Posts by NumptyScrub
176 posts • joined Thursday 18th March 2010 19:00 GMT
Re: Why not use a helicopter?
quote: "They normally fly into Nepal, then go by truck or whatever to base camp which is 20 something thousand feet up. Then they just walk the last bit."
As long as they state the frame of reference in the claim (climbed Everest from the base camp), I have absolutely no problem with it.
It's all relative, whether you claim the start is the base camp, or should be sea level, or some other arbitrary point. A "proper" zero reference would need to be from the centre of the planet; good luck starting a climb from there ;)
quote: "or you could just access the site. Youtube does HTML5.Apps are no longer needed."
Unless the target video is still in Flash, which "for technical reasons" is all the ones that want to show interstitial ads and provide proper behavioural tracking. Strange how many videos off Youtube don't work in Firefox (missing plugin required) until you install / allow Flash player.
As long as people want to make money off their Youtube channels (and Google want to make money off their advertising partners), you will have Flash videos instead of proper HTML5 ones. At least until HTML5 includes the same persistent cookies and other tracking features currently provided by Flash, so they can provide a fully HTML5 compliant advertising feature.
Cynical? Moi? ^^;
Re: User beware…
quote: "The next thing I noticed once I had set everything up was not only was my Gmail account open at the click of an app, without the need of logging in the same way you would on a computer, but when using it on the web for the first time all my historic search’s using Chrome on my laptop was automatically populated, including the website for my bank."
So, you're ok with Google having all of that information from your PC, but you don't like them letting you get to it from the phone? I'm assuming that you didn't create a new Google account specifically for the phone then?
Strangely enough most of my friends consider the behaviour you are lambasting to be a good feature. Never underestimate what the average person will agree to in the name of convenience; they actively want one account across all the devices which has all the info available at the touch of a screen (or button).
I'll leave it to you to work out what the manufacturers think of this consumer trend, and therefore how much effort they are spending to ensure they get all that tasty behavioural info themselves their devices "just work" with other devices and apps.
Re: Remind me again what the MPs said about their expenses ..
quote: "Anyway, it's in MPs power to change things. I wonder how long it will take MPs to realise that over complex tax laws is one of the prime causes of these loopholes existing (and therefore their use by companies). As they can change tax law, why don't they simplify the law massively and therefore remove most of these loopholes. They're complaining about something they created and they have the power to change."
a) politicians know that complex laws can be used to hide loopholes
b) politicians know that companies use these loopholes
c) in many cases politicians use the same loopholes themselves
d) the initial act of creating the loopholes has yet to be proven an accident
e) if it was an accident it really should have been rectified by now
Given the above, I would put it to you that the creation of these loopholes was a wilful act, intended to benefit politicians directly (campaign funding from pleased backers) and indirectly (companies awarding shares and/or retirement board positions to those selfsame politicians as a reward). The fact that these loopholes have existed through a few changes of government does not speak well for the intent of any political party to actually close them.
I would absolutely love for them to prove me wrong by simplifying tax laws and closing the loopholes. I'm not holding my breath, though.
instantaneous vs frames of reference
I r confuseded:
quote: "- At 12:00 on a particular day, Earth sends a message to the spaceship.
- Due to the difference in reference frames, when the spaceship receives that message, its onboard clock says that it's 10:00, not 12:00. If we had a universal frame of reference, we'd have to say that the message "went into the past".
- Now the spaceship echoes the message back to Earth. When does this reply arrive?
- Does the instantaneous communication channel work asymmetrically, so the spaceship's message arrives two hours later, Earth time, ie at 14:00?
- Does it work symmetrically, so the reply arrives two hours earlier, at 8:00?"
I would have said it arrives just after 12:00? You know, because of the instantaneous part.
Send message, gets received. Time taken to reply - 5 seconds. Check time dilation due to speed of spaceship into account; reply gets received more than 5 seconds after 12:00 (5 seconds on ship is more than 5 seconds in the Earth frame of reference, assuming ship is still at .5c relative to Earth).
You can't state a transmission is instantaneous and then state that the transmission takes a negative or positive time to travel. It makes no sense to do so. If we have a universal frame of reference, we would be able to define that 12:00 Earth local is 10:00 ship local, so that 5 seconds later 10:05 ship local (when the reply is sent) is 12:08 Earth local (go go time dilation). No time travel, no paradox, causality is unbroken.
Where am I going wrong here? Because the explanation above seems obvious to me, however proper scientists always refer to the time paradoxes and causality issues for FTL anything (transmission or travel), so I must be missing something. Something fundamental, probably.
quote: "In the UK it would be illegal to operate a drone (if it is taking aerial photos or video) without a license"
What license is required, and what laws would be contravened if a license is not sought first?
Serious question, I'm interested to see if and how this is different to just taking photographs with a camera in a public place. I do know in the UK there is no expectation of privacy when in public, however I'm not familiar with the nuances of photography and what specific lines have been drawn on what you can and cannot photograph in various circumstances.
The only ones I do actually know are the (lack of) expectation of privacy one, and the usual test in court being the ubiquitous "reasonable person".
Re: orly..
quote: "It's one thing for governments, who have some legitimacy in what they're doing, but have other people doing it ... it's not going to happen."
I know, that was best the line of the article by far :D
You think Eric believes he is government? Can't say that would surprise me either ;)
Re: Seller beware
quote: "Yeah dead funny - let's celebrate crime - oh it's not so funny when it happens to you or someone you know or a company you work for."
Since the consumer protection legislation in most countries allows for a full refund if the goods are not as advertised (e.g. lump of clay instead of Apple iPad), I think the consumer is going to be fine in this circumstance.
The company that neglected to check what they were refunding, on the other hand, should probably have had a decent returns process defined? You know, one where they check the returned product to ensure it was in a working state, and not something unusable that has been carefully packaged back up?
Crime is crime, but there are certain crimes (like this type of confidence trick) that can be trivial to avoid if you apply a little intelligence. In the case of corporations, this can be in the form of a well written and carefully implemented returns policy (e.g. "sorry, no refund before we open the box and check it"). The "box of spuds" selling technique is as old as time, it's not like it was only invented last year.
Caveat Emptor works both ways, if you work for a company that accepts returns from customers I would suggest you need to be at least as careful as someone purchasing from the public. Conmen have even less scruples ripping off companies than they do ripping off consumers ;)
Posted in The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME
Re: WHAT!
quote: "And the inclusion of the PS3 is laughable, as that's not even a computer in the most traditional sense."
I'd have to disagree, it has all the same bits, doing the same functions (CPU, GPU, IO, volatile and non-volatile storage). It runs a base operating system with a GUI, from which you can start seperate programs based on the task you wish to perform. You are, I'd hazard, equating the OS with "not computer" rather than the hardware, in response to an article about hardware design.
Even then, console OSs these days have web browsers, IM clients, streaming media services and many other applications that grace the default "computer" OSs. They don't have productivity suites, however that's because nobody [i]has[/i] written one, not because nobody could; the PS3 will recognise USB keyboards ok, and the controller has analogue input that can mimic a mouse / trackpad ;)
Also before Sony nerfed it, you could install Linux on a PS3. I'm pretty sure most people would agree that "hardware running Linux" = computer in that sense ;)
Re: Spooky action != Information
quote: "How do we know that it has not been decided?"
Because the next time you look in the bag, it might be a different colour. The properties that end up entangled are random properties; if you check them 10 times you can get 10 different answers from the same chip. The only caveat is that if you look at yours and it is blue, the other chip will be the complementary red colour at that time.
That's why physicists aren't too keen on it, because there is an apparent link between the chips (photons) that is not bounded by spacetime. One camp refer to it as "spooky action at a distance" and another camp call it "linked probability wave function" and there are possibly more interpretations too; I'd offer the possibility that both particles are running the same pseudo-random sequence (i.e working off the same RSA key), which needs neither spooky action or vast probability waves spanning light years in an instant, but does imply determinism on the part of the "random" properties (if you knew the sequence you could predict the value of the property at any time in the future, meaning it is not "random"). Which physicists would also have an issue with.
Currently there is no right answer, and it is entirely possible we will never have a right answer. We just know that that is the way it appears to work.
Posted in Facebook prepares to dominate Android
Re: You almost had me...
quote: "Would you like to tell me and the rest of my family how inane, uninteresting, incredibly dull and self-important the birth of my first child is?"
Depends, I have another 369,999 parents to congratulate for the birth of their children on the exact same day (and a similar number for the previous day, and for the following day, e.g. more than one million in 72 hours). I'm sure your news was much more intelligent, interesting, incredibly keen and modest than any of those hundreds of thousands of similar births, though :)
Disclaimer: I do have a facebook account, but rarely log on more than once a month, if that. All the stuff my friends post tends to be full of inane drivel, sprinkled with the odd meetup request that I'd already heard about face to face. When IRL conversations regularly contain the words "did you see X on facebook?" you have to wonder what has happened to the art of conversation... :/
Re: men
quote: "seem to have a problem with confusing and grouping individual behaviour with that of 50% of the world's population."
I see what you did there
Upgrading from JRE 1.6
Yeah thanks Oracle, Just let me know when your E-Business suite actually supports either an up to date JRE, or even an up to date browser, and I'll get patched right up.
According to the devs, clients need to be using 6 series JRE and have to be on IE8, because neither the 7 series JRE or IE9+ are certified yet. That's one Java and 2 browsers behind the times for their flagship enterprise product. Either the devs are lying, or Oracle is being sanctimoniously 2 faced in their "you should just upgrade, problem solved" stance.
Srsly ORCL, please to fix? >.<
Re: Hint, kids (of any gender) ...
quote: "If the genders in the scenario were reversed, the man would be being 'too demanding' and to-boot also chauvanisticaly assuming the women was his property."
Actually, if the roles were reversed the man would probably be found guilty of several sexual offenses and be looking at time in jail and a lifetime on the sex offenders register.
But it was a woman that did it, so it's fine, she obviously had a good reason for it :)
Since I actually know a couple of people who swear they can "feel" wireless networks, I can only assume they would be aghast at the idea of having a wireless transmitter actually in a car seat. Could be amusing pointing that out to them if I don't want to give them a lift somewhere ;)
To be fair though, I am also a little wary of a wireless network that can supply enough energy to charge a phone using me as a medium. My phone comes with a wired charger that exceeds the 500mA USB spec, so it'll need to supply at least that equivalent, and through my soft tissue at that... :/
Re: Thanks for the heads up.
quote: "Who the hell wants change for change's sake?"
Me? If you don't deliberately shake things up every so often, you won't find anything that works better than your current system. Of course the down side is, you also get to sit through a plethora of stuff that is just plain worse :(
It's a double edged sword, but one which I feel is worth the inevitable pain and frustration for those few gems you do find. Plus, it stops the whole thing getting too boring; I'd have euthanised by now if GUI development had not progressed since 1985.
Posted in Bacon sarnies can kill: Official
Re: Ok, lets get this clear for people...
You are Eadon and I claim my £5 :P
I'm going to spend it on smoked back bacon :)
Re: UK: Cyclists already pay for the upkeep of roads, as do pedestrians
quote: "*** Paying VED grants you no more rights to use the road than paying excise duty on a bottle of whisky. ***"
Not quite true. Not paying VED for a vehicle that requires it, means you are not allowed to use the public roads. Any registered vehicle is required by law to have a valid VED disc or be declared SORN, and driving a vehicle that is declared SORN on the public road is an offence.
Whilst correlation is not causation, I would feel perfectly comfortable claiming that, in the UK, paying VED (along with insurance and having a valid MOT) is what grants you the right to use the public roads.
Also:
quote: "To save having to listen to the ill educated whiners going on about "oh cyclists don't pay tax"...I propose that VED version 1.0 is scrapped, and VED version 2.0 taxes applied to all road using vehicles, based on the vehicle's kerb weight x by the number of wheels (as weight is what damages roads).
2.5p per kilo is about right. So a 1,200kg car will pay around the same as now - £120. A 3.5t van...£525.
So my 8kg bike will pay...40p. It's a fair cop. Apart from the bit where it will probably cost the Government at least £1 to process every application and it's payment..."
You seem to be forgetting that your bicycle does not self-navigate; when it is on the roads, it also has you riding it. EU regs on "kerb weight" for cars includes a driver at 75kg, so this would make the "kerb weight" of your 8kg bicycle 83kg, or a VED of £4.15 (not £0.40). Still peanuts, but a significant increase.
I'd welcome this sort of change too, as my 350kg motorcycle+me would pay £17.50 instead of the current £76 :)
Anyone with a Band A, B, or C hybrid / electric will hate you for it though, as they pretty much all weigh over a tonne (revised VED £100+), but currently pay £0-£30.
Also note that the contact patch for a bicycle is significantly smaller than the contact patch for a car due to difference in tyre size; a VED targeted at "amount of weight applied to the roads during use" would need to also factor tyre width in there as well somewhere, and would need to divide weight by number of wheels (you provide less downward force per wheel when using more than one wheel for the same weight). In that sense, an 83kg monocycle would technically do more damage than an 83kg tricycle using the same tyres, as the total downward force due to weight would be distributed between wheels / tyres ;)
Re: food != fossil fuel
There's also the question of how you define "carbon neutral" and over what timescales. Geologically speaking, fossil fuels are from a plant source and therefore part of a geological timescale carbon cycle. They sequestered lots of atmospheric CO2 back when we had a lot more atmospheric CO2.
Yes, the current view is that today's (more like 200 years ago but still) CO2 percentage is the "optimal" one, but that's only because some people have an issue with the seas being 100m+ higher than they are now. From a planetary perspective we are at a CO2 low ;)
Solution? Grow more fast-growing crops (whatever sequesters carbon the quickest) then bury them in landfill / down deep mine shafts. Make another batch of fossil fuels ready for a few million years hence. It appears to have worked on atmospheric CO2 levels several times higher than todays, so it is certainly scientifically viable as an option ;)
Re: Apple is refusing to hand over certain documents which might prove this one way or the other
Ah, but this is apparently "an attempt to discover harm" which they are allowed to refuse, rather than "an actual investigation of harm caused". Interesting. I'm now trying to work out how to paraphrase that into refusing to allow police on the premises even though they have a warrant, so I can straw man this. Obviously you need to cooperate if it is "an actual investigation of harm caused" e.g. lots of people testify that you sold them coke. But what situation would amount to "an attempt to discover harm" and therefore allow you to refuse to hand over material for investigation? You are seen driving a new flash car and going on expensive holidays, but still doing a 9-5 job on low wage? Would that fit closely enough to the above terminology?
It's all very confusing...
I am conflicted...
One the one hand, the point of prison is surely the rehabilitation. He deserves as much chance to make good as anyone else.
On the other, who would not have been wary of a convicted computer criminal asking to be in on the computer classes? This is a classic "should have seen it coming" premise.
I could not say for sure what I would have done, were it my decision to let this happen or not... :/
Re: @NumptyScrub
If friends of mine weren't so set on breaking any system they come across, I'd still be playing it. Gun bunny is one thing, but a 19-dice rifle pool on a starting character (and<5 dice everything else)? That's barely even 1-dimensional :(
Still, it means I get to try out quite a few different systems and see just how breakable (or not) they are... ;)
Re: If Samsung did this...
quote: "If Samsung did this...
...it would be seen as the holy-grail to all cabling problems."
Samsung already do do a limited version of this. There is 1 (one) headphone socket and 1 (one) micro USB / MHL socket on the Galaxy S3 I am currently looking at. Since iDevices usually have a headphone socket on them, there is in total exactly the same number of ports.
The main difference is that microUSB and MHL are standards (although in the case of the S3, not-quite MHL pin standard), but only deal with 3 things; charging, data transfer (USB bus) and video transfer (MHL). Note that these only require passive cables, which makes it cheap for the end user. Lightning is a generic data bus, so you will need active adapters (i.e. a cable with a computer in it) but gives as many options for output as, err... there are options for output.
The fact that they are selling it as a single cable, rather than a box with a multitude of output cables, is slightly more telling. If it were me I'd be marketing it as the one-size-fits-all solution and have HDMI, Ethernet, USB, eSATA, RS232 and any other serial output already on it (or as plugin cables to a proprietary connector on the box, if that is more your thing), with the caveat that apps will need to have the firmware available to be able to use it. Having an ARM-based active adapter for a single use-case seems like it's being artificially limited; if you are already adding a computer with infintely updateable "firmware" (it's more like a software download every time you connect it) then why only have one type of output hardwired in? To make people have to buy a second cable for a second output type?
Re: "Dangerous Ordnance"
quote: "It means that the guys that actually know what they are talking about called you out on your obvious lack of precision. Computing isn't the only area where minute differences matter."
Fair enough, to be more precise I make 5.56/25.4 to be 0.21890" (rounded to 5 places). Not only is that not .223, it's also the other side of .22 entirely. Looks like "lack of precision" is endemic in the ammunition specs as well as my posts, since the NATO "5.56mm" cartridge should really be called the 5.66mm (5.6642 exactly), given it is based on the Remington .223 ;)
quote: "Touch screen devices were hampered by styluses, preventing mass market adoption and Google glass is hampered by the need to have stupid looking glasses on your face."
Yeah, but installing cybereyes lowers your Essence, not to mention being much more expensive, and they don't have many upgrade slots.
Also I don't think they've actually invented cybereyes IRL yet. I think we might be stuck with needing glasses for AR for a while :/
Re: "Dangerous Ordnance"
quote: "world of difference between a .22 calibre weapon and a .223 calibre weapon."
Pfft, rounding errors... what is .223 to 2 decimal places? ;)
We both know that there is a world of difference between a .22 handgun and 5.56mm NATO, but that's in the cartridge size, propellant loading and projectile makeup, not the calibre per se ;)
Same goes for the much hyped Desert Eagle .50 cal, vs a .50 BMG intended for an M87... two different kettle of fish entirely, and they are theoretically identical calibre.
Re: "Dangerous Ordnance"
quote: ".22 rounds do nothing but piss off your attacker. Nothing dangerous about those."
5.56mm NATO on the other hand is carbine choice du jour for most militaries. I'll leave it to you to work out how big 0.22" is in mm :)
(hint: 7.62mm NATO is a .30 cal round)
Re: Been looking for a waterproof phone for a couple of years
JCB do some fairly ugly ones that claim IP67 or similar ingress resistance
You can pick several of them up at the Carphone Whorehouse on a variety of tariffs
Posted in Ten smartphones with tablet ambitions...
Re: People used to laugh at the size of my smart phone.
quote: "Everyone thought it was large. Now, as you say, everyone wants a brick."
Actually, what they want is a massive screen; what they will put up with to have one is a big phone (as long as it is light). If they can make a 3" phone with a fold-out 7" screen it'll outsell everything, IMO.
I'm thinking that Asus should do a companion PadPhone with a smaller phone (3"ish) and a 7" plugin (plugout?) screen... I can see a lot of people accepting that as a viable tradeoff of easy to carry phone vs decent screen size when you want it. The phablet equivalent of the laptop docking station and 23" monitor ;)
Re: One question I have always asked myself
quote: "Well the main issue here is not the resultant and basically inconsequential drag on the global air streams, it's the bio-centripital forces acting on the earth, from the spinning turbine blades, through the shafts and towers.
If there is a harmonic wave of inversive reactance, then the whole earth could flip on it's axis, when the turbines twist out of global alignment.
Then, and only then, will we really be in the shit."
What? I don't think any amount of wind turbines would be able to reliably spin the earth 180°, and since the moment applied to the earth from the turbines is reliant purely on wind direction, I'm pretty sure the overall effect is going to be similar to that applied by the wind to any other structure, natural or not (mountains and tower blocks are both viable carriers of wind kinetic energy).
Also, plate tectonics: turbines are not attached to a solid homogeneous system, they are attached to a mobile plate floating on top of a soup (magma flavour). Turbines on the eurasian plate may or may not be competing with turbines on the african plate, the north american plate, the indian, arabian, australian and filipino plates (these are just the ones bounding the eurasian plate btw, there are more). These plates are already moving in different directions anyway, so the net overall effect on the earths spin is going to be at best bastard hard to compute, and at worst fucking impossible.
Although you do raise the important climatological point of wind turbines possibly contributing to increased tectonic activity at active plate boundaries. Quick! Somebody should tell the government that wind turbines might cause earthquakes!
Re: AV is a malicious Peril
quote: "Windows has 85% of the desktop market (and still falling). Yet, it has 100% of the viruses out there. *think about it*."
Absolutely. I'd even go so far as to say that of the last 100 infections on Windows I have had to deal with, none were viruses. It's very rare to see a virus these days, what with the completely staggering number of trojans and ransomware built from kits out there.
Do you know if anyone has built a crimeware kit for OSX yet?
Re: So if the PC dies
quote: "MS says we do not own the software we have bought."
I don't think you understand exactly what it is you have bought. The reason they are called EULAs is that you have not bought the software, you have bought a license. If you had bought the software in its entirety, you would have the legal rights to make as many copies as you like and sell them on for whatever price you chose. That is why what you purchase is called a License, legally they cannot let you buy the software without you also gaining the resale and copy rights.
In this sense, it's more like buying a service, so it would be akin to saying that you do not own the right to do what you wish with the engineer who is providing the tech support you purchased. You bought the tech support (license), not the engineer (software that performs the licensed function).
For the inevitable car analogy, imagine you purchase (lump sum) an agreement with the local garage for free ongoing servicing of your car (an End User Service Agreement). You are not entitled to relocate their servicing equipment as you see fit (you have not "bought the servicing", only the right to have a service performed at your convenience), and in this case they are also refusing to service any car you bring in (license the hardware, not the user), only the original one covered by the agreement. It may be more restrictive than you are used to, and you are of course free to decide to terminate the agreement and look elsewhere (and most would, tbh), however they are perfectly within their rights to ask for those restrictions, and to enforce them.
I'm not going to buy Office 2013, nor am I going to rent Office 365, but I don't for one second feel entitled to demand MS change their terms to fit me. They just lose me as a customer instead :)
quote: "Who wants to pay for something that they then do not own?"
Rented accomodation, lease agreements (cars, printers, colocation racks etc.), theatre tickets, and service agreements all seem to sell well, and they do not give you anything to "own", they simply enable the use of something that is owned by someone else. The company I work for seems perfectly happy to lease printers, for instance, and several friends rent their accomodation. In that sense, I would hazard that the answer to that questions is "quite a lot of people are perfectly happy to pay for (the use of) something that they do not own". :)
Posted in Addicted to games? Maybe not in China
Re: its pretty easy
quote: "if you play for more than 7.5 hours a day you're addicted."
Arse, I'm addicted to sleep then :'(
If I don't get my sleep fix every day I look like shit, and I do it willingly for more than 7.5 hours per day whenever I get the chance.
Should I go cold turkey?
Re: Dark matter
quote: "galaxies behave as if embedded in a larger ephemeral cloud of dark matter. Increasing the central mass would not fit the spectrum of distance from centre vs velocity"
Hmmm... I've seen figures posited for interplanetary / interstellar hydrogen concentrations (i.e. vacuums), is intergalactic hydrogen not enough to make up the perceived defecit? Or is it a case of intergalactic hydrogen needing to be far more dense than the (known) interplanetary "vacuum" for the numbers to add up?
Maybe that's where all the phlogiston went to? ;)
Re: I'm feeliing old
For the Atari ST, Amiga A400 and Macintosh...
Windows - check
Icons - check
Menus - check
Pointers - check
Yep, they certainly look like WIMP based systems to me :)
Re: China
quote: "Bureaucracy and military incompetence are universal."
They already missed a trick, instead of "PLA unit 61398" I'd have demanded Unit 31337 for a start ;)
Re: Dark matter
quote: "But what you have to remember is that without a large amount of unseen mass, no galaxy can hang together under its own 'visible' gravity"
I thought that was what the posited "supermassive black holes" at the centre of each galaxy were supposed to be doing? Providing the required extra gravity and mass to keep the galaxies behaving the way we can see that they behaved (back in the mists of time when the light we are seeing from them was all shiny and new).
Or don't they fit the pattern any more? (I am not an astrophysicist)
@Dana W
quote: "Remember, this is where the Android (and Windows) fanbois come to play.
ANY attempt to defend Apple in any way will meet with the total disapproval of the Android children, and ther true revealed faith.
----------------
I'd like to thank everyone in this thread for making my point for me."
I'd have to say that your comments do seem to fly a little close to "true revealed faith" territory themselves, you know. Are you implying that a trademark applied for in 2000 should be nullified because another manufacturer created a product with the same name in a different country, seven years later? The first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007 (according to wikifiddlers, anyway), which is definitely prior to the grant of trademark, but is seven years after the application by Gradiente.
On a purely logical basis, the trademark and patent system would have to be first come, first served. Since this is what has appeared to happen in Brazil (2000 is definitely before 2007, when Apple applied), I can only assume that you are advocating that large companies should be able to shortcut the system because they have done something in an entirely different jurisdiction? Are you implying that the US Trademark granted to Apple should have precedence worldwide?
I'm sure you are a very nice person, but you do appear to be (deliberately?) ignoring some of the basic facts of this story in your rush to tar anyone who disagrees with your (implied) opinion as some sort of mindless "fanboi" of an alternative phone operating system. I hate to be the adult in the room, but an OS is just a tool the same as the phone itself; the issue here is one of naming rights not hardware capabilities, and I cannot honestly find fault with the way it has been handled. Brazil, as an independant coutry with sovereign rights, are at liberty to handle this any way they see fit. They have handled it exactly in accordance with their own statutes, and since Dec 2012 is contained within the 5 year period from 2008 (I note that article does not state the date in 2008 that marks the start of the 5 year period) Gradiente would appear to have satisfied their obligations to keep the trademark.
Lets see how the appeal by Apple turns out. That will speak volumes about Brazil's legislative structure, and tolerance to bribery, not this decision :)
Re: Hack?
quote: "Guessing an insecure password is a hacking now? Really?"
Yes, really. Gaining unauthorised access to a computer system, including but not limited to already knowing the password, but not being "authorised" to log in to it at the time you logged in, is a crime. With custodial sentencing.
It's to remove culpability from corporations for lax password and account security, and place it squarely on the person. There are several servers at work which I have root to, however if I have not signed the access forms and got them authorised beforehand, I could be in big trouble. :)
quote: "a perpetual dynamo generator needs no fuel or crappy solar power for a mini super computer under the floor"
Perpetual dynamo generator? I must have been paying attention to the wrong science at school, because I never heard about those. Are they fission powered, or are you talking about actual perpetual motion that somehow doesn't slow down when power is extracted from it?
I only did A-level Physics (and dabble in Quantum Electrodynamics), so I'd still be of the opinion that actual perpetual motion is, in fact, not possible if you intend to draw power from it. Please enlighten me how I am incorrect :)
Re: A metaphorical near miss
quote: "Ann Droid as a publisher doesn't really work as a metaphor."
It would appear to point out that Merriam-Webster may have to do some appeasing to Oxford University Press to avoid litigation. In a lot of cases they would even appear to have managed to misspell or typo the plagiarism, even though the paraphrasing makes it obvious which topics are being copied...
Re: Any justification for it being this way?
quote: "Do you complain that you can't upgrade the CPU and RAM in your phone? nope. Would you accept a phone twice the size and weight for that option? probably not."
Actually I would love to be able to upgrade the RAM and CPU for my phone, and I'd have no issue with it doubling (or quadrupling) in weight for that plus larger battery options. I am not an average consumer though.
Having said that, people used to willingly use the Motorola 8500X and NEC 9A once upon a time, and they are a lot larger and heavier than any of todays models... ;)
Re: They're both full of $#!T
quote: "When you give a reporter a product to review you don't get to dictate what they write."
True at face value, however many companies will specifically only give (read: free) review products to people they expect to give them a good review. People who they expect to give a bad review are told they are free to buy the product themselves, just like Joe Public can.
How likely do you think it is that Broder will get given another Tesla to review? How many other manufacturers of electrics will hand Broder a car to review, after this slugfest with Tesla?
The net result of this may be that NYT end up having to purchase electric cars from a dealership if they want to review them, which means they lose out on pre-release offers, and are out of pocket for the equipment. Which is legal (Tesla can refuse to give freebies to anyone they like, last I checked), and also understandable (Tesla are in the business of selling products), but which leads to somewhat shady business practises to keep everyone sweet.
See also: software reviews that never fall below 5 out of 10 ;)
Re: You're not paranoid if they really ARE out to get you.
quote: "Not paying for paid apps is theft. It hurts the developer and in turn hurts the Android eco system."
Technically correct, assuming that the apks they are talking about are those of paid apps (that's why freemium is so rampant in Andriod, the app itself is free anyway, and it's far more difficult to get round the in-app system). However the comment itself could be likened to:
"Not handing yourself over for exceeding the speed limit is a crime. The loss of fine revenue hurts the police force / government and in turn hurts the country."
Nice straw man huh? I'm quite proud of it myself, since personal experience would put the number of criminals I see on the roads at around 80% of all traffic (especially 35+ in a 30, I rarely encounter a vehicle doing <30 in a 30). I would be perfectly comfortable claiming that around 80% of drivers are in fact habitual criminals who endanger the lives of themselves and others without a second thought. Plus, I'm guessing a high percentage of people who commit other crimes (e.g. pirating apks) are also drivers. Speeding is a gateway crime!
I'm guessing that you are involved (or know people who are involved) in app development for mobile platforms, so this issue is likely close to your heart. I completely understand your irritation that people could so brazenly commit a crime habitually like that. However, please take a good long look at yourself, and your loved ones, and see if you can find anyone who is not a habitual criminal of some sort (speeding, downloading copyright materials without consent, controlled substance use etc.). If the only examples you can find are 10 years old or younger, I'd suggest that perhaps the laws are not working, and that public opinion would in fact require that the criminalisation of those habitually performed deeds should probably be revoked.
Remember, it is "government (and policing) by consent", not "citizenship by consent". They work for us, no matter what they might try to get you to believe ;)
Re: Attention Michelin Guides
quote: "Why try to defend principles, while you can just pay '"protection money" or rather in this case "abducation racket fee".
This is much less troublesome to pay the abducter, and probably less hazardous too !"
I've half a mind to email him and suggest he change the site content to reviews of tyres; Michelin Guides. Which is, as I'm sure you can see, a completely valid, different potential market use of exactly the same name they let lapse.
Note: most domain trolls just use an ad-strewn parking service with "this domain is for sale!" on there and up the price at every impression. At least this guy is actually using the domain, even if it is obviously parodic.
What they should be doing, though, is following the UDRP (http://www.icann.org/en/help/dndr/udrp) rather than sending bully letters cease and desist notices. The UDRP exists purely for resolving disputes over the ownership of domain names, and there is an expedited process for trademark holders against abusive registrations. Valid registrants who can't be bothered to renew domains (for a couple of years, from the sound of it) have their own fast track process to get a domain back, which they can then forget to renew next year :)
Re: Meh, so what...
quote: "If there was a species that went around going "meh, so what" at everything, they wouldn't be around for long, nor be particularly intelligent."
You mean like teenagers? Sounds a lot like teenagers to me. Also a lot of adults to be fair: "why are they spending my tax money researching X when they could be doing something else with it?" usually then explained as increasing something they directly benefit from e.g. the NHS, or education funding for their kids, rather than funding something that has a small chance of benefitting the entire species (and, to be fair, quite a large chance of turning out to be economically worthless). There's not a lot of point having highly educated people but no research posts left for them to occupy...
What would be a "critical mass of apathy", and how would you measure it in society as a whole? How can we check to make sure we are not the species that goes "meh, so what" then goes down in a blaze of apathy?
Absolutely, if you have the remaining balance and are happy for Mr. Petkovich to have it to make “more detailed plans and enough chicken wire to protect reactor exhaust ports" ;)
Hell, pay me £10m and I will happily spend the next 10 years providing detailed design options for a modular Death Star (or other spacefaring combat and launch platform, properly "modular" would suggest the Borg Cube as a more feasible design option); I'm not promising a 2015 launch date though. We'll need to mine the asteroid belt for the mass, for one thing, and that's not a 6 month proposition.
quote: "Wait....so 117 people have pledged an average of just over £120 each to this joke? Is the lunacy contagious?"
Check the Kickstarter T&Cs, IIRC then no money is taken unless the project reaches their stated funding goal.
So unless they actually do get to £20 million in pledges by April 1st, nobody will have actually paid anything towards this lunacy. That is alluded to towards the end of the article too ;)
Re: Trade War?
quote: "As far as I know all our Azure services and Office 365 are hosted in Europe and therefore have to be compliant with EU law. I checked this point when I opened our Azure account."
Ask them very carefully if there is the possibility that your data could end up on US servers as part of a distributed backup. ;)
I friend of mine had to ask a similar question, in respect of providing services to local government where the UK required that data to be held on UK servers, and only on UK servers. MS confirmed that they could not guarantee that at that time (this was a while back mind, for BPOS).
MS may be able to confirm they can do what you've asked for, however the shadow of "geographically disparate" DR backups (i.e. copied to US servers so the Patriot Act applies) may still loom over any cloud service from a company that operates in the US.
Re: 'There must be a limit to what the gov knows about its people'
quote: "The question is: Why is the UK electorate so accepting of all this crap? It is time to grab each and every MP and demand that this nonsense ceases, now."
The correct answer there is: we aren't. However, demanding it from your MP is tantamount to banging your head against the wall; see the quote further up where one specifically stated he would be voting against same-sex marriages, regardless of what his constituency wanted.
Does that sound like someone who has the interests of their constituency first and foremost in their mind, as is implied when they run for office in the first place? It doesn't to me...
