Re: Salvage?
The laws of salvage only apply to a vessel that is somehow damaged or 'stricken' in some way. Salvaging military vessels (without the owner's permission) is against international law.
6077 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
"... controlled via satellite by landlubbers in air-conditioned cubicles, ..."
I used to work a couple of desks away from a man who kept a bottle of rum in his desk. You could catch a smell of it when he added it to his tea. It was an open plan office so he couldn't have sodomy or the lash.
The old domestic plug colour coding was green = earth, red = live, black = neutral. These were 'sensible' in terms of their representation but the problem was that people with red-green colour blindness could easily make a lethal mistake in wiring them up.
The modern colours are yellow/green striped = earth, brown = live, blue = neutral.
Neutral is the same as earth potential under ideal conditions and serves as a current return line.
Warren Buffet once said that he only invested in industries that he understood, when his strategy of not investing in internet type stocks was questioned during the 'dotcom' boom. He was regarded as a wise man after the dotcom bust, of course. Maybe his understanding of IBM and the 'computer industry' is a little behind the times?
About 3 years ago (maybe), the staff at Asda started asking people for their postcode when buying things at the tobacconist counter and paying by cash. This lasted for a few months. The first time it happened, I said that I couldn't remember but after that happened I started giving them the postcode for the Asda store, which they typed into the till terminal. I assume it was an experimental marketing exercise and I know it was bloody annoying.
It seems to mean that if you do want to have access to the source code then you need to go with FOSS software.
Agreements where the source code is placed in escrow, in case the supplier goes bust, would seem to be prohibited by this statement, even if the supplier is happy to do so.
Maybe it should have said, "You don't have to give your source code unless you want to."
The discharge process requires oxygen, which I assume would come from the atmosphere for any simple applications. Given the apparently delicate chemistry, would there be any atmospheric pollutants that might 'poison' the battery? I'm thinking about nose to tail commuter traffic.
Given that oxygen is a consumed reactant, how much oxygen would be needed to generate adequate power for a car to accelerate in town traffic? The battery might need a compressed air supply to give adequate power for practical applications.
The charging process generates 'waste' oxygen .... be careful.
"However, each IP address cannot be resolved to a single individual because at the known time it has been simultaneously shared between many internet users. "
I know what my domestic IP address (from Virgin Media) is and it's been the same for over four years. If I go to whatsmyip.com and similar sites, it tells me. Also, from outside my home network, I can access my domestic FTP server using that address. I thought that nowadays it was only people on dial-up connections who had an IP address that was the same address as someone else had, but at a different time. What have I misunderstood or missed here?
I was very happy using XP for many years. It did everything I needed it to do and it did it quckly and quietly without fuss on my old laptop. I can understand why some people like to keep it going though I realise that it no longer gets security updates. I do remember that just before Win 7 was released, XP got a load of updates that made it really, really slow and so I felt that I 'had to' move on to Win 7 on a newer cheap laptop.
Maybe the people still running XP blocked out all updates except for security updates and run it in a cautious and technically/security aware manner?
(I avoided any further Windows 'upgrade' experiences.)
"By our reckoning, they would pay a couple of percent for this in the form of revenue-sharing..."
The Post Office could charge extra fees for parcel delivery based on the profits of the company sending parcels to customers.
"This would be a fair contribution for the use of the infrastructure."
No, a fair contribution would be to pay the standard rate, whatever that is, the same as all the other customers of the telco.
Wasn't it the boss of another German telco, some years ago who said (paraphrasing), "I see all the money that Google makes from its internet services and I think it's only fair that we get a percentage of that".
I'd think that the specialist assembler skills were to maintain and test the ground based copies of Voyager systems. I'm sure thre wouldn't be any 'reprogramming' of Voyager at its current distance. Can they still send it commands (which would need to be tested on the ground based systems)?
It would have been a simple matter to set up dummy/fake corporations in the real world and give them certificates (and websites, etc) and then practice/play with those instead of real customer certificates. You could even give them bank accounts and play/practice with secure financial transactions and so on.
When I first installed and used Linux Mint, over two years ago, I thought that the system update wasn't working properly because it only took about two minutes and didn't insist that I rebooted after it had finished. After that, for a while, I used to watch it in amazement as it downloaded and installed system AND program/application/package updates at what seemed to be incredible speed. I'm never going back.
"... The task of controlling the complex motions of a motorcycle at high speeds ..."
As I remember, the motions of a motorcycle at high speed are quite simple. It tends to go in a straight line unless you force it to turn. It's when you ride it slowly that it can get a bit wobbly.
"... so Android users don't have to sift through the clutter of an OEM's can't-delete-but-don't-use house apps."
On the Android phones I've used (three different ones over 5 years), you can put any application you like on any of your many screens and not have an application icon on any screen if you don't want it there. In this way, I customise my phone's appearance according to _my_ needs and preferenes. Maybe they were using a different kind of Android phone.
"The telco said that small businesses may have had their name, address, email address, telephone number, TalkTalk account information, password and bank details nicked by malefactors."
For some time, cautious/paranoid people have used different email adresses for contact with different people and organisations, in case of leaks/compomise. Perhaps it's time for businesses to use separate phone numbers and bank accounts for dealing with different suppliers and customers.
"... 400,000 people who have recently undergone credit checks for new service with the company."
That's 400,000 people who, sadly, neglected to perform 'best security practice' checks on Talk Talk. However, I don't think there's any way they could do that since we rely on these organisations to police themselves.