Posts by Old n Cynical

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Oh Great....What a frigging annoyance from hell

"An instant message sent by your iBuddy will ping on your iPhone, your Mac and your iPad, if you have left those devices on. What's more, it will keep pinging away until you have explicitly opened and received the notes on each device individually."

Not an attack on your post Fats, but assuming the article is correct about the above then...

Stupid programmers. They should have:

a) Been bound, or provided with a means self-bind, even through a hot key (say Cmd B)

b) Been gagged and had their status changed to 'Unconcious'

c) Been horsewhiped to within an inch of a kernel panic.

d) Had their status updated to 'Unemployed', or be provided with the means to self-terminate, maybe a key labelled 'DEL' on their forehead?

If only reason and sanity prevailed.

Oh. They don't. :)

(Of course, if the article is incorrect on the quoted points, just file my response for when some idiot does do this).

Re: Re: Re: Popularity affects law?

OK cowardly troll, I'll bite...

"You despair of your kids generation? Perhaps they get it from you!"

Firstly, I don't despair /of/, my kids generation, but I do dispare /for/ my kids generation. There is a fundemental, almost polar, difference between the two. Your first mistake.

Secondly, when talking of the current generation I actually alluded to hypocrisy in the courts in a general sense. Not hypocrisy where just Apple are concerned, but also hypocrisy in criminal courts. If you believe that the legal system treat us all as equals and in an equal manner, you are simply a fool.

Do Apple deserve a good legal spanking? If they transgress the rules of any land of course they do, and when they do, financial penalties should be punative in a very real sense, not just in a notional sense.

Have Apple demonstrated theselves to be open, fair and honest? Of course not, only a fool would suggest otherwise. Me? I am long enough in the tooth to know that a leopard does not change it's spots so easily. So far Apple have been treated very delicately in many actions that have gone against them. I for one, believe that should change.

All that said however, with idiots like the USPTO in action, the childish behaviour we have seen from companies like Apple in recent years can only be encouraged to continue.

Yes, I believe Apple deserve to suffer real punative sanctions at their next transgression. Did I say they deserve such punative sanction in respect of the article matter? No, I did not. What I did say however was that I agreed that the question "If it's against the law or found to be in violation..." was a valid question IMO. Note the /if/.

Re: if only

"if only there was an alternative system..."

One that is fast, stable, secure, has centralised development, is copyfree, comes with good documentation, has mature minded community support, and has variants which run well on both servers, desktops and laptops for the novice and pro alike?.. That would /have/ to be BSD then, eh? ;P

I really don't understand all the fuss and hype about Linux. (I am, of course, assuming that you were actually referring to Linux).

(Where's the Beastie icon?)

"Sitting around jerking each other off does nothing."

Then you probably aren't doing something quite right I'll proffer. Or is it because you just feel dirty and used ;)

More seriously though, I agree with your general sentiment, but hey, let the kids play.

Meh x 2

"100ppm in a century? No"

I am not aware of any data for the PETM that can provide accurate data for *100 year timesteps*. I am only aware of averages spread across 10,000+ years. If you can point me to a scientific source that provides PETM data in accurate, century timesteps (which are *not* a tiny part of a much larger average) - so that I can all draw a direct comparison against the last century - please do. If not, I fail to see how that statement holds.

Don't get me wrong - we are contributing to a (potentially) big problem - without doubt. It's the FUD driving some of the science that I take issue with.

At the end of the day we are not yet clever enough to determine if our current experiment on the global climate will roast us all. Even if we were to become able to accurately determine the furture for the climate, whichever camp was left our in the cold would always find a counter argument - it's the nature of the beast.

@AC 11.26

To clarify: where it should be - to me. I wasn't actually trying to draw a reference to bygone days.

IMO the most 'logical' day for New Year's day is when the sun is at (or one day past) it's lowest altitude above the horizon and definately not when the sun is at one of the equinoctial points... But then I also see sidereal as more intuitive and natural than say, solar :)

"Time measurement is just a tool. Tools should fit the normal user in his normal environment, not the other way around."

Ah'ha. HCT? Human Circadian Time. That may put me at odds with the bloke next door who is on permanent nights. He's on HCT +12. (I jest of course).

Me no confident

Last time I had occasion to visit A&E at my local hospital - which has been my local for longer than I care to remember - I was told that had I never been there and there was no record of me anywhere. When I pointed out that I had in fact been going there for decades - I was told "Oh well. Never mind. Take a seat. You are not the first to disappear off our system."

@Computers vs Humans

Rainbow tables are exactly the reason that one should, at the very least, sprinkle a decent amount of salt over passwords - about 128 crypto-random bits on each password should get the ball rolling.

As for brute force or basic dictionary attacks, these are a different kettle-o-fish, but there are relatively trivial ways to /assist/ in reducing exposure.

The problem is there are a lot of commercial systems out there that still dont even take the most rudimentary of data security precautions. 'Reap what you sow' I suppose.

Bring back NN :)

To compare vanilla installs (mostly) - and just with this page opened in a new instance (all in MB):

Chrome : 93 (3 processes)

FF: 121 (add-ons) / 69 (vanilla)

IE: 78 (2 processes)

Opera: 84

Safari: 44

(All latest releases)

And for people still living in caves:

Netscape Navigator 9: 53

So, it's official NN9 is only beaten by Safari. That's progress for ya ;)

800 million active users? Ok ,how many regular & *unique* active users - unique as in different prople?...

Hmm... Say 50 million cats. dogs and mice with pages. 750 million then.

Oh... 250 million accounts represent multiple account users 'other' accounts,.

So, 500 million left.

Let's see... How many are not regular, returning users? Say 100 million. 400 million left then,

Now, how many cognisant users? Hmmm. 5 you say.

Now how many have something interesting to say? ~1?

Oh, so it's really that's 1 active user with a brain and something constructive to say then.

Oi, downvoter(s)... Lol!

Prey tell how you can downvote actual times? Lol. You're funny! Please provide constructive criticism, if you can - explaining why I did not see the stated start/open/compile times. If you think I lie, say so :)

Ho hum

Whilst I am no supporter of such data sharing (quite the opposite in fact) - where the data to be shared is that pertaining to a private individual or their behaviour - if the service is adequately 'anonymised' I see no real problem with it. But it does reflect - yet again - that Joe Public is simply a commodity to be exploited.

The chances are all of us reading this will one day end up listed in an ancestry.com death certificate search and so will continue to be exploited, long after our demise. But hey, that's life!

Hmmm...

"Google Search, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Docs, GMail. All products (mostly) better than their competitors."

That would be a matter of personal opinion. IMO, any other free, competing product - which, even if it were technically inferior - that does not scan my soul and poke around my arseole like an insane proctologist for advertising opportunities at every turn would always be superior to one that does. I would rather pay a fee to a support minnow service provider that values privacy. My freetard days are long gone and I prefer to support small business buy buying their services ahead of using the offerings of an out of control ad agency. But that's just me. (As you can probably tell, I am no fan of G**gle and haven't been since about 2 years after G**gle first launched their search as a beta).

Whilst I don't have any compelling need or requirement to use any of the products you mention I fail to see what is so great about any of them, with perhaps the exception of search, which pretty much gets worse by the day anyway.

"Google's innovation is really to do with actually making products usable and GOOD"...

I would argue with your assertion that G**gle products are, for the most part, 'GOOD' (why so shouty?) on both technical and semantic levels. A raft of Google code I have seen leaves quite a bit to be desired. Semantically, 'good' is certainly not a word I would use in connection with G**gle. But then, the contextual meaning of 'good' may be different for me. If you were to replace the word 'good' with 'adequate' or 'barely adequate' I may be more inclined to agree.

Yeah!

""In Australia and Germany, where bans are already in place, Apple successfully argued that once a punter buys a Samsung tablet they're unlikely to switch into the Apple ecosystem, so Samsung will have gained a lifelong customer through the use of an infringing product. That's very self-deprecating for Apple"

Oh dear. What a pity. Never mind.

Me? I would take a Galaxy over an Apple any day as I prefer to buy into chioce, not a dictatorship.

Yesterday both links were publically accessible (for me). Today the 1st is offline and the 2nd paywalled.

The figures quoted were from Home Office data released after an FOI request. For the most part, and from further reading, it *appears* that the declarations of faith were there before the crimes were committed. In some cases however, it is obviously a case of 'Oh shit, too late. Better find God.'

I did find it interesting to note how crime types were 'distributed across faiths' however, especially considering that Christians were apparently 50% more likely to commit a sex crime than say, athiests. I struggle to understand that personally, but thems the figures I saw.

Ditto

"I fear British politics goinjg the same way as the USA"

That'll be us fucked then...

Still, at least our 1st black PM wll get a Nobel for doing, well, jack shit!