Comment Re:Not good enough (Score 1) 323
Here, let me ram this FREE truncheon up your arse. No need to get butthurt about it. Some people are so ungrateful.
Comment Re:Not good enough (Score 2) 323
Why are you defending them? Technical people like us may understand all these issues but as far as the average Apple user is concerned this unwanted album turned up and now they have the hassle of removing it. Worse still there doesn't seem to be a way of blocking Apple from adding stuff to your music library in the future. Hopefully the outrage will stop them doing it again.
Comment Re:Not good enough (Score 2) 323
I was a teenager in the 90s and most of it was shit.
Around 1990 a major change happened where music was written before lyrics instead of the other way around. That made songs very hard to sing, if not impossible. The vocals often had to be sampled and sequenced because live performance was impossible. As someone who likes to sing that sucked.
1990 was also when the loudness war went atomic. Bad times.
Comment Re:Rather than address the underlying problem (Score 1) 324
You can't have it both ways. If you lower corporation tax you either have to cut services or raise other taxes. There is a minimum outlay required to keep the roads drivable and legal system going etc. which corporations demand.
Ireland gets a lot of EU subsidy and the international companies based there are just shells. They bring no jobs or social benefits. Switzerland has high wages and high taxes on individuals.
Corporations want to be in our counties. They want local, skilled workers who can afford to live a reasonable life and be productive. They want education, roads, healthcare, services. They should pay for them, and won't leave if forced to.
Comment Re:Well.... (Score 1) 425
So what you are saying is that it's right when Apple does it. Features are pointless and never work until Apple does them. Essentially, only Apple can advance smartphone technology and any mistakes or lies should be forgiven because, well, it's Apple and we should be thankful.
Comment Re:Nothing Useful (Score 1) 545
For me the motivation to upgrade will be when I get a 4k monitor and want better high DPI support from Win 8/9. Windows 7 isn't bad but 8 not only looks better but it also supports different DPI settings for different monitors.
I have 7 on my desktop and 8 on my laptop. With Classic Start Menu I don't have any complaints with 8. In fact booting from cold to desktop in 4 seconds flat is very nice for a laptop when I want to quickly look something up.
Comment Re:The real test? (Score 4, Insightful) 545
Most people are fine with it once you install Classic Start Menu. There is some good stuff in 8, and it's not like Vista where performance went to hell and a lot of stuff just broke. Having different DPI settings on each monitor is nice, for example. All they really need to do with 9 is fix the start menu.
Having said that the multiple desktops feature looks nice. Something that should have been done years a go, but better late than never.
Comment Re:it's means it is (Score 1) 132
Thanks for the tip, I'll look into that.
Why Is It Taking So Long To Secure Internet Routing? 85
CowboyRobot writes: We live in an imperfect world where routing-security incidents can still slip past deployed security defenses, and no single routing-security solution can prevent every attacks. Research suggests, however, that the combination of RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure) with prefix filtering could significantly improve routing security; both solutions are based on whitelisting techniques and can reduce the number of autonomous systems that are impacted by prefix hijacks, route leaks, and path-shortening attacks. "People have been aware of BGP’s security issues for almost two decades and have proposed a number of solutions, most of which apply simple and well-understood cryptography or whitelisting techniques. Yet, many of these solutions remain undeployed (or incompletely deployed) in the global Internet, and the vulnerabilities persist. Why is it taking so long to secure BGP?"
Comment Re:This may be the way to escape from Comcast (Score 1) 418
In the UK the regulator makes them pay compensation if your connection is down for more than a day. It's not much help since you still have no internet, but it's a start. Bigger fines are the answer.
Comment Re:This may be the way to escape from Comcast (Score 1) 418
Just ask to see the signed contract where you agreed to the debt. When they can't produce it they can't prove the debt, and it goes away.
The Growing Illusion of Single Player Gaming 292
An anonymous reader writes: Multiplayer modes used to be an extra part of most games — an optional addition that the developers could build (or not) as they saw fit. These days, it's different: many games are marketed under the illusion of being single-player, when their focus has shifted to an almost mandatory multiplayer mode. (Think always-online DRM, and games as services.) It's not that this is necessarily bad for gameplay — it's that design patterns are shifting, and if you don't like multiplayer, you're going to have a harder time finding games you do like.
The article's author uses a couple recent major titles as backdrop for the discussion: "With both Diablo III and Destiny, I'm not sure where and how to attribute my enjoyment. Yes, the mechanics of both are sound, but given the resounding emptiness felt when played solo, perhaps the co-op element is compensating. I'd go so far as to argue games can be less mechanically compelling, so long as the multiplayer element is engaging. The thrill of barking orders at friends can, in a way, cover design flaws. I hem and haw on the quality of each game's mechanics because the co-op aspect literally distracted me from engaging with them to some degree."
The article's author uses a couple recent major titles as backdrop for the discussion: "With both Diablo III and Destiny, I'm not sure where and how to attribute my enjoyment. Yes, the mechanics of both are sound, but given the resounding emptiness felt when played solo, perhaps the co-op element is compensating. I'd go so far as to argue games can be less mechanically compelling, so long as the multiplayer element is engaging. The thrill of barking orders at friends can, in a way, cover design flaws. I hem and haw on the quality of each game's mechanics because the co-op aspect literally distracted me from engaging with them to some degree."
Comment Re:Power Consumption (Score 1) 75
I'm really struggling to think of applications for this. There isn't much connectivity and it isn't very low power, so both micro server and low power node applications are out. For prototyping you will probably want an ARM board to ensure long term availability and low cost.
Comment Re:Back up to optical media (Score 1) 268
They make their money from corporate stuff. The personal accounts are a small fraction of their capacity and at worst they see them as loss leaders. Keep in mind most of these guys don't run their own data centres, they just act as a front end for Amazon or someone else.
Comment Re:Ashes to Ashes ... (Score 1) 268
Tape is not very good for long term backups. The tapes degrade with use when you test them periodically. The drives fail and are expensive to replace. Recovery options are limited. You need to have the same backup software you used to create the tape, which is fine for Unix but an issue on other operating systems.
Bluray is a better option outside of a corporate environment. The drives are cheap and likely to be easily available for a very long time (modern drives still read CDs from the 80s). You can make video discs for non technical people, or just throw the files on as most media players can cope these days.
