Posts by Just Thinking

Their choice

A web host, like any other business, has a right to choose who they do business with. If they don't want to get involved in other peoples' battles that is up to them.

In that case

Surely this should have been tried as a conspiracy? Then they could have done his friends too.

No

They sell it at a profit AND they want profit from the software licence fees.

Not completely

If you take out the comments and blank lines (for those of you that use them) the number of lines of code is going to give you an idea of the order of magnitude of the amount of code. Or at least, if you format code so as to be ten times "bigger" than typical code it will be obvious from a quick glance.

Not perfect but not completely useless. 10 lines of code or 10,000 lines of code are definitely different.

Information is choice

I don't know anybody who would prefer to be subsisting as a hunter gatherer, rather than having the benefits of living in a modern society. That doesn't mean having to adopt western attitudes, give up your culture, or anything else.

Who has the right to decide that these people shouldn't have TV, or that they wouldn't find a mobile phone quite handy just like you do? TVs and phones aren't specifically western they are just modern (probably designed and made in the east). Making sure Sky isn't the only channel is a separate issue.

Probably these charities are genuinely trying to preserve tribal cultures, but you can't do that just be putting people in a time bubble.

Only at night

The moon is only up in the sky at night. During the day the moon is below the sourthern hemispere, so it is much lower than Everest.

Not difficult

So what, there are roughly 1000 matches to schedule. And a moderately large database of constraints determining which events can't take place on the same day, etc.

Not that difficult for a computer to solve.

There will be bugs in the constraints, and slight changes from year to year - they can be identified by manual checking, but the list can be fixed by running the program again. If the program is smart, it can minimise the changes in the new list.

The problem here seems to be that some guy is trying to do it in his head, in a slightly disorganised way (eg, asking for the policing constraints after producing the list rather than before).

Nothing in the article suggests this is anything more than simple data creation. The fact that they are going about it in a really inefficient manner doesn't suddenly make the list a work of art.

Alternative interpretation

When you change from selling albums to selling tracks, two things are likely to happen. Unit sales will go up (because the item is cheaper) and revenue will go down (because most people only buy the best tracks).

Both these effects are predictable, and the fact they have happened tells us nothing either way about piracy.

Switching from tangible CDs to MP3s also makes the whole process of buying music less exciting. When I was young I could afford one album a month, so I thought very carefully about which one I would buy, and scoured the shops to try to find the best price.

Paying the price of a coke for an MP3 you've heard a thousand times on the radio isn't the same. Maybe some people have just stopped bothering. It isn't as if there aren't plenty of other things to spend your money on these days.

I'm not saying that piracy has had no effect, but falling revenues alone tell you nothing.

Broken analogy

It is more like the police having a warrant to search your caravan and asking you were it is parked. How do you prove you don't own a caravan?

Only applies to the original file

By the time you have colour corrected the image, cropped and rescaled it, placed it on a page with other graphics, then resaved the whole page as a halftoned bitmap in an entirely different format - where exactly is the extra info the camera added?

But...

How does texting make a difference to an illiterate Muslim?

I remember

I remember trying the freezing technique, back in my home brewing days. Works OK, if you decrease the hops (otherwise it is very bitter). And a lot safer than using a pressure cooker and a length of plastic tubing to ... well that's another story. (Don't try that at home)

Ultimately I didn't see the point. You can get to 12%+ using ordinary wine yeast. If you enjor beer, why would you want to drink a brew so strong that you are unconscious before you have finished your first pint?

Or

I rather like the term FOSSer.

I can never remember

whether it is an s or a c in lisence either

3, I would guess

'nuff said

Not a crime?

This case was basically copyright infringement, AFAICT, which is a civil offence and therefore nothing to do with the Police.

Dressing it up as fraud to give the Police an excuse to investigate it was outrageous, and a reckless waste of public money.

Pirate sites and those who use them are not committing fraud or theft. They are potentially damaging the profits of the record companies, and it is down to the record companies to sue them to recover the damages.

"So let me ask our commentators, do you really want the Police only to investigate crimes that they know they can solve and prosecute successfully up front? Would we be having this discussion if they had succeeded. Or perhaps you all believe illegal downloading is ok."

Lets start by saying that the Police should only investigate crimes, and then narrow it down from there. This was never a crime. And illegal (ie criminal) downloading doesn't exist, although copyright infringement may be a civil offence.

You always lose

So the owner might (possibly) get the car back, but in what state? Did the new owner have it serviced regularly? What is the resale value of a recovered stolen car? How much will it cost you to insure a car of unknown history?

Getting your car nicked is always going to be bad news, but geting a property nicked ... multiply by 100.

Under insurance

If you insure a 350K building for 200K, you don't get 200K if it burns to the ground. You were under insured (misrepresented the risk to the insurance co) so you would be lucky to get pro-rata, ie a bit over 100K.

Ironing

Surely the biggest waste of time in human history? If nobody had ever thought up the idea of ironing clothes, who would miss it?

Besides iron-on stuff never works.

I'm a sleb

Why on earth would it be illegal to possess a copy of a video clip of someone pretending to chop their dick off? However realistic it might be.

Extreme poor taste, probably very shocking to watch (I appear to be the only person on the here who hasn't seen it, and I can't say I would want to). But illegal? With potential jail time? How did we get here?

Meanwhile, coercing some Z-list sleb into eating a kangaroo's testicles ... well that's considered prime time family entertainment.

A bit strong

I agree that they should stop charging when the competition closes. But I am not sure it would class as extortion.

Valves are great

I grew up when "tranny" meant "radio", but older TV sets still used valves. Fixing a broken telly was a matter of looking which valve wasn't lighting up and nipping down to the electronics surplus shop to replace it. A lot more lucrative than a paper round, in my early teens.

Not so sure how having a decorative valve on top of your iPod dock helps to improve the quality of an MP3, though.

Would that really work?

"Of course what they should really do (and might even do) is just place their own ads first without any need for bidding, and then auction the ad slots underneath."

I am not sure that would be a fair solution either. Suppose I bid at a level which guarantees me the top slot. Then Google come along and take the top slot for themselves. I get the second slot, but still pay exactly the same amount for it.

The only cost to Google is the loss of revenue from the bottom slot, which gets pushed out.

Would I not have the right to feel a bit ripped off?

Now if Google were selling slots, not auctioning them, they could say "sorry, we've taken all the top slots, you can have second slot and here is some of your money back" - that's fair enough.

That's the point

That was the basis of the judgement - the film would still make the same amount of money, but a year later. That is why they were only awarded the interest.

Of course if the film is released and doesn't make millions then they wold have been awarded interest on a profit which was never there in the first place. Unless you believe that a freeby audio CD in the UK completely destroyed the value of the film worldwide.

But all this happened in 2006 so presumably the film has been released and has made millions?