Posts by Bakunin

Re: Talk-Talk Bottom? Same old, same old.

"Now If I could onlt get Virgin Media to stop sending advertising to me (Addressed to the householder)."

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one (Sorry).

One A4 sized waste of paper marketing blurb roughly every two weeks and it's been going on longer than I care to remember. Plus they know full well that you can't block post to the "householder" under the Mailing Preference Service.

Anyone know if return to sender is paid for by the original sender? If not I'm going to start forwarding these to their CEO.

Yea. direct marketing! Your right to be bombarded by crap that it's your responsible for disposing of!

"Not defending Kodak, attacking Apple."

Not defending Kodak *or* attacking Apple. Rather, pointing out the analogy in the first post pretty much sums up *all* the big (and many of the small) players in the tech industry.

Any one of them would happily hamstring their neighbor to get that little bit higher up the ladder. They're all as bad as each other.

Re: Software isn't dead...

"Outlook might tank at the things you mention, but given the dismalness of available email clients, is still, from a *functional* perspective, the best email client around."

Outlook is one of the most awful email clients I've every had the misfortune to have to use. Its only saving grace is the fact that its calender and address functionality is compatible with most other peoples email set up ... because that's also Outlook. So that's pretty much on par with "I enjoy smoking because I'm a smoker".

Whether software is dead or not, or whether that has anything to do with lock in I can't say. But the fact that Outlook is still alive and so prevalent entirely to do with lock in.

Re: How contemporary

Welcome to the world of software driven consumer electronics. Now we can release products long before they're ready for the market and add the basic functionality later.

But that's not to say it's a Microsoft thing as they've all been doing it for some time now. May have started when it was cool to have your product in "beta" or perhaps with the startup mentality of launching at the minimum viable product stage (hype over functionality).

But then it could just be a fast as possible land grab for a new and growing market sector.

Re: …Unix disk space issues that were solved decades ago

"I suppose it does make sense that linux would drop all these conventions."

I suggest you read the "Linux Standard Base" and the "Filesystem Hierarchy Standard" documents.

Re: Welcome to the Internet...

" ... where everybody else is always wrong."

No they're not.

Re: Bloody annoying

Also annoying is the fact that you accepted cookies is stored ... in a cookie.

So those of us who expire all cookies when the browser is closed (and have been doing so for years) have to agree every time we return to a site in a new browser session.

So how long before the "accepted cookies" cookie becomes the standard long term tracking method because it's the one cookie people are least likely to remove because of the annoyance factor?

Re: time on mars

I assume it's "between about 4:30 and 5:00 p.m" because it took several pictures over half a half hour period.

If the day was 4000 hours long then I suppose late afternoon would be something like "between 1620:30 and 1621pm local time". (Assume you still bother with am and pm)

Mind you a 166 hour long lunch would be nice addition to any Friday.

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -- Douglas Adams.

Re: One of you, folks, is in great danger

"anyone who changes CTR-C, -V, and -X (s/CTRL/CMD/g if $apple) should be shot, "

Like when CTR-C became Copy rather than SIGINT? I still have a moments hesitation every time I use it.

Re: Nice testing procedure

"I'm really waiting for the day where your computer can be in either "usage" or a minimal "maintenance" mode and only in maintenance mode can you do updates, change bootloaders, play with critical files, etc"

If you want something like that try using a Linux/BSD variant setup to mount /sbin, /etc, /usr/sbin, and others as read only when in "usage" mode and read/write when in "maintenance" mode.

Or for for added security you could use a device with a physical read only switch for the drive/partition that holds those core parts. For standard user "usage" you only need write access to a /home/, /var, and couple of others. It's been a while, but I'm sure a quick google will confirm what can be mounted read only.

Used to run a firewall off of an old P1 with Debian running off of a CD but with /var mounted on a drive.

Re: Where is the upside

Many shows lack content, let alone "added" content.

But at least you didn't have to use your real name to do so.

"What has this got to do with IT?"

It's called commentard baiting.

The hacks at El Reg are presently gathered around a single monitor waving fistfuls of notes in the air and taking bets on which posters are going to come out of this with the most down/up votes.

Re: Leaps and bounds

I tend to "interact" with the text by reading it. It kind of stops at that.

Re: Too late for last years idea's

"Too little, too late. I predict a clockwise rotation on the drain."

Rimming?

Re: new version of gramaphone sideboard

"no new ideas just recycled ones"

Was that double post a self referential joke?

Mines the one with the coat in the pocket.

Re: In a better world...

In a better world you wouldn't need to have a NFC chip if you didn't want one.

Re: Is it hackable ?

My thoughts exactly.

I've been after something like this for the kitchen table. Get my server to scrape the RSS feeds of news sites overnight, then reformat the content into a basic HTML or ePub format. Rsync to the device with a single button push when picked up in the morning.

A return to reading the news with my breakfast in the morning (plus it looks like marmalade wont cause it any real harm)

Newspeak

" They are legislating to reverse the meanings of "opt-in" and "opt-out"! "

No citizen, you opt-in to having the plusungood content.

Remember "Ignorance is Strength"

Re: Calendars

Well I suppose it depends why you're dealing with 3000 domains.

If you just happen to like having lots of domains then relying on the auto-renewal system is probably fine. Most of the time with a decent registrar the auto-renewal system and reminder email normally works.

If you're looking after 3000 domains for paying customers then either stake your companies reputation on your registrar doing the right thing, or make it someone's weekly task to the check the couple of hundred or so domains that are due to expire over the next ten days.

What's your companies financial loss for letting one slip? Does it justify paying someone to check the renewal? If you're losing a typo squatting site that brings in a few pound over it's cost then probably not. If you're losing the domain for a decent sized contract that pays you to handle their website and campaigns, that isn't going to go down well.

Of course when it comes to you're own companies domain, it's always worth the inconvenience of manually checking.

Selection Bias

"Correction. Replaced stopped with "may have continued to do so using undetectable methods"."

One of the biggest problems I see with their statistics is, there doesn't seem to be any way to appeal the decision until the third strike is implemented. This means we have no way of knowing is the complaint from a "copyright holder or representative" is in fact at all correct.

Therefore plenty of people could have been misidentified the first or second time and not misidentified a third time. But they can't get that strike corrected.

A lot of people that did nothing wrong have continued to do nothing wrong. The system must work!

"If it was more than one God, then clearly religion is bunk."

Unless of course God's (or the gods) intention is to seed millions of intelligent lifeforms with slightly different spiritual perspectives. The progression of life is the slow adaption and integration of these beliefs systems into their single shared common thread. At that moment we all obtain a clear insight into the meaning of the universe.

Or maybe I just made that up to counter a pretty juvenile attempt to turn and interesting science article into an excuse for religion bashing.*

[And I say that as an ardent atheist]

"I've never voted precisely because of this"

"Modern democracy just means that it's impossible to find someone who's worth voting for. I've never voted precisely because of this."

Then you can do us all a favor (and I mean this without sarcasm or malice), vote for the little independent guy who's never going win.

If all the non voters spread their votes across independents that would help encourage more people to stand with non party alliances. It would also encourage more narrow minded voters to believe they can vote outside the mainstream options and not support this two party race.*

A greater abundance of independents in turn fosters candidates that are more representative of their area and less likely to be career politicians.

I'm not trying to provoke you. If you really don't want to vote then don't. That's your right and I support it. But you can use your vote to help effect a different type of change.

[* I'm coming from a UK perspective, so maybe that's a "two and half party race"]