* Posts by ratfox

3721 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2007

Billionaire vows to turn 007's Lotus Esprit into actual submarine car

ratfox
WTF?

Meh

Today I learned there is such a thing as Angry Bird perfume, so…

Google's latest Brussels self-abuse proposal needs 'concrete tech'

ratfox

Almunia does not have time

He is trying to get this wrapped up before leaving. He'll probably try to resist a solution which makes meaningless the four years of work up to now. This is supposed to be his great achievement; starting litigation now would make it his great failure.

The politicians do not have this constraint…

Murdoch calls for world+dog to 'expose' Google

ratfox

Re: robots.txt???

Google respects robots.txt, which means that it does index links to pages disallowed by the robots.txt, but never attempts to read what is in those pages. This is as far as I understand what robots.txt is supposed to do.

What Murdoch and co would like is an intermediate settings between "rank this super low because I don't know what's inside" and "read everything on this page, and put everything on Google news, ensuring that people never bother to go read it".

The robots.txt protocol is indeed a bit coarse, but I understand that the propositions from Google to the EU included some sort of mechanism to give websites more control over what data Google can grab and display.

YouTube turns on dormant DRM, permits official downloads

ratfox
Devil

"It doesn't harm anyone's business interests"

Yeah right. Every time you watch these videos while being out and about makes you happy! And you are not paying anybody for this happiness.

Media corporations most certainly think that you should pay for this. They own the content, so they should be able to dictate exactly how and when you are allowed to watch it. If you want to watch it in any other way, there is a convenience fee for that.

Double-click? Oh how conventional of you, darling!

ratfox

Yes but at least in explorer

There is a "Rename" entry in the right-click menu. There might be a shortcut for it too.

ratfox
WTF?

Yes of course, *tap Return*

I use a Mac since 2008, but this has to be the most incomprehensible thing about the UI. The shortcut for opening a file or launching a program is Command-O, and for renaming it is Enter.

I can only conclude that there are people who rename their files more often than they open them.

NSA tactics no better than a CYBERCRIME GANG, says infosec'er

ratfox
Black Helicopters

Just because they have money…

does not mean they have to use complicated methods only.

Turkish TV presenter canned for flashing too much cleavage

ratfox

Re: Why fire her anyway?

That was my reaction too. Even assuming there is something wrong with the cleavage, you can just ask her to dress differently…

On the matter of cultural diversity, let me say that I am very happy that television in most European countries do not treat women the way they are in Italy.

T-Mobile FREES AMERICANS to roam world sans terrifying charges

ratfox
Go

Clap clap clap

Woohoo!!1!

I wish I still lived in the US so I could subscribe to T-Mobile.

Google to award bounties for fixing non-Google open source code

ratfox
Coat

Stingy b***

Did not even offer $3,141.59

Android adware that MUST NOT BE NAMED threatens MILLIONS

ratfox
Happy

Re: MUST NOT BE NAMED

Who?

Listen, Google and Amazon: Soon we may not even use tape for COLD STORAGE

ratfox

@John: Read against the sentence quoted. It amounts to "disk [is] same or better better than disk".

But that sentence is indeed the elephant in the room of the article. Even assuming prices of disk storage ever gets as cheap as tape storage, they have a long way to go before they are as reliable in the long-term.

Bad for Bezos: Amazon's German workers threaten pre-Christmas strike

ratfox
Angel

Interesting explanation…

With all these loss-making factories, the German economy must be in shambles then!

Down with Unicode! Why 16 bits per character is a right pain in the ASCII

ratfox

Re: But Wait!

You can hardly call this ASCII

ಠ_ಠ

ratfox

4th of October, 2013

To be honest, all proper coders know that logs files should be formatted as in log_2013_10_04_23_59_59.txt

And every reader of XKCD knows this too.

ratfox
Go

Re: Hmmm...

My reaction was: AMEN, sister!

Google gets closer to EU antitrust deal over search dominance 'abuse'

ratfox
Trollface

So Bing must also include in its results links to Google services?

Right? Right?

Samsung: Sod off Apple, we've made gold mobile phones for way longer than you

ratfox

I am slightly dumber

For having read the comments on that web site.

I can understand technical people discussing the advantages of iPhone vs Android, but I am constantly amazed by the fans who have no clue and defend their brand.

Google: Thanks for the billions in revenue, UK. Here are your taxes, that's ... £11m

ratfox
Paris Hilton

What about VAT?

I have heard that there is no VAT paid on services such as those offered by Google. But would this be not a proper way to make large companies out of the country pay for running a business in the country?

PH, because she probably knows more than me about these money matters…

DEAD STEVE JOBS kills Apple bounce patent from BEYOND THE GRAVE

ratfox
Unhappy

Sigh

Now that Groklaw is gone, there is now only FOSS… They used to balance each other pretty well…

NSA in new SHOCK 'can see public data' SCANDAL!

ratfox

Fairly standard

I used to do military service in electronic warfare, i.e. listening to the radio. We were only allowed to "identify", but not listen to, civil communications in our country. Everything else was fair game, including baby listening devices and old wireless phones which were still using non-digital transmission. We had trigonometric detection of the place of emission, so we could know that it was coming from outside the country.

French data cops to Google: RIGHT, you had your chance. PUNISHMENT time

ratfox

Surprising

Google seems to be jumping hoops with Europe about the monopoly issue, I'd have thought they would pay attention to this. I guess they really want this new privacy policy to stand…

Google FAILS in attempt to nix Gmail data-mining lawsuit

ratfox
Alert

Well, actually…

Actually, it seems to me that Google's point is a good one.

If somebody sends an email, they are normally letting the recipient do whatever they want with the email, including forwarding it to third parties, publishing it in a newspaper, or indeed, letting Google read it.

I believe that in general, you make no assumption when sending a letter to someone that no one else has the right to read that letter. If the recipient decides to publish the letter, he publishes it.

In fact, only governments (ha!) seem able to restrict the right of the recipient to publish their letters. This is precisely the criticism that has been leveled at National Security letters and "super injunctions".

Google's boffins branded 'unacceptably ineffective' at tackling web piracy

ratfox

Duh

I think they should read again the company's mission statement. Not the thing about evil; the one about making the world's information universally and easily accessible.

Not showing things that are on the web goes directly against everything Google does; it's understandable that they are not trying hard to shoot themselves in the foot.

Google tentacle slips over YouTube comments: Now YOUR MUM is at the top

ratfox

Good

Xkcd has already commented on YouTube comments.

Apple ups revenue estimates in wake of nine million–phone weekend

ratfox
Angel

On the contrary!

Apple is usually famously tight-lipped; the fact that they go to the trouble of making this announcement today (only one month before earnings) shows they feel the need to prop up their stock price and reassure investors. (And it seems to have worked when you look at today's numbers)

But Apple would never have made such an announcement three years ago, when they were systematically beating all estimates every quarter…

Paraphrasing Thatcher, being successful is like being a lady; if you have to tell people you are one, you are not.

Boffins debate killing leap seconds to help sysadmins

ratfox

But… but… That would mean that at the end of my life, UTC time will be a whole minute out of sync with the rotation of the earth!?

BlackBerry BLOODBATH! Company warns of nearly $1bn quarterly loss

ratfox
Unhappy

Feeling sorry for them

Have felt that way for about three years now

Google smacks Surface with free Quickoffice for Android, iOS

ratfox
Alert

Hey, we have another source of money

…So let's kill your business by offering everything you do for free.

If I remember correctly, some countries actually have laws against this (e.g in France, you are not allowed to sell something at loss unless during designated sales periods).

Apple CEO Cook: 'We're not in the junk business'

ratfox
Unhappy

But then why does it look like junk?

I am looking for a new phone, but honestly, I would have preferred to buy an iPhone 5 rather than the new iPhone 5C.

Maybe I am too suspicious, but it feel as if the reason the iPhone 5 got replaced by the iPhone 5C is that otherwise, people would have bought the iPhone 5 instead of the 5S. Now, if you want an iPhone that looks good, you have to shell out for the 5S.

Maybe I'll go for the 4S instead…

You thought slinging Photoshop into the cloud would fail? Look who's laughing NOW

ratfox
Boffin

The real number her is -8% revenue?

I bet that quite a few companies would be satisfied with -8% revenue, if it comes with a subscription model. Getting money constantly and predictably is far safer than always having to convince people to buy the next version of your product. Why do you think Adobe is doing this? Realistically, the features from five years ago would be enough for most people. They are far enough ahead on features that the biggest competitor for their new release is their own previous release.

Everyone's waving their 5-inchers: BlackBerry outs new supersized Z30

ratfox
Go

GOOD!!

I got tired long ago already of the then-fashionable idea that pants pockets are not supposed to contain anything.

Bill Gates again world's richest, tops in US for 20th straight year

ratfox
Headmaster

It is Wunderkind, not wünderkind

I'll let you off starting this German noun with a capital, but I really don't think we need a metal umlaut here.

US plaintiffs can seek damages over Street View data slurp - court

ratfox

Tinfoil haaaats!!1!

Seriously, I hope for the NSA that they have better means of gathering data than randomly grabbing 20 seconds of data from unsecured wifi networks while the car is passing in the street. I cannot possibly imagine how useful this data could be to anyone.

400 million Chinese people can't speak Chinese: Official

ratfox
Happy

Doesn't matter much

They may all speak a different language, but they all read and write the same one…

ratfox

Re: No wonder

No way English is one of the top three hardest languages to learn. Finnish and Czech have got to be harder, without even mentioning Navajo and Swiss German which cannot be pronounced if you did not hear them in the womb.

Though English does have this particularity that, say, a word ending in -ough can be pronounced in seven different ways:

- tough (as staff)

- trough (as scoff)

- though (as low)

- thorough (as law)

- through (as brew)

- bough (as how)

- hiccough (as cup)

Google Nexus 7 2013: Fondledroids, THE 7-inch slab has arrived

ratfox

Re: iPad Mini 2 - The screen on the current Mini is awful...

Apple clearly felt they had to go ahead with a poor resolution for the mini iPad, just to have an answer to the Nexus 7. Indeed, most of the presentation was comparing the two devices.

Now that they had one more year to work on it, they better announce a resolution that is a lot better than the first version. Whether they can do that within the same price is another question.

Microsoft's Nokia plan: WHACK APPLE AND GOOGLE

ratfox
Boffin

Re: "make 40$ per device"

I think if you check your numbers, you'll find that the number of phones they need to sell is a tenth of what you claim. 7.2 billions divided by 30 is not 2.4 billions.

Women in IT: ‘If you want to be taken seriously, dress like a man’

ratfox
Facepalm

Re: Sexist numpty & Reg titles

"An entire article dedicated to missing the point and blaming the boys club for her desire to be the pretty thing with heels, glitter, make up and coloured hair while the rest of her workforce looked nothing like that. This is not a male/female problem yet she insists on pointing it out as one."

You are either willfully missing the point, or completely out of touch with the world. It is not about her desire to be the pretty thing, it is about her desire to look like a normal woman. Despite what you may think, wearing heels and make up does not denote a desire to stand out, it is just normal. Women dress like that, it is standard. Rather, it is wearing cargo pants which makes a woman stand out.

ratfox
Boffin

Re: Sexist numpty

>> So you (YOU!!!!!!!!) didnt speak up

Note the multiple exclamation marks — a sure sign of a diseased mind.

Ballmer's emotional farewell to Redmond: I LOVE THIS COMPANY

ratfox
Trollface

"I love this company"

That's why he is leaving. Stock is up 8% so far…

Yahoo! web! traffic! BIGGER! THAN! GOOGLE! in! July!

ratfox
Go

Thank! you! for! complaining!

And thus ensuring that they will keep doing it!

UK mulls ban on tiny mobiles to block prison smugglers

ratfox
Facepalm

Not gonna work

1) even if they are made illegal, prisoners will still get them.

2) making devices illegal to the general population just so prisoners cannot get them is retarded.

Marissa Mayer in Vogue fashion shoot

ratfox
Stop

Stop it

If Branson can dress in a stewardess-and-lipstick outfit for advertisement, I fail to see what the problem is with these particular pictures. We do not need to analyse everything a female CEO does in terms of gender issues, just because she is female.

If any CEO can get to advertise for their company by doing a photo shoot, let them. I remember Larry Page and Sergey Brin did an interview for Playboy, and the only reason that got them into trouble is that it was during the quiet period leading to the Google IPO.

'BLING BLING, BLING BLING' 'Hello, yes, my iPhone is made of GOLD'

ratfox

Yeah right

I don't believe for a second that Apple is going to produce a gold-coloured phone. Honestly, they simply have better taste than that.

This makes almost as much sense as the third-year-in-a-row rumour that a cheap iPhone will be introduced. When will people realise that the cheap iPhone is always the previous model??

Microsoft announces execution date for failed QR code-killer

ratfox
Meh

Re: Is it me

It is not you… Though it is not exactly broken; it is just the source code displaying. It must have been HTML escaped by mistake.

Apple sucking triple the phone switchers as Samsung – report

ratfox

Re: Lies, damned lies, and statistics

This. Percentages are useless if we don't have total numbers. All statistics are good if you present them the right way.

Amazon DISAPPEARS from internet

ratfox
Black Helicopters

Time to don the tinfoil hats

First Google, now Amazon… Coincidence? YOU DECIDE!

Screw you, Brits, says Google: We are ABOVE UK privacy law

ratfox
WTF?

Weird

How can they even think that this will fly? It seems crazy.

12 simple rules: How Ted Codd transformed the humble database

ratfox
Angel

defining what something isn't

You mean, like GNU, WINE… …Bing…?