INQUIRER Letters Page

Subject: Tommy Milley

In respsonse to Thommy's lengthy ramble about Vista and OSX, his musings took a turn for the worse when he rolls out that non-word loved by self-proclaimed nerds everywhere; "virii".

Given the use of the word that is not a word, his credibility evaporated before my eyes, the rest of the article vanishing in a cloud of pretentiousness.

jj.barnett

Subject: How to wreck a Mac (reprise)

Mr Knowitall is correct that the Mac dashboard calculator has a bug (buffer over-run? Could be...). Following his instructions does freeze the calculator, but that's all. No other processes are affected, and clicking on 3 rather obvious icons restores the calculator. Whoever started using the terminal was just showing off his l33t skilz or whatever the jargon is.

His argument was that this shows the soft underbelly of OS X. Au contraire, it shows that OS X is reassuringly stable, even if you deliberately crash an app, a widget or anything else.

Rupert

Subject: Microsoft has trouble with OpenDocument standards

Hi, Nick

Fun article. One minor point to mention is that there were 20 objections. One major point to mention is that Open Document is an open standard and is not in and of itself open source. Open standards can be and are used even by a wide range of software, both open source and closed source. (MS is against both closed source and open source software)

Best, Lars
Wearing his "OpenDocument Fellowship" hat

Subject: Johnny Walker

This site refused to let me in, suggesting I was under-age! (how did it know I am only 53!!) So I went to Diagio main site and sure enough the link is there and the same thing happens.

However, if I try the Guinness button, then I can discover the joys of our national drink. Is this because I am old enough for Stout and not for Spirits, or is this because this is a Scotch Whiskey and not an Irish one.

Should I investigate this in my local pub and see if they will serve me Johnny Walker or just offer me Jameson instead?

John Hammond

Subject: You coulda fixed up his letter

Let's clean it up...per his request.

"How about fixing up letters before you publish them? This will serve two purposes:"

INQ, actually do some work.

"1. Extracting the meaning from a letter will become easier: having to work out what word a writer meant to use from its context makes understanding what he is trying to say more arduous than it needs to be. Once in a while one of them has something worthwhile to say."

I'm lazy and I want you to think for me.

"2. Educate your correspondents. This is a kindness to those for whom English is not their first language, and apparently long overdue for many for whom it is."

Have them use big words; it makes them sound as smart as me. (I only listen to intelligent people.)

"It's also unfair to permit people to hold themselves up to public ridicule in this way: like noticing someone's fly is undone and deliberately not telling them."

I like to make fun of anyone who is not, or doesn't act just like me.

"OK, yes I am a snotty bastard, but I'm also right."

Disclaimer/Fake humble

"TonyP"

Troll

Subject: Scotch

whiskey or whisky

Here in the states we call that nasty whiskey thay make in scotland scotch is that not the case across the pond ? BTW Peat smoke is nasty and has no place in whiskey , save the peat for flower pots

Clayton

Subject: "17"

lol, whats up with that story? that has to be the randomest story the inq has written.

quite refreshing tho.

Don Julio

Subject: Which version of vista is right for u!

I have subscribed to a dell mailing list because I buy a great deal of varied items..any way... I have just read a new email brochure that tells me which version of vista is right for me and give its pro's for different models of dell computers...

For the " Genuine Windows VistaTM Capable", it lists this as great for "Booting the Operating System, without running applications or games"

I dont know about you, but I dont think I would every by a computer that can simply boot an OS and not run any apps all that well...

I found that funny...

mak

Subject: Re: Acer Marketing Plans

Your article, Acer Marketing... contains the following "marketing the bejesus out of ". In these politically correct, sensitive times, perhaps "the bejabbers" would be an option.

Tigger

Subject: Second Life

Thanks for stopping by the SL homestead and thanks even more for mentioning us on the site!!!!

Our website, however, is www.teamati.com not www.atiteam.com. But I'm sure the guys at that CD duplication site will love the hits!

If you have any questions about what we're doing in SL let me know.

ati guy

Subject: Skype reads your BIOS

You can instruct the previously quoted "Wayne", that he fails to grasp the point.

Sure the NT kernel prohibits direct memory accesses, which is WHY the kernel itself arbitrates these accesses. All addressable memory has to be accessed in SOME WAY, or nothing would communicate with nothing :P

I'd rattle off the names of the dozens of tools that can access BIOS's from within NT kernel OS's (Win32 BIOS Flashing tools notwithstanding), and give "Wayne" an educumukation in NT kernel API calls, but I'd feel ridiculous.

"Some people are like Slinkys...They're really good for nothing, but can bring a smile to your face by pushing them down a flight of stairs."

Scott

Subject: Message From Second Life

[12:05] Jessica Qin: hello -- i read your article where you talked about the IBM campus being empty. i am admittedly biased but i have to take some issue with this. i'm in-world here a lot and there are AVs somewhere on this cluster 24/7 (or close to it, i confess i don't keep *that* close track)

Subject: "Fixing up" letters: NO!

TonyP is a prig, and what's more he is stupid as well.

He wants you to "extract the meaning" from letters that may seem incoherent to him. But how the hell are you supposed to divine what the meaning is, if he can't? It seems TonyP was never taught about primary and secondary sources.

My view:

1. If someone wants to expose themselves to ridicule by sending you mispelled, unpunctuated letters - let him. It's a free world. (Besides, AFAIK most people couldn't care less anyway).

2. I want to read letters exactly as they were sent. If you attempt to clean them up, you may sometimes guess wrong about what was intended. Besides, form enhances content. If a letter is badly composed or expressed, that tells me something about the writer, from which I can make whatever inferences I choose. (Sorry to be "judgemental"). 8-)

Tom

Subject: How old was I when I lost my virginity?

I'll tell you what it is.

SEVENTEEN

Kjb

Subject: Your adventures in SL

From my experience in Active Worlds, a 3d VR program that is strikingly similar to Second Life but happens to predate it about, ohhh, 8 or so years, I can tell you that a lot of this coroporate hype will end. People will slowly forget it.

Back in 98, everyone and their uncle was looking for ways to cash in on the VR boom. We've still got the evidence in the form of a bunch of Sony Pictures and Jumanji themed objects. Today though, all the hype and companies left, and alls thats left is the grit of the community. SL has furries and people wow'd by VR still (something I havent seen since the JunoDome when AW had a deal with Juno). AW has programmers, artists, and would be politicans, the result being a blend of any game you can think of mixed with some sort of SimLIFE mmorpg.

Oh, and you can build all you want for free.

joe

Subject: How To Break A Mac

Only being one who wrote a 30-strong-page PDF on destroying the Mac (specfically the '99 "iMac" variety common around underfunded schools) last year in school (ironically - on a Mac), the incident that caused me to give up all hope on the Mac and even turn down offers by the School Network Administrator to glean credit as his special "Mac Breaking Assistant" (I kid you not - he WANTED me to find out how to break their more expensive, faster Macs) the crucial flaw in the MacOS in general I noticed in the bit about the calculator buffer overflow error - its NOT an error so to speak, but more of a built-in function of the operating system itself. I demonstrated this upon an iMac unit (that had to be put out of service for an OS re-installation as the console didn't help it stop the vicious loop I found to destroy the usability) simply by following 2 easy steps:

1.) Find a large piece of media (i used an image) 3MB+ preferably and start copying and pasting it to the desktop.

2.) Keep copying the entire group of copies as it doubles and doubles.

- After a short while you won't be able to do anything on this machine, - you can't escape it by any way me or the Network Admin could figure out. - Even restarting the machine didn't help - copy away it did and I laughed and went home (now I do school at home from my PC).

Valuable lessons can go a long way in personal enjoyment. I dare a fellow INQ to boldly venture into the exciting world of breaking the Mac sometime, ~ Oh the great fun..

Zip

Subject: Mr. Miley

60Hz is 60 times a second, not 60,000. For all of your technical knowledge, it'd be nice to get the basics right.

Open Source code? OSX is just as closed as XP and Vista are. If you didn't know, you CAN, in fact, run open source programs on XP and Vista. Gasp. OpenOffice, Firefox, the works. Not quite Linux, but hey, the freedom is nice. What's better? Having an actual option to something other than the ridiculously limited selection of software currently availible on Macs.

Macs don't have a 'ton of extra drivers' because they don't have much in the way of hardware. Unless, of course, you want to spend an extra ~1500 on a Quadro FX4500....which is something of a leap BEHIND nVidia's new offerings. (4500 X2, FX5500.)

Let's not forget the $600USD it'll cost for an extra 750GB hard drive. What does one of those cost, anyway? According to Newegg, 340.

Trevor