Posts by A J Stiles

I want to tell you a story

A few years ago I went to an electrical retailer in town to buy a new washing machine. Having chosen the one I wanted, I went to discuss finance options. I was eventually refused credit, on account of a bad debt run up by a previous occupier of my address.

Being told in front of a store full of people (strangers whom I would probably never see again; and not really in front of them, but quietly at a desk in a corner out of the way) that I couldn't have a loan because they were afraid I might not be able to pay it back, was a bit embarrassing.

But at least nobody ever got petrol poured through their letterbox because a member of an Angry Mob thought they were a bad credit risk.

Those who think it is theft

I'm still waiting to hear what the "thing" is that you used to have before someone downloaded a copy of something, and that you don't have afterwards.

Why GNOME ?

What's with the popularity of GNOME all of a sudden?

You can prise my KDE (which, incidentally, has oKular which reads PDF documents without need of Adobe) from my cold dead hand. Unless I'm using WindowMaker that week.

Skype

Well, Skype is bollocks anyway. If you want to sell telecommunications services, you have to communicate nicely with other people. Using your own jealously-guarded, proprietary protocol while others around you are using an open, published protocol would be a recipe for alienation even if you were first to the table.

The minute Skype is made compatible with proper VoIP (for which read: Asterisk), there's suddenly no reason to be using Skype as opposed to any of the existing applications which use the open IAX protocol.

Come to think of it, anyone with an IAX-compliant application that is easy for chavs to download could knock Skype off their perch.

WTF?

The problem with this is that the Arctic ice cap is floating on water. As any fule kno, a floating object displaces an equivalent weight of water. The sea level will not change as the ice melts.

You can easily prove this to yourself. Take one litre of water. It weighs 1kg. Now freeze it. It still weighs 1kg.; but now, due to a peculiar property of the H2O molecule, it occupies more than 1L. of space. Place this in a bucket containing several litres of water. The ice will float, displacing -- according to Archimedes' Principle -- 1kg. of water. Since 1kg. of water occupies 1L. of space, then the level in the bucket will have risen by 1L.

After 100g. of ice has melted, increasing the quantity of water in the bucket by 100mL., the remaining 900g. of ice will be displacing only 900g. of water. So the level will still be 1L. higher than it was originally: 100mL. from the meltwater plus 900mL. Archimedean displacement due to the remaining ice.

After a further 400g. of ice has melted, increasing the original quantity of water in the bucket by 0.5L., the remaining 500g. of ice will be displacing 0.5L. of water. So the level will *still* be 1L. higher than it was before the block of ice was introduced.

And by the time all the ice has melted, the quantity of water in the bucket will have increased by 1L. compared to what it originally was; but now, there will be no ice displacing any water.

But will it do .....

But will it do "first-generation" ARM targets?

This architecture is no longer encumbered by patents, nor is it particularly encumbered today by the price of memory (32 bits for a register-to-register MOV was always seen as a bit on the wasteful side, but it's nothing compared to the code bloat in Windows). So it's a prime candidate to be cloned by a far-East manufacturer, as long as a suitable software stack can be put together.

@ AC 07:58

"The PRS are doing the best they can in a tricky situation. If it was up to the record companies, artists would get sod all after they'd recorded the music. Even when the artists do get paid it's often not enough or it's years after the sales were made."

Oh, Boo Fucking Hoo.

You want to make some money from a song? Well, fucking sing it, then; and if the people listening don't pay up, then shut up. But don't expect to get paid everytime someone listens to a recording of it. The record companies have had their day. They had something you and I didn't: disc-cutting equipment. Until 1995, when the CD-R was invented and the rules changed for good; just like the rules changed for candle-makers in 1879, and for horse-whip manufacturers in 1885.

You know, as a musician, you've still got one thing I haven't, and that I can't recreate, and for which I don't even begrudge paying: Your physical presence. Learn to use that.

I'd piss myself laughing if Sir Cliff Richard's plumber came knocking on his door and demanded a royalty fee every time the tortoise-necked old fart flushed his toilet .....

A Thought Experiment

To all who like the idea of prohibition:

We have a problem with obesity in this country, especially childhood obesity. One way to reduce obesity levels would be to reduce the consumption of fatty fried foods. So let's suppose that we successfully lobby the government for a ban on the cooking and eating of chips.

Today, the chip industry is regulated. Chip shops have to satisfy certain minimum standards enforced by local environmental health authorities; including safe working practices, proper food handling procedures, regular inspection of premises and equipment, and so forth.

Can you tell me with a straight face that once chips were banned, a black market would not spring up almost overnight to meet the demand? Do you expect that there would not be a speck of fallout from the new, illegal chip industry? Do you honestly imagine that there would not be a single fatal electrocution, carbon monoxide poisoning or fire attributable to a poorly-maintained frier in an "underground" chip shop? That there would be no cases of poisoning from unsafe food handling practices or the use of home-made vinegar substitute? That the countryside would not end up becoming polluted through the improper disposal of used cooking fat?

And do you really believe that such a situation (chips still quite readily available, but from criminals at inflated prices and with greater health risk to chip-eaters , and with collateral damage impacting on non-chip-eaters) would be preferable to the situation we have now?

BSD

Actually, I think if anything is going to take over from XP on netbooks, it will be some sort of BSD-derived OS.

NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD all have the "BSD loophole" in their licencing agreements (which pre-date the GPL): anyone is free to take the software, modify it just enough to make it thoroughly incompatible with the original and treat it as closed-source. (Back in the days, that wouldn't have been such a problem as it is today, because almost no two computers could run code compiled for each others -- so you pretty much needed the Source Code.)

Once a company is building cheap clones of first-generation ARM processors (now patent-free; and since memory has become cheap, thanks to Windows, it doesn't matter anymore about a simple MOV instruction taking 4 bytes) they can simply compile a customised BSD variant with a few applications, burn it into a non-replaceable one-time PROM and not have to worry about their competitors ripping them off. Even better, from their point of view, they can ensure *in hardware* that future versions are incompatible -- past versions of your own products are always a greatest threat than other people's products.

@ AC 12:05

"if someone wants to allow cocaine taking on their private property, and it's somewhere where you don't have to go, then what the hell has that got to do with you anyway? Find somewhere else, if you don't like it"

Fine by me. Cocaine taking doesn't directly affect anybody else but the taker. (Certain regrettable practices necessitated by prohibition can create problems for those involved in the supply chain, but judging by the existence of other supply chains for legal products, those problems simply would not exist in the absence of prohibition. Let us assume for the sake of a fair comparison that any cocaine being consumed in those premises was produced without the exploitation of vulnerable people and that the customers were paying for it with their own money earned by legal means.) I prefer a pocket full of coins over a nose full of powder, and I can talk bollocks to complete strangers all night without chemical assistance.

"if someone wants to allow bear baiting on their private property and it's somewhere where you don't have to go, then what the hell has that got to do with you anyway? Find somewhere else, if you don't like it."

Indeed -- let them. They probably won't get many customers going along wanting to watch bear-baiting anyway. (Well, maybe once for morbid curiosity.) Beside which, the bears will get their own back sooner or later, and once that gets in the news they'll have a problem getting staff.

(Incidentally, smoking vs. bear-baiting isn't really a fair comparison either. Last I checked, cigarettes weren't sentient beings capable of objecting to being smoked the way bears are sentient beings capable of objecting to being baited. Or maybe you were drawing an analogy between people being smoked near to and bears being baited; but again, last I checked, bears didn't have a choice whether or not to be baited to the same extent that non-smokers had a choice whether or not to go into a place knowing full well that smoking was permitted there.)

"if someone wants to completely ignore health and safety law and it's somewhere where you don't have to go, then what the hell has that got to do with you anyway? Find somewhere else, if you don't like it."

Precisely. What other consenting adults do if it's not affecting me is none of my business. Their staff are grown-ups. They CHOSE to work there -- I can CHOOSE to stay away.

"AND get a job somewhere else, why should the law protect the workers from the bosses. If the bosses want to cut costs and let the workers get hurt, more power to them."

If I chose a job where I knew in advance that I would be putting my life on the line just by turning up for work, whatever happened next would be *my* fault. If I wasn't getting some sort of benefit out of it -- an adrenalin rush unavailable anywhere else, or just a seriously huge pay packet, for instance -- then you wouldn't see me for dust.

Let me remind you again: Before the government unnecessarily banned smoking in all pubs, there was NOTHING to stop you from choosing a non-smoking pub to patronise. If you nonetheless CHOSE to drink in a pub knowing full well that other people there were allowed to smoke, then that was nobody's fault but YOURS. Now, kindly stop blaming other people for your own shortcomings.

In the meantime, I will leave you with this thought: There's almost certainly something that you enjoy doing, and yet the very thought of which horrifies someone somewhere to the point that they would like to prevent anyone from ever doing it if they ever attained a position of power.

KDE for me

I like KDE. Not just for Konqueror, nor K3B -- which would be good enough reasons in their own roight -- but because it works entirely with SINGLE clicks.

GNOME with all its double-clicking (and the fact that even if you just want to type in a window, you have to click on it -- only once but still WTF?) just pisses me off.

Who the FUCK decided that you had to click something TWICE to open it? If I want to type in a window, I'll move the mouse pointer over it. If I want something to work, I will click on it. Once should be enough, for fuck's sake.

Close the door behind you, your lordship

Lloyd Webber is a dinosaur.

The recording industry only ever existed in the first place because they had access to a technology that, at the time, was not available to all. All that changed forever in 1995 with the advent of the CD-R, and the old recording industry is now unsustainable. Just like you can't sustain an industry around the business model of fitting paraffin lamps to horse-drawn carts. The makers of horse-drawn carts probably campaigned against the motor car, and the makers of paraffin lamps almost certainly campaigned against electrification, but it didn't help them and it won't help these dinosaurs.

Frankly, I don't give a flying one if the industry does go tits up. It's all boy bands, girl bands, effing/blinding/glorifying violence and former minimum-wage slaves from towns you've never heard of who "won" rigged TV talent shows anyway. What's left will be all about the music, not the money.

Hmm

There is only one way to be sure whether there is a single database or two separate ones. Show us the Source Code!

I'm personally more inclined to think that this is a case of someone not using it properly.

@AC 12:18

"By all means tie maths and physics/engineering together and show the kids that the boring theory stuff is the equivalent of the gym work that Mssrs Rooney et al do prior to the amazing feats of athleticism they weekly perform."

Best. Comment. Ever.

Is there a Reg equivalent of the Molly? I'd nominate you for one in a heartbeat.

PMS

Back in the days before PCs, when STIs were called VDs, PMS used to be called PMT -- Pre-Menstrual Tension (*not* Tantrums!)

There also used to be a bus company in Stoke-on-Trent called The Potteries Motor Traction Company, which was also abbreviated to PMT. You would commonly get men signing the late book (yes, they had those things in workplaces in those days) and writing "PMT" under "reason for lateness".

Mind you, in Derby, it's common to take a leak on The Spot and nobody bats an eyelid.

Does this mean Lester Haines is going, too?

"Sarah Bee" is obviously just the name Hainesey uses when he's pretending to be a woman.

Paris because ..... er ..... that's just the name she uses when she's pretending to be a hotel?

@ AC, rhydian

MS Office and MS Windows have different language, measuring units and paper size settings. Even though you correctly set up Windows for the UK (Queen's English -our -ise, A4 paper, metric measurements, currecy is £, dot as fraction delimiter, DMY, VCR time &c.) Office has its own set of country-specific settings -- and ignores those of Windows. (Or it did last time I had anything to do with it, which was shortly after XP came out.) Office also defaults to US Letter paper, which is only used in *one* country in the world -- everyone else uses A4. This causes many printers to sulk and insist for you to load the "right" size paper, or repeatedly press OK to get one sheet at a time out.

I'm sure there's a historical basis for this, but it's still a PITA. (Or it was last time I had anything to do with it, which was shortly after XP came out. Cue fanboys gleefully pointing out this is no longer the case -- or MS paid shills explaining why this is actually a *good* thing -- in 5 ..... 4 ..... 3 .....)

Hmm

A friend of mine had an idea. For dispersing crowds of vegan protestors, you don't want water cannons ..... you want gravy cannons!

Mine's the one with the CFC-free Salbutamol inhaler in the pocket -- what's your excuse?

ffmpeg

What exactly does this do that ffmpeg doesn't do?

Hmm

I think the idea is, the Government game the system by carefully manipulating the "basket" of goods used to calculate inflation. (Blu-ray players, for instance, currently are on a downward price trend.) By including goods in the basket which will drop in price, the apparent level of inflation can be diminished.

(It's more or less the same situation with supermarkets. Having more items priced cheaper than your competitors *sounds* good; but if most of those items are ones that people are unlikely to buy in practice, it's just theatre.)

House prices are where the *real* inflation is at. My two-up, two-down terrace has quadrupled in value since I bought it in 1996; but I still couldn't find another place for less than I'd get if I sold it.

Minor offences lead to major ones

If you think littering and dog fouling are minor offences, you probably enjoy living in a shithole. Some of us don't.

I for one am perfectly fine with idiots who think it's OK to dump their chip wrappers in the street or old furniture in lay-bys next to country lanes, and who don't clean up after their dogs (or, even worse: the ones who pick it up in a plastic bag and then leave the bag lying there), being caught and made to pay.

Bah

Why the *fuck* is *anyone* still running Windows?

For fuck's sake, it's less effort to go back to doing stuff by hand than it is to keep a bunch of Windows boxes malware-free.

Bloody hell

This is a total non-starter. A good actor can lie through their teeth and pass a polygraph test. A pathologically nervous subject can tell the truth and fail one.

It's security theatre, plain and simple.

@ AC 16:00

In my experience, *any* back-end-drive car, irrespective of who made it, is likely to be driven badly.

@ Oisin McGuigan

"And the question here is, Why teh hell do we pay for Antivirus"

Some people don't. :)

BTW, if you want a more sensationalist headline: This one would survive even physical destruction of the hard disk, since it's stored somewhere else altogether.

Someone can't do maths

1.5 tonnes is equal to 1500 kg., or about 3307 lb. That's just shy of 1.5 tons, which is probably why "tonne" is used as an alias for a megagram: because 2205 lb. (= 1000 kg.) is close enough to 2240 lb. (= 1 ton) that it doesn't make much difference -- and anyone who's still weighing stuff in pounds doesn't care about accuracy anyway.

No mystery here

"The Mono Extension is available today, but only for x86, x64, and mainframes. The code is not available on Power or Itanium platforms, which is a bit of a mystery."

Mystery? It probably is full of nasty binary blobs, is all.

@AC 14:56

I don't think you'll be entirely satisfied with McDonalds' hash browns, either.

@ vincent himpe

"it's like giving everybody the plans to the fortress. sooner or later someone will find a flaw."

Ah, but the probability that any given flaw will be found by a "good" person will always be greater than the probability that it will be found by a "bad" person.

@ Charles Manning

"MS, or anybody, should be allowed to keep their IP private if they wish. But that does not mean that MS, or anybody, should be allowed to be malicious with their IP."

No they shouldn't be allowed to keep it private, because keeping it private *is* being malicious. The fruits of all human endeavour rightfully belong to all of humanity. By concealing the Source Code from the users, Microsoft are preventing them from studying or altering it, and therefore imposing their will on the users. That is an act of violence.

You want to keep your Source Code a secret? Then do us all a favour, and keep the binary a secret too.

"All GPL muscle comes from copyright law. If copyright law was taken away then GPL would no longer have teeth."

I concede that. However, I would have absolutely no problem with a *different* law, mandating that every person who receives a copy of a computer program must be given the Source Code and build instructions.

Anyway, it will all be irrelevant soon. As soon as a decent decompiler exists, Freedoms One and Three will be available to take by force if required.

@ Chris

Not many jobs in Open Source databases? You're looking in the wrong places!

If you already know how to use Oracle, learn one of the others (they pretty much all do the same stuff anyway) and then work on devising migration strategies. This is a lucrative service you can sell to businesses currently using Oracle, if you make the right pitch.

Obviously this opportunity will run out sooner or later, as the number of Oracle customers is finite to begin with and you're cutting it down as you go; but you just have find something else in the meantime with which to keep yourself going when that job runs its course.