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davidpardo | 8 years ago | on: UK plans age verification for porn websites from 2018

When I was a teenager there always were a few used mags that we swapped or gave each other. If kids have smartphones, they'll resort to video sharing, and there are few ways to avoid it.

I'm not sure that's a good way to spend the taxpayer money.

davidpardo | 9 years ago | on: Cyberattacks in 12 Nations Said to Use Leaked N.S.A. Hacking Tool

Pretty safe until a machine in the network gets infected. The first infection comes from a phishing email or similar. From then on, the worm infects other machines connected to the same network, but usually not across the internet.

It uses a vulnerability in a protocol that's used for network sharing, and that's usually blocked at your router

davidpardo | 10 years ago | on: Non-photo blue

And Hewson Consultants did the same in their "interactive video adventure" Avalon circa 1984. The game -for the Sinclair Spectrum- asked for a four digit code printed in non-copy blue that came in the box. Quite a few games would do the same later, like Larry's, monkey island or Elvira, Mistress of the dark, with different approaches, but Avalon's was pure blue over white paper.

davidpardo | 11 years ago | on: Hyperloop Gets Test Track in California

Now combine Hyperloop with self driven cars that you can take at your convenience in both ends to arrive to your destination and most of the problems you stated seem easy to overcome.

Probably in a few years, when the hyperloops are ready, owning a car won't be as usual as now, but you'll be able to pick a self driven one paying per mile or a fixed per monthly quota.

davidpardo | 12 years ago | on: Subtly Bad Things Linux May Be Doing To PostgreSQL

Being a user of both Linux and PostrgreSQL, I'm very interested in this issue, but I only understand some of the words...

Could everybody wiser than me tell me if I should be concerned and the possible implications of these decisions? Should I invest in alternative platforms?

davidpardo | 12 years ago | on: Driverless cars are further away than you think

That would be against all economic theories I know. I'd demand is lower, profits use to go down too. I understand part of your reasoning, buying a car for the joy of driving, and probably some sport cars wouldn't be as affected, but for the automobile industry, it's going to be a hard blow.

davidpardo | 12 years ago | on: Tessel: The end of web development as we know it

You didn't address any of my points. Perl may have been horrible, line noise or a read only language, but 20 years ago was the quickest way to write a visitor book or a mailform. You could do it in C but didn't, just because you didn't need to. If the perl prototype was good enough, you could use it in production, and thousands of sites started to build whole e-commerce systems and found they worked.

Thad was a tipping point for the web, and the world now is different just because of that.

If you have to choose between power and easiness of development, most people will choose the later, and if I can try a new hardware board that doesn't force me to learn anything new, I'd probably try it.

davidpardo | 12 years ago | on: Tessel: The end of web development as we know it

Twenty years ago I read exactly the same about using the abomination that was perl/CGI instead of the so called correct C. And history tells us that the prototypes that were made to test the concept where, most of the times, good enough to stop further development in the academic way. This product (or a similar one) can empower lots of people in ways that we cannot imagine yet. Not all hardware has to be made by hundreds of thousands and be able to tinker with real world devices will be a bigger asset than we think right now. The web we know now hasn't been developed from tall towers but from the trenches. New ideas will flourish and then great developers will be needed to optimize, refine and scale projects that will change our view. At least that's what I hope.

davidpardo | 12 years ago | on: Valencia region government completes switch to LibreOffice

Ok. Let's try some more imaginary maths. If Valencia has five million inhabitants, and one in ten in these, in turn, send one document to the regional government every year, that would be, at a hundred Euro each, about 50M€ going to Microsoft. If the government uses LibreOffice, that's a big saving for the people.

On top of that, I guess most of the 100.000 users at the government -doctors, teachers, judges, clerks...- have never used a pivot table, and won't get those extra 72 seconds per day. This ain't Henry Ford's factory and there are much bigger externalities to take care of before this kind of imaginary optimizations.

davidpardo | 13 years ago | on: Portal Released For Steam On Linux

EU antitrust laws aren't against monopolys per se, but against using the power of a monopoly to gain an advantage in a new market. So, Microsoft wasn't fined for having a 95% of the PC market, but for trying to leverage that share to force its competition in the internet field out of the market. Apple tablets were born with the app store and conquered (created?) the tablet market, so, no problem.It'd have been different if they allowed people to install apps from anywhere and afterwards restricted them to the app store. So, I think microsoft would be in big trouble in the EU if they tried to shut Steam out of the market by disabling third party software on windows.

davidpardo | 13 years ago | on: 2013 Automobile of the Year: Tesla Model S

Congratulations on your 3,50$ per gallon. Where I live -Europe- it's about 8 us$. With these prices, the comparison between two luxury sedans -tesla S against BMW 535 or Mercedes E 320- is not that much skewed. Gas isnt getting cheaper and battery tech is better every year, so, even on financial terms, it makes some sense. You can't compare a toyota pickup and a model S in any criteria but overall length. Acceleration, top speed, comfort... Apples and oranges.
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