* Posts by Blarkon

87 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Nov 2010

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Major science fiction publisher to zap DRM

Blarkon
Facepalm

DRM and Locks

I've seen the argument that given that a competent hacker can strip the DRM from a file, that it's pointless. I wonder if these people also don't bother locking their house as a competant lock picker can open those locks in just a few moments.

The jury is out as to whether or not this will cause a jump, a slide, or make no difference to sales. What it will do is make it easier to locate this stuff posted on pirate sites because just like locks on house doors don't stop the skilled, DRM free means that the barrier to "sharing with all your mates on the Internet" is a lot lower.

Sergey Brin REALLY ADMIRES Apple, Facebook

Blarkon
Meh

"Breaks The Internet" - Google speak for Competition

Anything that doesn't suit Google's business model is tagged as "breaks the Internet"

Amount of ice in Bering Sea reaches all-time record

Blarkon
Thumb Up

I love satire

Great satire is when you can't tell that the author is extracting the urine. Good job!

CSIRO patent-trolls ALL OF AMERICA!

Blarkon
Holmes

Typical Ars Freetardism

Ars Technica believes that Australian science should be funded by the sale of tshirts. Because to Ars, all intellectual property should be monetized through tshirt sales.

Medieval warming was global – new science contradicts IPCC

Blarkon

Well the Reg has in the deep past published articles linking Autism to Vaccination - so this isn't too far out of it's contrarian "we know better than everyone else" editorial policies.

Qantas lets fly with 'net access

Blarkon

Across the pacific on one of the longest routes in the world is a bit more of an achievement than a cross country flight. Of course I won't fly them anymore because Alan Joyce has a Ryanair approach to customer respect and won't be sacked until a Qantas jumbo faceplants into Botany Bay.

Don't reform copyright yet, begs publishers' body

Blarkon

Doesn't really matter

99% of copyright infringement occurs with works that are less than five years old. Freetards wouldn't stop pirating stuff if the limit was 10 years, they'd simply argue that 10 years was "an immoral eternity" and that content creators should get a new business model (code for "one in which we pay if we want and lets face it we have better things to spend our money on so maybe you could make a t-shirt or a kickstarter or something and continue with the free")

'App Economy' has created 466,000 US jobs

Blarkon

Probably rubbish

Probably bollocks seeing that 99% of Apps publishes in the Apple App Store make less than $500 in revenue. It's like "YouTube" jobs where there are less than 20 people making more than 100K in revenue on YouTube.

Boffin's blog blast births boycott of publisher Elsevier

Blarkon

Future of Science like Future of Journalism

Cutting cost means cutting quality. No matter how clever people try to get, they never get around this. For science journals this simply means that they are going to go through what newspapers are going through. Peer review will become "fact checking" and will eventually become "outsourced community feedback". There are certainly people who want to put the boot into the Science Citation Index - I bet that's gone within 10 years as well.

As costs approach zero, the old soviet saying "You pretend to pay us and we'll pretend to work" will be proven true in another human field of knowledge.

Apple to stage New York education event next week

Blarkon

Free Textbooks = Poorly Written & Edited Textbooks

There is more than author pay involved in textbooks. Fact checkers need to be as knowledgable as the authors are about the subject. The more complicated the subject, the more that expertise costs both at the authoring and the editing level.

If knowledge wants to be free - why are the educated paid a lot more than minimum wage?

ISP ordered to drop 'three strikes' rule against pirates

Blarkon

I love it how people pretend that no file sharing goes on whatsoever. What's even more hysterical is that there is now legislation going through congress to indefinitely detain people without charge - but the real thing that has geeks riled up is the thought that someone might stop them from downloading movies and actually pay for their entertainment.

Steve Jobs memorial brings out tech titans... and Bono

Blarkon

So Woz didn't go

Looking at his tweet stream, he didn't seem to attend.

And they're off! Day one at the solar races

Blarkon

Try Tennant Creek instead of Tennant Springs. Unless you go with Alice Creek instead of Alice Springs in the next update.

Toshiba Qosmio X770 17.3in 3D gaming notebook

Blarkon

Great if you need to fry an egg

I've got a previous verision Qosmio and it looks like this one suffers the same problem - they just haven't designed it to effectively dissipate the heat it generates. I also have one of the monster sized ASUS gaming laptops that looks like it has big thrusters out the back. Say what you will about its aesthetics, the damn thing knows how to dump heat in a way that the Qosmio does not.

Ballmer: Uninspiring performance and a small package

Blarkon

It's nice to see some more realistic executive compensation than the brazillians of dollars that CEOs that don't increase profit are awarded.

BitTorrent CEO sees danger in AFACT vs iiNet

Blarkon
FAIL

BitTorrent has already managed to wipe out almost all science fiction programming on TV. You can scream until you're blue in the face that content producers need to have a business model where consumers can get things for free and choose to pay for what they want - but the reality on the ground is that if it doesn't make money, it probably won't get made and when users are given a choice to pay (with the production of TV now treated more like Busking) the vast majority won't.

Microsoft staff savage Ballmer at company confab

Blarkon

So someone anonymous posts on a blog - no one follows up to confirm - no one even knows if the anonymous poster was at the event - and suddenly something is true?

Windows 8 fondleslabs rock up on eBay

Blarkon

Works fine on an ASUS EP121

Win 8 Dev works great on the ASUS EP 121 fondleslap which is substantially cheaper than what these people are paying for a Win 8 touchscreen. Has very similar specs as well.

Google Chrome beta turns on native code machine

Blarkon
Facepalm

Cognitive Dissonace

So let me get this straight - the same people who for years were complaining how Microsoft put all these extensions into its browser and that they should just stuck with the HTML spec are now cheering for Google putting extensions into their browser and not sticking with the HTML spec.

Grow up, Google: You're threatening IT growth

Blarkon

Nothing will

Nothing will stop you from grabbing the book for free. But in the long run people who write books will go and do something else that actually provides some sort of monetary reward for effort. Which is fine if you don't think books serve any useful purpose to society.

The soviet system collapsed because people weren't paid competitive wages (though they were at least getting paid, so they bothered turning up to work). What do you think will happen to all those industries where you can just go and take the product without paying for it?

That's right. Gone.

We don't have to worry about the Book Burners from Farenheit 451 killing off the book - we've got the Freetards instead.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars

Blarkon

Blazing Angels III

Looks like Blazing Angels III

Major overhaul makes OS X Lion king of security

Blarkon

Lets see at Pwn2Own shall we

Lets see what happens at Pwn2Own at CanWest. I'm betting that someone walks away with a shiny new MacBook Pro far before anyone walks away with a Linux or a Windows box.

Custard pie activist slams IPCC 'grey literature' habit

Blarkon

Code Word

"Elite" is a right-wing code word for "Liberal" or "Progressive". Sarah Palin and Glen Beck are always talking about the elites. The author is missing his calling in not working for a News Corporation publication.

Microsoft's patents shakedown betrays spirit of Gates

Blarkon

Typical of Open Source

Can't create on your own, just copy copy copy - no wonder you bitch about patents. How about inventors get to earn a buck from thier ideas - but the typical Linux strategy is copy - copy someone's OS and give it away, copy someone's music and give it away, copy someone's movies and give them away.

Is the IT Dept failing users?

Blarkon

Going through personal laptop when user resigns

I wonder how happy users will be with the thought of the IT department having to scrub their personal laptop in the event that they want to leave the company. Or when the personal laptop needs to be seized for an unknown amount of time because of an impending legal discovery action.

Eight New Yorkers sue Baidu for $16m

Blarkon
Thumb Down

What typically American behavior

What a typical American reaction to something foreign.

TorrentFreak seeking copyright report’s mysterious author

Blarkon

Still but

Find me some Aussies with computers who haven't downloaded copyrighted material and I'll be more suspicious than I will of a report that claims that most Australians do.

Dunno what the end-game is here, but I know in my suburb the last video shop is in the process of closing up. There were four here five years ago. Given that Australia doesn't have NetFlix, Hulu or any other easy to use digital video rental technology, it isn't too long a bow to draw to figure that most Aussies are "provisioning their digital entertainment using alternative methodologies".

Reactions to iiNet's copyright win

Blarkon

iiNet certainly profits from Piracy

Those people who are taking the really expensive iiNet packages aren't doing so because they're distributing their own content. The message here is "the only people who shouldn't profit of creative works is the creators".

Steve Jobs unveils 30% subs model for ... everything

Blarkon

No - prices must be the same in app and at website

If you go back and read the article, the prices in the app have to be the same as on the website - so you can't jack up the in-app price to drive people to your site - otherwise you aren't in compliance anymore.

Microsoft's IE9: Don't believe the hype

Blarkon

Fast release cycle isn't necessarily good

Why is it that the same people that whinge about a new version of Office coming out every 3 years are the same people that demand a brand new browser every 6 months?

Pirates: Good for Microsoft, great for open sourcers

Blarkon

Open Source is a Disruptive model

Look at RMS' lifestyle - doesn't own a house, doesn't own a car, and doesn't give a stuff about programmers getting paid for their work. Open Source disrupts the professional software development model. It is a very cleverly designed scorched earth strategy. It is not a strategy that will ever provide a comfortable middle class income for programmers.

The eventual outcome of the Open Source Is Paid For By Support model is that support will be provided by the cheapest IT professionals. That isn't Americans with exorbitant college debts. IBM and RedHat are already moving open source programming work offshore to places where the income from programming tasks is more aligned with the revenue that open source software generates.

'NBN is like a bathroom' says opposition, BCA agrees

Blarkon

Tony Abbott would have objected to the rollout of electricity

The Oz opposition would have also opposed the roll out of telephones and even electricity as being too expensive and unnecessary given that business was able to function perfectly well in a pre-telephone and pre-electricity environment, so should be able to continue to function without such things.

If Tony Abbott had lived in Roman times, he would have objected to the rollout of Aquaducts.

Microsoft's Novell patent cartel dodges German regulators

Blarkon

Open source wants, open source can pay

Given that open source makes so much money that contributers are rolling in cash, why don't the open source vendors buy the patents?

Microsoft embraces ARM with Windows 8

Blarkon
Stop

MSFT hasn't been Intel/AMD always

NT 3 and 4 ran on MIPS and PowerPC architectures. Windows 2000, XP, 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2 run on IA64 as well as the Intel/AMD architectures.

What's all this business about Microsoft only being tied to one processor architecture?

Steve Jobs gets Obama love

Blarkon
Jobs Horns

Each iProduct sold increases us balance of trade deficit

There was an analysis done by the WSJ that found that the iPhone actually added almost 2 billion to the US trade deficit with China http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021142902413796.html?mod=wsj_share_twitter

You've gotta wonder how making products that cost your country money ends up making you one of the country's best business leaders.

North Carolina to raise army of Microsofties

Blarkon

If it were open source

There'd be 100 comments arguing whether they should be getting trained in Open Office or Libre Office or if KDE was chosen how it really should have been Gnome and so on ad infinitum ad absurdum.

Microsoft actually creates training materials that meet the standards of these schools - they have a whole bunch of academic programs designed specifically to meet institutional criteria. Other vendors rarely (or simply do not) do this - which is why they don't get a look in. On the Open Source side of things there is a fervent belief in not having to pay for documentation (which explains pretty much everything about the quality of open source training materials and documentation).

Google accused of hard-coding own links in search

Blarkon
Stop

Here's the problem

No business on the Internet is now safe. Google starts a Travel Agency. Puts itself at the top. Destroys the ones who would have got to the top because they were "better" according to the algorithm because all the traffic goes to the top site.

Google starts any business and puts it at the top.

No business is safe because now all google has to do is decide to make an online business, and they can instantly give themselves massive market share an $ without actually being the best online business.

No longer is it a matter of being the best because you rose to the top of PageRank - Google can do a half arsed effort with their own business and take the majority of the internet market share - by inserting their own business to make it look like that is the best of breed on the Internet.

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