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Comment Re:So this is the way it ends (Score 1) 564

Why would it die to Android?

What has Android got, that can kill Microsoft?

I'm pretty sure it can't win the malware race, one way or another.

Nor can it win the horrible user interface race. Both are already at ex-aequo positions there.

Both are backed by people who think they can force their badly thought-out long-term strategies down people's throats Deep-Throat-style. And someone always end up unexpectedly spunked in the eye, with both of them.

Besides, Microsoft already overcame a very dangerous threat to its continued existence: It has managed to survive Steve Ballmer and his deadly finishing move, the flying chair, just fine.

Comment Re:Google Play Store (Score 1) 564

Going to arbitrary websites to download and subsequently execute binaries is extremely dangerous, and significantly disadvantages small vendors... How is a random user supposed to know that the website they've been to and the file they just downloaded is trustworthy and not some piece of malware?

Considering some of the crap that is included in apps available on the various official app stores (malware, hidden Bitcoin generators that use the users' CPU cycles to generate Bitcoins for the company making the app, shit programming, dubious app subjects such as rape, etc.), I'm not sure there is a difference...

Comment Re:Shut your mouth! (Score 2) 51

A somewhat better explanation:

"Schaft" is the European Labor (giant robot) manufacturer that provides most of the antagonist mecha in the anime/manga "Mobile Police Patlabor". The "Patlabor" (from "Patrol Labor") are police robots, made by fictional Japanese company Shinohara Heavy Industries, that help maintain the peace in Tokyo in said franchise. Although "help maintain the peace" is somewhat of an euphemism, considering their tendencies to cause massive property damage... Schaft's most impressive product is the Griffin Labor, a quasi-military model that can fly.

So the Japanese team being named "Schaft" is a reference to Mobile Police Patlabor, and not a African-American. The anime in question, by the way, is rather realistic and has some good character development.

Unfortunately, it is clear that these robots are not using the Shinohara Hyper-Operating System or the experimental Asura OS (the OSes that drive the Labors life-like movements in the anime), considering their clumsiness.

Comment Re:No need for 100% accuracy (Score 2) 227

On the other hand, if you want random unrelated contents blocked, these filters are excellent and deserve a broader deployment. For example, as we all know plastic modelling (as in 'building styrene scale models') is a horrible subversive passtime that is looked upon by government officials and search companies as unacceptably original and therefore obscene. As such, it is completely acceptable that doing a Google image search for '[scale] [machinery name]' removes half the results because they supposedly are child pron, despite A) not having any shades of flesh color in them and B) representing a whole world of pain as they tear up your insides when you try to insert them into, well, anyone.

Now, however, if I Google plant part names at work and specify the plant name, invariably Google turns up some pron. Including child pron. So something is tremendously wrong with their search filter if Googling '1/87 garbage truck' removes 50% of actual garbage truck images, but Googling 'stamen Rosa' results in pron.

Conclusion: Anti-pron filters are a great way of obtaining porn by removing non-porn related results!

Comment Re:Who's talking about robots? (Score 1) 246

Are they all moving around erratically or in a slightly jerking motion? Smashing into walls now and then? Prior to being drunk? Are you hearing weird sequences of beeps at any time? Ones that cannot be the product of some crackhead phone tune? Whirring sounds? Blade dancing? Intimate sensor exploration going on? Talk about the conspiracy to eliminate all those dirty fleshbags?

If so, you've been going to the robot parties. And you may be one yourself.

By the way, perhaps you could confirm the following: Is it true that Google's self-driving cars are big-time into Roombas, often releasing revved up exclamations such as "Oh yeah, baby, suck on that ignition switch! Suck on it! VROOOOOAAAAAAHHHHhhh..."?

Comment Re:Crime? (Score 1) 397

It seems like it would be a lot easier to steal from a drone than it would be to steal from a person delivering a package.

hmmm...

my shopping list for this looks as follows:

  1. butterfly net
  2. mesh that is able to withstand quad-copter rotors, to replace mesh used in butterfly net
  3. extension handle for net to catch high-flying delivery drones
  4. rocket pack and high speed roller skates to match speed of drones
  5. protective suit
  6. heat-seeking missile launcher for use against security drones trying to catch me
  7. Felis domesticus gene splice kit to give me the nine lives of a cat...

Anything I missed?

Comment Re:"is" vs "would" (Score 2) 162

The problem is precisely that this absurd interpretation of the words "criminal organisation" is used with regards to internet forums. Apparently, the fact that some people on forums might be dangerous terrorists (of the Muslim persuasion, according to the AIVD, because as we know extreme right movements never bomb anything...) means that the whole forum can be considered a criminal organisation and makes it okay to siphon up all user data, including that of innocent users.

The other problem is that the law is not adapted well to modern times. Now, the 'solution' the organisation supervising the MIVD and AIVD is advocating is changing the law to retroactively allow the previously described behaviour. This is all very strange, because this supervising organisation is supposed to be independent from both security services and is also meant to keep both in check with the law.

Ronald Plasterk, who is responsible for both the AIVD, the MIVD, and the supervising organisation, is claiming that all is according to the law (when it is not). So now various MPs are calling for a parliamentary investigation into the use of illegal investigation methods by the secret services and he is even being criticised by his own party members. Hopefully this will happen.

The lackluster reaction by Mark Rutte (the prime minister) and several other people in power is quite worrying though...they just don't seem to care.

Comment Re:just leave (Score 1) 845

All we now need is smart clothes technology that allows us to give a different message to Google glassholes and to the general public.

For example, every Glasshole is shown an image of Goatse, while every other person sees a cute Care Bear or My Little Pony...

Surely there's some Google Glass flaw that can be exploited to obtain this very desirable result?

Comment Re:Google Chrome virtual machine? (Score 2, Insightful) 135

Considering Google's track record with the amount of malware for Android, perhaps they are now trying to get Chrome into the #1 spot for "most unsafe browser out there" in spite of Internet Explorer?

Poor Steve Balmer. He left Microsoft too early to witness this event, and will now have to cool his anger on some chairs...oh wait.

Comment Re:So French (Score 1) 75

This kind of idiocy is not limited to the French, as many stories on Slashdot will surely tell you. Equally moronic rulings can be found in such illustrious countries like the United States, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, etc.

But hey, perhaps you prefer to tell yourself your "Freedom Fries" are surely not French (they're not, they're Belgian) and continue to enjoy your obvious bias instead!

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