Posts by Tom 38
1569 posts • joined Tuesday 21st July 2009 13:02 GMT
Page:
Re: Typically American
It's really not simple though is it? There are hundreds of millions of guns and billions of rounds of ammo already in the hands of Americans, you could completely ban the sale of all guns and ammo for a 20 year period without massively affecting gun ownership.
I expect that some assault rifles will get banned for future sale as a result of this, but nothing else.
Re: I'm shocked, SHOCKED
As an insider, can you explain why your operating costs are scheduled to triple in 4 years? Seems like you might need less money if you weren't planning to needlessly expand your organization.
Biggest mistake ever in the history of the internet
I've no problem with IDNs, or TLDs in non roman script, but this is just a daft money grubbing exercise that will confuse and irritate people. www.coke? fuckoff.com.
Re: America's trade commission
Is Illinois no longer in America? Has Canada invaded the Great Lakes and I missed the article?
Re: But...
Interesting point ACx, but who the fuck is talking about your mail being opened?
I'm positing "email is secure as a postcard". A postcard does not need to be opened to be viewed. A postcard makes its way through many postal systems. In any of those systems, the operators of the system, could, if they so wanted, view the contents of that postcard. The postcard can then be delivered, and there is no indication that the postcard has or has not been read by anyone else.
You might think that posties would never do that, they have no purpose to look, that it would be a disciplinary action if they did.
Compare this to an email. An email does not need to be marked as "opened" to be read. An email makes its way through many postal systems. In any of those systems, the operators of the system, could, if they so wanted, view the contents of that email. The email can then be delivered, and there is no indication that the email has or has not been read by anyone else.
You might think that SMTP admins would never do that, they have no purpose to look, that it would be a disciplinary action if they did.
You can dislike it, you can down vote me as much as you like, email is demonstrably similar to a postcard in snail mail, whilst people use it as a secure person to person communication tool.
Re: People saying prices haven't increased?
If you think prices have increased and you're on an 18 month contract, then you're one of the morons subsidizing me (thx!). I have zero commitment to my phone provider, if they were to raise prices for 3G (they won't) I can just leave for elsewhere.
my £45 contract is now £47.56 a month due to 'inflation'
Play that game then - your £47.56 a month is only worth £45 in 2008.
Re: But...
You should have a reasonable expectation that a postcard sent through the mail may be read by someone other than you. You should have the same expectation for email - it's as secure as a postcard.
Anything you wouldn't put on a postcard shouldn't be put in an email.
@AC: Which operator do you think will raise their 2G/3G prices to absorb their 4G costs?
Which operators raised their 2G prices at all after spending 6 times as much on the 3G auction as they are anticipated to pay for the 4G auction?
I expect that the monthly cost of my 3G contract will continue to fall, as it has since I first got one in 2008.
I expect that a bunch of twats will pay over and beyond to get 4G now.
I expect that eventually I will get 4G when it is comparable to the cost of 3G and I need a new phone.
Re: 3G
£22.4bn not £37bn. In USD it was $35bn.
Licence A: TIW £4.3847bn
Licence B: Vodafone Airtouch £5.964bn
Licence C: BT £4.03bn
Licence D: One2One £4.003bn
Licence E: Orange £4.095bn
The 3G auction in Germany raised £30bn.
Re: As usual...
Is someone holding your child over a balcony saying "Buy 4G service or the kid gets it"?
If you don't want 4G, don't get it.
zemerick: It's called, maths, it's a new trick people are using. (short answer: browsers can be used on different OS.)
Long answer: Eg, these sets of donations
Chrome - Windows - 10, 10, 10, 10
Chrome - Mac - 50, 50, 50, 50
IE - Windows - 20, 20, 20, 20
Average for Chrome is 30
Average for IE is 20
Average for Windows is 15
The average for windows is therefore less than the average for any one browser. Without looking at the raw data, it would be tricky to say exactly why, but it is probably like my noddy example, IE users give more than the average for windows, !IE users on windows give less than the average for windows, and !IE users on !windows give more than both.
Re: Assumptions, assumptions...
You might want to look into why the Iranians have the regime that they currently do. They wanted to save themselves from a repressive regime that willingly murdered their own kind, desecrated their religion and acted as a puppet for the west.
Instead they wanted a stable society based upon their Islamic beliefs, completely isolated from western influence. Apart from that choice, they are no more "evil" than any of their near neighbours. There is far more religious freedom in Tehran than in Riyadh for example.
Re: The 15- game
I was brought up playing union, but league is definitely faster, more skilful, more physical and demanding. Tackling is better and harder, there is none of the silly playing on the floor that makes union so dull sometimes.
It's a proper tough man's game, if you can play league, you can play union no bother, but only a few union players can play league, it is just too physical and technical.
The largest costs in illegal drugs come from three things:
How difficult it is to produce
How far production centres are from the consuming market
How difficult to smuggle the drugs
However, this does not control street price, only the import price. Street price is largely governed by the users - how much they are prepared to pay, and the difference between the street price and the import price is the profit of the dealer supply chain. Being a 'good' dealer is maximising what your clients will pay for the product.
Coca is produced in South America reasonably easily, but requires a lot of processing, is a long way from the target markets and is difficult to smuggle. This makes the import price very high, and the street price.
In order to legalize cocaine, you would first need deals with people to produce 'legal cocaine'. This would be legitimately produced cocaine in Colombia (NB: The US puppetColombian government will not go for this), then legally imported into the UK. The import price of this would be extremely low compared to that of illegal drugs.
The huge difference between the two allows for a lot of taxation. Attempts to undercut the 'legal' price would not work - the legal price could be adjusted lower than it costs to import into the UK, making cocaine import/dealing no longer worth it - unless you cannot get 'legal' cocaine.
You would then have people complaining that legal cocaine is too cheap, and everyone is buying it.
It's a pipe dream. Legal cocaine, I'm not that interested and will never happen, legal pot should happen in the next 15 years. The thing is, all these drugs are easily available to anyone that wants them, they should be regulated for quality and taxed.
Re: Basic question for Anonymous Puncher.
Punching someone in the face is not necessarily illegal. If you are 'engaging in discourse' with someone, and they use 'fighting words', then it is entirely fine to lay them out. Fighting words are not 'come on then, have a pop', but 'words used specifically to incite hatred from their target'.
In other words, the defence is 'Yes, I punched him, but he forced me to do it by saying XYZ'. Police are expected to not respond violently to fighting words btw.
Similarly, it can be illegal to photograph someone.
So not as clear cut as you put it.
Re: grey market/tasers
"Chasing someone" could be lethal to some people, should the police not chase people either?
At some point, the police need to stop thinking about how this will affect the perpetrator, and instead think about how to quickly resolve a situation for the benefit of everyone else.
He clearly felt his options were:
a) Shoot her with a tazer
b) Pepper spray
c) Shoot her
Ideally, he should have called for back up and waited, or been a bit more manly and cuffed a 8 stone woman. Perhaps there was no backup available, perhaps he felt that physically restraining her until backup arrived would be more harmful than the tazer.
Tony Abbott and his legal politics
What is it about Tony Abbott and his desire to resort to dubious legal action to get the political result he wants? Before this, he funded legal action against One Nation/Pauline Hanson (aka, 'that daft racist') on electoral fraud grounds, getting them imprisoned before it was all overturned. In that case, he established a secret trust fund and recruited potential litigants, in order to stop a candidate from standing.
It's all so underhand and seamy.
Re: My favourites
Panasonic (TV's)
Logitech (PC peripherals)
Asus (PC components & Tablets)
Yep, this exactly. Although I was disappointed with my last replacement logitech, which feels like a nasty plasticy piece of shit - the box said it was the successor to the MX 518 :/
Re: Source?
I pay £15/month for unlimited 3G internet, 6000 minutes, unlimited texts. I use on average between 300MB and 3 GB a month, with a peak usage of 8 GB, mainly subscription music and TV services. Watching TV on my phone for around 6 hours a day - I like to have the cricket on at work - uses about a GB of data.
Re: Maps worth more to Google than Apple?
Put up and shut up? No thanks.
Don't use a clubcard, don't tie your Oyster to your identity, pay for things with cash.
Posted in John McAfee on a plane to America
Re: There's still something missing.
If he's flying American Airlines, then the zombie aspect is covered, they are just fetching him his in flight meal.
Re: @Tom 38 @BenR
No-one is reading what I am posting, clearly.
Well, in that case, and even looking at your latterly posted "Noddy example", how about we let the police go to the courts and ask for permission, based on suspicion and/or evidence, to monitor the communications of these people to see if there is any link between them?
Bomb goes off, we know who set it off, we want to know who they have been communicating with. Lets start that monitoring! Oh wait…
We could even have a special name for it... what might one call an 'order' from the 'court' I wonder...
No shit Sherlock. I fully agree that access to this information should require a court order. However, if you aren't collecting that data, you can't access it.
We currently collect communication logs from phones, store it, and can access it with a court order. We currently don't store communication logs from internet devices, and so can't access it at all. I don't want the police randomly searching my internet history, but if they need to randomly search my internet history, as decided by a judge, then they should be able to.
Re: @Tom38
So you feel that it is proportionate to have every website site you've ever visited, including the millions that you've never heard of but your PC has probably wondered off too, recorded in a form which can easily be searched by large numbers of people.(Dazed and Confused)
How would me wanting the police to have that information logically expand into wanting you to have the information?
Logic, it's a priceless tool.
Also:
I agree fully on limiting dissemination of the information, and would limit access to this new information to the same people who can currently peruse phone records. (Tom38)
Reading comprehension, also a priceless tool.
Posted in Earthworm Jim
Re: An enjoyable game
Witness the player's frustration at Nataliya's tendancy to get shot or walk in front of his gun, whist endlessly chirping "We need to go to the control room!" before she gets stuck walking into a door frame.
I loved that game, but babysitting that daft bint as she continually fails to walk to the computer almost made me break my N64 controller in rage. She'd stand outside the control room, you inside, doors open, all the windows blown off, repeating "We need to get to the control room". NYARRGHH.
Re: Holier-than-Thou Non-Believers
I play my games on Steam, costs me £0.00/day. I've tried shopping around, but I can't find it any cheaper.
Sounds bad - what COO sells their own stock, not exactly a vote of confidence, but then you get to the crux of it - she still owns (at current prices) ~$500m worth of shares.
Posted in Apple's iOS 6 maps STILL muddle Mildura
Re: It shouldn't be too hard
Perhaps they could have referred to some sort of officail Australian reference source?
Did you miss that the location they are reporting for 'Mildura' is the co-ordinates that the State of Victoria supplied as the location of 'Mildura Rural City' - it's literally the central point of a massive area of nothing. IE, this comes from official government sources.
It's a universal truth, data is shit until you've spent too long sanitizing and verifying it.
Re: @Tom 38 "I recently did jury service..."
There is no published case where having these "new laws" would make a difference to the outcome of the case or the evidence presented.
Do you want to revise that? How precisely do you enumerate the number of cases that could be proven by collecting new evidence, without collecting the evidence. Not many people leave court and then say "Hah! Suckers! If you'd had my IM logs, I'd be doing porridge right now".
Eg, (noddy example) currently if plod think A. Burglar sold a stolen phone to A.Fence - but there is no phone records linking the two - they can't proceed due to lack of evidence. The two communicate frequently on MSN, but there is no evidence of that - there is no way for the police to see that.
With the new system, plod can see that the two talk about this stuff on IM, and could charge them - but without knowing what the data is, how can you possibly say that?
I agree fully on limiting dissemination of the information, and would limit access to this new information to the same people who can currently peruse phone records.
@BenR
So what you're saying is that the existing laws enabled the authorities to connect these people to each other and the crime through their communications?
Yes, they could in this case. The point is that in this case, the existence of communication records between the defendants was what caused the conviction. It was dumb luck that the defendants chose to use phones to communicate, if they had chosen email or IMs, there would be no record of the communication, and they would have walked.
In that case, you've just undermined the need for the new law straight away haven't you?
This loophole is what the police and CPS currently have to deal with. The purpose of the new law is to allow police to investigate any communication method - email, IM, phone, VOIP - as they can currently investigate phone communications, and to close this loophole, so no, rather than undermine it, I think I've stated the case quite clearly.
PS: I don't agree with the law in it's current form either, I don't think I made that clear.
Because you've not needed it for the last 2000 years and there's no reason to suggest it would have helped in any recent incident, conviction or operation
Steady on there. Until very recently, very few conversations took place on the internet, the intent of this law is to give police the ability to do the same thing they can currently do if the conversation took place by phone.
I recently did jury service, and the key thing that connected (and convicted) the defendants was their copious phone communications and locations as reported by their phones (combined with their insistence that they didn't know each other). It is clear to me that this information is genuinely useful to convict criminals of their acts.
Re: @AC 07:35 GMT
Suggesting that defense against Israel is a good reason for Iran to have nukes is absolutely absurd.
Israel refuses to admit it even has nukes, and if it did admit it had them, it would not give them up as it sees them as a last defence against Iran. See how that argument works?
Israel has very little motivation - read "none whatsoever" - to out-of-the-blue attack Iran just for the hell of it.
Really? It didn't take much motivation for Israel to out of the blue attack Syria over perceived nuclear ambitions.
PM Netanyahu stated just 3 months ago that he has "red lines" over Iranian nuclear development, at which point risk for Israel is "intolerable". Netanyahu and Barak have been reported by the former heads of Shin Bet and Mossad as having "belligerent" and "messianic" impulses over Iran.
When the the whole football team is threatening constantly to kill the tiny class nerd and he gets a baseball bat, do you advocate that the 300lb lineman get a bat also to 'protect himself' from an unprovoked attack? Seriously?
To clarify, Israel and the US are the tiny class nerd, and Iran is the 300lb lineman? Some mistake surely? Military spending (2009): US: $663bn Saudi Arabia: $33bn Israel: $13bn Iran: 9bn (note some of US military spending is aid to Israel).
do you really subscribe to moral equivalence between Israel, the US, and Iran
Yes, pretty much actually.
I think the State of Israel is the 21st Century's Third Reich. Its degrading treatment of it's citizens, whose only crime is to be Muslim, is shocking. The conditions in Gaza are truly repugnant. The only similar situation to Gaza in the last century was the Warsaw Ghetto. That a people on which so much horror was foisted can so quickly be doing the foisting themselves is an irony of the human condition.
Iran is a rabid theocracy, with very few freedoms for it's people, I wouldn't like to live there.
The US is morally bankrupt. The poor starve whilst the rich live out their gilded lives. I've been all over the world, and I've never seen so many people eating out of bins as I saw in three weeks in Chicago.
Half the nation thinks that paying for healthcare for the less fortunate is somehow "wrong", whilst they spend more on military spending than anyone else in the world, so that they can promote their democracy and value system around the world by projecting military force.
Two of these countries have nukes, and you're a liar if you've never heard the expression "turn Tehran into a parking lot". In the current scenario, at some point - any point - Netanyahu may decide he's had enough, and nuke Tehran. Israel would be condemned, but Iran would not be able to respond back in any meaningful way. With both sides having nukes, that equation changes such that neither side has a reason to use them.
Re: Reminds me of a few years back..
A subscription warez service? I doubt it. One of the points of warez is that it is software that you are not prepared to pay money for, and so I doubt how successful such an enterprise would be.
Plus, if this was the golden age as you describe it, warez was everywhere - kickme.to/fosi - no-one was paying for it, let alone a subscription.
You sure this guy didn't just have a personal FTP server hooked up to his shiny network connection? 'Back in the day' the number of dodgy FTP sites covertly run by sysadmins on commercial networks was obscene.
Re: @AC 07:35 GMT
This is how Iran sees the west involving itself in this:
US: Here, look Iran, you can't just go enriching uranium.
Iran: What? This is our Uranium, we dug it up here, what do you mean we can't use it?
US: Naah, don't be mental, it's far too dangerous to let your lot have any of it. Here's some the French have made
Iran: French uranium? Why would we buy french uranium, we've got our own! What if we do something you don't like and the French cut us off?
US: Hah! Don't be silly, we'll never hold the supply of fuel over you.
Iran: OK, there's just the small Israel problem.
US: Israel problem?
Iran: Yeah, you gave them a bunch of nukes, and they keep threatening to level Tehran. Not cool bro.
US: Pfft, they'd never do that, trust us.
Iran: So we can build some nukes too? MAD is required for equilibrium.
US: Crikey no, you can't have nukes because you signed the NPT, Israel never signed it, so it's fine for that right wing theocracy to have nukes - what could possibly go wrong?
Re: Very weird post respones here....
He wrote the original versions of gcc, gdb and gmake, long since replaced (even their replacements have been replaced, eg gcc -> egcs -> gcc 4 are all major rewrites).
He is responsible for emacs, and for that he can never be forgiven.
Re: All as bad as each other
If the GPL forbids only one thing, why does it take 5644 words to do it?
If you were going to answer that one, you could also follow up with why the GPL forbids the inclusion of CDDL licensed works, when the CDDL license is so open that it can be included along with BSD licensed works?
You can be stauch pro-FOSS, and still disagree with the statement "RMS is right as usual".
In this case, I agree that he is right, but on a lot of things I disagree vehemently with him, particularly over GPL.
Re: Google worries me - About GeoLocation
Please, if GeoIP even gets the right country I'm impressed. Doing Geo IP on my phone will return the same location each time, and never anywhere near where I actually am. Doing it on my home connection shows says that I'm in the Netherlands, and from work it says I'm in Germany.
Re: Blimee...
100 TB is a lot more than your average guy, but it's not that much really. It's also probably not 100TB of actual storage, but 100 TB of storage with no redundancy.
I have a simple setup here with two 16 disk JBOD arrays with SAS expanders plugged into one server. Currently I have 18 disks in there, for a total of 36 TB 'headline' storage, which comes down to about 30 TB of redundant storage. If I filled the remaining bays with 4 TB drives, that would be another 80TB, easily bringing me over 100 TB - although there is no way I'm paying £50+/TB.
The JBOD arrays were second hand, only cost me around £70 each plus postage from the US.
Without going for an external chassis, you can get quite a lot of disks just by cramming them into a decent full tower case. Before I had the JBODs, this is what I had, a tower case filled with 12 disks.
You can easily find motherboards with 7 or 8 onboard SATA ports and multiple PCI-E x8 slots, and you can buy cheap 8 port SATA LSI cards from ebay for around £100, or cheap 2 port cards for around £15.
The worst downsides to doing this is that a case crammed with disks needs proper airflow, or your disks die real quick, and when a disk does die, you have to dig around in a powered off case to find the broken one.
Re: Any the negativity continues
We pretty much all agree on space exploration, boobs and a dislike for Oracle.
Actually, there are a few frothy right wingers on here who think that space exploration is a waste of tax dollars (and that tax is somehow immoral or thievery). So mainly just boobs and Oracle.
Re: @AnotherNetNarcissist Yeah, I've got an issue with Android...
Why[sic] does "supported" mean to you?
People continue to write and update apps for it, which apparently has already stopped happening for WP8.
Eg, most of my music comes from Spotify. There is a WP7.5 spotify app; it's buggy as hell. Here is what a user of it says:
Hey guys! How about a update to this bleepty music software, actually you can't talk about it as music software, but we do not mind to wait forever and ever for updates. In other words this app just not work, actually there is much more bugs than working things. So Spotify and Microsoft how about a update that fix all those bugs and adds all those improvements? source
Allegedly, the WP7.5 Spotify app was written by "some guy" at MS, not Spotify.
Fuck it, WP7.5 is dead, I'll get WP8, that must have a decent Spotfiy app. Oh wait…
Unless my American did what?
Re: Wrong tense.
If I buy an Apple phone, then I know I will get support for the phone's software for years. I know I will still be able to get the latest apps when I want them.
If I buy an Android phone, then I know I will probably, depending on manufacturer, get support for the phone's software for years. I am fairly confident that I will still be able to get the latest apps when I want them.
If I buy an MS phone, I know that I probably won't be able to upgrade it to the 'next' version, and that as soon as the 'next' version comes out, I won't be able to get the latest apps for my phone as they are only available for the 'next' version, MS want another license payment for their new OS, and the only device that will run it is a new one.
Rage on
"Gang of Four" in computing uniquely refers to Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides, or their wonderful book. Using it any other way is just wrong, which I suppose is what I've come to expect from Herr Schmidt.
Re: So does everyone.
At least half of them are right,
Re: so.cl (pronounced “social “)
I keep seeing it as SoCal.
Re: Awesome
Not just this, but it is also going where nothing man made has ever gone before, exploring parts of space that we can only speculate about their behaviour. Soon, this thing will be outside of the solar system's influence, into real space, and we will get a better glimpse into what is beyond.
Personally, I think it will be as Jayne says in Serenity - "Oh, hell. I've been to the edge. Just looked like more space"
Re: I can imagine an Alliance For Wireless Power meeting in the future:
Don't mention the Popular Wireless Power Front - fucking splitters.
Damn, I was hoping he'd done a Maxwell and actually flung himself overboard.
Not that Maxwell is dead, he's living it up Israel with his Mossad buddies.</tinfoilhat>
Re: Only use odd numbered versions of Windows NT
Somehow you missed that I was only talking about Windows NT, so you get a fail icon. I'm sure, seeing how you know its all tiresome incorrect bollocks posted by morons, that there are two families of Windows.
XP I did miss off, since that is NT 5.1, and simply a better shell for Win 2k.
I still don't understand why you all think this is bollocks [possibly because of instead of saying why it is bullshit, you've gone straight for the ad hominem. Who is the moron again?]. Are you saying I am wrong because Vista and 8 are awesome, or that Win2k and 7 are shite?
Re: Jai
But, you have a really crap 4 year old iphone, compared to your friends with up to date high spec Android phones
I know plenty of android fans who literally cannot wait to throw their money at Samsung or Google. There's a guy in the office here who has been through a Nexus, Galaxy S, Galaxy S2, Note, S3, and he's now got a Note 2. For his tablets he's bough a Xoom, a Galaxy Tab and a Nexus 7.
Despite all this, he still regularly has digs at me being a "sheep buying the latest ifads" - I've had an iphone 3G, an iphone 4 when I accidentally tumble dryed that, and an original ipad.
