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Sony Ericsson is trying to launch the Xperia Play gaming-phone-combo-doohickey in the UK without (m)any devices (stuck in shipping or some such). Three of the biggest mobile chains already delayed - not a great start: http://psp2roundup.blogspot.com/2011/03/xperia-play-launch-round-up.html

it's already 2 years since that episode aired, why they waited 2 years to file a lawsuit?

looking for a job

Presuming you're referring to XP, there's a .ini file you can edit in the root of the CD to tell it it is whatever you want it to be. A quick googling gives: http://windows-tips-trick.blogspot.com/2007/01/unlocking-winxps-setupini.html .

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

Why should they know better? They did nothing illegal. Some bureaucrats thought they could get brownie points by bullying Google. Google didn't have anything to win by fighting, so they rolled over. None of this means there was any wrongdoing on Google's part. At worst, they were impolite.

Wow. I see Google has moved on from copying iOS and is now perfecting its reality distortion field. (Jeez, that one is going to burn some karma.) The poor, poor billionaires at Google are being bullied by the big bad government for being impolite ? Grabbing someones email and passwords, which they owned up to doing ("It’s clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords.") goes a little beyond impolite, it is most definitely against EU privacy laws. I've no doubt there was extensive transatlantic diplomacy that led to this slap on the wrist from a US agency rather than legal action in the EU. Besides even if it weren't illegal you'd expect a company with a motto like "do no evil" to have a stronger moral compass than that of pimply faced script kiddie.

When has Microsoft demonstrated any vision beyond marketing? Microsoft makes profit out of their monopolies (Windows and Office) only. Everything else loses them money. Check out their annual reports if you don't believe me.

I wrote a blog-entry about this.

Not really related (well, sort of), but it looks like Kansas City, Kansas are the lucky winnars! of the Google Community Fiber project.

To visit http://marsandme.blogspot.com/ for a wonderful perspective from Scott on the regular dealings of being a Mars rover driver.

This guy would seem to disagree. They were planning drives for Spirit just 4 days ago...

Spirit is doing just fine on Sol 792. Just four days ago one of the rover drivers blogged this:

"The good news is, we have data from Spirit at last! And a lot of it, too -- a whopping 110 Mbits!"

Here are some pictures Spirit has taken recently.

Is this sloppy Slashdot reporting, or an early April's Fool joke?

long long time ago

An interview with ComodoHacker: http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-comodohacker.html His twitter account is @ichsunx

39 years away is a LONG time. Many politicians will have a chance to overturn this during that time.

Or if you're an optimist, perhaps the free market will have beat them to the punch by then. Or you might point out that there already is a modern city without petrol cars.

By 'Modern' I assume that you are ignoring the child slavery, sentences of death by stoning for adultery and death sentences for people leaving Islam. It may have electric vehicles but in religion, law, and morals it is medieval.

It's hard to believe that such low-strength fields could have much of an effect on soft tissue, let alone bone density: http://thevirtuosi.blogspot.com/2010/05/cell-phone-brain-damage-part-deux.html

The US already has the most progressive income tax of the developed countries: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-nation-has-most-progressive-tax.html

aloria said...
Man, xkcd has become so boring and lame that it's actually sapped my will to snark on it. The only thing that works me into a lather anymore is when people incessantly link to the "Bobby Tables" comic every time SQL injection comes up on a message board.
July 10, 2009 12:29 PM

That comment is from 2009, posted nearly 2 years ago, and bear in mind that was almost 2 years after the comic was first posted. I'll bet aloria has killed herself by now...

aloria said...
Man, xkcd has become so boring and lame that it's actually sapped my will to snark on it. The only thing that works me into a lather anymore is when people incessantly link to the "Bobby Tables" comic every time SQL injection comes up on a message board.
July 10, 2009 12:29 PM

That comment is from 2009, posted nearly 2 years ago, and bear in mind that was almost 2 years after the comic was first posted. I'll bet aloria has killed herself by now...

aloria said...
Man, xkcd has become so boring and lame that it's actually sapped my will to snark on it. The only thing that works me into a lather anymore is when people incessantly link to the "Bobby Tables" comic every time SQL injection comes up on a message board.
July 10, 2009 12:29 PM

That comment is from 2009, posted nearly 2 years ago, and bear in mind that was almost 2 years after the comic was first posted. I'll bet aloria has killed herself by now...

Tom Kyte of Oracle/"Ask Tom" fame blogged about this recently:

[speaking about HBGary] And all because of - SQL Injection... If you don't use bind variables - you are susceptible to it. If you accept input from an end user and concatenate it into your SQL, you are subject to SQL Injection. If you use bind variables - if you do not dynamically construct your SQL at runtime - you are not subject to it. It is that simple.,

http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2011/02/interesting-read.html

He continues, "it is much harder to write code that doesn't use binds than it is to write code that uses binds". I agree- I feel... dirty... not taking the minute or two to add a parameter. Looking at our error logs, I see bots searching for parameters in web forms and testing vulnerabilities.

C# is very good at performance.

Compared to what? It's comparable to Java, and a lot faster than Python, but it's still a great deal slower than C++ or C.

That said it's a perfectly fine language, and is a good trade off between runtime speed and coding speed. If I had the choice I would go for Python, Java, C, C++ or a combination of those, simply because they are cross platform.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-na-monthly-201002-201102

Was that link supposed to have web stats for Linux usage? I didn't see any. Googling though I did find this: OS Platform Statistics. It shows web stats for Linux being above 5%. The stats have Linux breaking 5% in November 2010. Going further and comparing Linux stats with Windows stats, it has all versions of MS Windows having 86.5% of the OS market in December. In February it was 85.9%. In the same tyme period both Linux and Mac OSX gained share.

Again going further, there's OS and browser spoofing. Using Firefox I don't know how many webpages I've landed on that says "Best viewed with X" where X is a version of IE. Spoof IE on those pages and some render fine while others don't.

Falcon

On this pathetic plane, perhaps. Others may have found different metaphors.

http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2011/03/story-behind-story-of-my-new-plosone.html

They may be from novel viruses. The They may be ancient paralogs of the marker genes. Or they may be from a new branch of cellular organisms in the tree of life, distinct from bacteria, archaea or eukaryotes. I think most likely they are from novel viruses.

I'm going to go with this last opinion as well, it's probably from some virus, which would account for the sequence wackiness. I'm wondering if they can construct some speculative primers and (without isolating the organism) start sequencing outwards from these novel sequences, maybe get enough to tell if it's a virus or a novel organism.

They nearly destroyed Skynet last time, but some of the Novell viruses survived.

http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2011/03/story-behind-story-of-my-new-plosone.html

They may be from novel viruses. The They may be ancient paralogs of the marker genes. Or they may be from a new branch of cellular organisms in the tree of life, distinct from bacteria, archaea or eukaryotes. I think most likely they are from novel viruses.

I'm going to go with this last opinion as well, it's probably from some virus, which would account for the sequence wackiness. I'm wondering if they can construct some speculative primers and (without isolating the organism) start sequencing outwards from these novel sequences, maybe get enough to tell if it's a virus or a novel organism.

Here's a Venn diagram that explains why Doctor Who beats everyone else: http://mooseintheyard.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-im-doctor-who-fan.html

I think they're probably looking ahead too. If it's ok to have an app that warns about DUI checkpoints, why not one that warns you about speed traps? Why not one that ties into your phone's GPS and automatically fires off an audio alert when you're nearing a photo radar van that someone else tagged? Apps like this could be made very user friendly, and police departments could stand to lose a lot of money to them.

You mean people might write apps like these?

http://www.trapster.com/iphone.php
http://landlinemedia.blogspot.com/2009/07/photo-radar-theres-app-for-that.html

Short story by A.Clarke, highly recommended

Your post made me think you might be interested in these two links:

Some thoughts on a "Copyright Offensive"
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html

Packet In's Income Thoughts, plans, possibilities, etc.
http://packet-in.org/wiki/index.php?title=Income

all the best,

drew

I found this more informative on the reluctance motor http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_2/chpt_13/4.html. Of course you would still want to incorporate solar panels on the top surfaces of the wings just to get that bit of extra free energy into the system, especially if done properly as the wing surface so no additional weight. Add to that an inflatable aircraft http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2008/06/weekend-wings-20-inflatable-aircraft.html (using hydrogen or helium) and away you go.

"You should have chosen a law school."

You're really joking right? more and more

Lawyer's have is worse than IT!

What the fuck? "To see the contents of this list you should enable Javascript." Well fuck no! I don't trust you evil Google, and so I don't enable JS for you!

A simple table, or list, and it requires JavaScript? That's fucked up. Progressive enhancement, or graceful degradation (whichever one of these you prefer) is essential to providing an accessible, usable, and useful web. Two different design philosophies, that amount, in this case, to the same thing. If the browser is not JavaScript aware, capable, or has it turned off, the browser should still be able to access the information!

Anyway, from the first link, I can see that AbiWord, a great, fast, and cross-platform word processor, is on the list. I use it all the time, 'cause it opens up so much faster than OOo.

(On the list, some kind soul pasted it too: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=tmw4JCFU. Though it's in CSV format.)

I can see from the list, that DokuWiki, DragonFly BSD, Freenet, LibreOffice, MoinMoin (another wiki system...) and QEMU also got listed. There are a lot of other good projects there too. I don't use most of the projects, but knowing they are there, is good.

To answer my own question: yes, there is..

Cheers,
Ian

"My used car is better than your new motorbike!"

Yes, your bike may look impressive...

Well...not really. It's a V-Strom (shameless plug to my motorcycling blog), which is usually considered to be a rather homely bike. But it'll hold up better for the kind of riding I want to do than the sexier GSXR or Bandit, and it has no problem touring two up with a full load of gear. It's also about half as expensive as a comparable Beemer, Triumph Tiger or Super Tenere. As a wise man once said, "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

...and be good for pulling the ladies...

I guess...I've carried my wife, my daughter and my step-daughter on it (not all at once, of course). Unless you mean "pulling IN the ladies, in which case, as a (happily) married man, I don't really care.

...but can it pull a caravan? No!

Ooookay...My pick-up truck won't pull an entire caravan either, and the bike's way more fun.

Can you put fourteen crates of beer in the back? No!

Maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised. You should see how people load up the Wee/V-Stroms sometimes. If there's a bike that could carry fourteen crates of beer, I'd wager it would be one of the Stroms.

I think you'll find this article/video interesting:

http://180degreehealth.blogspot.com/2010/08/rice-vs-potatoes-rvp.html

"The chairmen, porters, and coalheavers in London, and those unfortunate women who live by prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions, are said to be the greater part of them from the lowest rank of people in Ireland, who are generally fed with this root. No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution."

"what the Board of Agriculture mentions as a fact of the greatest importance, that potatoes and water alone, with common salt, can nourish men completely"

"The potato, which in some points of view, may justly be regarded as one of the greatest blessings to our species, is capable of operating the greatest calamities, when it exclusively furnishes the food on which a community is content to exist"

"The small farmers live on potatoes and milk. It is considered that he is a very fortunate man if he has milk for his family. He sells his butter and never uses oatmeal in his house."

You are misinformed.

Thanks! Very good articles http://appsformobilefree.blogspot.com/

thanks! Very good articles http://appsformobilefree.blogspot.com/

What, you think Verizon doesn't have shitty customer service too?!

My advice is to go with something like Virgin Mobile: no contract and ridiculously lower prices (I pay $40/month for 1200 minutes and unlimited data).

1) self signed certs also make trafiic encrypted !
2) Firefox3 and Caching HTTPS content : http://neopatel.blogspot.com/2010/02/firefox3-and-caching-https-content.html

jscript is a problem : http://objectmix.com/javascript/506946-individual-xmlhttprequest-requests-over-https.html

Don't knock the Noone, he cares alot about it...

A picture of what it amounts to in size difference here:

http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2011/03/march-19-2011-super-full-moon.html

Both images were taken with the same lens, on during an "average" size full moon, the other yesterday. While indeed notably bigger yesterday in comparison, it really isn't that impressive in absolute terms...

By the way, contrary to the opening lines of the Topic Poster, it is about once each 18 years, not 28 years.

either that or one of these two
http://brostoncollege.blogspot.com/2011/02/trojan-dildo-commercial.html

http://xxxdessert.com/sextoys/sex-toys-women/trojan-horse-penis-dildo/

Considering "Jane" used to be "John" http://zagria.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html . Sexier pic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jane-fae

Someone erroneously posted below that homosexuality is a preference. Its not. I had a friend who was a male married to a female with 2 kids and he was homosexual. AFAIK they had no plans for divorce. I work with a m2f transgender, and I've known many male and female homosexuals and bisexuals. Honestly, I can't understand it fully, but I just look at it as gender being a bimodal distribution that has overlap between the modes. Personally, I think it takes balls to go m2f and in no way be fooling anybody.

That is from 2003. It certainly doesn't seem to be Linus complaining about Android. And, I think, that is the point. However Google has been behaving itself it has done so with minimal backlash (there has been some for certain actions, but those have generally been resolved peaceably). In fact Linus seems to be pretty OK with Android. http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/02/happy-camper.html

So from the fact that his statement on the specific issue of misappropriating Linux Kernel header files made in 2003 he doesn't mention Android in particular, and a blog-post saying he owns an Android phone because he uses it as a GPS unit and some games you conclude that Linus would not mind if they actually do what Florian Müller claims they do?

That is from 2003. It certainly doesn't seem to be Linus complaining about Android. And, I think, that is the point. However Google has been behaving itself it has done so with minimal backlash (there has been some for certain actions, but those have generally been resolved peaceably). In fact Linus seems to be pretty OK with Android. http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/02/happy-camper.html

Most likely this was submitted by a.....Canadian. And we Canadians are known for our fervent patriotism. Canadians are also known for having a national inferiority complex. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_cringe#Canada http://madcanuck.blogspot.com/2004/10/canadas-national-inferiority-complex.html So, whenever we do something noteworthy(or not so noteworthy) we tend to publicise our connection to it.

obligatory http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/

Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it. Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short. [ShakaUVM]

FWIW, I believe in AGW, and think it’s a serious problem. Does that sound like a crackpot creationist to you? No? Oh, I guess you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about, do you? [ShakaUVM]

... referencing the Salem Hypothesis (a reference to Creationism) *was* insulting. [ShakaUVM]

Thanks for making the record. You sounded just like the Creationists that get really evasive when pressed to explain some of their answers. In fact, saying that they don’t have time to educate people is one of their favorite lines. [ShakaUVM]

Years ago, I wrote an article defining science using falsifiability, and explained why ID/creationism doesn't qualify. In it, I pointed out that "Intelligent Design" advocates are humorously evasive about the identity of the Designer, but "wossname" has to be the funniest example I've ever heard. Anyway, a computer scientist replied to my article, saying "I'm a creationist" then claimed that a prominent atheist scientist's belief in panspermia amounted to secular belief in ID/creationism. He argued that "evolution is almost infinitely adaptable like this, and is thus unfalsifiable" which can be rephrased as "you can prove nearly anything using evolution" or "you can sort of argue anything using evolution" or "... With the same rationale, evolution is impossible to falsify as well...". Like most creationists, he used the term evolutionist liberally but at least he didn't babble about ID excluding creationism. He also didn't pull a Ben Stein by trying to link Darwin to Nazis. Brett's real classy like that.

Later, Marble joined Andy Schlafly and other "skeptics" in

Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it. Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short. [ShakaUVM]

FWIW, I believe in AGW, and think it’s a serious problem. Does that sound like a crackpot creationist to you? No? Oh, I guess you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about, do you? [ShakaUVM]

... referencing the Salem Hypothesis (a reference to Creationism) *was* insulting. [ShakaUVM]

Thanks for making the record. You sounded just like the Creationists that get really evasive when pressed to explain some of their answers. In fact, saying that they don’t have time to educate people is one of their favorite lines. [ShakaUVM]

Years ago, I wrote an article defining science using falsifiability, and explained why ID/creationism doesn't qualify. In it, I pointed out that "Intelligent Design" advocates are humorously evasive about the identity of the Designer, but "wossname" has to be the funniest example I've ever heard. Anyway, a computer scientist replied to my article, saying "I'm a creationist" then claimed that a prominent atheist scientist's belief in panspermia amounted to secular belief in ID/creationism. He argued that "evolution is almost infinitely adaptable like this, and is thus unfalsifiable" which can be rephrased as "you can prove nearly anything using evolution" or "you can sort of argue anything using evolution" or "... With the same rationale, evolution is impossible to falsify as well...". Like most creationists, he used the term evolutionist liberally but at least he didn't babble about ID excluding creationism. He also didn't pull a Ben Stein by trying to link Darwin to Nazis. Brett's real classy like that.

Later, Marble joined Andy Schlafly and other "skeptics" in

On the other hand, the Green Freedom concept means that, in the long-term at least, gas should never cost more than $5/gal because that's about how much it costs to produce it just using atmospheric CO2 and fission reactors. I say in the long-term, because building such a facility would likely be a large construction project and take years if not over a decade.