Posts by mordac
28 posts • joined Thursday 10th September 2009 19:48 GMT
So, what happens if you decide to stop renting?
So, what happens if you buy CC for a year ($360, or whatever) and then decide to terminate the subscription?
Do you keep access to the software in its state as of the end of the subscription, or does the Adobe license manager delete it from your machine (or deny you access, which amounts to the same thing)?
I suspect the latter, and for that reason, I'm out. Subscription only works if it's cheap; Adobe hasn't realised that yet.
UK already has an open map
It's called OpenStreetMap. I wonder if they've thought of cooperating with OSM, rather than competing with it?
EU vs US
"Google has argued that as its search engine business is based in the US the EU's Data Protection Directive should not be applied to it."
Presumably by the same logic an EU company with a US subsidiary could claim exemption from US laws?
I'd love to see how that would work out.
WRT the actual case, as I understand it, the complaint is that the information must be published by law, but they don't want anyone to be able to find it.
Wouldn't a suitable robots.txt provide a solution for this?
I'm sure this won't affect Apple's investment in manufacturing in Brazil...
reduce or increase soot?
I though that soot and particulates from coal and diesel were a cooling effect, not a warming one.
You know, mega-volcanoes causing the next ice age sort of thing...?
Repayment is not enough
They've abused their dominant market position so the repayment to competitors that they screwed over should be more than just 1:1 repayment since the extra costs to rivals will have reduced their ability to grow their customer base.
A better model for costs might be to repay 300% of what they overcharged, or a requirement to repay 100%+interest *and* discount future charges by 50% over demonstrable costs for 5 years.
Reflections on Trusting Trust
If you think this was the first computer virus, you need to read Ken Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust":
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
The date of the paper is 1984, but the antics Ken describes occurred many years before.
Steve.
Dynamic content
Surely one of your boffins can implement a dynamic filter so that readers can select between unit systems at will?
When they do, be sure to include the Furlong-Firkin-Fortnight unit system in the choices.
Posted in Queensland to appropriate household PV
compare like with like
Isn't the point that at the time when PV is generating electric, there's a surplus of production, so it's worth bugger all, and at the time when consumers *want* their leccy, then sun has gone down and it's all non-solar...
Presumably there's nothing to stop individuals from storing their generated electric (batteries, pumped hydro, molten salt etc) so that they are self-sufficient and can go off-grid. But I'm guessing that that's not economically viable (yet), so maybe they should just accept that electricity at 10am is not worth the same as electricity at 10pm.
This goes both ways, doesn't it?
TFA says "significantly representative of rights holders affected by the scheme". So how much is "significant"? 100? 1,000? 100,000? It doesn't matter.
Imagine that Mr Pirate buys one of these licenses, (I presume there's a licensing fee). Let's say he picks the "popular music" category. And then he gets a few mates (100, 1,000 or 100,000 - whatever) who create "works" in the category so that he can represent them. Those works don't have to be terribly good, someone singing "yo ho a pirate's life for me would probably count.
That's it. He now has a license to distribute *all* media in that category, for any fee he likes. Perhaps he could choose a fee of zero.
TPB can set up in this country, with the blessing of Cameron and all his cronies.
Posted in China goes Alt with root proposal
Re: permanent marker on a whiteboard
> some joker had placed permanent markers in the tray
Easy enough to remove - you draw over with dry wipe marker, and it all wipes off.
Posted in Google Drive stalls on LAUNCH DAY
Re: Windows
Where is this setting then? I think you're making it up.
Enforceable?
Are terms like this enforceable?
Tricking a child into into signing away all rights to her artistic creations and then selling them commercially sounds like the epitome of an unfair contract...
Posted in Google Maps takes scenic route
Use OpenStreetmap.org instead? If you happen to find a problem you can fix it yourself.
In other words, the advertising industry is not allowed to use
ANY form of consciousness-bypassing techniques to try to make
the viewer want something they normally might not want
So using semi-naked women to sell deodorant to men is banned, right?
public interest?
or T-mobile's commercial interest?
It seems that they're whining that they spent money on speculation that the new phones would be popular, and if they don't go on sale, they'll lose their investment. boo hoo.
re: Green Ink
There's a fee for DPA subject requests. I don't think there's any fee for FOI requests.
The AC posting sounds a little bit as though it might come from someone with inside knowledge on the case.
Steve.
really slow updates
One of our devs here says that the .NET framework updates are slower than normal to install. Previously, they did their optimization steps after installation, but this time round they seem to run them synchronously.
Also it seems like it might take more than one pass for the install to complete, so you need to keep re-running Windows Update until it says that there's nothing left to update. But that's nothing new.
Posted in Census threatens spies' cover
Simples
If it's that much of a problem can you return a blank form and £1000 in cash?
waste of time
I'd be surprised if Google even have the data - why should they bother to keep both the blurred and unblurred images for all the Street View data that they have collected?
silver lining
If you've had 1000 nearly simultaneous withdrawals for £100, the bank can hardly claim that they must have been authorised transactions. So you'd hope that the account holder wouldn't have much trouble getting a refund.
Unless your account name is Ross Anderson, I guess. Cos that would be quite a good double-bluff attack.
Exchange Rate??
$1200 in US
€1200 in Europe
Re: Well, that's what Open Source means
"Ok, not exactly"
No, that's *exactly* what open source means. Open source is about sharing your work so that others can benefit from it.. If you think otherwise you are completely missing the point. Mac OS X uses a ton of open source software: MacOS is based on the MACH microkernel and variants of BSD. Safari is based on WebKit. XCode uses GCC. Apple list a load of stuff at http://apple.com/opensource/
It's interesting that Apple used Readability, and I bet the Arc90 team are as pleased as anything that their code is being used, but to say that Apple "lifted" the code, or that there's any controversy here has a tinge of Daily Fail journalism.
Awesome
Anyone else noticed that you get 2 player mode if you insert two coins?
Makes me wonder what the Google logos are going to do for birthdays of other video games...
Posted in Vodafone tosses out idiot tweeter
Who was sacked though?
Was it the idiot that posted the tweet, or the bigger idiot that left his terminal unlocked?
Badgers cos there's no beaver warning triangle.
Posted in Apple IDs the next-generation iPhone
A Meringue?
Or could you use this for stuff *other* than paying for your tube ticket/groceries/whatever?
Shirley NFC is a secure, contactless communications channel. So you could have a case with extra hardware in it (a bar code scanner or something).
Or you could have a contactless dock. If Apple build in inductive charging you could have a phone without a connector slot to accumulate crud.
Since water is one of the common causes of failure it might even be feasible to have a phone that's waterproof as standard (if you can get rid of the other leakage points).
Not New
Central government has done this before too. The one I've heard of was someone trying to use FOI to obtain details of all 'A' and 'B' roads in the UK, to assist with the OpenStreetmap project.
DTp released the data, but reminded the requester that such information was Crown Copyright, and could not be redistributed, so OpenStreetMap volunteers have had to re-survey the roads themselves, or use out-of-copyright Victorian maps.
The Information Commissioners Office confirmed that DTp (or any other public authority) were completely within their rights to impose whatever restrictions they chose on distribution of the info that they released.
The only thing that surprises me is that other public authorities don't pull this kind of cunning stunt on FOI queries.
