Posts by Mike Moyle
781 posts • joined Thursday 8th February 2007 17:44 GMT
For what it's worth...
While I am not a fan of the color choices made -- and I *DO* maker my living as a graphic designer/illustrator -- I feel that I should point out that, if you take a couple of pieces of paper and block off the two totally unnecessary toxic-waste green bars on either side of the picture in this article, the visual effect of the UI is not as bad. Those bars appear to have been added for the sole purpose of making the whole illustration as eye-searing and unpleasant to look at as possible, in an attempt at biasing the viewer.
Propaganda is one thing, but SLOPPILY DONE propaganda is just totally unacceptable!.
So-o-o-o-o-o...
Does providing Comcast with a free neighborhood hotspot get me any additional capacity before I get tagged as "using more than my fair share" of network capacity and face the sudden but inevitable throttling...?
Does Comcast indemnify me against the MPAA/RIAA/federal/state/local law enforcement if someone uses my connection to upload/download movies, music, governmental secrets, or kiddy-smut...?
No...?
Thanks, Comcast... I think I'll pass!
Neptune...?
Doesn't Lir have the franchise up in that neighborhood...?
Unfortunately...
The current administration almost HAS to crack down on BC, et al.
The looney fringe on the far right -- which includes/controls many Republican Congress-critters -- keeps trying to paint Obama as a Commie.Muslim/Fascist/Pinko One-Worlder. One of the canards that pops up repeatedly is that he plans to eliminate the dollar and go with... I don't know... some U.N.-mandated world currency (They never actually seem to KNOW what he's going to replace the greenback with, just that it's going to be internationalist and un-American!).
That being the case, and independent of what he ACTUALLY may feel about such things, any sign of tolerance by the Feds for something that is, after all, INTENDED to be the exact sort of independent international virtual-currency that they fear will just feed into the Tea Partiers' paranoid fantasies and give them an excuse to tie even MORE members of the administration up testifying in interminable Congressional hearings.
Were I the suspicious and cynical sort of individual (Which, of course, I'm NOT! *a-HENH!*) I might actually suspect that their secret goal is to keep EVERY executive-branch employee permanently testifying before the various subcommittees in order to make sure that nothing gets accomplished for the rest of Obama's term.
Re:Re: Yup - Me too!
"OK I'll have a discount for buying by self-checkout."
Exactly! For THIS fifty-something, it's not an issue of not being able to figure out how to use a self-serve checkout; it's rather an issue of not WANTING to use one. I worked retail too many times in my life; my policy now is that, if I am expected to ring up and bag my own purchases, then I am damned well going to get an employee discount. If there's no automatic discount attached to the self-serve machine, then I want the full service that I'm paying full price for.
Re: Re: Note that difference *loan* (with interest) versus old car maker (2nd or 3rd) bailout.
@Ledswinger
"That's lefty speak that can be fairly translated as 'any cause not associated with my economically illiterate, luddite and socialist beliefs'."
Actually, I read it as a Libertarian "I've got mine; fuck you," anti-government, anti-tax-that doesn't-benefit-me-right-now screed.
...probably just goes to show that either: A) the inarticulate fringe at both ends of the political spectrum are almost indistinguishable, or; B) we all see the boogeyman that we expect to see.
Re: Over complex
"Even in a tape recorder or VHS it is always the magnetic tape that is moving, never the magnetic pick up head."
You COULD do the same with a tape player -- you'd just need a 200 foot long tape player and cartridge for the head to move across. I'm just guessing that THAT's the reason that they move the tape rather than the record/read head on those, but i'll admit that I could be wrong. By your argument, hard disk drives should fail after an hour or two of use because of all the travel that the read/write head has to do. By the standards of HDDs, a read head that moves laterally only, at a moderate speed -- say 3 inches in a second or two -- would likely be pretty robust.
Privacy rights
Here in the States this is, to the best of my knowledge, fairly settled law. If you are someplace where you expect people will see you, you HAVE no inherent right to privacy. In the past, courts have ruled that the documentary value of public photography outweighs individual privacy rights. To decide otherwise would mean that photographers shooting a public event would need to get signed releases from every person at the event; or shooting at the scene of a crime would require sign-off by the perpetrator on any photographs taken of him at the scene.
The exception to the "public places" rule comes if you go into an area where one normally WOULD have an expectation of privacy. You could, for example, take photographs of anyone on the sales floor in a clothing store (with the owner's permission, of curse, since this is private property), since this is not a place where a person could have a reasonable expectation of not being seen. You would NOT, however, be able to take photographs in the dressing rooms, since THERE, a person COULD reasonably have an expectation of privacy.
The short version, then, is that you would likely have no legal right to stop someone from looking at you or photographing you while they are wearing GoogleGoggles on the street or in a public park, or in any place where the property owner does not prohibit it, but the Glasses would have to be removed/disabled if the property owner required it or the wearer went into a place where a reasonable expectation of privacy would exist -- e.g. even if your local pub allowed them, you'd STILL have to take them off or turn them off when you went into the Gents'.
Downloadable capsule summaries of photographers' rights -- which should also cover wearers of GoogleGoggles -- for the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia are available at: http://digital-photography-school.com/photographers-rights-and-photography-privacy-advice
What level...?
Not that any prison is fun, but I'm assuming, since there was no violence nor threat of violence, that they'll be assigned to a minimum-security facility fir non-violent offenders. Even in these unenlightened United States we frequently keep the violent, likely-to-reoffend population separated from the ones that are most likely to be rehabilitated and successfully re-enter society. Surely the UK does the same...?
It's sad, sometimes...
I swear, my first thought was "bio-neural gel packs".
...I'm so ashamed...
Re: Re: valid assumption?
"Photoshop is the only one that has credible competition, and you could make a good case that for 90% of what the people using pirated PS copies are doing, they could do just as well with Gimp, which is free."
I'm actually going through this at work right now. I REALLY wanted to be able to recommend FOSS publishing software -- GIMP, Scribus, and Inkscape -- but,with the POSSIBLE exception of Scribus (which, admittedly, I've only dabbled with) they're just not ready for professional publishing.
The thing that keeps GIMP from being suitable for me, for example, is its lack of support for LAB or -- most critically -- CMYK colorspaces. Add to that the fact that the "roadmap" page lists high-end CMYK support as a low-priority item and I just don't see how I can recommend it.
OTOH. The way that I see it is that @ $50/month, it will take the department a bit over two years to pay Adobe the equivalent of the price of CS6 Design Standard edition. Thus, if we go cloudy with a subscription, that gives the FOSS teams two years to get their programs up to something that I feel may be worth reconsidering before we hit the break-even point and start losing money.
Re: Its just makes it more difficult for new talent to enter the industry
"I haven't looked, but do they allow short-term subscriptions that cost less than buying a boxed copy?"
Individual programs are available @ $20/month (annual subscription) or $30/month (no contract); quit at any time.
Re: See! I told you guys!!
"I wonder if there are brand equity people at Intel who are now seriously considering a rechristening of McAfee (the software company)."
Oh, I'm sure that they wouldn't be averse to smashing a bottle of champagne over this one's head, either, if given half a chance.
Re: @Esskay "you won't even notice the pixels"
"The Internet has done for porn what Justin Bieber has done for music."
Auto-tuned porn? The mind boggles.
Re: Eh?
"as for the story that started it all, yes, for SOME of us who have been there it is more than in bad taste."
There. Fixed that for you.
I WAS there... A couple of dollars' worth of various whole grains, a couple of packs of the day-old vegetables, a smoked turkey leg or two (the cheapest meat at the local grocery store) and some spices. Boil on Sunday until the grain is cooked through and the meat has fallen off the bones and the family eats for the rest of the week.
So if you're trying to pull the "You don't know what it's like..." argument, you can piss off right now; it's not working.
Now -- speaking for me, personally (the only one for whom I can legitimately speak) -- I applaud Lester for taking the plunge, for raising money for charity, and for documenting his experiences in a series of articles that were entertaining enough to keep a bunch of people -- who possibly haven't had to and <deity of choice> willing, never WILL have to live hat way -- reading, contributing to charity and possibly even thinking about the problem in real terms for the first time. Taking the step of thinking "What would I do if..." is the first step towards trying to solve the "if". I applaud Lester's sneaky, underhanded attempt to use entertaining anecdote and body-function humor (BTW, Lester -- How'd that all work out in the end? *Ba-BOOM!*) to lure people into taking that first step.
Obviously, YMMV, but it's YOUR milage, not mine and not necessarily anyone else's. Claiming to speak for "those of us who have been there" is as insulting (to some of us) as you accuse Lester of having been.
Re: Its not going to be a pretty sight.
"...when Etna finally breeches..."
"...when he finally Etnas his breeches" you mean?
As to your final option...
"Beam me up, Wernher..."
...would that be von Braun or Heisenberg...?
Not that anyone at ICANN asked me...
...but it seems obvious that anyone who is a participant in a given field should NOT be allowed to own the TLD for that field -- allowing this makes them, effectively, a gatekeeper for their competitors. It may not matter at this moment, with the amount of scrutiny that the new gold rush is garnering, but further on down the road I could see a gradual shift to "setting the fox to guard the henhouse"-mode happening.
Re: Anti trust
No, you're not the only one -- While reading the article, I was hearing the Ghost of Microsofts Past whispering "Embrace, extend, and extinguisah..."
Re: They make...
The point that people seem to be missing re: the Quakers and many other civil-disobedience actors is that they understood and accepted the risks that their actions entailed, they took their day in court and they took their punishment standing up and facing their accusers. I dislike speaking ill of the dead but the simple fact is that, when push came to shove, rather than face his accusers and ARGUE his point Swartz punted.
Re: Thing is
"You can be a soap dodging techie but you catch more flies with honey than vinegar"
But you can catch even more with a pound of shit...
Re: So who will run the servers in the various 'clouds'?
I believe that the ones who actually still know how the machines work are called "Morlocks".
Is Chief Judge Davis new to that post...?
...Because CLEARLY he doesn't know how the system works down in that neck of the woods!
Re: Ya think?
"Does it really take a 155 page report to know this guy is a liar?"
No, but it may take a 155-page document to lay out the facts and reasoning behind the decision in sufficient detail to close off as many vectors as possible for appeal to a higher court and possible overturn of the judge's decision. In learning argumentation, lawyers are trained to build a pyramid one brick at a time and to explicitly reference each brick. Not doing so can lead to appeals based on claims of "unwarranted assumptions" and "unsupported conclusions".
Re: Attosecond
This prefix also explains certain practices at jobs that I've held: The "AttoBoy" is now defined as the amount of reward one earns for going above and beyond to get the job done under nearly impossible constraints.
I was going to use the "Joke Alert" icon but, sadly, it isn't really...
Re: don't break the small laws
@ James O'Shea
Actually, the one that always springs to mind for me happened locally some years ago. A state police officer, patrolling his stretch of the interstate highway one hot lazy summer day, saw a guy driving a large rental truck while wearing earphones. He pulled the truck over and was just going to let the guy go with a warning... But, as he was standing near the truck, he smelled a sweet, sort of... herbal... aroma coming out of the box. Asking for and receiving (grudging) permission, he opened the back of the truck and found it PACKED with trash bags full of smoking herb -- which would have made it to market if not for a pair of earphones being worn at the wrong time.
Re: List your devices
@ AC 13:49 GMT
"there's not one chance in a thousand that I could remember each and every gadget"
That may be true for you -- personally, I think that I'D remember that I was carrying a SECOND laptop AND that extra hard drive... That level of forgetfulness seems beyond me. He could have probably got away with forgetting or "forgetting" the extra SIM card, but forgetting the extra computer just seems unrealistic to me.
Basic rule of thumb: If you're going to break a BIG law, make sure NEVER to break any of the SMALL ones while doing so, because THOSE are the ones that will get you pulled aside in the first place. (Not that I would actually know anything about breaking any laws... *A-HENH*!)
Maybe it's just me...
...but it seems like there's an easy solution to getting industry to use best security practices: Just make it impossible for them to collect "damages" in legal cases involving computer intrusion, while allowing THEIR customers to collect damages from THEM for downtime/identity theft, etc. as a result from that intrusion.
Making the cost of not securing their systems an INternal cost, rather than an EXternality, would -- to paraphrase Samuel Johnson -- "concentrate their minds wonderfully."
Redaction...?
Based on this one article, it sounds like he didn't redact any of the customers' information before sending the data to Gawker to publish. That's making a lot of third parties pay in aggravation (and the possibility of identity theft, etc.) for their ISP's failure. Frankly, AT&T's embarrassment is of zero importance to me -- punishing users for their choice of connectivity vendor strikes me as being more than a bit of a dick.
He could have -- relatively easily, I'm sure -- redacted the information in such a way that Gawker or some other news outlet could have presented it to ATT, asking for confirmation that it was theirs and asking if they were aware of the flaw in their security, without leaving the users hanging in the wind.
Also, there is no mention of how LONG he waited for ATT to fix the flaw before going past them for the publicity Three days...? A week...? Three months...? This has bearing, I think, on whether his actual goal was giving ATT a genuinely reasonable amount of time to verify the problem, fix the code, test the fix, and roll it out, or whether it was just to cover his ass with the "Well, I TOLD them and they did NOTHING so I HA-A-A-A-AD to go over their heads" defense.
Re: sick of it
@ Obviously!
"Why is it the same old story day in and day out?"
Just to piss you off...
...Obviously!
Re: shock
Before Ahmedinejad can win -- by a landslide or otherwise -- they'll need to change the constitution, which currently limits a president to two terms.
Okay...So howzabout...
If all the vertical turbines will slow the wind downstream from them, that means that there will be less convective cooling of those downstream areas, raising the temperatures locally.
Therefore,we build HORIZONTAL turbines to catch the resulting updrafts.
PROBLEM SOLVED!
Take THAT, fancy Harvard-scientist-types!
Re: At 16, he can drive......
"But at 16, he's legal to drive? And vote. And die for his country...."
No. I don't know of any state that allows voting at 16.
...And under 18 requires parents' signed consent to enlist in the military.
...And most states that allow driving at 16 allow it as a restricted license -- no driving between 11 PM and 6 AM, say; license valid only in the issuing state; no passengers except an adult carrying a valid driver's license, etc. Few states (if any -- I haven't checked the relevant statutes everywhere) give unrestricted licenses to 16 year-olds.
Age of Consent laws
You may think that the U.S.'s age of consent laws are "absurdly low", but one reason for them is to enforce anti-predation laws. Equal treatment under the law means that you (technically) aren't allowed to say "members of THIS group are allowed to do 'x', but members of THAT group are not." True, this leads to teen-aged sexters being accused of child pornography, but it also leads to priests and other authority figures being sent down for sexual abuse of a minor.
So... you know... As with most laws;kind of a mixed bag.
@ Chris007 -- Re: Translation
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/executiveorders.asp
"First of all, the number of executive orders issued by President Obama is grossly exaggerated here. By our count, as of 28 September 2012 the total number of executive orders issued by President Obama was 138, not 923. Moreover, compared to President Obama's predecessors in the White House, this is not an unusually large number of orders for a modern president: President George W. Bush issued 291 executive orders during his eight years in office, while President Bill Clinton issued 364 such orders over the same span of time.
"The listing of numbers of executive orders issued during the terms of modern presidents included in one of the examples above also bears no resemblance to reality."
Obama's record on executive orders -- his "whims", as you would have it -- is well below such "tyrants"as Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt.
...Watch a lot of Fox News, do you...?
@ Mark
With trademark infringement, I think that the point is "Where does it start causing confusion?"
Take your "jPhone" for instance: As long as the "j" was accentuated -- ALWAYS accentuated -- so that there was NO way that a cursory glance would not mistake it for an "i" -- a different font, colored a bright, screaming red where the rest of the logo is turquoise, the tail of the 'j' is made longer than usual... the possibilities are endless -- it might pass the "not likely to cause confusion in the general public" smell test.On the other hand, making the logo in a similar font to Apple's, in the same all-black, with the tail of the "j" shortened or otherwise de-emphasized (which is,itself,another judgement call -- when is something "too much"?) to lessen the difference between a "j"and an "i" then a case can be made that it DOESN'T pass that test.
xPhone, if made suitably visually distinctive, might pass the test... it might not. aPhone, all the rest... same thing -- maybe maybe not. Picking theone letter that MOST CLOSELY resembles the one that differentiates an "iPhone" from a "phone", however,is likely to be a bit whiffy on the smell-test
The real question,though,is -- in the case of someone wanting to enter a market that ALREADY has a competitor selling a well-known and popular product with an identifiable name -- why would one WANT to use a similar-sounding/similar-looking name if they're NOT hoping to ride on the coattails of that other product in the public mind? Remember that the term"iPhone" was not in common usage when Apple named their product. Once they DID bring the term into common usage, however, it became the responsibility of companies following on from there NOT to attempt to infringe -- just the same as it would be their responsibility not to name their mobile phone the "Galazy S", or the "Blackbury", or any number of OTHER "trivial variations to the generic term" that resemble products already on the market.
Interestingly -- to me, at least -- is; that, if I read aright, Apple maintains the sole right to the name iPhone for "computing devices", just not cellphones. Does this mean that the Brazilian company has to cripple their (otherwise,non-infringing) telephone so that it can't access the Google store or run non-phone applications? It seems to me that a case could be made that allowing it to run non-telephony-related apps would put it dangerously close to, if not INTO, the area of a "computing device".
"I can hear you fine...
"...How's it coming through at YOUR end?"
Trade war will never happen but, on the other hand...
... If it meant that I could stop paying hundreds every month for National Grid's (lack of) service here in the U.S., then, y'know... it might not be so bad!
(Mine's the one with the gas bill that I've been afraid to open in the pocket -- We've had damn' few days in the past month that it ever got above freezing!)
Re: says
I was thinking Willy Ley, myself -- but, yes, they would be proud. This is what a space-plane is SUPPOSED to look like!
Even if the "warhead" turns out to be a dud...
I suspect that this still comes under the category of "blackmail". Anon had best hope that they actually ARE as clever and unfindable as they think they are. They genuinely seem to be trying to go from "minor annoyance that's not worth going after" to "butt that wants kicking".
Re: So the French courts are ordering Twitter to write code now?!??!
...or as a Jewish friend of mine used to say, "If someone's going to be an anti-Semite, I just wish that they would be anti-ALL-Semites, instead of just hating MY family!"
Re: F**k Opera
Nope. Definitely not in the standard version, and I generally avoid "beta" anything. When/if they roll it out to the "real" one, I'll try it out. Until then, if it's only available in beta, my point stands.
Re: F**k Opera
" 'As long as Opera is the only browser on mobile devices that automatically rewraps text when zoomed in'
"It isn't. Firefox Mobile does it."
Interesting. Because I've got Firefox for Android v.18.0 on my phone and tablet (Android 2.3.5 and 4.0.4, respectively) and it doesn't do it and doesn't give me that even as an option. Is there a newer version, or another FF that Google Whatsit isn't showing me?
Maybe I'm missing something...
... but if "cameras with outward-facing infrared lights." (the specific target of the device, as noted in the article) rely on the reflection of those infrared lights from an object (for focusing, visibility or whatever), wouldn't having an IR filter on the camera kind of defeat the purpose? I mean, it seems to me that if you're using IR lighting on your system, filtering out IR is probably the LAST thing that you want to do.
Now, if you're saying that this wouldn't work on cameras that specifically don't use IR illumination/reception and block thoise frequencies, I would suspect that you were right -- but that's not the target that they were apparently aiming at.
Or what am I missing?
Re: F**k Opera
Um... no.
As long as Opera is the only browser on mobile devices that automatically rewraps text when zoomed in so the user doesn't have to scroll back and forth AS WELL AS up and down to read a story, then f**k the rest of them.
Now, I'm sure that someone will come up with the "...but there's a plug-in for Firefox that does that..." whine.
F**k that, too. I don't really have the time nor the interest to hunt for add-ons that give me something that I can get out of the box elsewhere. A browser is a commodity product. I prefer a commodity that works the way that I want it to from Day 1 without requiring my fiddling with it. YMMV
Re: "You clearly know less than you ought to if you want to be taken seriously in this discussion."
@ David Hallett
The problem with your argument, as I see it, is that it is based on the premise that "Anything not physically impossible is morally permissible." The fact that information CAN, as you say, be copied infinitely does not imply that it SHOULD be. I don't know what you do for a living but are you okay with your employer using your services without pay? Certainly, he *CAN* do it, but is it morally acceptable and -- more importantly -- is it PERSONALLY acceptable to YOU? If that theft of services is NOT morally acceptable to you, then isn't it EQUALLY morally unacceptable for ANYONE who wishes to possess the result of another person's labor to take it without recompense to the creator?
If I'm missing the point of your argument -- that your point is NOT that morality isn't, and shouldn't be, a factor in a business transaction -- then please state it more clearly.
Re: Re: "What happens when someone deletes your metadata?"
"and therein lies the problem. Copying is not stealing ss it doesn't necessarily that you're handling stolen goods."
Basically, it seems to me that the distinction rests on whether you accept that (as stated in the article) "The requested judge-led review hinges on the fact that in UK and European law, as well as an international treaty, copyright is aproperty right." (Emphasis, mine.)
If you don't accept that, then the premise that "(c)opying is not stealing" makes sense to you. (Whether it will make sense to a judge or jury is left as an experiment for the reader.)
If you DO accept the premise, however, then it becomes clear that any action which takes away the creator/copyright owner/property owner's right to say what use -- IF ANY -- may be made of his property and for what recompense to himself is theft of his property rights. (Alternatively, it is -- at the very least -- theft of services; i.e., using the result of his labor without recompense. Or doesn't the U.K. have that one?)
(And, yes; I know that the above isn't likely to convince the "copying is not stealing" brigade of anything , but hope springs eternal...)
The floggings will CONTINUE until morale IMPROVES!
"Management has to focus immediately on boosting employee morale by inspiring a customer-centric culture of high productivity, cost leadership and efficient innovation."
Translation.:Make the drones work harder for less money and, if they complain, off-shore it all.
"A prudent course of action ... would require the Company to aggressively right-size the business and focus on generating significant amounts of cash."
Translation: Give us all the money NOW! NOW!! NOWNOWNOW!!!
"It certainly doesn’t sound as ridiculous as sending Bruce Willis up there."
That rather depends on how HARD we throw him at it, doesn't it?
Re: Sound steganography
"Sound steganography ...is still steganography, no chance for a neologism here ;-("
"Sonic Inscrutabledriver"?
