Re: HDMI?

"This mini is too small, it needs to be a transit."

Re: I wonder how much of the opposition matches mine?

The thing is, in this country, there is no official form of ID needed for anything. If you want to leave the country, ok, you need a passport. If you want to drive, or do any number of other activities that require centralised training and authorisation, you need a license. If you need to prove who you are, you can use these documents if you have them, but if you don't, you can use other things - references, bills etc. If you need simply to access state services (eg benefits, voting, police services etc) there isn't currently any need for a universal source of ID, and nor should there be. I am a citizen of this country because I was born here, not because the government supplied me with a piece of paper. That's a fundamental difference.

By insisting on a national, universally issued, and required ID card for everyone in the country, the government would permanently and entirely change the relationship between state and citizen.

That is the objection to ID cards. The requirement to carry them at all times was the totalitarian nail in the coffin.

Re: MSFT the Value Destroyer

I was about to ask if you are Eadon in disguise, but then I saw Eadon's comment below.

God help us, there's two of you now.

Solar panels in Adelaide

I had a look on google maps. Can't imagine it's making much difference to be honest, your installers have them all facing North! Honestly, silly mistake.

Re: Finder: a disgrace

Got a mac, and installed Ubuntu - Finder was the primary reason. You've covered most of them. Here's a couple more:

- No single-key way to open a file. Isn't finding, and then opening, files, the main reason for Finder?

- Drag & drop a file into a folder, it stops exactly where you let go of the mouse button, instead of correctly slotting into the folder list where you would expect (according to the current sort method)

- No folders at the top? What are you smoking, apple?

- No tabs - this is hardly the cutting edge of innovation any more

Since the primary use of an OS is to find and launch programmes and files, getting the browser right is absolutely critical. OSX fails so hard at this it makes baby Jesus cry.

The whole OS is kind of like this - full of broken philosophy, inconsistent ideas and nonsense user interface decisions. In usability, Windows is a hell of a lot better, and that's not a compliment.

Re: Hmm

4. Libraries would stop letting members of the public use their computers.

Re: @AndyS - Lets see if this self-fulfills

Maybe because I prefer it? Or maybe because in 10 years time I might know perfectly well how computers work, but right now something is broken in a way I can't figure out, and doesn't fit even slightly into the famous 'How to ask questions' tutorial? That tutorial is very much aimed at programmers and advanced users, in the 90s, who had technical questions. It's very helpful, and has a whole lot of other advice, but since one of the most commonly occuring lines is "...or just don't ask the question at all," it's not great for end-user advice. RTFM is a good answer if I need to know the exact ins-and-outs of ffmpeg, but not if totem crashes when I insert a DVD. Mostly, that guide would simply tell me, in the latter situation, not to attempt to contact 'hackers.' Which is valid, but doesn't make it relevant to this conversation.

As others have said, the format of answering questions advocated by the guide has done a lot of damage to Linux's usage (although if everyone asked questions like it advises, the world would be a better place.

Re: Lets see if this self-fulfills

Flocke: This guide is great if I'm investigating the mis-behaviour of Apache when configured to use port 8082 and accessing from the local machine (although it's fine from a remote machine on the same sub-net, or local machine filtered through a proxy). The problem is most user-based problems aren't like that. What if my Ubuntu installation crashes to a black screen immediately after install? I have no way of knowing what hardware is causing it, or if it's even hardware related. What if Firefox crashes, then refuses to re-start? It may seem obvious to a self-described 'hacker' to type 'kill -9 `pidof firefox-bin`' and re-launch it, but as a new user, that's not simple. Especially when the dialogue simply says it's still running.

In other words, this guide is largely aimed at the wrong target when talking about user-space problems.

Re: Puzzled re. legal jamming

You've got it the wrong way round - they're not planning to jam signals IF GPS goes offline, they practice by jamming everything they can think of (eg GPS), to make sure they can cope if it goes offline. So they'll jam relevant signals over an entire operational area (or vehicle, or people, or aircraft...) during a practice, and see how well they cope.

Re: Geometry fail

Are you all stupid?

Assuming north is up, and the river flows from north west to south east, it enters said bend going north east and exits, having turned 270 degrees to the right, going south west.

No, it doesn't cross itself. In fact, and this is where it gets complicated, there are other bends on either side of the 270 degree bend (that's the big squiggly one, by the way). So in fact it comes into the whole shebang going south, and exits it going south.

Let's spell this out. It turns 135 degrees left, then 270 degrees right, then 45 degrees left.

There, do we all understand? If not, ask your teacher to explain it, once she's finished setting out the sand and water play areas.

Re: Wireless

By that calculation, Google reckons it is worth $40 per xbox.

Both figures seem a bit extreme, really. It'll be interesting to see what the judge thinks.

Re: Swanky

.gov.uk is a standard domain, as is .ac.uk, .police.uk, .org.uk, .co.uk etc

Using the TLD like this actually makes perfect sense.

Re: Poor quality pics

Looks pretty blue to me.

Link, purely in the name of science:

http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044271.g007&representation=PNG_I

Re: Preaching to the wrong crowd...

3rd most read article on the BBC website just now (probably partly due to being on the front page of Reddit)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19557497

Says much the same thing.

@ mark 63

Second name Thatcher? Maybe you should offer some assistance to those silly poor people who wouldn't understand your friendly threats.

Except that from the network's point of view, it is simply data. So to try and charge more for some data than other data is wrong.

As a commenter above said, this is like charging twice as much for electricity you want to use to watch your TV with - there's simply no justification.

Re: Dunno -- there's a point

TL;DR: Likes Apple, therefore thinks new thing might work, but isn't sure.

Re: Humidity?

Pretty rough summer heat wave that one, at -11 to -71C!

Re: Non-FB user question

Simple answer: Ts&Cs are not enforceable.

Longer answer: in UK law, as with most other jurisdictions, contracts are only enforceable if a number of conditions are met. These include, from memory:

1. The contract is legal

2. Both (or all) parties to it fully understand everything in it

3. No clause is "unfair"

4. A contract cannot be a one-way-street, ie it cannot be used to enforce a gift or similar.

Of these, 4. is satisfied (the user gets use of the website), 1 is probably ok (there's nothing illegal about broad licences), 3 is questionable in the extreme and 2 is demonstrably false.

No company, anywhere, ever, has managed to enforce a shrink-click license, for exactly this reason.

Re: WTF!

Wow. That's a leap of logic.

80%* of daily journeys are under 50 miles, and a 50 mile range will cover 91%* of all daily miles (even those 54 mile journeys are mostly covered, after all).

Also, it's got a small engine, since it's backed up by a hybrid system.

So, it's more like a prius than a hummer, but one where the first 50 miles have no local emissions.

(* figures from thin air for the sake or argument, but not far from wrong)

Re: 6 inches is too small

They're 6 inches because they're designed for reading books, the most popular form-factor of which has a printed area of, about, 6 inches. If you want multi-functional, you've hit the nail on the head - spend more and get multi-functional.

Re: So, what does a developer without deep pockets do?

"Avoid the US like the proverbial plague?"

While I completely agree with you, this story is actually about Taiwan.

Yeah. Maybe his dad's best mate, who was due to meet him at the pub that evening. Maybe, when he got to the pub, Mr Chambers wasn't there. So maybe he could send a message that said

"Get to the pub now, beer's getting cold. Do I need to firebomb you out of your house?!"

There, about the same level of seriousness. I reckon I can figure out how Paul would react. He'd ignore it.

Re: Drones

The Iranians displayed a complete, undamaged drone, explained how they brought it down, and revealed other bits of on-board info including mission data, past service history etc to prove their point. And tellingly, the US has not denied that what the Iranians say is plausible/possible.

The simplest conclusion, therefore, is that they did, indeed, bring it down as they say. Any other explanation is currently not as likely. Remember this is a nation on the brink of independently developing nuclear weapons, with a very high level of technological expertise. It's worth taking what they say very seriously.

Two conclusions:

1. Whether or not it's possible to encrypt GPS usage so that it cannot be spoofed, the current US attack drones don't do so.

2. On-board data stored in the drone's computers is obviously not adequately encrypted.

Neither of these conclusions are surprising, since the whole point of drones is that they can be developed and deployed quickly and cheaply. But I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a fast scramble in the US to sort out their encryption.

Re: You have to wonder

"Global Warming" refers to overall _global_ temperatures, not local weather, which leads to more extremes. The weather we are experiencing in the UK exactly fits with what is expected. The confusion between weather and climate is one reason why it is normally now referred to as "climate change."

Re: I hear that in a democracy

Yup, that's how science works! Let's start with the 2nd of Thermodynamics! Lynch it!

Re: Also

What amazes me is the picking-and-choosing on sites like this when it comes to _which_ bits of scientific consensus to ignore.

Re: Have they tried turning it off and on again?

I suggest they visit http://www.downloadmoreram.com/ and get some decent RAM downloaded.

Should get things up and running again in no time.

Re: Major error?

The computer got a virus, which no anti-virus software could yet recognise. Luckily it was very easily removed. They simply had to delete System32.

I don't think I've ever seen an advert on youtube? Oh wait, adblock plus.

I was actually astonished recently using my mother-in-law's PC, when youtube showed adverts before ramping up the main video I was looking for.

Re: It's called a laptop!

Unless you follow "Lappy" with "486". Then it's perfectly acceptable.

Re: 52MPG ?!?!

Uh... Or you could put an 8.0 litre W16 mid-chassis, throw in some radiators and ramp up the map to 1,000hp, like Bugatti did. That would be fun, too, right?

Unfortunately it's not the car on review, which is a small, city, petrol. As a commenter above has already pointed out, this is an extremely good economy for this type of car.

Reading a review of a car and then saying "why didn't they..." and coming up with a completely different concept is a bit, well, giraffe.

Re: and people wonder...

I love farcebunk. I use it to tell all my friends about my new Halfraud purchases, on my Micro$$haft computer.

I bet that made my argument look mature and well reasoned.

Re: Incompetent idiots.

What you can do, however, is write them a pointed letter if they ever try to charge you £20 for a small slip-up, pointing out their history of slip-ups too. Often works.

Re: Did Bobby Tables change banks from HSBC to Barclays?

Is Little Bobby Tables apposed to controled circumstance?

Except no, because the links went to pirate sites, not Perfect 10. So if you searched for Perfect 10, Google told you where to find pirated images.

Re: I'm Confused!

Are you all for real? Is it that hard to see the difference in intent between a site which indexes _everything_, including the occasional pirated content, and a site which aims so specifically to index pirated content that it is, well, named after it?

I don't want to assume commenters here are as thick as mince, but let's re-state that, just in case.

The law takes intent into account.

There, can't get much simpler than that. That's why there's different crimes for killing people - accidentally, in self defence, in a moment of rage or because you don't like them, they all carry different sentences.

Re: Long-known

It's also a 19 year old bike, so any "fit for purpose" legislation is certainly as worn out as the seat.