releases on LP to releases on CD-- but cost savings actually passed on to the consumer is about minus $7 as cost of an $8 LP on CD suddenly jumps to $15.

And now again, Record industry gets dragged kicking and screaming into big cost savings in moving from CD to DRM digital distribution (fidelity of the product actually goes DOWN in the process), but wants to INCREASE relative price-per-song. A 15 song CD as DRM digital download costs about $15 and only as little as that because Steve Jobs is a hard-nose. And there is now another benefit for the labels with digital downloads, as you also lose any legal means of resale, AND you may lose access to your music in the future and have to pay AGAIN if new devices stop supporting today's DRM scheme. The product costs about the same but delivers less to the customer.

So I ask, just why would anyone think any of us would give a BLOODY S#!T about infringements to the copyrights owned by any of the major labels?

If you feel sorry for the artists, then why not just send them a check directly for that CD you copied from your roommate, and bypass the distribution industry crooks in the process. And when you do, include a note explaining that they really don't need those guys anymore...

.

CompUSA goes titsup

Keith Doyle
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Tech vultures beware-- it's the liquidators that will be vulturing over you...

I'd look for them to 1) remove all discount stickers on all the items and/or retag them to full list and then 2) "discount" sections of the store at amounts which may sound good but will initially amount to more than the prices were before the fire sale started. With lots of "going out of business, huge discounts" PR hype, they'll then increase the discount amounts slightly about once a week, but many clueless will be taken in by the hype, go into the store looking for fantastic deals having not done their homework and buy up most of the good stuff at inflated prices. Liquidators aren't as stupid -- buyers are-- the liquidators will aggressively attempt to squeeze every last dollar out of the merchandise, and not simply start slashing just to get stuff out-- they've probably got a couple of months to empty the stores, and by the very end there'll be great deals on stuff you couldn't give away, or perhaps store fixtures (though I wouldn't even count on that)...

Yahoo! and! Adobe! sign! ad-packed! PDF! pact!

Keith Doyle

They're gonna have to update PDF so it breaks the reader, first...

...I knew there was a reason I haven't been allowing my acrobat reader to auto-update itself...

Linux desktops grow and grow and grow

Keith Doyle

MS and anti-use features...

MS is saddled with features designed to make things not work. Not work if you change too much hardware. Not work if you try to install it on a second machine. Not work if the media has DRM and you don't have a license. None of these "features" are features that benefit users. And MS programmers have to be careful when they write or fix features designed to actually benefit users so that they don't break the not-work features and allow the wrong things to actually work. Not everyone is willing to put up with this culture of "defective by design." Linux is not impaired by designed-to-not-work features. There are only two "problems" people seem to have with Linux. 1) the redundant features that make them have to decide which to use-- which distro, which GUI, etc., and 2) lack of a port of their favorite application. WRT #1, I'd have to say, which problem would you rather have? Features designed to not-work or more features (that work) than you need? WRT #2, many of these "favorite" apps have free alternatives, may work under Wine, and more and more existing apps are being ported-- give it time, and look around as perhaps your favorite app has a competitor with a Linux port. Yeah I know, you're stuck in your ways, you old dog...

No email privacy rights under Constitution, US gov claims

Keith Doyle

Email has NEVER been secure-- get over it...

But hopefully stories like this will help encryption to become ubiquitous, with easy to use plug-ins for email clients.

True, it is no guarantee but no point in making it easy for them. Might work as a spam filter too-- reject any email that arrives unencrypted-- and when the spam-meisters compensate for that and encrypt all spam, that'll give 'em some gibberish to waste their time on when they should be out pounding the pavement looking for the real bad guys instead of expecting the NSA to magically do all their work for them.

Just as they thought high-tech weaponry would win in Iraq they think high-tech surveillance will do the same at home,. The serious bad guys will be writing a letter to "mom" about the "thanksgiving turkey" where everything is a keyword that means something nefarious but flies under the auto-surveillance radar-- there's more than one form of encryption and the best forms won't appear encrypted at all. Certainly any bad guy worth his salt must be well aware that all his communications are subject to surveillance, as these guys aren't even trying to hide that fact anymore (or if they are, it sure ain't working).

Mandriva bigwig (nearly) accuses Ballmer of b-word

Keith Doyle

If MS really did pull this sort of stunt...

.. doesn't it seem like they're behaving like a cornered rat? Makes one wonder what they know that we don't that's inspiring such acts of desperation-- or is it just pure paranoia? It doesn't show a lot of confidence in their products. You'd think if they'd use all that energy and cunning to produce a well designed OS that people would actually prefer to use, they'd fare better. Linux in fact, is actually doing pretty well because it's better, not because it's cheaper-- noone is twisting anybodies arms to use it or to improve it. But, MS would have to forgo the heavy handed bully techniques they use on their developers (and their customers, it seems), something they just can't seem to outgrow. Waterboarding techniques just don't produce a good OS any more than they produce good intelligence.

Orange's Apple deal to bear unlocked iPhones

Keith Doyle

If Jobs had any cojones...

He'd team up with Google to get the 700Ghz band unlocked and then produce a phone system that would bypass the major carriers entirely. That is the technology that will make me run, not walk, to buy it. In fact, I'd even buy that sort of technology from Microsoft (gasp!). Microsoft may be evil, but they look pretty good compared to the US telephone carriers...

Big media gangs up on pirates, file sharers

Keith Doyle
Dead Vulture

Technical solution?

Let's see-- well, some kind of tagging won't work unless you can eliminate all untagged content from the internet (maybe not even then), and eliminating untagged content will go over like a lead balloon.

The best they will be able to implement IMHO is Google's YouTube scheme using a more centralized and "independent" (or at least, advertised as such) registration service, so they won't have to submit their entire copyright catalog to Google and also to every other potentially infringing site. But they still would have the problem of going after infringing sites that aren't using their central registrar and are going to have a time forcing noninfringing sites to utilize it. Google in fact, are the only ones possibly capable of implementing an internet-wide copyright checking system, and even if Google was up for it, you still are going to have a time forcing everyone to utilize it.

I write my own music and make my own visual content that I give away for free. I'm not going to "register" it at Google or anywhere else. Try to force me to and I'll be registering multi-terabytes of random noise. If these guys do anything to the internet that impedes my ability to give away my content, or tries to make me pay for that "privilege", I smell Class Action...

California court tilts towards mandating web accessibility

Keith Doyle

It's not rocket science...

Accessibility is not all that hard, but you have to be aware of it. We need a case like this to raise awareness if nothing else. Clueless or lazy webmasters who can't be bothered to worry about this deserve to be relegated to the fringes of the internet.

Newspapers don't have this worry because there are technical solutions to it-- you can buy an electronic reader that will read the text of a newspaper aloud-- and photos often have captions, the newspaper's "alt text" equivalent, and now most have a web presence that, get this-- needs to be accessible...

In addition, there is significant benefit for all of us-- script crippled websites will become less obnoxious, and accessibility improves searching and filtering capabilities. Given that computers are mostly blind themselves, they are similarly inhibited by non-accessible sites without a "human" reader to translate, and I often don't want to be the one that has to spend the time to be the computer's web-eyes and/or babysitter. I often use command scripts to automate repetitive browsing operations that are impeded by non-accessible sites-- my blind computer "agents" need that accessibility every bit as much as humans do, for effective functionality-- why force me to manually click on every link and button just because some web-hack is overly enamored with the latest "flash"-in-the-pan visual glitz-tools?

And I agree about the text browser-- I don't always use one but I do hate sites that don't work with them, which can usually be identified by uselessness with a text-only browser.

I have 10 fingers that can work in parallel, not just one-- the mouse takes "ease-of-use" to the "Playskool" extreme, leaving the experience of interacting with a computer akin to playing with kids toys instead of the symphonic virtuosity it could be. Every time I have to take my fingers off the touch-typists "home" position, I'm losing productivity, reduced to one finger, when even the keyboard could be improved-- you can't play "chords" in any meaningful sense of the word for example. And with GUI browsing, I turn off Java & javascript to the extent possible, as that is the primary source of offensive obnoxities such as ad-glitz and security flaws. I also prefer text-only email because it's far more secure-- but then again, I got doodling out of my system on my highschool math papers...

Get used to it and learn a little about accessibility before your own eyesight gives out-- a case like this is long overdue.

Windows update brings down TV newscast

Keith Doyle
Pirate

Automatic updates...

First time I ever heard about the concept of automatic updates, the first thing that occurred to me is that it sounds like a recipe for crashing all your customers machines at once-- what a completely brilliant idea!...

The RIAA will come to regret its court win

Keith Doyle

Once upon a time...

...getting "signed" would lead to copious amounts of PR. But given the kind of PR that the RIAA members are now generating, just who in their right mind would want to sign with any of them now? I pity those who already have and are now locked in-- only to find themselves servile to the writhing death throes of their Luddite overlords.

Geeks and Nerds caught on film lacking geeky nerdiness

Keith Doyle

Consider the source...

Any self respecting "geek" who can't get any better tech job than one working at a retail store is one who is clueless from the start-- consider the qualifications of the dimwits who sell you stuff at those stores-- the repair techs are likely only slightly more knowledgable than that-- otherwise they'd have a much better job at a real tech company. If it says "geek" on their car or on their T-shirt, turn around and run the other way briskly...

Alleged CastleCops DDoS botmaster busted

Keith Doyle

So what do they do about the 7000...

I presume they may now have enough information to identify these 7000 zombie PCs now? Just what do they do about them? Notify their owners? Send out a command to all of them to shut down their bots (at the risk of some liability, I expect)? Or are they simply considered a honeypot to catch other hackers? Or a new tool for law enforcement monitoring of internet activity? With the potential of keystroke logging, screen capture, video cameras-- I'd think 7000 controllable PCs would be a pretty tempting resource for more than a few folks.

When your bank is made aware that your information has stolen, there are laws requiring you to be notified. Access to your computer however, may still be fair game-- shouldn't we start hearing about people getting letters from the FBI about their computer being controlled by someone they nabbed?