Posts by nijam

Re: Aladdin

> They'll want to monetise it somehow...

N..., No..., Nokia

> What is a "drone" when it comes to this legislation?

Same as for all other new legislation - a Government spokesman brought in to make fatuous and ill-informed claims about the need for the legislation and to claim that it won't affect anyone except terrorists/paedophiles/tax evaders/...

Re: Waiting for the EU is a waste of time

> ... fund reduced taxes for everyone ...

Hahahahaha. Hahaha.

No.

Re: shipping it around

> What was wrong with old fashioned paper bags anyway?

By some measures (not all, obviously) they are worse for the environment, apparently.

Re: plus ça change ...

> unless you read ... the average person had very little knowledge of what went on behind the Iron Curtain

I think you might well know even less about it if you *did* read the Morning Star.

Re: Civil laws

> ... Plod just doesn't have the resources

They seem to have plenty of resources for lots of things that don't matter very much.

> ... I am now wondering if there are any in Paris

Don't worry, I'm sure you haven't been left out.

Re: No right to conceal information

> There is no way to read the original court order to imply that it asked for anything remotely resembling a "universal skeleton key..."

And yet, as should be evident to all readers of this august journal, the court order was based on a request from the FIB that they knew full well could only be done in such a way as to be a universal lockpick. I'm surprised that even needs to be pointed out.

.

> if you had a Notes "evangelist" in the company you would find pockets of little Notes based apps all over the place doing clever (and sometimes not so clever)

Yeah, we had one of those. "Sometimes not so clever"? In fact, usually not so clever, we found.

> ... because there was no easy replacement for what those apps did

Our experience was that the main difficulty was in finding out what they did (what they were meant to do was often somewhat different), so they could be ported to an actually-supported system.

> Might as give up any attempts at rehabilitation.

In this particular case, it's been stated that the SELF-PUBLICIST gave interviews about his activities after being convicted. Rehabilitation may well have ridden off into the sunset at that point.

It may also be a sound reason for this case not to set a general precedent.

> I'm assuming Apple will get their hands on one of these devices, figure out what zero-day it is exploiting and issue a patch?

I'm assuming Apple will get their hands on one of these devices, figure out what zero-day it is exploiting, and deny it's possible to exploit it.

> They only go off script when you start being a dick

They only go off script when they start being a dick

> Like many here I was deeply involved in fixing Y2K issues

Whereas, like many others here, I was involved in wasting my time confirming that none of our software or IT equipment would be affected by the Y2K issues. (And just to make the point, I'll point out that it was repeatedly hyped as a "millennium bug", when it was merely a "century bug".)

Re: the $5 part that blew up the rocket

> ... might only need, say, $100 of paper trail ...

Oh, how quaint! An optimist!

Re: In Loco Parentis

> A school's monitoring of its pupils should reflect that.

Not quite equivalent to behaving like the STASI, surely?

Re: Slack? IRC?

> ... it's a no brainer.

I've never been quite clear what that is being used to mean. Is it "the obvious solution", or is it "only something a person with no brain would do"

Re: Both sides are wrong here

> Thompson and Venables WERE given the right to be forgotten by the trial judge...

...which makes a mockery of the system.

Re: And the reverse is...

> Even Microsoft waits for you to log off/shut down before borking your system.

No, they install the bork first, *then* tell you to "restart to bork your system" (may not be the exact wording of the message, not sure).

> Wonder what happens when the thing misses its target and then goes off hunting for another nice lump of orbiting metal to hump with?

Or, more plausibly, falls back to earth...

Re: Optional

> I'm too fed up to tell you why you are so wrong bringing this up (YET AGAIN!)

>

> So here is a Wiki article

>

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent

Can't help noticing that the link very clearly says "patent". So your point is?

Re: "its in the public interest to know of old business fraud"

> I'm quite sure Google pick up the fight with a very dislikeable person

No, it's (once again) a dislikeable person picking a fight with Google.

> how do you breed depression and broken souls?

Religion.

Re: My hopes and dreams, dashed.

> Critics reported that the coffee was out of this World, but unfortunately it lacked atmosphere

Unlike terrestrial Starbucks, which just lack atmosphere.

Re: "what is the distinction?"

> The distinction is they never created much trouble

How is that a distinction, unless you are taking anti-drone hysteria as fact?

Re: Call me a cynic..

> The cloud is PAYG

Company accountants have always loved PAYG, for a variety of reasons. Basically it means they can budget for stuff they don't understand.

> Please list them.

No, that would be offensive.

Is this whole discussion an episode from a Kafka novel?

Re: Hydrogen is a terrible

> I can summarise the current EU and government policy direction as "Do renewable stuff. Don't ask us how, we don't have a fucking clue."

I suspect that's not quite correct; surely the policy is more likely to be "Do renewable stuff. Don't care if it's possible, just do it."

> ...less than the energy wasted from devices in standby

Hmmm. I suspect the devices mentioned in your link are rather out of date .... and probably were before that article was written. My own measurements suggest that the widely publicised figures about standby consumption are (deliberately, and in some cases substantially) exaggerated.

Whether or not standby consumption is waste at all is a separate issue from how much standby consumption there is, of course.

Re: So Someone Learn me....

> ... but the price agreed will have been based on a volume number ...

Are you suggesting that a company the size of Samsung won't have set the unit-price of the contract to depend on volume?

Re: Nice idea, but...

> (Shouldn't be that hard, just keep the glass tilter, and add a hydraulic pump arm to the top.)

... and stop chilling the stuff... oh, it's lager.

Re: What's a bro-grammer?

A pejorative term coined by some person or group with an axe to grind.

Re: So drive a..

> ... Fiat car which does not include the tech and will run for years

Are you sure Fiat is what you meant there?

Re: Bad bargaining

> ... a story with a stick image ...

What's brown and sticky?

A stick.

Sorry, I couldn't (be arsed to) find a stock image of a stick.

Re: Is KDE still a thing?

> What is wrong with these people?

Chasing the fads that smartphones (and yes, Windows 8) conned people into thinking were trendy?

Re: @Jim C - GPL is not freedom at all.

> What did they offered in exchange for BSD ?

BSD is not under the GPL, but under the BSD licence (remarkable coincidence, don't you think). So using what Apple did to criticise the GPL (which would have stopped them at least partly) is really quite odd logic.