Re: An open letter

While I agree with what you're saying, it sounds like the possibility exists that they aren't acting legally. If so then it should be investigated.

Re: Aperture Science

Yup, definite echoes of Cave Johnson there.

Re: Jack Reacher

@MJI - probably that tall blonde dude they got to play Lestat...

Re: It really should be simple enough

How exactly does a "limited number of copies" (digital) benefit anyone? The publisher/author would still get paid when a copy was borrowed, so no loss there - in fact having unlimited copies increases potential payments. The library could simply pay the equivalent of however many physical copies they would have purchased - say 3? - and then be allowed to loan it out as many times as they wish; maybe, worst case for a time limited period..

Incorporating digital deterioration is pointless - i'm sure that over time format changes would cover this.

Re: No need to drag politics in please - Non M

If you're after non M - i'd suggest Transitions (very sci-fi non M) Crow Road & Complicity as starting points, also probably wasp factory (just because it's his "famous" one) - these are my favourite non M ones - the rest (IMO!!) are good to read but I often found the conclusions to be a little unsatisfying (except maybe walking on glass - but that one's just odd.)

I always prefered the M stuff (I think i've read all of them more than once) ... heh, you've got me reminiscing now.

Re: A low friction connector?

.. or some (weak-ish) magnetic connectors, so you don't have to rely on springs / external forces to hold them in place.

Re: Interesting Article

Chicken.

Re: People will pay for music if it is sanely priced

The argument about the price of music always falls flat for me since the price of a CD (~£10 give or take, YMMV) hasn't actually increased since the early 90's, and as far back as i can recall there has always been too much crap around. It's hard to say if it's actually getting worse or the fact that there's obviously still a market for it that just exacerbates the crapiness of it all...

Re: Yeah

"How does this work with prescription specs?" - at the moment it probably doesn't but, I don't imagine it would be difficult to adjust the thingummydoodah to compensate for different focal lengths etc. or later on even be incorporated in prescription glasses in some inobtrusive manner...

"Or, indeed, being able to show my interest in (say, a fine frigate and or postillion) by making sure that the subject being visualised was aware of the visualisation?" - slack jawed drooling like the rest of us?!

Re: downloads -"none of the associated costs on a physical product"

"when the digital version has none of the associated costs on a physical product" - except that they do. More or less. It's the same situation as with ebooks, most of the cost is associated with producing the game. Sure there's a small % associated with making & distributing the physical product, but not that's going to make much difference and then there are the additional overheads associated with the digital downloads - bandwidth, servers etc.

In any case you pretty much can get most games as digital downloads these days.

Re: And the problem is....?

"We're discussing one of those problems, companies dodging corporation tax."

Yes but since when did "we" give any shade of a damn about companies not paying tax? It's a problem for the government but they've somehow manipulated us into kicking up a fuss about it - threatening to boycott amazon & starbucks etc. It's not the government's ham fisted attempt at running the economy, no it's all those evil corporations legally avoiding paying tax....

Re: And the problem is....?

Here's a poem from the 2000s called "Sorry you're dead Ms Miggins but we ran out of dialysis machines because the economy's screwed and we don't know what we're doing so we're blaming everyone else instead. [sent from my iPhone 5 in first class]"

Fair point but...

As mentioned in the article, it wasn't this that cause the crisis.

"How the bankers "make" the money is by doing it thousands of times a second so it all buids up and this would stop this." WHY do you want to stop this?!?!? OK the whole banking system is a big farce built on imaginary money, but this bit actually "works".

"The banks by doing this are taking the money out of our economy i.e. us and giving us nothing in return." - well no. The bank makes a profit - their staff get paid, their shareholders get a dividend, and the bank has money to invest in new business etc.

For now all *I'd* do (& IANAB) is fix the system so that the last crisis can't happen again (or can easily be mitigated) and then step back and think before doing anything else. Knee-jerk reactions/laws/regulations never really work. & Yeah i know it's how the current (UK) government operates but hey...

Our Money...

The problem is that the Government think it's THEIR money.

not electrical anyway

one of the limitiations of binary based electronics is how fast you can switch between "1" & "0" voltage levels and still accurately tell what you had (against noise). I imagine any gain from using ternary bits would be lost in speed, plus the associated logic would need to be more complex - almost getting towards old analogue electronics!

still, nice to see the Chinese trying to develop new stuff.

plausible though

I think the titanium guy might have a valid point - as long as the apps correctly use the Apple APIs, they'll probably be OK. This is probably what the new SDK clause was really about - his argument sounds plausible/sensible anyway.

In any case how would apple be able to tell an app was written using a translator (barring any headers it might add) and not straight in Objective C or C++ etc? (OK, if the app doesn't use the APIs i suppose that might give it away...)

argon?

Yeah i remember that Portillo documentary - as i recall they tried different gasses (on pigs?) and found some gasses (nitrogen etc) although effective caused the pigs to become stressed due to suffocating (i.e. it would be inhumane). I think they settled on argon? But as you said the pro-death penalty guy said it was too easy - but that might have just been an extreme opinion for the sake of 'good TV'.

Passwords(!)

Yeah, we should all use passwords instead(!) <ahem>

4 digits is OK for a PIN - it's not like you can stand at the ATM/checkout and try and brute force it.

an 'easy' way round this problem is to make customers give their cards to the cashier who then inserts the card into the reader. The customer then enters the PIN on a separate keypad and the card is returned at the end of the transaction.

let's face it there's never going to be a secure way of doing this. However at least now banks (should!!) now have to admit that chip & PIN is not secure as they made out and take some of the liability themeselves.

...but it's a fair point tho.

I agree the internet is currently a 'better place' since Google arrived, but you must be a little concerned at the dominance/influence they have. In the end they're just another company. You know, like Microsoft. Big companies need to be periodically attacked to 'keep them honest', if the attack is baseless it'll be ignored, if not then maybe things can be improved.

And lets face it having a motto "Don't be evil" is just asking for it really!