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User: David+Gerard

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Comments · 2,952

  1. Re:How can this be? on Windows 7 Users Warned Over Filename Security Risk · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bah. Vista is far superior. Windows 7 is for Mac-wannabes who want to "do" things with their computer, not just admire its AWESOME MIGHT as your CPU fan starts lifting your house into the air.

  2. Re:The P0rn option... on News Corp Will Charge For Newspaper Websites · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For scholars? They don't cite Britannica either. Or look at it, or assess its actual accuracy vs. Wikipedia (about the same). They just invoke its name as better than Wikipedia, evidently without really thinking about what they're saying.

  3. Re:What do they have to lose? on News Corp Will Charge For Newspaper Websites · · Score: 1

    The question is whether lying to advertisers or lying to subscribers is the right business model.

  4. Re:The P0rn option... on News Corp Will Charge For Newspaper Websites · · Score: 2, Insightful

    People liked the idea of Britannica in theory; in practice, they hadn't opened a copy since high school. People derided the idea of Wikipedia in theory, but in practice it's useful enough to be a top-10 website.

  5. Re:Another smart move from the movers and shakers. on News Corp Will Charge For Newspaper Websites · · Score: 1

    The WSJ has a unique value proposition: original financial reporting you can't get anywhere else. Recycled AP feeds, reprinted press releases, corporate propaganda presented as op-ed, funny dog stories and Garfield cartoons do not.

  6. Newspapers to go behind paywall on News Corp Will Charge For Newspaper Websites · · Score: 1

    Newspapers will be holding back content from their papers' free websites, instead charging for some digital news and information. "We are fully confident that both readers and Google will come to the party and give us money," said News Corporation president Steven Swartz, "and not just laugh and ignore us henceforth."

    Newspapers plan to fight back against the avaricious parasitism of Google in just telling people where to find content the newspapers had put up on the Web for free with a new e-book reader, a variant on the Amazon Kindle. "For only $300, readers can read DRM-locked down versions of our content that they're paying a subscription for on top. We can't see how this could possibly fail to work."

    Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has been notably successful in selling valuable original financial reporting that cannot be obtained anywhere else. "So there's no reason people won't pay for recycled Associated Press feeds, the latest on Britney and Paris, corporate-backed op-eds, funny cat stories and pretence at holding the government's feet to the fire. And Garfield. What a funny fellow that animal is!"

    He also advocates new advertising and revenue models. "The technical press on the Web shows the way forward: blatant and obvious gutter-slut crack-whoredom. Subtlety doesn't pay the bills any more -- we must enthusiastically welcome the corporate cock into our throats and rectums. Also, I'd like to mention that everyone should use the Windows 7 beta. HLAGH HLAGH HLAGH." he added, wiping off his chin.

  7. Re:Save Vista! on Windows 7 "Not Much Faster" Than Vista · · Score: 1

    I'd buy that for a dollar!

  8. Save Vista! on Windows 7 "Not Much Faster" Than Vista · · Score: 5, Funny

    Windows 7 is CASTRATED APPEASEMENT to soy latte-sipping girly-men who wish they owned a Mac. We want a REAL operating system. An operating system that PERSONIFIES America's INDUSTRIAL MIGHT. That makes you feel AWE at the MAJESTY of the progress of its operation. VISTA is a monument to everything that makes us the country we are!

    Like Chrysler, like Hummer, like Edsel - "Vista" is a name that will be remembered as the greatest operating system in Microsoft's history.

    Just Say "No" To Seven -

    SAVE VISTA!

    Original blog post - Facebook group

    We want ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE to join this group. So far we have nearly 30. TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

    "I fully support this initiative. My computer business employs 200 people; the best possible thing for it is to make sure Vista continues and goes forward." - M. Shuttleworth, London

    "I can't tell you how much Vista has done for my business. So many people depend on it." - S. Jobs, Cupertino

    "Vista is the one thing that will keep people seeking out and using systems that are at the forefront of technology. It's been the best thing for all of us." - L. Torvalds, Portland.

    "I'm ... I'm touched. *sob* I didn't think anyone cared. You guys. Developers! *sob*" - S. Ballmer, Seattle.

  9. Disks full of porn "sold to military" on Unclean Military Hard Drives Sold On eBay · · Score: 1

    [probably to post tomorrow]

    Gigabytes and gigabytes of pornography and highly sensitive login details for gentleman's art sites were bought by a US military missile air defence base second-hand on eBay.

    The artistic pamphlets were found on a hard disk for the SPLORT (Super-Powered Less Obviously Retronymed Thing) ground to air missile defence system, used to shoot down Scum missiles in Iraq.

    Dr Andy Jones, a researcher at the base, said "This is the fourth time we have carried out this research and it is clear that records left on hard disks are the twenty-first century equivalent of random pornographic magazines found in bushes and parks by masturbation-crazed eleven year old boys. PHWOAR, LOOK AT THE TITS ON THAT ONE! I'm sorry, I'm just reviewing a birdwatching site. Fabulous display of Cyanistes caeruleus.

    "Of significant concern is the number of large organisations that are still not disposing of confidential information in a secure manner. Thank fuck."

    The disk also contained login details, credit card numbers and 18 USC 2257 information on ... "prospective military contractors," said Dr Jones. "Really. Prospective contractors. We're getting in touch right away."

  10. Re:Imagine on Debian Switching From Glibc To Eglibc · · Score: 1

    RHEL doesn't use vanilla glibc either.

  11. Re:FINALLY on Debian Switching From Glibc To Eglibc · · Score: 1

    He's undeniably brilliant, and also undeniably not the easiest person to work with.

  12. Re:Might be a good idea on Debian Switching From Glibc To Eglibc · · Score: 1

    He has an overwhelmingly clear case of Asshole Personality Disorder.

  13. Re:Debian forks glibc, Drepper forks Debian on Debian Switching From Glibc To Eglibc · · Score: 1

    Final version up now. More hopelessly obscure geek jokes!

  14. Re:Debian forks glibc, Drepper forks Debian on Debian Switching From Glibc To Eglibc · · Score: 1

    This could be the most obscure string of geek jokes ever written. It makes GNUphone seem comprehensible to outsiders.

  15. Debian forks glibc, Drepper forks Debian on Debian Switching From Glibc To Eglibc · · Score: 5, Funny

    [To be posted tomorrow, probably]

    The Debian project has dropped the use of the GNU project's glibc C library, substituting the eglibc fork, as glibc maintainer Ulrich Drepper refused patches or bug reports for several architectures Debian relied on.

    "Any change will negatively impact well designed architectures for the sole benefit of this embedded crap," said Drepper. "Famously good architectures like x86. Can you believe, these people wanted their C library to work in systems with shells other than bash! These people must think they're signing my pay check."

    Drepper has, in retaliation, announced his own fork of Debian. It will be created in cooperation with Joerg Schilling and Tuomo Valkonen and be based on OpenSolaris with Ion running on XFree86 as the standard window manager. "Keith Packard ruined X," said Valkonen. The standard file system will be ext4, given its proven ability to cause data loss in user software the maintainers consider ill-written.

    The project will be licensed under both the intersection and union of the GPL, LGPL, CDDL, MIT and the thing TuomoV wrote for Ion. This is not anticipated to be a problem in practice with real-life users, at least not until one exists.

    "YOU!" said David Dawes of XFree86. "YOU'VE BEEN TALKING TO THEM, HAVEN'T YOU! YOU'RE CONSPIRING WITH THEM! THOSE GUYS! THEY STOLE IT ALL! THEY PUT A RADIO IN MY HEAD! LINUX/BSD WEENIES! I'LL SHOW 'EM! HELL YES!" "That means he's onside with us," said Valkonen. "Dave's been a bit terse since he finally lost it trying to fix his own broken modeline."

  16. Re:FINALLY on Debian Switching From Glibc To Eglibc · · Score: 1

    I can see it now.

    "YOU! YOU'VE BEEN TALKING TO THEM, HAVEN'T YOU! YOU'RE CONSPIRING WITH THEM! THOSE GUYS! THEY STOLE IT ALL! THEY PUT A RADIO IN MY HEAD! LINUX/BSD WEENIES! I'LL SHOW 'EM! HELL YES!"

    The only theory anyone's been able to come up with is that Dawes finally lost it trying to fix his own broken modeline.

    caps filter caps filter caps filter caps filter caps filter caps filter caps filter caps filter caps filter caps filter

  17. Re:FINALLY on Debian Switching From Glibc To Eglibc · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ulrich, TuomoV and Joerg Schilling.

  18. woohoo! on Borland Being Purchased By Micro Focus · · Score: 1

    I can't wait for Borland Microfocus Turbo COBOL!

  19. New super-fast Internet at least 2 days out of 7! on Virgin Media UK Pilots 200Mbps Broadband Speeds · · Score: 1

    Virgin ("We've Never Done It Before, And We Don't Really Know How To" Media), operators of Britain's only cable television network, has launched a new 200-megabit Internet service.

    "That's 200 megabits total over the day, usually," said Virgin Media phone menu robot Mark Schweitzer, "but it's very fast when it's going. Plain old ADSL can't hold a candle to it. You can hit your download limit in minutes!"

    Customers will be able to add the boost free for three months, after which they will need to pay an additional GBP5 per month. The three months will start when Virgin ascertain the customer might possibly have thought about it in passing, probably last June. Should you be in any way less than satisfied, Virgin will be happy to leave you in a phone queue for three days, then disconnect your service entirely and charge you to switch it on again rather than just go back to the old plan like you asked them. And cut the cable outside your house and claim you did it. And pass your address to the record companies so they can send you threatening letters.

    Virgin Media will be releasing the new broadband service before Christmas. "We've heard that you can use things called 'computers' to send messages and even pictures. That'd be a good service to offer! We have this bloke in facilities who knows a bit about computers, we could get him to run it between refilling the coffee machines. If we tried, we could probably make it as reliable as our telly. Nobody really minds when the football drops out ten minutes before the end, do they."

    Virgin Media was founded as an experiment by ethically challenged psychologists to ascertain just how abusively awful customer service could get and still have anyone giving them money. The company is sponsored by British Telecom to make them look good by comparison.

  20. Re:Billy Goat on Microsoft Not Ditching Vista Until At Least 2011 · · Score: 1

    Have a Facebook group.

  21. Ubuntu is just not as cool as its competitor on Shuttleworth Says Ubuntu Can't Just Be Windows · · Score: 3, Funny

    In a stunning public relations coup, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MNPLY) has successfully overshadowed Ubuntu Linux 9.04 "Juicy Jubblies" by announcing that it is laying even more people off.

    Microsoft announced new and expanded roles for remaining key executives as another several lesser, losing quitters deserted upper management. "It shows the fantastic opportunity available to everyone at Microsoft to climb seven or eight reporting levels up the org chart," said marketing marketer Steve Ballmer to pitchfork-wielding Wall Street analysts today. "If we haven't laid them off for making too much money or not kissing enough ass."

    The Yahoo! deal is expected to go ahead. "We figure they'll go broke before we do. Probably." Mr Ballmer also plans to run the Yahoo! servers on Windows NT rather than FreeBSD after a similar change worked so well at Hotmail. "Some say synergy's another word for two plus two equals one, but you just have to make the value of one work for you."

    Windows 7 betas have been greeted with remarkable positive press. "Of course, the betas preview the 'champagne and hookers' edition, which would be way too much for netbooks and explode users' brains. Imagine thinking those little things are computers! So we're releasing what we call Windows 7 Dumbass Edition(tm). It lets you log in and look at the shiny. Even Spider Solitaire has the ribbon toolbar! And you can buy an upgrade to the version that runs programs! It lets you do that!"

    Dumbass Edition(tm) comes with pre-installed viruses to make the computer part of the Storm, Conficker and FBI botnets. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

    However, Microsoft has indicated to its press corps, Microsoft Completely Enderlependent Analysts, to ixnay on the evensay and highlight the job openings for work on Windows 8, firmly penciled in for a 2012 release. Windows 8 will be optimised for low-end 32-core systems with a mere 16 gigabytes of memory -- 28 cores for the interface, 3 cores for the DRM and one core for everything else. "'Seven' is just so this year. I hear they'll get $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM done next release for sure!" said ZDNet marketing marketer Mary-Jo Enderle. "It'll be awesome(tm)!"

    "I'm sure it'll be fine, fine," said Bill Gates, upping his hours at his charitable foundation and scheduling the sale of several more packages of Microsoft stock.

    Larry Ellison of Oracle, who recently purchased Sun Microsystems, merely snickered, muttered "Java. OpenOffice." and let out a long and resounding laugh.

    Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical, speaking from his castle on a crag high on a mountaintop in west London, was sanguine at Ubuntu's news being overshadowed. "I lost ten million dollars on Ubuntu last year. I'm losing ten million dollars on Ubuntu this year. I expect to lose ten million dollars on Ubuntu next year. At this rate, I'll be broke in ... sixty years."

  22. A comment from Stephen Wolfram on Wolfram Alpha vs. Google — Results Vary · · Score: 5, Funny

    (due up tomorrow)

    Some might say that Mathematica, the source of my fortune, and A New Kind Of Science: A Brief History Of My Stupendous Intellect were ambitious projects. But in recent years I've been hard at work on a still more ambitious project: Wolfram Alpha.

    Fifty years ago, people assumed that computers would quickly be able to handle all kinds of question. It didnâ(TM)t work out that way. But a few years ago, I realized that I was finally in a position to do it myself. As I'd always expected I'd have to, of course.

    I had the crucial ingredients: Mathematica and A New Kind Of Science. And my truly massive intellect. With these, I had a language to compute anything and a paradigm for complexity from simple rules. And my spectacular brain, which is much more spectacular than anyone else's, as proven by me being rich as well as smart. Which is smarter: to be a professor, or to have all the professors pay you tribute? I think my net worth makes the answer clear.

    But what about all the actual knowledge that we as humans have accumulated? I realized we needed to make all data computable as knowledge. Of course, natural language is incredibly difficult for computers. So we added the secret ingredient: my jaw-droppingly spectacular brain, undoubtedly the largest on Earth.

    I'm happy to say that with a mixture of clever algorithms and heuristics, linguistic discovery and curation, and some casual Nobel-worthy theoretical breakthroughs in my spare moments, we've made it work. Itâ(TM)s going to be a website with one simple input field that gives direct access to my superlative brain, in its planet-sized glory.

    Our pre-launch testers have been at work as well, and I'm dealing with all manner of queries in spare thought cycles while I jetset around the world, wowing the pitiful minds of gorgeous international supermodels before impregnating them with my superior genetic material. Let's just have a look at the query stream: "tits" "goatse" "mary whitehouse naked" "4chan" "tubgirl" "2girls1cup" "ITS OVER 9000 LOL" "desu desu desu desu"
    ERROR ERROR ERROR
    ####(^^(856*##&##
    NO CARRIER

  23. Re:I really want Windows to carry on being crap on First Look At Windows 7 On an Entry-Level Netbook · · Score: 2, Funny

    I despise Microsoft in most ways and think Windows 7 is quite usable. It's REALLY FAT and USES POWER RIDICULOUSLY, but the interface is responsive and OH SO PRETTY and not overly annoying. Yeah, it's nice and it's smooth. And REALLY FAT. Oh my God its arse is huge. But shapely. Yeah.

  24. Windows 7 is for latte sippers. VISTA! on First Look At Windows 7 On an Entry-Level Netbook · · Score: 4, Funny

    Could everyone please sign up to the Save Vista campaign. Like Hummer like Chrysler, like Edsel, Vista shows the might of full-sized American industrial production. Itâ(TM)s a monument to everything that makes us great. We can't let it be trashed for misguided corporate attempts to suck up to latte sippers.

    Say No To Seven! VISTA VISTA VISTA! All the way!

  25. Re:I'm doing my part! on Microsoft Not Ditching Vista Until At Least 2011 · · Score: 1

    "Like Hummer like Chrysler, like Edsel, Vista shows the might of full-sized American industrial production. It's a monument to everything that makes us great."