* Posts by bobbles31

332 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Aug 2007

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Default admin password, weak Wi-Fi, open USB ports ... no wonder these electronic voting boxes are now BANNED

bobbles31

Re: The position of the constitutional court of Germany is worthy of note

Ah, the old if you don't agree with me you must be in this really bad group tactic.

People have opinions that may differ from yours, that doesn't necessarily make them corrupt, paranoid or stupid.

Fanbois to gamebois: Apple paperwork reveals iOS FUNPAD

bobbles31

Awesome

Only in this world would a company make a unique selling point of removing all the buttons and coming up with a sleek clean design......and then sell you the buttons separately.

I haven't been this impressed since buying a cable for my wireless controller.

Yes! It's the NFC phone-bonk doorbell app AT LAST

bobbles31

Re: We have arrived at the stage

Or you could swap the bell for something that doesn't wind the dog up?

The UK's copyright landgrab: The FAQ

bobbles31

Re: @tony2heads

I guess it's because the patent covers an artefact that you actually have to produce yourself, whereas copyright covers the artefact itself.

A counter analogy would be, why should property copyright have limited duration when my home ownership is never ending.

The home I leave to my children doesn't revert to public ownership after 70 years so why should that photo, that I spent a lifetime training and perfecting my craft such that I was able to capture it?

Virgin Media revs up for Liberty Global merger

bobbles31

Having been part of the team that sold the business for current share price + 24% I doubt many of the companies owners will complain.

Hard luck lads, todger size DOES matter: Official

bobbles31
Coat

Nothing beats astronaut.....ever!

Sorry, i know its sad, but when I first saw that ad, it totally cracked me up.

Mines the one that smells like bad deodorant.

Boffins say flash disk demands new RAID designs

bobbles31

I thought that the whole point of raid was that the expectation that a drive would fail and the system could carry on.

Surely the question becomes one of performance improvement over maintenance cost. Given that you are going to be replacing drives more frequently, is the increased maintenance cost less than the increased revenue from having faster drives? If so, use SSDs if not don't. I would hazard to guess that across the industry their are relatively few applications that would provide a net benefit.

Success for Einhorn: Judge blocks vote on Apple's Proposal 2

bobbles31

Actually, by not paying a dividend when they patently could they are directly affecting the share price and as a result not acting in the best interests of the share holder. Einhorn isn't a philanthropist he is a capitalist, he has provided capital for Apple to operate and now he wants his return.

Satanic Renault takes hapless French bloke on 200km/h joyride

bobbles31

Re: Why get back in the car?

Re: Why get back in the car?

If he's disabled he might have had no other usable means of transport.

Oh, we'll that makes using a car that he knows to be defective perfectly alright then.

HYPERSONIC METEOR smashes into Russia, injuring hundreds

bobbles31

Re: the cause of death is organ failure

I always thought that everyone dies of the same thing...lack of oxygen to the brain.

US taxman joins UK politicoes on hunt for Amazon cash

bobbles31

Re: Idea?

Why not simply make licensing subject to vat/import duty?

Outlook 2013 spurns your old Word and Excel documents

bobbles31

Re: Curious...

It's this small idea called capitalism.

The reason cars don't have 8 tracks or tape players is because it is no longer commercially viable for the manufacturer to include support for those features. The same applies to software. At some point the company has to make a call as to whether or not a given feature is economically viable to include in future versions.

Or would you rather that the new versions included a legacy feature tax in the price to pay some engineers, analysts, qa, localisation, managers etc to maintain that feature in all future releases?

Down vote away, but the OP did ask for an explanation.

AFACT wants ushers to confront pirates

bobbles31

Re: Why are they trying to make this the Ushers problem

Totally agree, ushers are there to...well...usher people to their seats for the performance.

Why do the only people making real money out of movies expect everyone else to police their terms and conditions.

Siri: Can you make a Raspberry Pi open a garage door?

bobbles31
Pint

Re: says:

Not Friday yet, but have a cheeky one on me, it's Christmas.

Second Higgs possibility pops up in CERN data

bobbles31

Re: Funny you should mention 'pantheon'

They are all small gods waiting for people to believe in them.

Report: Apple, Google, Microsoft join forces to buy Kodak patents

bobbles31

Re: An amicable agreement

It's a wonderful example of the prisoners dilema, if all the companies cooperated then they would all suffer minimal costs and could freely innovate. If one of them sets out to gain the patents then all would suffer substantial costs and innovation would be stifled.

I've always thought that the duration of a patent should be based on returns. Once a patent has returned the research and development costs and given the inventor a healthy return then patent protection no longer applies. This should apply particularly where a patent is considered a component of a bigger system.

Schmidt: Microsoft will never be as cool as the Gang of Four

bobbles31

Re: Rage on

To be fair to the original poster, I have heard the term big four used a lot when talking about companies but in tech circles or at least dev circles Gang of Four refers to a specific group of individuals and more commonly a specific book.

I guess the corporate GOF would rather appear more like wise gurus than the corporate pirates that they really are.

Humans becoming steadily STUPIDER, says brainiac boffin

bobbles31

I wonder if by "average citizen" he means, the subset of all Athenians that are not slaves and not the sum of all people that live and work in Athens. I believe this to be an important distinction because it is essentially like saying the average person at Cambridge University is genetically disposed to high intelligence (not counting all those people who clean the floors, cook food etc etc)

Rockstar ramps it up with Grand Theft Auto V reveal

bobbles31
Thumb Up

I was a rabid GTA fan boy but IV put pay to that. It's not that the game was bad but it wasn't true to the GTA lineage of bigger badder and more ridiculous. Bailing a jeep out of the back of a cargo jet however, is pure GTA! Soon as I have confirmation that the annoying, friends phoning you up to whine mechanic is gone, I will put in my preorder.

Of course, I might be willing to put up with incessant friend nagging if the combine harvester mission gets included again.

Apple is granted a patent on the rectangle. No, really

bobbles31

Re: Email the Judge in the Samsung case.....

Portable display device, yeah good luck defending that one. I got a digital picture frame that shape for Christmas in 2003.

Firm-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's tax dodge profit shift? Totally legit

bobbles31

Re: We live in a world where there is choice

Your argument is only slightly flawed, Starbucks themselves are the very antithesis of your argument. They charge a premium for a product that is exactly the same as everyone else's. and yet, people pay the higher Starbucks price, why?

How high would a tax have to be before Starbucks stopped seeing a profit big enough to warrant having outlets in the UK? This is the point at which Starbucks would leave. Whilst there is a profit, there will be a company there to exploit it.

bobbles31
Coat

Re: Self-employed Milkmen, eh?

I'll take a stab at it,

Hmrc introduced IR35 which is supposed to apply the test of "on the balance of probabilities is the contractor actually a disguised employee". (The sheep in wolves clothing test)

They could by the same definition introduce a "on the balance of probabilities is the company just making that foreign payment in order to avoid tax". What I like to call the bunch of robbing bastards test. If they pass the test then the payment be treated as profit and not an expense.

Mines the one with the PCG membership in the pocket.

bobbles31
Pint

Re: Nonsense

You my friend make a very salient point. An import on ip is exactly what is needed. Corps have found a way to put a value on something that is tax free. IP is exactly what this is, for a company to take money out if the system (country) it has to be assigned as an expense of the company. Normally this would be assigned to something that had been imported but as you quite rightly point out all that has been imported is the IP. If import duty was assigned to the value of the IP that was extracted then everything would balance. The company can show as big a loss as it likes because it will have paid some form of tax on all of its expenditure.

Sock-wielding movie pirates go to prison

bobbles31
Coat

Re: The punishment is way too light

Up voted by me, I used to be an avid cinema goer, but have given this up nowadays in favour of on demand services. The biggest turn off to the cinema is not the people who love the sound of their own voice so much that they can't shut up for 2 hours, not the overpriced "refreshments", not the mortgage sized face value of tickets. It is the simple fact that on the balance of probabilities any film that a cinema is showing is nothing more than an overhyped over dramatic pile of special effect sequences shown in no particular order and generally for no particular reason.

Here's an idea, when the producers sit around deciding what film to make and how to go about it, rather than getting the worlds best marketing people and advertising executives in a room with a group of special effects technicians, maybe (and I know I am out on a limb here) you should start with a writer, and a plot, and maybe a script. The cinema "experience" is still one of the best forms of entertainment available it is just a shame that the actual content has sunk to a level akin to watching a porn film starring Jo Brand.

Mines the one with the frog pills in the pocket.

Apple must apologise for its surly apology on its website on Saturday

bobbles31

Re: I disagree

You can waste a courts time with rounded corners patent cases, you can bitch about the verdict to the press, he'll you can even call the judge names outside his own court if you like. But Judges get real funny when they issue an order and it doesn't get followed. People that don't do as they are told by a judge generally go to prison.

bobbles31

My guess is that they would go with the language of Europe, Esperanto.

Bond's Walther PPK goes digital: A civilized gun updated

bobbles31

Seriously though

I am curious, is this sort of thing a self generating Media frenzy or do the picture companies drip feed you ideas for stories to promote their films?

Why is 4G so expensive? Answer: The Post-Voice Era is coming

bobbles31

Your buddy accepted a sales call from some random stranger and got suckered.

Windows 8: Is Microsoft's new OS too odd to handle?

bobbles31

To be fair to him, he offered no opinion on whether or not sucking anything proffered by lee would be good or bad, only that he didn't want to. Which kind of makes his point.

The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

bobbles31

Not a hoarder so much

I do regularly clear out old kit so my collection these days only runs to a couple of boxes.

Although in my defence I do seem to cling to exotic items:

1 x Fujitsu Siemens stylistic st5031 tablet pc

1 x mpeg4 daughter board for long obsolete graphics cards.

1 x Commodore 64 with 1541 disk drive and 1501 printer

And my personal favourite

1 x Action Replay Cartridge mkiv for said Commodore 64

Copper-obsessed BT means UK misses out on ultrafast fibre gold

bobbles31

Re: Dark fibre?

IMHO we are reaching a sort of saturation point with tech. Most people get by with a tablet these days, whilst they certainly aren't a 640k 8bit machine they are also much much lower spec than a top of the range PC. My point is that the difference between what you could get and what you would actually use is getting wider and wider, I had virgins 40meg product about 4 years ago it was extortionate but I felt that As a heavy user I needed that bandwidth. Then I realised that in actuality I would rarely go over 10 meg in terms of what I actually used so I dropped my service down to that, no noticeable difference in service I merely stopped flattering myself that I needed that much bandwidth and accepted the fact that at 10 meg I could probably receive a file quicker than the source can pump it out.

Microsoft fast-tracks Windows 8 Service Pack updates

bobbles31

Re: Err...

So by the power of your money they should stop working because they have shipped code to a DVD printers?

Democrat candidate attacked by GOP for being stabby assassin ORC

bobbles31
Happy

Re: So...

You're right, those are naive assumptions.

It's time to burn the schedules and seize control of OUR TVs

bobbles31

Re: You can lead a viewer to VoD

Same here except if a film is just starting on a channel that carries ads I hit the record button go for a smoke and come back safe in the knowledge I have enough recorded time banked up that I can skip the adverts.

First full landing site and colour pictures back from Mars

bobbles31

I wouldn't know what to do with all the spare time.

BT bags MASSIVE £425m broadband rollout deal in Wales

bobbles31

Re: But...

The taxpayer does of course, a bit like the situation we have now but without leaking dividends for shareholders.

bobbles31

Re: I'm happy with that...

I guess we're all happy with that until the term "too big to fail" rears it's head. I am happy for an infrastructure monopoly, just not one that hoses down shareholders with money whilst claiming that they need state aid to do their business.

New lightest-ever material: Ideal power for electric car

bobbles31

Re: It's like...

I can't wait to get my custom nissan leaf with black dials and black switches with little black lights that light up black to let you know that you have done something.

Intel prunes SSD prices

bobbles31

I wonder if a sizeable drop in SSDs will hurt new machine sales. I used to buy a laptop every other year but last time I was due for a replacement instead of shelling out over a grand on a new laptop I spent about £500 on replacing my current laptops drives with an SSD and a hybrid. As a result I now have a 3 year old machine that is as (if not not more) responsive than a lot of modern laptops.

Disclosure: I primarily use VS 2010 for work which is very heavy on disk usage.

CERN catches a glimpse of Higgs-like boson

bobbles31
Coat

Am I the only layman that thinks that the LHC sounds like nothing more than a powerful brownian motion generator?

Expect someone to find hundreds of Higgs Bosons by plugging Atlas into a really hot cup of tea and subsequently being murdered for being a smart arse.

Mines the one with the book in the pocket that has the words Don't Panic written on it in large friendly letters.

Microsoft ejects DVD playback from Windows 8

bobbles31

Re: Microsoft are the bitches of Hollywood

That could be the case, or.........just maybe it is a correlation with the increasing popularity of laptops over desktops and even tablets over laptops that is leading to a market where an ever larger proportion of machines are sold with no media drive at all.

I mean what percentage of a target market needs to have no need of something before that feature is removed. Especially in the case where that feature costs real money in terms of a license?

Martha Lane Fox hits caps lock, yells at small biz websites

bobbles31

Whenever I read anything related to MLF I always end up rembering a quote from one of the pratchet books.

"the problem with stupid rich people is that they give them silly jobs for serious money."

Workers' comp covers sex-related injuries, judge rules

bobbles31

Re: What a strange decision.

It may well be the Hotels fault, but the woman was insured. So it is her insurance companies job to recover damages from the hotel or it's insurer.

I guess dropping something on your foot is potentially not as pyschologically damaging as having something fall on you unexpectedly whilst your mind is presumably in a busy and happy place.

Stray SMS leads to aborted landing

bobbles31

Re: Go arounds

That program confused the living poop out of me. I had been in Australia for 3 months, and was watching it about 6 months after I got back. I started watching it about 15 minutes in with no idea what it was about and was genuinely confused until I noticed that some of the dates for serving politicians were in the future.

Good though

'Perfect storm' drives electronics stores to EXTINCTION

bobbles31
Happy

Re: what I predict ...

Buy 'n' Large?

Larry vs Larry: Oracle and Google in courtroom smackdown

bobbles31

I think that the case is not based on the dispute that Java is free or not. It is based on the principle that Google have forked the Java source with no intention of returning their changes as a contribution to the ongoing Java effort. Effectively creating two Javas, Sun's and Googles.

Iirc the license allows for the forking of the code for personal use but not for ongoing commercial distribution as competing platform.

Effectively, oracles Own IP is being used as the basis for a competing product which oracle are saying is against the terms of the license under which the source code is made available.

Leisure Suit Larry set for second coming

bobbles31

Re: Meh

Did you stray here from the BBC comments section?

Sky News admits two counts of computer hacking

bobbles31

Re: Hmmmm

1) So far as I can tell, the only person guilty in the Wikileaks saga was the person that leaked the information. IIRC, Wikileaks didn't pay for the information so technically have no charges to answer.

2) Yes - though if I were on the Jury there I vote not guilty.

3) Yes

4) Not as such, but the leak should be.

5) Depends on how they come about them.

In almost all these cases there is a possible public interest defence, I guess that when you are faced with the moral dilemma of whether to break the law or not you should ask yourself very carefully, is this really an act that is being taken in the public interest. Or is it just something sensational that the public's insatiable appetite for the salacious would be interested in.

I fear that the Murdoch's empire for tat is more weighted towards the latter.

Considering some of the things that haven't been reported in the Tabloids that really are in the public interest I find myself not giving them the benefit of the doubt.

bobbles31

IMHO the only way that the public interest defence could possibly work is to treat it as exactly that. When the journo brings the evidence obtained illegally, bring the prosecution and test the evidence, the story, the outcome and present your arguments for a public interest defence. If the public (as represented by a jury) disagrees then justice will be seen to be done.

Of course, journalists would probably be a bit more cautious when using this form of defence and that is right and proper.

MPs should make this clear and from this point on that is the process.

Arizona bill makes it illegal to 'annoy or offend' online

bobbles31

Re: Loophole

If you can't see the dummy in the room, it's you.

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