Posts by Ian 55

Re: What was 2.0 really known for?

For Microsoft promising that it'd be like Unix, certainly with multitasking if not multiuser, and delivering the mess that 2.0 was over a year later than promised.

90% of their time is in the browser

Exactly.

This is why Microsoft set out to destroy Netscape all those years ago and were prepared to do it illegally. It's one of the few times you can't say they didn't see the future correctly.

Re: Ah yes....

Yesterday, a platform display at Nottingham station was repeatedly rebooting. This involves showing its IP address...

Re: iOS 7

One of the classic exam questions: "Is '7' a random number?"

Dear Microsoft

If you'd like to pay me to use IIS (ok, switch headers so it looks like I am) to host parked domains, I will happily do so...

Only recently and only for minor updates

Yes, it was added in 3.7, I think, but it only works for say 3.8 to 3.8.1 and when 3.9 or 4.0 are released, you will have to do it manually.

You also need to keep on top of plugin updates yourself.

Re: Data entry on the Psion Organiser

Having dropped one and lost everything on it in far less time than 30 seconds... that wasn't good enough.

You could (and I did) drop a Series 3* and everything was fine.

Bitcoins are forever?

The comparison with diamonds is a really good one - the market for diamonds is effectively rigged too.

At least if you buy diamonds, you can be reasonably sure that someone will pay you half what you paid.

Incompetent or criminal?

Can I have 'both', please?

Re: "Encrypted them in a way he could not decrypt them"

Presumably you could be coerced into saying who could decrypt them, because they are the ones with the key or for other reasons?

Re: Does this make it the largest robbery in history?

Bernie Madoff says no, for one.

See also the Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BTCST) which ran off with 700k of the things, so it's not even the biggest Bitcoin theft.

Re: I don't understand the reference to our sun...

Yes, it's about 10,000,000 times less.

Re: Sir, You Are Being Hunted

It's quite fabulous on so many levels, and the only one I was prepared to pay money for (albeit in a Humble Store sale).

If the (Bath-based) developers are reading this, implement slow motion for those of us without the reflexes and mouse control of a teenager :)

Re: Self-advertising

Yes, I don't know what it says about me as a user, but I get an awful lot of (awful) Spotify ads.

I wonder if they charge themselves for them, and distribute the money to the labels.

It is not impossible that the directors have been so negligent that they become personally liable for their decisions. Certainly, the banks may extracted have personal guarantees from them.

Re: I should create a company

I am struggling to think what's so clever about this company. Altering the temperature of somewhere according to whether or not there are people in the place is not exactly difficult.

Someone (this bunch?) have a phone program that can let the system know when you're nearby (probably), so the place can be warm if and when you arrive.

But really this is simple control stuff with some nice industrial design.

Re: graphics? buy a graphics card

I will admit to being surprised, but AMD's APU graphics capabilities are the sort of thing a good mid-range discreet card could do a couple of years ago. This means a lot of games are genuinely playable on it.

Obviously, those wanting to do AAA FPS 'need' the latest and greatest card, but more and more people don't need any discreet card. The low power the APUs take compared to many graphics cards is another very pleasant surprise.

Re: 68000 - 16 bit

Sinclair was just doing what IBM were doing in describing their 8088-based computer as '16-bit'.

Re: Shaken not stirred was an innuendo

Incredibly, Moonraker wasn't the worst, either in terms of its relationship to the book - there were rockets in the plot too - or as a film.

Re: What's wrong with 'unelected.uk'

I can cheer as loudly as anyone when ministers are told to get lost by judges but..

"judges don't make up the law as they go along".

.. oh yes they do. Look at, to pick two examples...

1) Shaw v DPP [1961] UKHL 1. Shaw published a magazine containing ads from some London prostitutes. Street soliciting had just been criminalised in the Street Offences Act 1959 and prostitution itself being legal in the UK, there was (and still is) a clear need for people to advertise.

He was charged with "Living on the earnings of prostitution" and "Publishing an obscene publication" - both offences created by statue law - and also the new offence of 'Conspiracy to corrupt public morals'. The courts decided that the latter was a Common Law offence, something 'everyone' knows is the law, despite the fact that it was based on no statue and had never come before a court before = they invented it.

One of the Lords said "Suppose Parliament tomorrow enacts that homosexual practices between adult consenting males is no longer to be criminal is it to be said that a conspiracy to further and encourage such practices amongst adult males could not be the subject of a criminal charge fit to be left to a jury? .. My Lords, if these questions are to be answered in the negative I would expect to find some clear authority during the past centuries which would justify such an answer. I know of none."

And indeed it was next used in 1970 against the magazine International Times which, in a small section, published gay contact ads. The behaviour was, by then, legal but because of those ads the magazine - part of the 'counter culture' like Oz - was closed down. I don't think anyone doubts it was a political prosecution, and it was done on the basis of a law that some unelected homophobic judges had made up.

2) Dica, R. v [2004] EWCA Crim 1103. Dica was HIV+, and two of his sexual partners were infected. The original judge held that their consent to the sex was irrelevant, but this was overturned by the Court of Appeal. They did uphold the overturning a principle that was known for over a century, that unintentional transmission of an STI was not an offence, based on R v Clarence (1889) 22 QB 23 which established .

Basically, they invented a law that says that it is. (And did so, it turns out, by some very selective reading of Clarence.) This was despite a government submission to a then-recent Law Commission report saying that - for a variety of very good reasons - it should not be.

Now, it is open for parliament to pass a law re-establishing the previous position, but which MP wants to be the subject of Daily Hate headlines saying they want to more people infected with HIV?

You'll find more examples by looking at Lord Denning's career. What WP means when it says that "During his 38-year career as a judge he made large changes to the common law" is that he made it up.

Re: Sadly Trevor

“Less than 60 people globally who are considered U.S. Persons"

Once you're one of them, you're no longer considered a US Person, simple.

The US has admitted killing - under Obama, not the moronic Bush Jr - four US citizens via drone strikes. At least two of those were extra-judicial killings, more usually known as murders. And while it may not have happened yet, the US Justice Department believes the US President has the legal authority to order a targeted strike against an American citizen located within the United States.

Re: My vote goes to ....

I still want a PDP-11, and a VAX.

Even though my mp3 player has more CPU power than either, never mind the phone.

Re: Intel

If you want to talk about processing power per Watt or dollar, fine. What ARM chip can match a decent current x86 processor for raw processing power though?

ARM chips are remarkable, but they've much less raw power.

Re: Marvellous

Oh, there's no comparison between the VCS and the Atari 400/800. It's amazing that the first one works - everything has to 'race the beam' generating each line on the fly - and the latter are simply amazing bits of hardware for their day. Pole Position was my favourite, showing off the hardware line-by-line scrolling to best effect.