Posts by frank ly
2189 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 09:17 GMT
Page:
@Sean Re: Tell him to go fuck himself.
You started off fine, then ....
"...the current account you have with your bank ...... It's a piece of digital property you own precisely because those IP laws exist .......Without them, there's no basis for electronic banking systems...."
The principles and laws regarding ownership of money and the record keeping of that ownership have been practiced for thousands of years. It's called 'accountancy', as practiced by banks, which have been around, in various forms, for thousands of years. This has nothing to do with copyright or IP laws.
"Except, of course, that without copyright, there's no legal impediment to just counterfeiting as much cash as you need, is there?"
Yes there is, due to very old laws against ....... counterfeiting.
"If you don't have a better alternative to Intellectual Property laws, you're part of the problem, not the solution."
If you don't have a better understanding of Intellectual Property laws and their relationship to reality and existing laws and economic/social processes ...............
" ...allowing users to display videos and images in chronological order."
That is the most original and inspired idea I've ever heard of. (I don't get out much).
@localzuk Re: @Andy S Non-FB user question
Yes, as I indicated in parentheses at the end of the second para.
However, I think that both parties have to 'be aware and cognisant' of the form and value of the 'consideration'. You can't expect the 'average user' to be fully aware of the cost of running FB, so they can't be bound by legally binding contractual terms if they act against the T&Cs. Also, if it was a contract in law, either party could sue the other for breach of contract, and I don't think this can happen.
It needs a lawyer or a court to determine all this.
@Andy S Re: Non-FB user question
You used the word 'contract', which may not be correct for FB terms and conditions.
In UK law, a contract requires some recognised form of payment to take place (or 'consideration' as it is called in law.) Since FB users have not paid or been paid by FB, there is no contract between them. (Having said that, it may be arguable that FB's actions in running the site cost them time and money and so this is the 'consideration'.)
I think the T&Cs can be regarded as license conditions. Whether these license conditions are enforceable is a matter for lawyers.
Is nothing new?
" ...alongside the ibex and izards ...."
They had alternative stand-up comedians in those days too?
Re: Dodgy pics
Many of them are artistic and tastefully posed. You just need to spend time looking for them.
And they're free! :)
A pedant gets grumpy
" ...Chair of the committee defining the standard refutes that, ..."
Am I the only one who is annoyed by seeing the word 'refute' used to actually mean 'deny' or 'disagrees with'?
"...and in many homes the wiring is sufficiently shielded that no interference is generated ..."
Really? I must be living in an old-standard house, as is everybody I know. Where can I find samples of shielded domestic mains power cable?
Re: Real name policies
Somewhere out there, is a man called Frank Ly, who doesn't know that I'm using his name to conceal my true identity.
Re: What? NASA is into self-harm now?
They are scale replica 'Alien' eggs, as practice for when it finds the nest (which is its secret mission).
Public announcement from eBay:
They got better!
Re: Use of waste heat?
Getting away from secondary school physics/thermodynamics for the moment; I'd really like to know, from someone who has experience in this area.
If I was consuming 55MW of electricity and producing 55MW of waste heat, situated in a built-up area with neighbouring commercial/industrial buildings, I'd be looking for ways to sell it to my neighbours as a baseload heating supply.
With large power consuming data centres being built around the world, I'd have thought that this consideration would be uppermost in the minds of the owners/operators/designers; if not for 'save the planet' reasons then for simple running cost reasons.
Is it a good/workable idea or am I being idealistic?
Use of waste heat?
55MW (or whatever) of electrical power going into the centre will mean that 55MW of heat will have to be extracted from it. Will this be dumped into the air (or nearby river) or have they considered selling waste heat for use in neighbouring buildings and homes?
What are the economics and technical challenges of doing this? Is it cheaper to just dump it?
Re: Applications?
For weapons use, I think that microwaves have a problem with beam spreading over quite short distances due to the relatively large wavelength.
Someone who knows about this will probably pass further comment soon.
Re: I'm far from being a native speaker
Wikipedia has many excellent articles on the details of the English language. Such as this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe
If English is not your first language, these articles can be difficult to follow since they are very detailed and technical.
True Cost/Efficiency
Unless someone finds a huge natural supply of hydrogen gas (unlikely), then hydrogen for use in vehicle engines can only be an intermediate energy store that is manufactured using electricity. As such, it seems to be a convoluted way of getting grid electrical energy to the drive of a vehicle, compared to using batteries.
Does anyone know about the relative comparisons for hydrogen manufacture, distribution, storage and use in vehicles; compared to the battery charging alternative? The main meaningful comparison would be the energy finally delivered to the vehicle for a given unit of grid electricity used. Another important comparison would be the costs of the entire supply and storage processes.
Technical and performance considerations for the vehicle would be less important since the entire reason for developing these alternative power sources is to reduce the use of fossil fuels. It's already been shown that the 'average car' can run quite well and fairly conveniently using hydrogen or batteries.
Posted in New MPEG format paves the way for UHDTV
@AC 11:28 Re: Rights and Licenses
Well done with the childish insult. I'm sure it made you feel good in some strange way.
I don't mind paying for things I choose to use. (I've paid for seven MS Windows OS licenses so far over the years, even though I have the ability to bypass that payment process). This choice of codec is being mandated by an international authority, which is a different situation. Whatever the cost is, I'll still end up paying for it since I'll be an end-consumer of the products that are distributed using it.
It's "Judge Koh" to you.......
... and to everybody else too.
Limitations?
If you get a cheaper (£12.90 a month, say) plan with AYCE data, do they throttle the speed if you go above the stated 1GB limit? Is tethering allowed?
At the moment, I'm with Tesco Mobile for £12.50 a month 1 year SIM-only contract (1GB, 750 minutes, 5000 texts) which is due for renewal in December and has out-of-bundle charges. TM T&C do not allow tethering but their customer rep. told me that they don't bother monitoring it because of the excess data charges. I find tethering to be very useful when I visit family members who don't have an internet connection.
Re: MUCH worse than WindowsME.
"... and it's nowhere near as good as the Windows7 experience."
For me, the Windows 7 experience on my new laptop was nowhere near as good as the XP-Pro experience on my old laptop. Having said that, for the past year the XP-Pro experience consists of getting 'essential' updates every time I turn my old laptop on. It's now running far slower than it used to, which makes me very suspicious.
I'm now developing the 'skill' of using my Asus Transformer Pad (which has its own problems) for as much as I possibly can and am seriously considering using my old XP laptop to install and learn how to use Linux.
@Tony Smith
The first paragraph (especially the last sentence) made me feel depressed and resentful towards you.
I'm not complaining, just explaining.
Posted in New MPEG format paves the way for UHDTV
@AC 07:50 Re: Rights and Licenses
"... willing to invest 10's of thousands of man hours for the good of the world ..."
Have you heard of FOSS, Linux, Ogg Vorbis?
" ... GlaxoSmithKiline decide to give their cure for the common cold away for free."
Not the right analogy. How about:-
'WHO, UN, NHS, Medicare, etc; mandate that the only cure for the common cold that may be prescribed is that produced by GlaxoSmithKline.'
Note: Analogies usually fall over if you push them too far and this one is no exception.
Posted in New MPEG format paves the way for UHDTV
Re: Rights and Licenses
This leads to the question of who is/are the lucky companie/s that own the patents on this mathematical process? Will the people who pushed this through for acceptance and those who accepted it find that their Christmas presents are large and expensive for the next few years.
Oh my goodness, I am so cynical.
I may be wrong but here goes ......
Thinking about it briefly (very briefly), this will give you the ability to encode successive bits of data with different polarisation, the discrete sequence of the polarisation direction (in 3D) which is known to the creator but not to any unauthorised person who tries to read it. However, there will be a finite and limited set of possible polarisations otherwise an authorised recipient would not have the equipment to read it. It's like being presented with a box containing a bit of data then being told that there are in fact, say, 100 sub-boxes (determined by the polarisation direction) so which sub-box do you want?
Isn't this actually high density steganography? Or am I splitting hairs?
This made me wonder ....
" The word prediction is uncannily prescient in part thanks to the app’s ability to peruse your Twitter, Facebook and Gmail scribblings and learn from them."
Am I paranoid or are the alarm bells in my mind reasonable?
@Neill Re: @AC 10:25 I have a TF300
Thank you Neill, but I've figured out a method. I transfer a folder of pics over WiFi to the SD card, then use the Settings menu to remove and then remount the SD card. This works well and it only has to rebuild the thumbnails that it doesn't already have, so it's not slow.
@AC 10:25 Re: I have a TF300
Yes, that's because you are mounting a new storage device, which is then scanned to see if there are any image files on it. I use Wi-Fi to transfer files between devices (no messing about with pulling cards out, modern way of doing things, etc).
In this case the Gallery app doesn't know about it and there is no way to tell it, "look in here", unless you do a full restart. It's the same with my Wildfire and Desire phones and my old Advent tablet. It's an Android thing.
As for the Transformer Pad slide show, it takes a *special* kind of developer to show images in reverse alphanumerical order :)
Re: I have a TF300
So do I. I've had it for a week now and I often say "WTF!" as I try to use it. I'd be here for a long time if I tell you all the things I've noticed that are just plain 'wrong' with it; so here's just one:
Take some pics with your Android phone (or any camera) on a day out.- Transfer them to the SD card in your Transformer Pad. - The Gallery app can't find them. - There is no way to tell the Gallery app to look for them (I've tried refresh, it doesn't work). [WTF!]- You have to put them in a particular directory, then turn off the device, turn it on again and wait for it to search memory to find pictures, [WTF!] which it does eventually. Then you can see the pictures you tranfered to the Transformer Pad. -You decide you want a slide show, so you press 'play'. It does a slide show, starting with the LAST picture you took and ending with the first one [WTF!].
These could be dangerous if worn at the same time as beer goggles.
Does the product packaging carry a warning about that?
I'm thinking about .....
The Producers
I predict that ....
... within a year, this will be ready for commercial production within five years.
re. "..price increases as the market matures and stabilises."
As a market matures and stabilises, the prices should, if anything, decrease as incumbents streamline their business and prune out ineficiencies.
Could it be that the incumbents used a lower than rational price to lure customers in, then have a captive herd for forced milking?
Re: Bodily fluids?
If it's dried, does the residue count? Am I over analysing this?
Oh yes ....
"Since I started drinking XYZ pale ale, the hair on my head has regrown and my sexual prowess has increased noticably. It's great, give it a try."
It didn't take long to type that and it's not defamatory or rude. :)
@moiety re. Either is good
But not both at the same time; please!
"Engaging Citizens with Engaging Design"
Move along citizen. There's nothing useful for you here.
Re: Making a version number part of the name...
How about 'Maestro' or 'Princess'? (Obscure cultural and age-related reference.)
Posted in Fujitsu trials anti-phone fraudster tech
Why is it common in Japan?
Are the police in Japan so corrupt that paying money to 'sort out' an arrrest is a well known way of dealing with it? If anyone phoned me (in the UK) with such a story, I'd call the police to report the incident.
re. "Trouble at t'mill"
It's "Trouble at ' mill". The missing word 'the' is not pronounced in any part and the final 't' in 'at' has a definite vocal stop followed by a brief pause in place of the missing word 'the'.
Re. Taxes would decrease
Have you heard of a thing called 'causality'?
There but for the grace of God ....etc.
Just reading about this mind-bogglingly stupid act was so chilling and sphincter puckering that it was the equivalent of realising that I'd done something quite stupid myself.
I'd like to thank Knight Capital for raising my awareness.
It's heartwarmimg ......
to see them embrace free-market capitalism. A need/desire arises - someone steps up to offer a service to deal with it.
Re: oh, what a choice
If you have a sufficiently large number of monkeys managing the root DNS and assigning TLDs, then eventually they will produce a masterpiece of an internet.
Posted in Qubits turn into time travellers
Practical applications ...
When will I be able to send a message back in time to warn myself not to buy shares in Facebook?
@jake re. "Actually, that's cannon .."
Actually not. Cannons fire much larger loads and are so heavy that they have their own carriages.
Re: Why bother. " ...a precious poster ..."
I like that finger slip. (I assume it was a finger slip.)
and now for something almost similar .....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cSSiCghAdU
West Antarctica?
How was it decided which part of Antarctica would be called 'west'? I'd have thought that every part of the antarctic coast would be 'North Antarctica'.
Ahhhhh, ......
... the Streisand effect.
re. "possible veg seeds"
In such circumstances, it would be ironic if the 'possible veg' turned out to be Triffids.
