If there were no hacker pirate scum, there would be no security issues

Subject: Microsoft is the world's biggest cause of zombie remailers

One of the more insightful articles of late. Though I'm not sure how you can blame microsoft for the inequality or for failing to address it. Could you really expect them to sell a $20 version of Vista and another at $200 and expect to sell any at $200? I dont see how that could work.

Richard

Subject: Really Crap PR.

Ok, i rolled out some new hp machine the other day for a client. This time, they are not Core2Duo, no, they are "vpro". And that is what?

and today i see the worst offendor,

"What is this? In AMD's own words it is "an ecosystem branding initiative designed to provide consumers with greater choice and simplicity for seamless enjoyment of their personal photos, videos and music, as well as popular videos from the Internet"

oh, so its a set top box like the apple tv thing, that probably has a memory card reader for seamless blabla?, or is it one of those laptop esq portable dvd players with a screen, that has USB (wow) that you can see your photo's on?

Press releases like this are so crap, naff, and tell you more than nothing about nothing. Why do they treat "consumers" like total morons. Every single blinking product nowadays is seamless, a generation ahead, and yet they still refuse to make it clear what it is they are harping on about.

Speaking of harping on....

regards,

Craig

p.s. keep up the good work!

Subject: Tarshishim in the new millennium

Hello from a reader who fears that he is very much out of the loop w/r/t popular culture. Owing perhaps to being older than his greatnieces and greatnephews.

My name is Tarshis. Because it is an unusual name, I did a fair amount of looking it up when I was young, and I know about Biblical references, secular meanings, place names, and an order of angels called tarshishim.

Can you tell me, however, what it is about tarshishim in this year of grace 2007 that renders the word I can only assume instantly understood and its connotations understood to readers of the Inq?

I'd thought I was walking around with this exotic surname, but no, here we are, in a discussion of making LEDs the word "tarshishim" is one of the first to spring to the reportorial mind. I mean the subeditorial mind, as the word occurred in headline copy.

As I no longer know one band from another, and we live in a postcolonial etc world, I am prepared to learn that a group called Tarshishim is top of the charts in trend-setting Scunthorpe, or perhaps Dar es Salaam, or even San Francisco, where I live.

Please do consider enlightening your elders.

Jerome Tarshis

Subject: Microsoft is the world's biggest cause of zombie remailers

Microsoft has nothing to do with your problems in China.

The problem is entirely that you eejits use pirated software. Linux IS available to you, in dozens of flavours, you DO have options. Why bother spreading your useless FUD?

If there were no hacker and pirate scum, there would be no security issues.

Anon

Subject: Vista CnQ driver?

The reason AMD is holding off on Vista CnQ drivers is that there isn't a need for one. The support is built into Vista (using WHQL drivers provided by AMD) and it does work. The problem here is the way the motherboard implements CnQ. If I had to guess, I'd say the XP CnQ driver had all kinds of hacks to control the CPU directly. The Vista driver plays nice and goes thru the ACPI BIOS. This is the way it should be done.

It's not AMD or MS's fault if the BIOS is broken. Hell, my Gigabyte board didn't even have support in the BIOS for CnQ. It just worked in XP if the driver was loaded. It didn't work in Vista until GB sent me a beta BIOS that adds the option (and I'm guessing the proper ACPI data.)

You're going to see a lot of disappointed people with brand-name PCs, because big makers don't like to release BIOS updates. Too much risk of people bricking their machines and blaming the manufacturer.

TWP

Subject: solar panel feed-in

Hi, here at the Commission Research Centre in Italy (where co-incidentally we certify and accelerated life-test many PV Modules), the feed-in tarriffs are basically 2 choices. (for a below 30kWp system : choice a) months of complicated paperwork, engineers drawings, inspections at local, county and other levels, more negotiations etcetera might get you €0.60 per kWh. choice b) is months of negotiations with the network transmission people (without the drawings and engineer inspections) will get you €0.40 kWh feed-in. We reckon a payback of 9 to 12 years in Northern Italy, with the (certified) modules lasting at least 25 years. With the current EU push for lower CO2 it should become even easier to install or hopefully fashionable to put in PV - costs about €6k per kilowatt on the roof - but as more people get the systems then the feed-in-tariff will inevitably drop. Good luck with your negotiations!

David Shaw

Subject: Winterpeg

I dunno why all these people are leaping to the defence of Winnipeg. It's not like they have a lot to brag about. The only time it's not so cold that the mercury in your thermometer freezes solid is when it's swarming with more mosquitoes than the Serengeti at full tilt. Sure, it's a decent city when you compare it to to anything else within a thousand miles, which you could probably do from the top of a mole hill out there in the flat lands, but where I come from we get seventy two inches of heavy snow in a day along with some ninety mile an hour winds and a storm surge that resculpts the coastline at least a couple times a winter, yet we are still thankful that at least we don't live in Winterpeg.

Although, I do need to point out that we Atlantic Canadians proudly claim the rights to all dead baby seals, while the only seals being accosted in Manitoba are at the paws of their many polar bears. I don't care how many celebrities Greenpeace pays to pose with whitecoats on some god forsaken ice flow, harvesting the rampant seals that eat our fish stocks and multiply unchecked thanks to the near extinction of local sharks makes the same amount of sense as killing rats that eat a farmer's grain or beavers that destroy lumber because the hawks and wolves that used to keep their populations in check have been wiped out. Ignoramus hippies and their bleeding hearts just about make me as angry as the money grubbing facades who speak on their behalf in exchange for some good spin and a quietly negotiated number of zeros penned onto a check the TV never bothers to mention.

Blinking hippies. They get stopped at the door when they try and find some footage of a cow being methodically reduced to beef patties, which I can assure is quite a bit more graphic not for its violence but for its deeply engineered efficiency,(a pneumatic buzzsaw that automatically scans then disembowels a thousand animals an hour makes a mere hooked club seem downright quaint) so they take pictures of the only things they can. And hey, big bonus that their subject matter has got big round eyes and is fuzzy as all get out. Then they pay millions of dollars to some cushioned, manicured, managed image of a human being to descend from a helicopter for half an hour and tell the grizzled, stubby, hairy masses that what they and their forefathers have been doing for the last 400 years to feed themselves is just icky, like, omigod gross, flip their hair and then leave again.

Every year it's a new batch of 'em coming round, and each time I feel a desperate need to grab a happik and let them experience first hand the humanity of having their skulls caved in before I peel their prized and perfect pelts from their still twitching muscles and leave the now hideous carcasses to melt through the sponging ice and into the inky depths forever, to nourish the few fish that are left beneath the waves. In my scant twenty three years I've seen the complete collapse of the local cod, halibut, flounder, mackerel, herring, mussel, scallop, clam, oyster, tuna, snow crab, rock crab, pilot fish, hake, skate, salmon and eel fisheries. The only game left in town is the lobsters, and with all those players at the table it won't be another full hand before that folds too. And if the only thing that leaves us is the chance to go out once a year in the freezing hell that is the Gulf and club a few seals worth maybe a tenth, or a twentieth, of what we used to earn catching fish, then so blinking be it.

Ok, sorry. That was just my seal clubbing rant. I hate seals. Almost as much as Green Peace. And Paul McCartney. But anyway, who cares what a bunch of Manitobans think? Winnipeg may be the best thing the prairies have going but that's like winning the Taller than Mickey Rooney contest. On behalf of the Dominion of Canada, I wholeheartedly support your right, nay, DUTY, to artlessly bash and slander all and any parties that you may know everything or nothing about by posting words on the internet. As near as I can tell that's what the blinking thing was invented for anyway.

Tom Murray

Subject: our tone

When I want cheap, badly written polical commentary, I'll ask for it.

Dave Cameron

Subject: BBC using MS-only media player

You are ignoring the fact that the BBC is a public institution, paid for by the taxpaying citizens of the UK. Even if using WMP is fine for 90 or 95% of UK citizens today, that leaves 5-10% of its citizens who would be unable to access BBC content using choice of OS. If it were just "15 Solaris users" that'd be one thing, but we're talking several million people here!

A equally good argument could have been made a few years ago that the BBC web site should be made IE-only, since IE accounted for almost all use. It was certainly higher than the penetration of Windows is today, because most MacOS users used IE then, and the small penetration Linux has today was even smaller back then. Had the BBC made such a choice, it would have acted as a limiter on the ability of UK citizens to make the choice switch to Firefox. Its little things like this that add up when taken together and act to reinforce the existing monopoly and limit choice.

Even people who love Microsoft and think all their products are great and much better than MacOS, Linux, Firefox, etc. should be in favor of the BBC using cross platform formats. By making it easier for those who don't like Microsoft's products to switch to alternatives, they encourage competition and those Micrsoft-lovers will end up with better products from Microsoft in the future. Either Microsoft will be forced to innovate, or they'll be forced to copy the innovations of others. Either way, Microsoft's products improve.

One only needs to point once again at the example of IE to see why. After Netscape was sold to AOL and during the time it took several years for Mozilla to appear in a usable form, IE reached 98% share and Microsoft had almost totally shut down the IE development team. It only existed to patch bugs, and according to Microsoft, there were no plans for a new version unless/until web standards evolved enough to make it necessary. It was only due to Mozilla and especially its offspring, Firefox, rapidly gaining market share that caused Microsoft to reconstitute the IE development team and add features such as tabbed browsing, popup blockers, etc. that other browsers had added in order to better compete. Does anyone really think Microsoft would have added those features to IE if it still had 98% share today?

Doug

Subject: USA and green policy

Hi Paul, The US would respect environmental issues far quicker if we started to damage their economy for them. They have too long gotten used to the idea of having us change to suit their economy, rather than compromise so that everyone gets a fair crack of the whip.

For example, repealing copyright law on movies and music in Europe (both of which would affect the US far more than any other country), along with changes to how companies can licence software (disallowing clickwrap licencing and any forms of DRM) - would soon bring the US in line. This could be viewed as imposing economic sanctions on the US until they comply with environmental demands. This isn't unreasonable - we all share the same planet, atmosphere and resources.

However, for this to happen, we actually need some politicians in Europe with the backbone to stand up to the US and say "Nein".

Kindest regards,

Oliver.

Subject: Microsoft is the world's biggest cause of zombie remailers

You are quite right concerning access to alternative operating systems and the "first user" syndrome over here, every time I use my own schools computers, I generally have to cleanse my own USB drive as well, it seems to be a common problem, all of the foreign teachers here suffer the same problem. Of course, I could make suggestions, though they do run Kaspersky on their systems, I rather doubt they've been updated at all. The computers we use in the classroom don't have network access, so all their viruses usually come through the students, who have brought their own software or files to use, and didn't know they were infected. Of course, my college doesn't really have a clue about IT, and as far as I know don't maintain any of their own machines, they just buy them, stick them in the room, and expect them to work.....Though I have heard that there are in fact some good Linux companies in China with good distro's, I have yet to see anyone use them.

Unfortunately, almost everytime I look at the management here in China, it just makes me want to leave sooner.

Good luck fighting the Zombies.

Justin

Subject: TV Tuner

Does Hauppauge have something against AMD processors? I noticed the system requirements listed this:

PC with 3.2 GHz processor or faster. Or Intel Core Duo processor, with 512 MB of RAM minimum.

As the required CPU for their WinTV-HVR-4000.

Besides the fact that they list the Intel processor by name, off the top of my head I can think of no AMD processor that meets of exceeds 3.2 GHz.

How goofy is that?

Jeremy

Subject: 'ignorant jackass'? Take off, eh?

Please ignore Chris in Regina. He's obviously gone screwy from snow blindness sustained this winter, or has not yet recovered from last summer's massive blood loss caused by millions of black fly bites.

For the record, the baby seal blood splattering stops somewhere around the western border of Quebec. After that the only things lying on the ground (until you reach the Rockies) are the pellet-shot riddled carcasses of mosquitoes big enough to hump a Hummer.

Chris, crack open a two-four, or spend a toonie and buy sense a humour, eh?

A happy resident of LotusLand (aka BC)

Pedersen

Subject: Congratulations

Hi Mr Magee,

I have really enjoyed reading the Inquirer for many years, but I have to congratulate Mr Andrew Thomas for single-handedly changing that experience for me.

Generally, I have enjoyed the mockery, sarcasm, bad puns and tongue-in-the-cheekiness from various Inq writers, regardless of the subject of the article. However, Mr Thomas's writings seem to be in a different league altogether. It is generally seemingly maliciously biased, uninformed and crass, something that I would rate to be even lower than Jerry Springer shows.

I understand that for the sake of objectivity, you need to include a wide range of opinions. And that Mr Thomas's articles will probably generate a lot of traffic, which is always good for advertisement revenue. I fully understand these reasons and have no problems with them. Nor do I ask you to censor Mr Thomas's writings. I only humbly ask you to put author tags on the article titles, both on the Inqurer's front page as well as the RSS feed, so that I could avoid reading Mr Thomas's writings, since I still very much like the articles written by other Inquirer staff.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Wang

Subject: In response to Dhooge's Comments

Hi there

In response to this article, some uninformed idiot called Dhooge wrote "what an idiot" and basically insulted you for having posted it. I will not let this one die unavenged and must respond to Dhooge in the only way I know how and defend the honour of the article in question.

Dhooge: you are a gullible noobtard. Either that or you've never heard of SATIRE. That article has been going around the net for years and is clearly not a serious one. It was a joke article NOT for parents but to show children how irrational their parents could be, as many know their parents would have believed this at one point. It's also clearly dated if you read it.

If you have nothing important or informed to say, then don't say anything Dhooge. You have only succeeded in annoying me this morning by your lack of proper netiquette and moronic reading skills. I am sorry to insult you directly but you must learn a lesson here and not make this fatal mistake again, lest you insult another person out of hand.

PLEASE, for the sake of all of us, LEARN how to interpret satire, wit, sarcasm and all the wonderful parts of intelligent journalism before you grace the Inq again with your negative comments. Furthermore, it wouldn't hurt to learn how to spell and take some grammar lessons. I really hope you read this on the Inq, or that someone will kindly forward this to you, withholding my own email address of course.

Yours faithfully

Steve Ansell

Subject: The Letters

Someone could make a killing selling USB powered sarcasm/satire detectors. Nice dusty "hacker" article. We now have divided the room into those who can take a joke, and those who cannot. =)

Axi

Subject: Oops You did it again.

I would say that you missed the point. But I can't. Missing implies that you would at least try to aim in direction of the target.

Your argument that they using MS format allow them to reach 90% of users (while completely valid) has nothing to do with the idea of switching to OpenSource.

If they won't switch, people will have even less motivation to change their operating system. What will happen then? Maybe next year you will have new argument about reaching 95% users... then 99% and then you will ask "Why to switch to OpenSource? Everyone is using MS operating system anyway?"

Now I have a question: Are you real person? Or did other theInq writers create you just to stir some emotions? If you are real, then I feel kind of sorry for you. If you are not, then good job guys!

Marcin

Subject: Humourless Canucks

What the hell is going on...? I've only been out of the country for a few years and it seems that my fellow Canadians have been replaced by puritan fanatics.

Lighten up, folks. It was a joke...not funny, but, still, a joke. I'm a Canadian who was born in Winnipeg. I know about the wind on Portage and Main, -40, the mosquitos, the floods, the car thefts. It ain't exactly Eden.

Jeez...you think Andrew gave a lousy impression of Canada...? Not nearly as bad as the humourless, rabid prigs who wrote in to threaten and scold him. It's embarrassing.

As long as he doesn't make fun of hockey, we'll let him survive. Speaking of which, how about those Jets, eh...?

JoeCanuck

Subject: Winnipeg

Hi Letermen,

First off I agree with the west french, I think Andie can be a bit of a knob, his article in response to Charlie's article on 'Vista brute force activation' kinda made me feel like I was listening to my parents giving out about something they felt they had to comment on, moral higher ground etc.

But Canada... get over yourselves! Can they not handle the piddle being taken out of them.

The Inq is an english tabloid, it doesnt spell everything correct, its not supposed to, it doesnt use correct terms, its not supposed to, IT is a closed circle. we are IT, others arent. If u want politically correct go watch FOX news aka the American believers No1 Go read the oxford dictionary and give out to the ed there, at least thats his job IT guys arent priests or preachers, they are ...nice guys, but,... revel in power and revenge when required(don't cross em)

So Canada, get over yourselves, this isnt a travel agent, no one was going to travel there anyway(esp to listen to some idiot who isnt french speaking french) G'night from p0ln btw, Im Irish, look at the history books, look what old england did to Ireland...

If anyone has a right to complain, it's the not the English or the wannabe French , they destroyed half of the planet through occupation

Steve McCann

NOTE Profanities in much of the above are replaced with INQUIRER approved alternatives.