Posts by Name

Re: ID cards and the Irish

Except, of course, immigrants will be the first to be given ID cards starting from next year. Still, never let the facts get in the way of a good Daily Mail rant.

@All it does is put the pollution back to the power station

For your information, assuming the coal mine is right next to the power station so no transport problems, the efficiency of a coal fired power station (Joules of electricity divided by Joules of heat from burned coal) is rarely more than 40%. One power station that I visited had a 39% efficiency, but when the electricity consumption of the coal crushers, cooling pumps etc was accounted for, efficiency was only 33%. This is related to the second law of thermodynamics - more useful work can be obtained from a certain number of Joules of heat if that heat is available at a higher temperature. The materials of the turbine blades and things like that limit the temperature that they can use and therefore the efficiency. That is why they need those big cooling towers, or a lake - there is a lot of low-grade heat to get rid of, the other 67%. In sensible countries, the cooling water is distributed to radiators in people's houses.

IP Addresses for the RBN

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=327367&cid=20971557

Slashdot had a story about this. The linked comment is a complete list of the IP ranges turned into a list of iptables commands.

Younglings - no alternative for p2p

In many parts of the world their is no alternative for p2p.

Especially for people with very specific (non-global or in their own region available) tastes in music or fansubbed asian spoken cartoons.

@ Chris

Yes I get all that but what's the point? I'm in a cafe and you have the wep key to my network which is at unknown location. What use is that to you? And how does that then compromise my laptop? I'm sitting in a cafe using an unencrypted wireless connection. You don't need to compromise my WEP key to start firing exploits at me or sniffing my traffic.

An interesting discusion of this sort of thing

Read this online book, it explores the usefulness of various energy sources:

http://www.withouthotair.com/

Also Herbys, about what's wrong with the uranium mine, google:

"in situ leaching", and then imagine that your drinking water was coming from a well.

Movie vs Game argument

Manhunt has been effectively 'banned' twice, and I'm very thankful too.

A quick retort to the aforementioned argument that "if a movie like hostel can get the all clear, why can't a game?"

I would argue that a movie you only likely watch once, and that seen by a 10 year old child would cause nightmares, but hopefully not be too damaging, not that they should have got to see the movie in the first place. A game however would be played many times over through different levels, with the manhunt game also different categories (read: severity) of killing and culling-styles. You have to draw the line somewhere, and I think manhunt is a perfect example of the way in which society can try make plenty of cash from dodgy movies and games, thankfully Britain's not quite as corrupt as I once thought, and manhunt will permanently remained banned for sale in the UK, although unfortuantely downloadable via torrents I notice.

Title

"If the level of patent protection related to the cost of developing the 'invention' then some sanity would prevail."

I have said for a long time patents should be filed with a claimed value based on the costs and effort the patentee expended + some extra incentive. So for example big pharma would be filing multi-million dollar patents and patents for trivial inventions would not be worth filing. The claimed value would be open to legal challenge to keep it honest.

The patentee would be required to sell full non-exclusive rights to the patent to anyone willing to pay the claimed value and would be allowed to make any other kind of licensing or partial rights deal he could get.

The patent system is entirely man made and was intended to be for the benefit of mankind not inventors or companies or patent lawyers. In today's world it is not fit for purpose and needs a major overhaul.

Yawn

F1 so over hyped, over regulated, over priced but no over taking. Such a bore.

Mosley would prefer to have them racing diesel transit vans, safer, greener and most importantly more space for advertising.

More effective

Suicide is by far the most effective method of reducing your carbon footprint.

So perhaps the DVLA employees responsible for this report should make a real contribution towards saving the planet and top themselves. Wouldn't do the gene pool any harm either.

hmm

From the linked (blocked?) site

"PopularTechnology.net—Why Adblock is bad for the "free" Internet

Adblock effectively robs these free sites of their revenue. If Internet Explorer came with a feature such as Adblock, you would effectively wipe out thousands of websites, maybe more. These are the same free sites users of Adblock frequently visit. The irony is how this is self-defeating."

An alternative interpretation is that Adblock stops these sites robbing advertisers of their cash.

For a user that isn't going to look at site adverts and isn't going to click on them then who is ripping off who when I site gets revenue for serving them anyway?

Title

By Fluffykins

"Why is the right to conclusively prove I am who I say I am (or as conclusively as possible at the moment) an erosion of civil liberty?"

How dumb can you get. If someone can be bothered to take another sample analyse it and match it against a database it proves that (barring a number of possible errors) you are the same body that gave a sample when the database was created.

Is that who you think you are, an entry in a DNA database?

Identifying a body as the same as one previously identified is more accurately and much more efficiently done with a photograph (and/or iris scan and finger prints).

DNA is *only* useful for identifying traces left by a body with the body that left them and because we all shed DNA everywhere is fraught with danger (for the innocent) that traces of our DNA shed (or planted) at some location will be used to incorrectly associate our bodies with something that happened at that location.

DNA is easily collected and easily replicated. If DNA evidence from crime scenes was widely collected and used crims would start spraying their workplaces with DNA collected from other people. The reality is useful DNA samples are rarely obtained from crime scenes and the ones that are do not often identify the criminal.

Outraged?

I don't think that many Americans will be offended by this. The fact that there are so many people here uptight enough to become outraged over something such as this makes me wonder why I've even stayed in this country for so long, however.

Re: Another one that won't be buying it

Next time you get a free moment at work, walk down to your marketting department (or whatever they're calling themselves - ours term themselves "Company Creative Vision Department") and see the calibre of people that pursue a career in semi-sales. Then you'll see the kind of person who would sign this off.

RE: Shes not...

And your prejudice is sadly justified by just this kind of case. As, I'm sad to suggest, will be many many many other peoples likely less (I dare to give credit in hope) ironic prejudices.

The sooner this is stopped (why do they even have "celebrity prisons" ... that is surely missing the point all together ?) the sooner people will stop claiming discrimination.

Oh, sorry, I forgot, this is discrimination, but it's positive right so that's OK ?

Only in America

If Google wasn't a billion dollar company this lawsuit wouldn't even have happened. It's all about the money and AA trying to make a quick buck.

For more interesting news visit www.amusingyou.com/news.htm

I'd be willing to.. switch ISP!

If my ISP tries to charge me or the BBC for bandwidth we have both already paid for, then I'll switch to a better ISP. Simple really!

poor reporter

Burke Hansen: Your reporting is very poor, and your use of obscenities only makes it worse. You write as if you are 14 years old and still in school. If you want to be taken seriously, you should write more professionally.

Title

Gees CDs spin faster *reading* inner tracks than they do reading outer tracks. The drives change the disc rpm to maintain a constant linear velocity at the read head.

As for lost fingers, well if you try hard enough a CD can get about 1/4 way through a bit of 2 by 4. http://homepages.newnet.co.uk/martynarnold/aol.htm

Barclays

To be fair to Protx, Barclays Merchant Services themselves gave us conflicting implementation dates for 3D Secure. Initially they told us July 2007. Now they're saying March 2008.

I think the banking industry in general has handled the introduction of 3D Secure appallingly. Customers haven't been informed about it and so they either panic and think it's a phishing scam or blame the retailer and accuse us of having stupid unfriendly websites. Chip and Pin was trailed all over the place for months beforehand, 3D Secure is being introduced piecemeal.

Sheesh

I am not a programmer. Yet I've used Linux, on the desktop, for the last 10 years. My (now) 16-year-old daughter has used it for the last five. The vast majority of Mr. Vance's complaints (the ones that are not outright laughable) are, by and large, out of the hands of the "Linux community." Mr. Vance, you want drivers? Ask the hardware manufacturers where they are. Or ask them to simply supply APIs so that others can write them. Closed and proprietary drivers...how is that the fault of Linux users?

Multimedia support. Hmmm. My Linux boxes do all DRM-less multimedia just fine. Sure, maybe that's because I had to pay extra for a distro that covers those licenses (or maybe it's because I just downloaded the DLLs off-shore...I'm not sayin'). Still, we're back to proprietary codecs, encumbered by out-of-control patent laws. Again, how is that the fault of Linux users?

Finally, power management support. Okay, I'll give you that one. But you know, my desktop boxes don't give a hoot about that. I don't see it as being a deal-breaker.

All in all, this article seems to be mostly non-technical FUD, from a non-technical writer. I hate to use the "S" word...but is it getting a bit shilly in here?

Title

I have been directed to roads which have been permanently closed, I have also driven roads the GPS didn't (yet) know about.

From a UK perspective I think it is crazy that more than one organisation is doing exactly the same (not very good) job of digitising road network maps. Accurate and up to date digital maps of our road network should be provided by the government as a public service.

They are the ones that built the road network and keep hacking around with it, who better to keep accurate information on it. We paid for it, is it so unreasonable to expect a supplier to provide accurate documentation with their product?

Re: To be fair...

Mo, Protx homepage, left hand side - VSP Monitor. OK, so it doesn't say "Status page" but it's not exactly hidden either.

Otherwise, agree with you entirely. This was a massive f up of the highest order.

Title

Cough:::: Torrents, One Click Hosters, Usenet, ::::::Cough, Video Converts, COUGH::::::COUGH:::

What a minute..

Hang on. You mean AdCenter wasn't a joke? That was a serious attempt at breaking into a new market? Woah..... I want some of what Ballmer's been smoking.

Indoctrination

This is just the biometric security industry priming kids to accept that gathering biometric data is a normal everyday activity so that when they grow up they won't object to having to give a DNA sample every time they want to buy a newspaper from the corner shop.

Wrong way round

The problem with Choose and Book, as with most of the NPFIT, is that it's a solution in search of a problem. There was very little wrong with the previous referral system, the problem was with the waiting list once you got referred. The Government though is obsessed with choice and IT. I don't want a choice of five hospitals and fifteen consultants, I want to be treated by a competent doctor, in a local hospital and after as short a waiting period as possible.

Bit pointless

There have been cars run in Britain using hydrogen peroxide fuelled rocket motors. Hydrogen peroxide passing over a catalyst produces superheated steam.

Don't know what speeds have been achieved in Britain but such cars have achieved over 400 mph in the States.

Are these not steam powered cars?

Is this car going to set a record for steam powered cars with a boiler? Will there be a separate record for steam powered cars with a boiler and piston rather than turbine 'engines'?

Can I set a landspeed record for a petrol powered car with a specific number plate? I think I already did.....

The cat already left the bag

"... the reason the initial iPlayer product will be restricted to Windows is simply down to the availability of suitable DRM controls; the BBC can't just fire off content across the internet without considering the artists, producers, musicians, presenters, technicians etc etc who have some creative interest in the stuff."

Sure, in the same way they can't just fire off content across the ether to be picked up by anyone in the area I suppose.

Careful

He is right about operating systems being crap. You can't just take an application, it's data and configuration and plonk it on a machine and say run here, then pick it up and plonk it on another machine to run tomorrow.

That's why virtualisation is so attractive you can pick up a virtual machine with its operating system, application, data and all the configuration and crap and plonk it on this or that physical machine to run.

Of course an operating system can be made meaner and leaner if it only has one application to run which would save on the horrid overhead of multiple bloated operating systems in multiple virtual machines on the same physical machine.

However, if he is advocating writing or re-writing operating systems then why not write one properly in the first place so you can easily move complete configured working applications between machines and do away with the problems which make virtualisation attractive?

VMware's products are there to work around problems with OSes and applications. If you are going to start re-writing then maybe you should be trying to fix the problems not to make the work around more efficient.

Yes it is that difficult

"Is it really that difficult to have the responsibility to not have an alcoholic drink if you're driving?"

Yes, the yoofs of today have been raised in a land where the government seeks to assume responsibility for everything. It is hardly surprising they have no sense of personal responsibility and act accordingly.

Yeah, $3.00 words...

for $3.00 minds, Jesse. If anything, these apparently difficult words are compact ways of telling things. Medicine carries a lot of Greek and Latin terms, deal with it. May I should rant about so many computer science terms being english terms. I guess you would be similarly bothered were the medical terms to be written in Chinese or Swahili.

Of course, the article explaining the terms won't ease your misgivings about it, will it? Next time you find one of those unpronounceable words, ask for its meaning.

A parting shot: it happens the patient wasn't "fucked" because he bled green (at least, not this time) it was a side effect of the medication he was taking. Remove the medication, remove the symptom (oh, another confusing Greek word!)

Please, grow up a bit.

The highly-talented heiress

Highly-talented?

Like your typical modern celebrity who is famous for being famous I can't say I have noticed she has a talent for anything (shopping maybe)?

Just leave it

They just can't resist mucking about with things can they? All we want is decent, straightforward pricing. Their online billing is still not showing anything after May 31st so we still can't check how they're charging us for internet access.

Reg, please be more careful

When Garlik's so-called identity theft prevention scheme starts producing results that make the slightest bit of sense vis-á-vis the results, then I might take them a bit more seriously. However, as the system is only slightly better than entering your name into google and then scraping the first three pages of results, I will continue to get my advice from genuine security experts.

Antigua should learn from Canada's mistakes

Antigua is doing the right thing here. The USA does not care if you are "right" and they do not honour treaties or Free Trade agreements that do not fall in their favour. Canada has had a long history of trade disputes with the USA, most recently over softwood lumber, and the USA lost every court case and even lost in the NAFTA panel (which is dominated by US judges), and yet they refused to remove their illegal trade actions. Unfortunately for Canada, we elected a spineless Conservative government who caved into ALL US demands immediately after being elected and our lumber industry paid for it with tens of thousands of jobs and a cap on how much we are allowed to export to the US. Antigua should definitely stick to its guns and turn the screws on the Americans, anything else just wont work.

I seem to remember...

a time when Google's uncluttered interface and fast load times used to be a major selling point over Yahoo, Altavista and so on.

First....

First they came for the immigrants ....

Thanks Branson

So, since Virgin took control of NTL I've lost all the Sky channels, my broadband's gone up by £2/month and now their cutting the speed I can expect without bothering to tell me about it. And here was me thinking it couldn't be any worse than NTL.

Inaccurate

Warwick and Stratford District Councils aren't piloting internet voting, they're using machines to count ballot papers.

Con

This is such a con. The only reason for barring these services is to protect their own revenue. And without a definitive list of banned services or the methods by which they determine what services you are using some people are going to be in for a nasty shock when they get their bills. I don't know how the mobile operators are allowed to get away with such unfair and protectionist practices.

Minister in Sci-Fi land again

From the way the BBC article is written it certainly seems the minister favours some kind of GPS satellite tracking system which would suggest that he's yet another Government minister who has got the whole thing back to front and thinks the satellite does the tracking rather than the receiver figuring out where it is relative to the satellites.

If you're going to get any useful realtime data back from the tracking device it'll need some kind of transmitter - presumably a mobile phone type device. Which makes the device quite bulky and likely to annoy and confuse the already confused dementia sufferer.