Posts by John Sanders

Nuclear batteries a penny...

Honestly who the hell cares about the name of the coin past the first post, the point is that it is small and the important thing besides the size is that uses something different than chemical reaction.

What type of isotope?

Beta or Alpha emitter?

How long until we can have one that produces 1.5 volts, a decade? 5 years?

Is it dangerous as waste?

As somebody else asked, can you produce them using existing nuclear waste?

etc.

People with two or more neurons in work condition do not care about the bloody coin, got lots on my pocket (blame candy dispensers) and they're called f****** small change.

as if...

...Exchange 2007 wasn't messy and expensive enough...

Im sure the chinesse

Will bottle the lunar water and sell it as an aphrodisiac that can cure a lot of illnesses...

The Indians will probably use it to try to raise call center efficiency.

Nestle would say that Lunar water is better than London's tap water...

Easy...

No admin rights of any kind, not even power user.

Anything that going beyond opening word, writing a letter or browsing is forbidden without admin approval.

We're not bastards, if anyone needs a tool we try to find a suitable one and we will maintain it, but the less the users decide or do on their own the better for the network.

Draconian scripts configures every inch of the computer to match work specifications.

Virus free and stupid free. Of course from time to time a loose windows box has an issue, backup user data, delete user profile, restore user data, there you go.

Paris because she knows work computers are just for work and not for fancy stuff.

Thats all fine

If anyone could understand exactly what to buy and for what...

Does anybody recall how many times citrix changed the name of their flagship product?

Citrix Winview

Citrix Winframe

Citrix metaframe...

Citrix metaframe xp...

Citrix presentation server...

XenApp server...

All those changes, just like microsoft, to make a worse and worse product in each incarnation, presentation server 4.5 interface is plain horrible. Now we like java, now we not we prefer .NET...

And besides, citrix protocol is named ICA not RDP.

What!?

@Sarah Bee

Come on, comments on websites are the spice of life, specially Monday mornings...

I love people's comments, sometimes they are the sauce and the meat on otherwise boring articles with no substance at all.

Microsoft is now...

Bordering on plain irresponsibility, Win2003 is where many people have their "soup". And dammit it is not a bad product.

Lately, seen the Vista debacle It seems that MS doesn´t realize what exactly is people doing with computers and their OS.

Customers do not like playing with the OS they like to work with it, I understand the case for MS trying to get more money out of his customers.

But what is the point of trying to force people out of what works is tried and tested?

By the time they realize what are they doing to their own the penguin will be waiting for them at the door.

Most people I know are already playing with *nix boxes for one reason or another.

The funny thing is...

That MS droids really think that Vista's problem was a marketing issue and not a technical one. That's why Win7 feels like vista SP3 with a forced new taskbar no one asked for.

They have fixed those issues that had a match with the marketing complaints, the rest remain unresolved as they were in vista, ie:

1) General dumb down of the whole desktop concept

2) Pushing new concepts and metaphors down people's throats just for the sake of change.

3) Too many wizards that only serve to confuse even the most seasoned admin.

4) Uses too much resources (yes even 7 still does)

I think there's a long life for XP ahead, those pesky license servers required for volume licensing won't be welcomed by many I'm afraid.

So what is Miguel waiting for?

To release a compile to "static-native-code" version for Linux and Windows?

I may buy a license then and use C#, but until then C++ does the trick.

Lame, lame, lame, he would win to MS big time!, not to mention having something interesting in his hands... But you know, MS did not pay Miguel for that, just for the dynamic implementation.

I wonder...

How many people tried to virtualize and found out that running on real iron is better for the particular application that they run.

In my experience I have found that going the virtual route is mainly expensive. Virtualization does wonders for small applications with low yields requirement, but it ruins citrix and exchange servers, specifically because very low I/O compared to the real thing.

So far I've tried vmware, sun's vbox, xen and the citrix xenserver, and the results are all the same, very comfortable environment to run but very slow I/O. Domain controllers, small db oriented apps, even the odd MS-SQL test server run just fine, but anything else that requires raw power does not.

I do not know about Linux servers though, never had to virtualize any, the buggers keep running fast no matter what you throw to them.

Mine is the coat of the non-international-enterprise it worker. Yes the one making redundancies without thousands of pounds to burn in software licenses.

Itunes flashing pre's

Quote "Probably it is time to software "update" a few Pre's."

Quote "That's a good point. These things are claiming to the hardware and to the OS that they are iPods, so what happens to them if Apple needs to release a firmware update for their own iPods to fix some bugs? It wouldn't be their fault if the Pré was bricked by it as Palm is doing all it possibly can to ID them as actually being iPods so what is there to stopthem from being treated as such?"

Oh come on, just imagine leaving your pre hooked to Itunes, then going to bed, waking up in the morning just to find out that instead of your pre there is an ipod touch occupying its place.

Dear lord...

I'm the only one who thinks

That Win7 is the same dog with a different collar, Win7 sure had 2 long Vista years to make sure the manufacturers build computers that can run it.

So yes, it does run better on recent hardware, but have you guys check what happens if you try it on any of those Pentium 2.4mhz 512mb most business run on (Or those Semprons 1.x/2x) XP is here to stay for a long time on those.

I do not think the new taskbar is that great, I think is not and improvement but just different. Like the ribbon.

My impression is that Vista/7 are copying the worst bits of environments like Gnome/MacOS and forgetting what makes windows great.

Also Explorer.exe is as buggy and neglected as it always has been, they just coated it with a new layer of aero paint, and made it different enough as to make regular people (those that do not care about IT) even less productive.

But anyway no one cares and the press has decided it is the new king... long life to the king.

I do not like MacOS, never did but I have to admit that most of the time they get things right.

I just hope that they fix bloody X.org one of these decades so I can leave the windows ship behind once and for all.

And yes, I work on the field.

Science...

I welcome our new strange particle overlords...

But I must point out that I have seen many of those on tube stations during peak hours.

Mod chip

@cornz

Just wait for the angry penguins to get their hands on the console... Sony will regret not letting Linux run on the thing.

Good, good but...

I would have preferred to hear they were allowing pop3 support once and for all besides their proprietary push system.

The possibility of having email on the blackberry when under wifi coverage without GPRS and the like would be a killer feature.

One can dream though.

Everybody knows

That to stop a full scale zombie outbreak all you need to do is to seed the garden with pea-shooter plants. Some potato mines and sunflowers.

I think this zombie-mania is some sort of inadvertently provoked viral marketing campaign... that and playing Plants vs Zombies til the early morning.

What the market needs

Is an e-reader with at least 200dpi that can render an PDF A4 page properly (as you see it on your computer), at that very moment say welcome to the e-reader era, and say goodbye to the kindle's of the world. Drop your pdf's there on an SD card and there you go.

I do have a huge collection of books in PDF, my father does, so does my uncle and my brothers.

My brother found that using an eeepc and the like is a much sensible option than buying a kindle, it is less portable I know, you can hardly beat the portability of an e-ink reader, but with the eeepc you can get your email read books and browse the net. The benefits outweighs the costs.

A common ground upon I agree with many people is that PDF is the perfect format beacause it is the closest thing to the original book. Never mind that on a book which is all text this doesn't matter at all. However bring on a comic book, illustrated novel, illustrated dictionary, technical book of any kind, children's books or school texts.

With PDF despite it's shortcomings the wheel is invented already.

These are my two cents. and on this one yes, pirates wins but so do the publishers, I never bought music on electronic form, but I certainly bought ebooks in the past.

Chess game...

This is a Chess game... but however clever Zemlin and Torwalds are... MS is very clever too, and won't give anyone any advantage unless provides a benefit for MS.

The match will go on for years to come...

re: Special electronic exchange rate #

@MarkOne

Then it seems every single manufacturer/vendor seems to forget to mention the tax issue.

And besides, who cares whether it is the government or sony's greed, what we complain about is how cheap electronic things are on the other side of the Atlantic compared do Europe and specifically to the UK.

And it is not just the consoles or the computers.

I won´t trust MS too much on this one

Judging MS´s track record of computer catching viruses because they run MS´s Windows... I won´t feel safe wearing a MS made condom to avoid catching a virus...

Reality distortion field

It is the law of the funnel, the big wide end is for Apple, the narrow end is for Palm.

What Palm was doing was not wrong, not immoral and not Illegal, not even cheeky.

I know of nobody who uses Itunes that has entered a lot of metadata and would like to lose it.

Suppose that tomorrow someone rather than Apple makes a nice device you have to have, now you need another bloated clunky mediaplayer stuck on the guts of your computer... good luck keeping both devices in sync.

I do agree on the fact that apple doesn not have to run any compatibility checks or anything, but should not sabotage others making compatible devices.

What would happen if MS tried to actively block third party clients from accessing Exchange?

Apple did not invent the mp3 player. Microsoft did not invent Email. IMHO Apple is short sighted in this one.

Paris, because she's not stopping other women to dye their hair blonde.

UI Changes

UI CHanges are nothing but stupidity, the browser is fine the way as it is, hidding functionality out of the screen only makes the app dumber.

Why do we have to learn a new UI for something which is well designed in the first place?

What´s the benefit???? Do they want to repeat Office 2007 ribbon interface fiasco? do they want to alienate their userbase?

Linus

Linus would sell his mom if that makes him look fair.

One of these days he will have to take a position.

Right to read

MR Stallman saw it coming many years ago:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

now the trolling against the man can begin.

About the ribbon

I said it many times before, and after using Office 2007 without issues for more than 6 months now, I reaffirm myself even more; The ribbon is a huge step back it turns a GUI application into a VCR Like appliance where you have to remember what button does what.

It may be OK for dad or grandpa but not for those who know how to use a computer already. It makes hard to find functionality on the software.

The only reason for being able to use Office 2007 with the ribbon I could find is that I knew Office quite well already.

What proves the ribbon a failure is the fact that not many are implementing it, except for MS's whore partners like Autodesk (I still remember when autodesk made things like IE 6 and the .NET framework a requirement for Autocad...)

Meanwhile...

In redmond´s secret underground lair...

- Ok guys we´re in now!

- Begin phase 2...

MS employees rampage on forums lately spreading Bull*hit

@"The Other Steve"

Sir your ignorance speak volumes about yourself, and you wish you were half the man Stallman is, are you by any chance a Redmond employee?

Everybody takes ideas from everywhere this is no exception, Linux software borrows from Windows, Mac, the Amiga and the like, so does MS and so does Apple, and so does everybody else.

Or does MS invented the concept of the GUI, mouse, buttons, menus, etc? Did MS invented TCP/IP? the web? email? word processing? IM chat? CAD? presentation? file sharing? printing?

So far what you call ideology has lead to the biggest non-commercial software ecosystem ever, and it seems all that ideology is more necessary than ever to prevent companies with a dubious legal track record from screwing that ecosystem that no one forces you to use or like.

So run windows and go watch some porn with IE.

Look ma new icons!!!!

Love the new icons, thanks register overlords!

By the way I´m I the only one who finds microsoft rablings about windows pice booooooooooooooooring... As in more of the same release after release?

This is vista sp3 or what vista should have been since the beginning...

Whatever...

The real story here...

- Sorry John, it seems we´re not capping the number of apps the starter edition can run.

# Wait can not we cap the number of megabytes the os can write to the HD on a day?

- Err... John, no megabyte capping either.

# What about the ram? the mouse...

- John, leave it be.

# Hey! I know!!! let´s prevent people from changing the wallpaper!!!!

- Dammit John, thats one good prank!, I knew something good some day would come out of the marketing department.

Nobody scores

Much better than allowing the competition to score isn't?... Pure MS style after all.

I just wanted....

To kill all humans!

Awesome news everyone!

Translation to plain english

"The technique has important implications for network security because it can be used by attackers to conceal the leakage of confidential information, the paper warns."

The technique has important implications for p2p traffic, because it will be used by file sharers to keep their p2p networks kicking while the RIAAs of the world have to figure it all out once again.

Dissapointing...

I tried:

1) http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=biggest+piece+of+junk

2) http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=biggest+piece+of+pie

3) http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pie

Bingo!!!!

Apparently there are two types of Office suites...

Those who find OO.org to be sufficient or in the right track... for its price...

And those that use MS Office in such and advanced way that OO.org is no match.

I wonder if the argument was more of like:

If you HAD TO PAY for your office suite, would you spend the pounds on MS Office or would you get OO.org?

I bet if people had to pay for MS Office there would be a much bigger OO.org adoption.

Lawyers?

Feed them to the sharks!

What about not being able to uninstall commercial extensions?????

Hey, have anyone else noticed those Microsoft .net extensions, Skype extensions and the like that can not be uninstalled????

Why does Mozilla allow for unremovable extensions????

I for once...

@Simon

I welcome our new Flying Pig flu overlords.

What was again the requisite to be one of those alpha males?

Boooooring!

So, more of the same, just a slightly trimmed version of Vista, and voila instant customer satisfaction.

I'm not so sure it will work this time either, the interface is way too different from previous loved windows versions, and on top of that no more classic look and feel.

I kinda knew it...

Somehow I knew it will end like this, when it comes to legal stuff, there is no solid legal way to stop people sharing goods based on mutual consent.

And at the end of the day the corporations do not play nice and resort to mafia-like tactics, you make it public then boom.

Who cares?

Paris does...

Mainstream support... er does anyboy actually use it?

Who cares about mainstream support anyway, I've never met anyone in the IT sector that had to call MS a single time, if the issue was unsolvable, then reinstall, if there is incompatibility, roll back previous Win version, if NT4 is required, run it inside VMWare...

Incredible

I will never understand why people think that introducing big cosmetic interface changes is necessary at all.

Most people like their desktops as they are, no one is going to invent a new paradigm so good is worth to implement.

The new UI changes in Windows Vista/7/KDE are all bullshit, sure you can work with those new GUIs on their respective platform, and you can even get used to them, even like them.

However what is the point? they do not add anything new, anything its not been done yet, more cute perhaps.

What Gnome should focus on is on producing a desktop with as few bugs as possible, I for once would like to see Gnome release 2.30, improved this and that, no changes from version 2.2x just lots of bug fixing.

Anyway I will be content if just they were to announce no more mono on Gnome.

Where is...?

The brand new Cisco 8xx modular with a x86/ARM, 2gb Ram and a 250gb hd so I can have my super duper Cisco IOS router plus an embedded Linux server?

Come on Cisco!

MS back to what does well

1) Distracting Manoeuvres while they observe the enemy

2) Find a weak spot, apply pressure

3) Embrace

4) Extend

5) KILL!, KILL! KILL!

6) FINISH HIM!

8) FATALITY!

9) If it doesn´t work goto 1) if does goto 10)

10) Fallout profit.

Paris, because she knows something the IT world doesn´t: MS is the pimp of the industry, and treat the rest of the IT landscape like the w****s.

The industry does not get it

All we want/need is TCP/IP+SMB awareness.

All the necessary files for our digital entertainment nowadays get into our homes through the computer.

Being it Linux, Mac or Windows they all talk SMB, dammit even most if not all home NAS and multimedia boxes out there talk SMB.

And having a wonderfull free open sauce implementation of SMB called SAMBA, why the Fcuk do the likes of sony or iomegas of the world have to keep inventing new stupid standards every year to interoperate computer-related equipment.

Leeny for the masses (at least the IT educated ones)

@Michael Fremlins

I do have 3 xVM Debian Lenny Virtual boxes running on my lab, the three of them seem to be working just fine.

Honestly, I build Debian Linux VM´s all the time and never had any version crash on xVM or VMWARE

@Doug Glass

Thanks god no sane IT person pays attention to arguments like these, because computers are not cars you know.

If anyone followed your arguments computers would still be black and white terminals, and you won´t be ranting against the people who over the years make things possible.

I bet you do not run Windows 3.11.

codecs worth $1million per user ??

Not by a chance, but MS would be delighted.

Who cares about Apple?

Yep, If I was Palm I would not worry too much, once Steve is not in charge anymore Apple will go down quickly due to the "shoemaker manager" syndrome.

Palm was once plagued by this nasty syndrome too, and it didn't fully recover since. They have plenty of in-house first hand experience.

I will say it once again, many of the big IT companies that fail do so because there is no IT people/IT Minded at the top. Those IT companies that do well do have IT people/IT Minded at the top. MS, Apple, Google, Red Hat... :)

Once a shoemaker walks-in into an IT company, all he can do is; cut the research budget, make money saving deals with MS, and produce new IT goods with little or no added value over the old version, but which are sponsored by celebrities.

The Cuban regime will use this to control IT

The Cuban administration will use a custom made version of Linux not to improve the liberties of the Cuban people.

They will produce a customized OS full of government controlled trojans and spyware so they can control what any citizen running a computer does with it.