Posts by Gav 682 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2007
Actually, being in charge of tea trolley would be ideal for these people. If you give them a request for tea and a plate of biscuits, and they don't arrive because they've 'filtered' the request, then you'd know about it. They can't secretly not give you your tea.
Otherwise you're spot on.
It's quite simple. Yes, who your friends are is your information. But the information about those friends is not. It belongs to *YOUR FRIENDS*. That includes even something as basic as their name.
If I choose to put some information on Facebook, and share it with my friends on Facebook, then that's as far as it goes. I am not giving anyone licence to take that information and upload it into some other website. So if one of my friends foolishly choose to register with "Spamalot Fake Social Network", that does not give "Spamalot Fake Social Network" free reign to scrape all MY data simply on the ok of my friend.
Naturally I have no control over how my friend may manually transfer information, but if forced to do this they may engage their brain first and consider what they're doing and where. But if it's done with simply a press of a button then its too easy to do without any thought.
This is not to say you should trust Facebook any more than Google. But the principle is that what you upload to either website is your decision, not someone else's, friend or not.
"Quite who would decide to buy Viagra from a random site in these circumstances"
Well there lies the eternal mystery of spam. 99% of spam uses deception, yet some people still think that those sending the spam are the kind of companies they can trust with their money. Having lied once, they couldn't possibly cheat them again, could they?
The only other possible explanation is that spammers are still hopelessly pursuing a marketing method that simply doesn't work. Somehow I don't think so. I guess you can never underestimate people's capacity for stupidity.
Who much more crap they are may be an issue, but it has to be said that monopolies are bad and Google is close to being one.
Monopolies always work to maintain their position. This is rarely beneficial to their customers or society in general. Monopolies exploit their position to inflate their profits at everyone else's expense. Monopolies lock out innovation if its not in their own interests. Monopolies use unfair practices to stomp on smaller competitors. That is why authorities will, usually, act to disable monopolies and everyone does their best to avoid looking like one.
If 1plusV can show that Google is acting like a monopoly, regardless of how good their alternative service is in comparison, then it is bad news for Google, but probably good news for everyone else. And if they can't prove they're a monopoly, then that's good news too.
It's all win as far as I can see.
I installed a new front door on my last house. Last year I moved. Imagine my disgust in learning that the door I had purchased for my old house was not compatible with my new house. I had to go out and buy again what was effectively the same door, just a slightly different size..
Why can't manufacturers let me move from house A to B and take my door with me? I've paid them once for the door, surely that entitles me to a new door every time I chose to upgrade my house to a new model?
Compare a Top Performing Company's aims with that of a Average Public Sector's aims.
TPC Aims = Sell more widgets, make more profit
APS Aims = educated children, less deprivation, cleaner streets, prettier buildings, healthier pensioners, nicer parks, fewer traffic jams, fewer anti-social neighbours, what else you got?
Public sector aims, and the means by which they can be measured, are far more complex. So it is hardly surprising that they're not as easily understood.
"The file was not encrypted or password protected."
Cos it would have been ok if it was "password protected", wouldn't it?
Why are we saying this as if it makes any difference to the leaked information? There really needs to be more effort from everyone to hammer the point home that as a method of security, "password protection" is as useless as locking your front door when you have no walls.
Clearly you have missed the whole point. The issue here is not that the truly arduous job of tagging you in photos has been made easier for your friends. The issue is that Facebook are now keeping a database of face recognition data on you. Compiled from data kindly, and unwittingly, supplied to them by you and your friends.
While this may be getting used today to help out tagging of photos, who knows how it will be used tomorrow with Facebook's next income generating idea? The day you are hit with personalised, Facebook generated, marketing when you walk into a shop gets that bit closer. Maybe you don't wish to share your interests and friends with the retailer? Tough luck. Facebook had you tagged the moment you walked through the door.
"Gordon Broon was hardly a bundle of laughs"
Yes, because that's the first thing you look for in the leader of your country; the ability to raise a laugh. That's why Berlusconi is so widely respected as statesman.
I'm afraid all this survey (and ElReg's response) demonstrates is that different cultures have different ideas of what's funny and that the individuals in each country, naturally, believe their sense of humour is among the best..
I would think it has far more to do with the size of the image. Entire books occupy tiny amounts of memory and bandwidth. But if you're going to embed pretty pictures in them they take up significantly more. That's why Amazon actively discourage images in their ebooks.
It's the opposite of album covers on MP3s. There the image doesn't take any appreciable room in comparison to the actual content.
What absolute tommy-rot! What we need is another good war, get these idle johnnys signed up, into uniform and digging trenches across Europe. Make men of them and get them use to the feel of a spade in their hands.
Then the ones that make it back to Blighty will be laying pipes for this inter-network what-not like billy-o!
Frankly I'm disgusted that a former Tory minister failed to jump at this obvious chance to give the Bosh another good hiding. Gad, he was suggesting we take the lead from countries that don't appear on any map of the Empire!
No wonder he was put out of office. We need chaps with greater foresight and 21st century thinking.
The current system must die, yes. But the concept is still sound. If you want companies to invest in research, they need the incentive of a protected period in which to exploit their research. A period of time when they know they'll not have to compete with some other company under-cutting them with the same product, but without the research costs to re-coup.
But the idea that you can come up with a vague idea, patent a lot of generalities, sit on it until someone else has the same idea and actually does something with it, then bring in the lawyers; that's clearly not helping innovation or society. The current system is broken, it should be replaced.
The details of patent should be required to be a lot tighter and concrete, no more airy-fairy unspecified methods. The time that a company gets to utilise the the patent should limited. After, say, 5 years, if they can't demonstrate that they're doing something with it, then they don't get to sue someone else unless they can prove something like industrial espionage or theft of research.
And you're basing that conclusion on.....?
Clearly this is a big embarrassment for Sony, but I don't believe for a second they're stupid enough think that lying about events is going to help. There are bound to be a number of investigations following this debacle, so any lie would be discovered and make things a whole lot worse for them.
That is, unless, you're keen on conspiracy theories and never believe anything you're told. In which case obviously Sony is in league with the legal system, the government , the Illuminati and our alien overlords, and the whole thing will be whitewashed.
But one important thing to learn from all this; never ever give your proper full name and correct date of birth to a website that has no genuine need, or right, to know them. It's not your job to help them build a detailed marketing database.
"their intention has always been that their wedding should be accessible to everyone."
That's nice, especially since everyone's paying for it.
That's "accessible" meaning the commoners can watch their betters on the box in the "lounge" of their dreadful little squalid houses, but are not welcome to turn up and take part.
Because they're not their videos to move.
Because they can't just go creating new user accounts for people on Youtube who didn't ask for them.
Because when they were uploaded the user accepted Google Video terms and conditions, not Youtube's.
Because it's a good opportunity to loose a whole heap of abandoned and/or duplicated junk.
Scientific discoveries in the last 100 years make it appear that humankind are just microscopic, insignificant specks of conciousness, in a unimaginably vast and complex universe.
The pope's beliefs, on the other hand, have it that we are special favourites of the ultimate big guy, around which all things were created.
Who has the bigger complex about themselves?
When those 2,433 coal miners died in China, who else died? Was there any threat to the health of millions of uninvolved persons many miles away? Was there any danger that those who tried to save them may die years from now, as a direct consequence of simply being in the near vicinity? Were acres upon acres of farmland put out of use due to coal dust? Did they have to fill the mine affected with concrete and encase it in lead for the next thousand years, just in case anyone else stumbled over it?
Didn't think so.
Nuclear energy may be unavoidable, and other energy sources may have their dangers, but a body count of miners is a facile argument.
I could do this in a couple of hours.
Of course, it wouldn't be tested in any way, or have any guarantee of being secure, or have any user documentation, or support, or any load testing, or any guarantee of delivering what you wanted in the first place, or work beyond the current year, or any regard for industry standards or best practice. You need to follow an accessibility and security policy? Don't make me laugh!
And don't call me if it falls over, cos I'll be busy knocking up some other half-assed rush-job and won't remember a thing about this one. And, no, I won't have written any technical documentation either, so good luck to anyone you bring in to fix it.
But, yeah, couple of hours no problem.
Selective indeed. If you read what it says, the whole point of the experiment was to see what the difference a "bumper" made. Which they did not test with a real thumb or real hand or real person.
The test you are referring to was when the phone was held to demonstrated that it "reduced sensitivity" of the antenna. Which is not news to anyone, and wasn't the point of the experiment.
"then with the antenna actually in contact with a "thumb phantom" with the same dielectric properties as human skin."
So they didn't actually test it with an actual human thumb attached to an actual human person? How then can any reliable conclusions be reached? All they've demonstrated is antenna performance in an unnatural laboratory situation that assumes their replacement mimics all the variables of the real-life scenario.
They can say that the "phantom thumb" mimics the human thumb, but without a comparison performed in the same experiment how do they know? It's an assumption that may not be true.
I was disqualified from school athletics yesterday for using a quad-bike. Seems that it only counts if you play how they want you to play! Schoolyard bullies is all they are. If that's their attitude, I'm just going to go drive the wrong way around someone else's track!
After school, I wanted to play Scrabble, but was upset that my pals didn't appreciate my innovative mod of "make-up-any-word-you-like". They said I couldn't play and wouldn't be my friend any more. Talk about childish! And I had a dead-cert triple word score for "Uzurqtkb" on my first go!
Apparently I'm free to do whatever I like, but as soon as I want to join in games with the other boys and girls I have to follow "rules". It's not fair!
How can any defend MySpace by accusing others of being a complicated mess? Most MySpace pages I ever had the misfortune to stumble across looked like the result of vomited HTML mixed with gif poo. Say what you like about Facebook (really) but at least the pages have some sort of semblance of design.
I'm on my third anti-virus software this year. First one was way too much hassle to install, maintain and update. Second one attempted to police too much, whined continually about being the free version and I should upgrade, and was a resource hog.
Latest one is Microsoft Security Essentials. Early days yet, but it could be that finally Microsoft have got an anti-virus package worth using.
What are you on about? You do understand the difference between being a suspect, and being guilty, don't you? Thankfully, it's quite a big difference. The police don't decide whether you are guilty, and arresting you does not make you guilty.
I doubt the police are even claiming this evidence is anything like conclusive enough to prove him guilty . It is, however, exactly the sort of evidence that police will follow up on, which leads to other evidence, which is conclusive enough to suggest prosecution will prove you guilty.
So I imaging what's happening right now is the background of this guy is being looked at, and they have enough to allow them to have a look at what might be found on his computer and in his house. And if he's clueless enough to have allowed his name to go out on a PDF's properties, they'll likely to not have to look far.
Censoring websites and organisations that you do not agree with is not censorship. Censorship is a necessary step in the fight against censorship.
It's not hypocrisy if you refuse to accept there is any other alternative. There is no alternative. Those who think there is an alternative can be ignored.
All those who do not agree with this will be punished until they see the errors of their ways.
Freedom must not stand in the way of the struggle for Freedom
Invading Sweden would be too much like addressing the problem. Normal procedure is to invade a country nearby, in the hope that the voters' general ignorance of geography confuses the two adequately.
Those in Finland should be getting nervous.
Linux Penguin, because even the Antarctic is similar enough for some.
Once again Sarah Palin demonstrates why she is universally loved by all purveyors of topical humour. Every time she opens her mouth she provides all the material required for a killer comedy sketch. The gems just cascade out of her in a never ending production line of quality feeds. She is the entire comedy industry's foil in a top-billing stand-up double act.
>How did it catch on?
When people asked you if Windows was a good thing, and you rubbished it, did they never ask you what the alternative were? Did you have any answers for them? It caught on because GUIs were the way to go for mass-user computing and the alternatives all had major drawbacks. Simple as that.
Mac OS was notably superior, but was tied to the expensive hardware. OS/2 was bloatware that need super-specced machines that no-one had.. DESQview was nice, but essentially just a DOS utility for power-users. GEM was also nice, but crippled to oblivion by in order to avoid being sued by Apple. Linux didn't surface until the 1990s, by that time the boat had sailed. And, er, that's it..
On the other hand; Windows would run on the computer you already had, and was produced by the company whose software you already had. Most companies at the time were on their very first desktops and they were expensive. The idea of replacing them after only 3 years just to update your software would have been regarded as ridiculous.
The question is not "How did it catch on?" It's "How could it have ever failed?"
Never, ever, believe a builder when they say they'll cover something up, "it'll be fine". Simply put, builders have an entirely different concept of the meaning of "clean". A inch thick coating of building dust over every surface translates as "clinically clean", piles of rubble and debris translates as "a bit of a wipe and it'll be clean"
I speak from repeated experience of building work in computing environments.
I have an even better idea. It's a USB Flash drive that looks exactly like a USB Flash drive. I can't claim credit for this, I bought it like this, but someone has somehow managed to get a USB Flash drive to fit inside a USB Flash drive. Not only does it look neat, but it also has all the size advantages and memory capacity of a USB Flash drive! Perfect!
Another better idea; use sellotape to stick a USB Flash drive onto the middle page of a foolscap accountancy ledger. Hey, kewl!! It's like 21st century technology married with 19th century!! It's totally pointless and impractical! It looks like crap! More junk that you'll never, ever, use to fill up your desk drawer with!
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