Posts by Uffish 861 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Aug 2012
That's a blip on the radar, a blimp might possibly be carrying the radar.
As for the rest of your guff - I, for one, don't give much thought to Microsoft's current or future behaviour and products except to take them or leave them as I choose. Articles in el Reg etc help in making an informed choice. The market is what business is about, I hear, and it is up to Microsoft to choose what it does.
I have been using various flavours of Linux for many years and, by choice, have used it almost exclusively (on my own computers). My wife however has always used Windows because she needs certain programs that don't exist in Linux (or Wine-Linux etc etc). If that means Linux is inferior so be it.
But if Microsoft proposes a paid for OS-as-a-service and also runs the data equivalent of upskirt.com on the back of it then it's goodbye Windows.
I'm not French, I just happen to live here and I'm trying to be polite about my French hosts. These are just my opinions but I think that they are valid.
1. No-one was targeted purely because of their religion so cut that bit out.
2. No-one would like their house being searched or their mosque being closed, especially for no good reason. To be cold-hearted about it though, no-one could say that it was the end of the world for them.
3. You don't know France - this wasn't some local police chief doing this on his own initiative it was a direct, and I am sure detailed, order from the top.
The context is suicide bombers and kalashnikovs being used throughout Paris. Again being cold-hearted, trying to make sure that there wouldn't be another 130 deaths takes precedence over seriously pissing off a lot of innocent people.
Lastly, if there are any Moslems reading this, salamalikoum. Nothing has changed my opinion that you are a great bunch of people.
Personally, maybe because Paris is my local big city, I prefer strolling policemen to sleeping policemen - and much prefer either sort to the shooting kind.
Every country has it's examples of official wrong that will never be corrected. 'Bloody Sunday' and Jean Charles de Menezes in the UK, innumerable innocent black victims of policing in the USA etc etc etc.
French radio and TV reports highlighted the questionable justification of a lot of of the recent searches and arrests in France. This is not judicial oversight but it is oversight and, so far, I haven't seen any move to a police state and I have been wandering around Paris without worrying about guns and bombs.
Of course, some people see anything and everything as an excuse to fantasise about conspiracies but, please forgive me, I'm not one of them and your theories just sound like gobbledygook.
@Graham Marsden
So if you were the French Minister responsible and the police and security services came to you with all their intelligence about known, suspected and possible jihadi supporters - what would you do?
The French decided on checking out, I guess, just about everything they thought could help. I don't think this means that they have forgotten about Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité. Perhaps it just means that they wanted to stop another massacre.
I have great objection to anyone 'laying claim' to a planet, bit of a planet, an asteroid or even a some part of empty space. They don't own it; shouting that they own it or plonking a spaceship near it does nothing to change the fact that they don't own it, never have and never will. Even if you change the meaning to laying claim to a priority right concerning said planet asteroid or bit of space it is not up to any one country to administer such rights.
That US Bill is a bit of bipartisan navel fluff .
In France the number of people of interest to the security services greatly exceeds the number of security people available to monitor them. Solve that problem in the real world and the Croix de chevalier de la Légion d’honneur is yours, along with kisses on both cheeks from the President.
Sure, they were spying their socks off before and now all that the spooks want is to continue as before and with the minimum of additional paperwork and oversight (i.e. none). Can't blame them for that, but Parliament has now to address the problem of a regulatory framework for spying on the inhabitants of the UK.
One small crumb of comfort is that we will at least get to see the intelligence, democratic instincts and innate morality of MPs and, maybe, Peers. Should be interesting.
The "all the fault of a very few engineers" argument was aired at the same time as the CEO left. If that is really the truth I will never buy another VW because you cannot trust the factory to make what it thinks it is making.
VW has had enough time to find a solid chain of command from programmer to board level (all of whom, rather surprisingly, would be getting on in years and very fond of fishing). That scenario might not be the truth but it doesn't stink to high heaven like the current one. There are far better choices than choosing an indefensible defence.
In the nineteenth century legislation began to be put in place limiting the loading of ships to some safe value. This legislation was opposed by the free market forces at the time but was imposed after taking into account the human and financial losses from overloaded ships.
Imposing load lines on ships was nothing new. Wikipedia says that Crete, in 2500 BC had such laws, as did the Romans, the Venetians, the Hanseatic League etc. In the industrial revolution it seems these ideas got left behind.
Legislation which limits freedom can, in certain circumstances, be "a good thing" and free market forces can, in certain circumstances, be "a bad thing".
I think Uber is "a bad thing" because too much in it's organisation invites a disregard for risk. Reshape the idea to limit the risk and it could become " a good thing".
I would like some form of legislation that says that being in possession of any piece of 'private and personal' information is illegal unless it has a clear, auditable link to specific, named permission from the subject. Wont happen of course. Big Brother is watching us all and taking copious notes.
@zmodem - Viagra was invented and marketed for the treatment of heart disease, the introduction of Aspirin was suppressed by Bayer so as not to interfere with the sales of Bayer's new wonder drug Heroin. Why should I believe anything you say about these clearly incompetent scientists?
My phone tells me where I am, and I can clearly see that it uses only land based transmission systems why should GPS be any different. All carbon dating is polluted by the atom bomb tests and so cannot be relied on. All the scientific evidence you cite is untrustworthy. You have not proved your point and I have no reason to change my ideas.
(Where is the tongue-in-cheek icon ? )
There's a film out there showing the assembly of bombers (Lancaster or Wellington probably) during the war. It was bloody good propaganda for British workers as it had a fair amount of mechanical insight and jargon. I think it was addressed principally to the Americans. A complete plane in 24 hours - real time.
@ Mr Dogshit
I don't mind them spying - it's them being bat-shit crazy that worries me. They have been given a big, beautiful doughnut stuffed with gizmos and what do they do? They profile people listening to the radio! As research, even for the arcane world of spying, this is a complete waste of time.
Their budget is way too big.
And why the hell shouldn't we touch the market?
The market is a human construction, there used to be slavery in Europe (and lots of other places, natch), then there was feudalism, then there was a fairly slow change towards today's 24hour rolling stock-market reports on all TV channels. I fail to see why the changes should now stop - and I fail to see any evidence that economic changes have stopped.
Natural carbon dioxide concentrations in the Chauvet-Pont d'Arc cave* regularly exceed 3%.
However, to my mind, the problem is not how much damage Volkswagen has done to the world and it's population it is how much illegal cheating and deception Volkswagen management judges acceptable. They seem to have set the level a bit high and, I think, should be discouraged from continuing that strategy.
* The replica tourist cave is worth the detour.
If you look at the spot it was drilling there's a big smile drawn in the dust. Some mission controller being whimsical or is Curiosity really feeling pleased with itself.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pia19807_flat-horizon-monday.jpg for a high def version of the article photo.
... is speed through the toll gates, mostly there is no queue and no waiting for the driver in front to find his credit card/cash and wait for a receipt.
The new Dartford crossing toll system in the UK forced me into a tedious, slow and utterly stupid process involving a long detour to a village shop, a long wait while the shopkeeper found the right instructions for the terminal and a three pound fee instead of the two pound fee I was expecting. What are this government’s economists smoking/sniffing?
I just downvoted you because I think you are indulging in a bit of irrelevant rabble rousing.
Mass surveillance won't reliably find terrorists , for the reasons admirably explained in an earlier post. Mass surveillance does work for other purposes than protecting you and me from assassins (for example, it works for Google et al). That is the reason to be very wary of uncontrolled mass surveillance.
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