Posts by Kevin Whitefoot

They're _NOT_ blaming the wrong people

The Norwegian consumer protection authorities have already attacked the record companies although not with total success. This isn't an either or situation and Apple is clearly in violation of current Norwegian law which explicitly says that you have the right to copy (and play) multimedia content to the device or your choice for private use (at least so I have been told, ask a Norwegian lawyer for details).

The fact that the record companies are also in violation is neither here nor there. In Norwegian, British and general European Union consumer law your contract is between you and the seller not between you and the producer, this is one of the great strengths of European law as compared with the US (for instance). Usual disclaimers: IANAL, etc.

Nonstory

All students studying any IT related subject in a Norwegian Technical High School (this is university level not A level) or university have had access to all the relevant MS tools for nothing for years. I studied C# by internet with Hist (Høyskole i Sør Trøndelag) several years ago and had access not only to the VS2005 cds but also full versions of XP.

I still used SharpDevelop for most of the exercises.

ize

I have always written organize not organise. Ize is not just American it is perfectly ordinary Oxford English. See http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/orexxorganize?view=uk. The ise version is a variant beloved of newspaper style manuals because their hacks can't be relied upon to remember that some words don't descend from Greek.

@Tom Mason

That will never fly. No large organization (government, telephone network, ISP, etc. ) will ever give the ordinary person that kind of power.

You have to remember that as far as they are concerned you are simply a cash cow to be milked. No farmer ever gave his herd to right to choose.

I thought they were extinct

Looks like an idea from about 1980.

Re: Retention of hard drives?

This stuff should never have been on any drive outside a secure datacentre. Concentrating on the hardware is missing the point.

There is no dead horse icon so I'll make do with the vulture (or is it a puffin?).

Good to see my home town in the limelight

You mean that "dogging swindon" didn't attract you Andy?

Seems to be a strong connection with rugby. I wonder if this is a coincidence?

Coat or Paris? Decisions, decisions. Have to toss for it.

(A coin, you dirty minded person!)

Can someone explain?

How does this work?

How does Expedia sell Easyjet tickets? Surely your credit card transaction has to go via Easyjet or else Easyjet won't get paid. If that happens then how does Expedia get its cut? If Expedia take your money and then buy the ticket on your behalf using their own account Easyjet could simply refuse the transaction.

I'm not denying they can do it, I'd just like to know how.

Also why is this not a problem for Ryanair? I've just tried Stansted-Krakow 8th July, return 15th July. On Expedia all I get is LOT at over GBP500 (change in Munich) but at Ryanair I can get it for GBP120.

Actually I tried Luton-Krakow for same dates and Expedia finds nothing at all but Easyjet has seats at GBP137. So has Expedia already caved in? Or is Expedia, as I've always suspected, only interested in selling expensive tickets and gets a commission from the airlines like any other travel agent.

IT? because there are only two icons with a question mark and I don't wan't to go to Paris.

Long live Komplett!

I have no idea what their foreign operations were like but I have bought plenty from them at home in Norway. So far they have been the epitomy of what a web shop should be: efficient, reasonably priced, fair.

And their behaviour when returning goods under warranty is, in my experience, very good indeed. Actually the Logitech XBox controller that failed is still in my junkbox because they simply took my word for it and sent me a new one.

So I hope this isn't the beginning of the end but rather a strategic withdrawal and chance to regroup.

Puppy Linux

For all those who think that putting Linux on a USB stick is difficult please take a look at Barry Kauler's Puppy Linux (http://www.puppylinux.com/about.htm). Much lighter than most other distros and very esy to install.

Speed of the drive is not a problem because Puppy is so small it loads the whole system into a ram drive.

The name Paris is a lot older than the French city of the same name

It's a perfectly respectable Greek man's name with a very long history. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_%28mythology%29

You surely jest!

"The Symbian signing system has stood up remarkably well, though that's got more to do with its intended function than particularly brilliant security. The iPhone stopped people doing what they wanted, so the security crumbled; Symbian generally lets people do what they want, and that's most likely what is keeping it secure."

I have an N73 and stopping me doing what I want is exactly what Symbian does. The only reason a lot of ordinary users haven't complained is that they only install mainstream software from companies that can afford certificates. If they try to install something from a personally trusted but non-commercial source they will get the impression that the programmer is incompetent because the only way to get it onto the mobile is to upload the app to Symbian for signing for each device That's not allowing people to do what they want that's suppressing competition from the less well off. And also preventing the ordinary end user from doing a little recreational hacking (in the RMS sense). I would insert some curse words but I'm afraid my vocabulary isn't sufficient in this field.

If it takes 20 minutes to get a DVD player working ...

it is definitely faulty. That is, you have paid for everything in the box including the instructions. All of it should work. If I buy a car I expect it to work instantly and generally it does. If it doesn't it is normally due to a malfunction. Why should I not expect the same of a DVD player?

Revision control systems record the ID of every contributor

every time he or she commits a change.

So if you have the repository it is hardly difficult to find out who touched a particular line of code. It can be tedious at times, but not difficult.

And Subversion in fact makes this job easier than most, see: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/blame.html, for instance.

So the whole discussion is about a complete non-issue. Anyone who wants to know who did what can easily find out.

I use bzr.

@Kenny Millar

>1. Hydro power is expensive - more expensive than gas, coal or nuclear fuel.

Can you justify that?

Surely the marginal cost is much lower for hydro. Or is this a pumped storage station?

I agree with Svein Skogen...

but I'm a little more diplomatic in my choice of words.

Unfortunately most of those I have harangued on this subject just look at me as if I've just stepped off the last flight from Mars.

Most people can't get their heads around the idea that not only is it possible to download illegal copies of CDs but that there is plenty of music out there of equal quality that really is free (see http://www.jamendo.com for an example).

More of the crap that Symbian have foisted on us with S60V3

This just benefits the incumbent firms and their favoured software houses. Just as Symbian signing locks out everyone with a good idea but no money. If I own the hardware I should be allowed to run what I like on it.

Let's hope that Android and OpenMoko become widely available and easy to install.

Re: Scary

It's certainly a lot easier to plant DNA than fingerprints.

Old and out of touch?

I use Emacs every day. Not just to develop code but to write my diary, edit web pages (including a local wiki complete with RSS (thank you John Wiegley and Hugo Haas )), move, rename, files, view tar, zip, archives, view web pages. And those are just the things I do. I am well aware that that is just scratching the surface.

And by the way I do all those things in both MS XP and Ubuntu Linux. I also use VS 2008 (only on XP of course) and the suggestion that it is a reliable product is just beyond belief, it crashes on me at least once a day. If I only had a VB.NET mode for Emacs I would be very happy!

Re: As a card-carrying fat smoker,

@ AC As a card-carrying fat smoker,

>Costs to NHS so far: £0. Future costs to NHS: £0 (private healthcare).

>As for being an 'out of work sponger',

>I'm an electronic engineer

So you just call the local telly repairman when you get sick then?

The contrast should be between lossless and lossy not CD and mp3

I think that the only reason to buy CDs is that very few albums are available in lossless formats. This is beginning to change though. Anyway it's not only Radiohead that are dinosaurs. there seems to be hardly any innovation in mainstream music these days, just endless recycling. The interesting stuff is beginning to happen on-line and under Creative commons licenses. Take a look at Jamendo, http://www.jamendo.com (alright not all 6000 albums are worth even listening to but there is a lot of good stuff and it won't cost you a penny nor harm your conscience). For a particularly apposite track listen to Tryad's Struttin' http://blue.jamendo.com/cz/album/3661/?ref=158035.

@James Shepherd

A virus? In an MP3? Does your MP3 player execute scripts?

Can't really have a reasoned discussion without the page in question

So where is the URL of the page so that we can all see if any reaction at all was justified?

@Vidar Ramdal

But "5 inches in linguni" doesn't work!

Greater<>higher and double negatives do not necessarily cancel.

If you grab hold of a wire at -10V and then another at -110V I think you will be left in no doubt as to which is greater.

And whether it is regarded as higher or lower surely depends on the context which is not the case with temperature.

The jargon definitions of greater than and less than in mathematics and computer programming are not identical with the meaning of the same strings of symbols in conversational English (and anyway in both mathematics and computing unambiguous symbols are used not the aforementioned words).

If one wishes to speak unambiguously about temperature then surely the words hotter and colder should be used not higher and lower nor greater than and less than.

Double negatives have a long and honourable history as intensifiers. As far as I can tell they fell into disrepute when attacked by the same idiots who tried to forbid split infinitives.

This whole affair reminds me of culturally dependent IQ tests.