* Posts by petur

1046 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Dec 2009

Analysts claim itty bitty iPhone Mini to land next year

petur

Re: 2% of activations?

No wonder... the z3 compact is a bloody good phone, still amazes me every day. Value for money Apple buyers can only dream of.

Sony showed the rest that making your smaller model also slower/cheaper is a biiiig mistake

Who wants SLEEP DEPRIVATION for Christmas?

petur

Re: And with a normal book?

Bah... forgot to write the most important part, I've also set the foreground colour to something softer, which these boffins could have done too.

petur
Meh

And with a normal book?

I used to read in bed with a small reading light shining on the white pages...

Now I read on my Nexus 7 set as white text on black. Light levels are now much lower.

Not sure I'm worse off now

YEAR of the PENGUIN: A Linux mobile in 2015?

petur

Re: Sorted the desktop out?

I'm talking about one filemanager having no clue how to open a file because the tool is part of another DE - best they can do is let you hunt for the correct binary in /usr/bin

I'm talking about each DE picking a different place to mount network locations

A nice examples: AcetoneISO - a GUI for easy ISO mounting. It even offers a selection to pick your filemanager (fixed selection, too bad if you use another one), this causes the ISO to mount in a different location to try to fix this confusion of end users.

If we're going to talk 'year of the desktop', stuff should work together.

All systems I have setup for linux newbies, I have made sure NOT to mix DE apps

Go ahead, ignore the issues and downvote some more. You downvoters clearly are not using linux everyday :/

petur
FAIL

Re: Sorted the desktop out?

"But I still can run Gnome application in KDE and vice versa... so You choose your environment but it does not limit your choice of applications."

I'm amazed by the downvotes...

And mixing the environments isn't as nice as you think, some stuff works, but the mix of client side decorations and server side decorations results in a horrible experience.

Opening a reference to a file from an application build for one environment to another one? No go.You might as well run two VMs next to each other....

petur
Unhappy

Sorted the desktop out?

It's a fragmented mess, getting worse by the year... We used to have the gnome/KDE camps - look what we ended with now: gnome/unity/cinnamon/MATE/KDE/...

Sound and battery: 20 portable Bluetooth speakers

petur

Bose soundlink mini

Still have to encounter a person who, upon hearing them the first time, doesn't go looking in the room where the real speakers are.

Bloody expensive and a shame you can't get two do play stereo, and use micro-usb to charge. But otherwise it's a investment you won't regret.

Listen to this youtube clip of the Bose side by side with a JBL charge. The recording was done with proper audio recording gear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369O58SIyFo

Feds finger Norks in Sony hack, Obama asks: HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE KOREA?

petur
Unhappy

(not) funny

I sure hope the intel people saying "trust us, it's NK" aren't the same ones who said "trust us, Iraq has WMDs"

I wish I could find that funny....

Linux 'GRINCH' vuln is AWFUL. Except, er, maybe it isn't

petur
Coat

"We'll have to lock our doors now so hackers can't walk in? Thanks for the tip."

nah, just your windows

Little big phone: Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, a toothsome hand-fulla Android

petur

Re: I think I may have chosen.. poorly

Yes. It's a great little phone. As a moderately heavy user, with all options on and no stamina-modes, it still manages 2 days (still 30% after >6 hours of screen time), a coworker who only uses it for chat and mail manages to recharge every 4 days.

I read somewhere that the glass isn't maybe as good as Gorilla glass, so I went for a thin case + screen protector. I would have taken the latter anyway since I hate reflective screens.

petur

Re: Questions...

There's some bloatware, most of which I disabled. Phone still has plenty of memory but maybe you installed other bloatware in return ;)

Dark matter-hunting boffins spot EXCITING signal in X-ray spectrum

petur

Re: Old, debunked.

@ashdav

https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-66-did-we-just-find-dark-matter-1b2f992ac353

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

petur
Meh

The top 'article' (current one looks like Canon ad to me) takes waaaay too much space, I have to scroll down half a page to get to the list of articles (and that's on a big display). Same for the articles themselves.

Are you trying to copy the ugly and inefficient layouts of other sites? Please don't.

Why are new website designs going for bigger layouts - surely that's not the best way to handle big displays (which I got because I want to have multiple windows open - not easy when the websites start to scale too)

The future looks bright: Prepare to be dazzled by HDR telly tech

petur

Re: A difficult problem to solve

Another problem (that was mentioned way too briefly in the article) is ambient light.

If I'm watching in a dark room, blacks will need to be black and white should not be full power 1000 nit. When there is more light (daytime,...) the blacks don't matter much but you do need the high output on white. So it's maybe better to shift around a bit within the light output.

And I don't buy it that ambilight alone will solve this. If TV is going to output 1000 nits, ambient light sensors are going to be a must.

Dirtbags dressed up malware as legit app using Sony crypto-certs

petur

Android

Not sure if they are also able to generate signed malware for Android? Not that I kept any of the Sony bloat on my Z3 compact - all disabled and updates blocked

EU law bods: New eCall crash system WON'T TRACK YOU. Really

petur
Facepalm

"Hit a harsh speed bump and get an ambulance chasing you!"

but maybe you injured yourself hitting that speed bump!

Shhhhh! It's a Swiss Sunday shutdown. Kill the lawnmower, punish the kids with CHEESE

petur
Thumb Up

way to go!

I'm very fond of these rules and laws, because we seem to have become a very self-centred society where nobody cares about the rest if they can get their things done.

So if my neighbour starts drilling and hammering in the middle of the night, or mowing the lawn on that sunny and quiet Sunday afternoon, I can tell him to stop or face uniforms.

I also believe that shops can close on Sunday. The old 'no time during the week' makes no sense because the 'I need to work until 6' was how they managed to get shops to stay open late. Either open late or on Sunday, both is just for spoiled morons...

VW's Scirocco diesel: A sheep in Wolfsburg’s clothing

petur

Diesel

Still waiting for it to get banned....

Angry Birds to angry words: Rovio flings 14% of its staff out the door

petur

n900

they also had a pretty neat (and impressive) game on the n900

It was space vs boat at Orion launch. The boat won

petur

If you're going to destroy that boat or kill the skipper, you might as well just go ahead with the launch....

Google kills CAPTCHAs: Are we human or are we spammer?

petur

Re: Brute force solution

Pro tip: my board has most of the IP range of China blocked. Fixed the problem for quite a good part :)

(as the board is targeting a Dutch speaking audience, not much is lost, only once did an expat complain)

Is EU right to expand 'right to be forgotten' to Google.com?

petur

Re: Age weight

I'm talking about ranking...

And I'm aware of the options to set time and verbatim and what not, but they're nicely hidden behind 'Search Tools' AND they are mutually exclusive (limit on time OR search verbatim OR ...)

petur

Age weight

Maybe Google can attach age weights to stuff their crawlers come up with. So older info becomes less relevant and drops to page 84765478

And not only the personal information stuff... also tech searches could do with age relevance, getting sick of Google turning up 10 year old links when searching tech related stuff

Ten Linux freeware apps to feed your penguin

petur

LibreOffice

Still waiting for it to open docx files without completely messing the layout...

Holy sh*t! Amsterdam man in pop-up public toilet shock horror

petur

Re: Safety features?

According to the article there was some kind of explosion heard, so this is NOT a case of somebody stupidly parking a moped and a phone zombie getting hit and deserving it....

Dropbox sees rival file-piles merely as dots in rearview mirror

petur

Re: Personal Cloud...

Just do it...

I haven't touched my dropbox and box accounts in more than a year, the Gdrive as little as possible.

The only limit is uplink bandwidth, which here in Belgium is pretty limited either by technology (Belgacom, copper) or corporate idiots (Telenet, cable), the latter trying if they can charge you an arm and a leg for 10mbps....

So if I have to pass a huge file to several people, I upload it to a webserver I have an account on (yes, cheating, I know, but my ISP also limits me to 100GB)

BOFH: Everyone deserves a little DOWNTIME

petur

Re: The one advantage...

Are you sure? I remember it the exact opposite, an SMS or call interrupting the data. Off the memory, because with 3G+ this is no longer an issue....

The gender imbalance in IT is real, ongoing and ridiculous

petur
Thumb Down

BS article

When I was studying electronics engineering (no sign of IT focus back then, but electronics did have programming courses), there were maybe 3 or 4 girls in a group of a few hundred, so < 5%.

Things have gotten better since then, but not so much, so I'm not surprised of the imbalance.

If the facts were to show that there is an imbalance of unemployed IT workers (lots of unemployed female and less or none male), THAT would be an interesting fact.

Want more female in IT? Get them interested and in the schools. But maybe you need to face the fact that males and females are DIFFERENT and have different interests.

IBM and Ericsson plot to deploy 5G. Never mind that it doesn't exist

petur

Renewable energy 'simply won't work': Top Google engineers

petur

Re: Nuclear Power

Thorium reactors have more disadvantages than not being usable for weapons.

Please put an end to this myth.Read up on the subject before posting.

Thorium reactors are being investigated for a long time already, if they were the ideal solution, there would be many of them in use, because governments are looking for cheap/safe energy, regardless of what the paranoid people claim.

Thorium is still in experimental stage and I hope they can work around most issues one day as it does look promising.

petur
Thumb Down

Re: I seem to remember

The fact that Iceland has usable geothermal energy has some adverse effects:

Since energy is quite cheap, a lot of energy-hungry industries (aluminium,...) went there, causing the power requirements to rise quite high.

So now they are not only using geothermal, but wasting a big part of nature, building a dam + hydroelectric plant to make more electricity.

Useless 'computer engineer' Barbie fired in three-way fsck row

petur
Pint

Re: i look forward to more real world barbie books

ROTFL! Have a beer!

Nexus 7 fandroids tell of salty taste after sucking on Google's Lollipop

petur

Re: Testing

Why do you assume they didn't. Think you're smarter than them?

There will probably be a perfectly good explanation for this, just like with many other bugs. Just wait for the fix. The more people complain, the faster they'll work on it (sadly).

Sailfish OS tablet is GO: Fans stuff cash into Jolla's cap in hand

petur

Open source

Sadly way to much of their platform is closed, with only promises to open in the future. Just look where it brought the n900, the community is still not done replacing all the closed source blobs.

Mozilla, EFF, Cisco back free-as-in-FREE-BEER SSL cert authority

petur

"It usually costs money"

Yup, a single domain is usually quite affordable or even free, but if you want a wildcard for subdomains, oh dear, of dear.... sometimes it feals like you're dealing with the maffia...

NOKIA - Not FINNished yet! BEHOLD the somewhat DULL MYSTERY DEVICE!

petur

strategy

here, Microsoft, have our burning platform...

hey look, here's a new one

So you want to introduce a BYOD plan. Where do you start?

petur
FAIL

My employer offered it...

...but I said no!

I bring my own device but have to give some dodge exchange server full wipe control over my stuff? No Way.

I'm still using it for work, using less convenient sideroads to get to the calendar and email, but unless they can come up with a clean separated use they will not get the rights they want on my phone.

BOFH: SOOO... You want to sell us some antivirus software?

petur

Yes, by all means just drop all ZIP files, also drop DOC(X), PDF,... because you never know it might be an unknown attack vector.

You sound like the IT guys at a customer site I work right now.

We're running around with USB sticks to move files around because that's the only thing that seems to work (*). Personal USB sticks, of course.

Yes, what could possibly go wrong?

(*) given that contractors are not allowed on the customer network, I have to do with a separate ADSL for my connectivity (which is a blessing because there's no firewall).

Home Depot: Someone's WEAK-ASS password SECURITY led to breach

petur
Pint

Re: copy paste error?

Use the 'Tips & Corrections' link at the bottom of the article for that, not comments....

Now I got your pint

Virgin 'spaceship' pilot 'unlocked tailbooms' going through sound barrier

petur

Re: Why...

@ AC: You've entirely missed the part that says that he DIDN'T touch the handle - only the lock/unlock (which might have been needed for some other action?)

Nice touch of you downvoting somebody pointing you at your error.

Rosetta reaches perfect position to get touchy Philae

petur

Orbit

I was surprised that the craft went into orbit around a bit of rock with an estimated gravity of 10−3 m/s2. This is so far out of my usual calculation area that I cannot even estimate what forces are playing :/

Gut feeling would have been you aim to fly next to it and fight the weak gravity with occasional thruster. Obviously I need to do some more math :)

BOFH: Stop your tiers – when it comes to storage, less is more

petur

ANY Trackball/"advanced" mousing device

Maybe... but I still cling to my two Logitech Trackman Marble FX - best thing they ever made

Remember Internet2? It's now a software-defined metacloud

petur

Re: The Internet was (nearly) always "software defined"

Yes... My router has hardware-NAT, which turns out to be an FPGA actually so one could argue even that is software ;)

Big Retail's Apple Pay killer CurrentC HACKED, tester info nicked

petur

Re: Concerns

You probably will have a choice:

a) let CurrentC (shop) handle the transaction with your bank

b) let Apple/Google know all about your purchases while they handle the payment and oh by the way there's a nice percentage going in their pockets.

Pick the least evil one?

Even a broken watch is right twice a day: Not an un-charged Apple Watch

petur

Re: Odd

I bought a Casio with solar and DCF77 just because I wanted to have a watch that would always work and always be correct. It's on my list of best stuff I ever bought.

When this tech will also be able to show me incoming mails and IM/SMS, I'll upgrade...

UNCHAINING DEMONS which might DESTROY HUMANITY: Musk on AI

petur
Meh

Politics and intelligence

What gave you the idea that intelligence is required for politics?

Just look around.

Lollipop unwrapped: Chromium WebView will update via Google Play

petur

Now do this to the rest of the OS

Would be great if they would manage to only have the HW-specific bits fixed for the device (HAL, BSP, whatever you want to call it), and have the rest of the OS upgradable so that a security issue is the OS can get fixed.

By now it is clear that handset vendors are not the party to look at for updates.

Another reason why this gets urgent: just like happened with PC and laptop, the phone and tablet category is reaching a maturity where a current device will have enough horsepower for several iterations in the coming years. So more and more people will find out that their phone or tablet is just as usable in 5 years (if they have a user-upgradeable battery), and having them buy a new one just for the OS is bad for this planet.

Google+ goes TITSUP. But WHO knew? How long? Anyone ... Hello ...

petur
Coat

Re: Titsup

"Put it this way. If it were "Lying on its back with its legs in the air", a well-known way of saying "Dead", "Knackered", "Utterly cattle-trucked", etc, which way would its tits be facing?"

sideways?

Chipmaker FTDI bricking counterfeit kit

petur
FAIL

Re: That's going to cause some problems

Not only designers...

I bet this will somehow fly back into their face in another way.

Knowing the issue, and in need of a USB to Serial, will you take the risk of getting an FTDI based one (with the risk that it is a fake one), or go for another one that doesn't have this risk?

I'm sorry but although I try hard not to buy fake versions, I'm going to play safe and avoid FTDI completely.

Watch sales drop through the floor. This is image damage that will last a long time.

Want a more fuel efficient car? Then redesign it – here's how

petur

Re: Fuse wire

And I think it's best to use some properly shielded cable for the control signal, not ribbon cable.