Posts by Cody

Obviously what is needed is a trike

Obvious from these photos, as from the Segway, what you need is a third wheel, and a trike. All the energy being spent on balancing could then go to locomotion. Improve load capacity as well.

Yes, it is warming!

It is warming. It is the warmest year in the warmest decade of the warmest century. You may be looking at snow and at thermometers. This is a mark of being in denial. You do not understand that temperatures cannot simply be measured, a great many different stations have to be assessed.

We cannot tell you which stations. We have signed confidentiality agreements which forbid it. No, we cannot give you copies of these agreements, we have lost them.

Then the raw data has to be adjusted. No, we cannot, alas, give you any of the raw data before our adjustments. We used to have it, and would love to make it available, but we lost it during an office move some years ago. Sad.

Anyway, moving right along, there is warming, its catastrophic, its going to get worse. Plagues, floods, famines are going to happen. But there is a way to avoid all this. All you have to do is pay! Isn't that simple? You thought it was far more complicated and difficult than that. No, you just have to pay. Who do you have to pay?

Well, a number of people. First you have to pay me, to continue my studies into just how awful this is all going to be. Then you have to pay the US Corn industry. This may surprise you, but it is necessary. We have to pay them to stop growing food and instead grow oil. Or, if they insist on growing food, they have to be paid to not sell it to anyone to eat, but instead turn it into oil.

Then, you have to pay to erect large religious monuments all over the Highlands of Scotland. These monuments will avert the wrath of God. You can think of them as our equivalent of the very effective Easter Island statues which were so successful in dealing with a previous energy crisis back on that little island. Or perhaps those cargo landing strips which the Pacific Islanders built at the end of WWII.

Now that you are emerging from denail a little, well, now you can go outside and look at your thermometer. It reads 2C. Well now you understand, that means that it is really 7C, and this is the warmest winter in the warmest year in the warmest decade...

Just keep repeating it, and you can walk right out of denial.

Not as great as it sounds

We looked at this, and it has some very severe disadvantages, enough to make it basically impractical. The first is the cost, we are talking 10-20k for an installation. The second is disruption - they will dig a trench 100 meters+ long in your garden. and lay the pipe in it. This means up one side and down the other. The third is much more serious. If you don't get the dimensions right, what happens is that you produce permafrost in your garden, at which point the whole thing has gone pear shaped. You can no longer cool the ground any more, which is how you get the heat out in the first place.

All in all, this is a hare brained scheme, on any scale. Two much more practical technologies are first, to insulate the house properly. This is cheap, effective. it makes an absolutely huge difference to both cost and comfort for very little outlay and little disruption. If you are comparing it to 10-20k for the ground source heat pump, just spend a quarter of that and you will get an absolutely superb insulation job even in the most difficult circumstances. Roof insulation is one thing, then there's cavity wall and cladding.

The second thing, which is less efficient in theory than the ground source heat pump, is an air source heat pump. Much, much cheaper, and you are not going to produce permafrost. Yes it may be less efficient, but its more cost effective.

There is a reason why ground source heat pumps have not taken off. They are not very sensible.

what's at stake here

The MacFanatics can only see one issue in this: what Apple wants, Apple must get. What the wider effects of giving Apple what it wants may be, who cares?

So in the present case, what Apple wants is to be able to sell OSX at retail in a form which will install on many standard X86 main boards. However, it also wants to restrict what you do your installs on to only systems bought from Apple. It wants to do this by EULA clause in software sold at retail and unbundled from any hardware/.

These systems, on which the EULA forbids installation, may be no different technically from the same systems bought from other suppliers (with the exception of EFI which is a tiny piece of the thing). But Apple does not want you to use them, it wants to restrict what you install on based solely on how it is branded.

The thing you all have to realize is what the rest of us, who are not Apple users and never want to be, find worrying in this. And it has nothing to do with Apple or its wants, which we find to be the least important part of this question. This is our worry. We do not like the idea that software makers can tell you where to buy the hardware you run their software on.

We do not, for instance, like the idea that MS could stipulate in EULA that you may install Windows on any system you like in dual boot mode, as long as it is not labeled Apple. We do not like the idea that MS could stipulate in EULA that you may run Office under Wine on the system of your choice, as long as it is not labelled Apple. We feel very uneasy about the idea that there might come an amendment to the GPL that would ban the installation of any GPL licensed products on Macs. And so on.

The thing you all have to get your heads around, after you stop cheering that West Ham has won, is that this is not a ruling for or about Apple. It is a ruling on what powers software makers have. And it does not give these powers just to Apple. It gives them to everyone, to use against anyone they feel like using them against, and that includes Apple.

So, are you all so sure you really like them Apples, now?

more complicated than it sounds

"You'll be breaking the Microsoft End User License Agreement (EULA), meaning you're potentially running a pirated copy of Windows."

Well. This is a much more complicated issue than appears, and it varies by jurisdiction. Will you be breaking the law? And if so, which?

MS and Apple would like to argue that if you break the EULA, you also break copyright, because you only have permission to use within EULA constraints. Using means copying. Only into memory, but it is still copying.

There are conflicting precedents in the US on this one. Vernor undermines the whole argument, and makes it legal to buy an upgrade, install it, and then sell the previous version. Vernor also makes you the owner of your bought copy in the sense of Title 17 Section 117, which gives you the right to make or authorize adaptations essential for use with a machine.

However Blizzard has ruled that you are not the owner in the sense of Section 117, and that any violation of the EULA is therefore a copyright breach.

None of this has any bearing on the EU situation, where the legal status of EULAs is completely unclear. In the UK they may be an unlawful attempt to modify the terms of a previously concluded transaction, a purchase. In Germany they may be unlawful as not presented and assented to at the time of purchase.

In no jurisdiction, to my knowledge, is there any connection between EULA breach and copyright law breach. Others may know of some.

So, its much more complicated than it looks. And in particular, breaking EULAs is in any case not doing something iilegal. Its breach of civil contract. You can be sued, but not prosecuted.

Ah, the iTablet.... or the iSlate... or whatever

"Apple has not said a tablet is coming. Various sources say one is. It is claimed it will be bigger than an iPhone but smaller than an MacBook, and will cost around $700."

Every so often, it will determine that some of the news was not fit to print, and will help you not to yield to the temptation to read it by blocking it. You will only be able to buy papers from the app store using iTunes. Every now and again one of the papers will offend SJ, and be blocked for a couple of weeks until it sees reason and apologizes.

This will be applauded by the Apple fans, after all, why should Apple support the anti-Apple press? When it is just picking on Apple all the time?

It will have a camera in it, and if you do not wear a black turtleneck at least once every 50 occasions of use, it will emit a deafening scream until you go get one and put it on.

You will only be able to get apps for it from the app store, and you will pay a percentage to Apple for having made sure that all your apps are clean and well intentioned, and cannot be used to access such wicked though unaccountably legal works such as the Kama Sutra.

You will be obliged to kneel and bow your head in the direction of Cupertino wherever you are in the world at least once a day.

It will look very expensive for what it is. It will have tiny amounts of memory, which if you add to it will take you well over 1,000. It will also require you subscribe to the worst possible mobile operator in your jurisdiction. Apple will do testing before picking one to make sure it really is the worst.

All in all you may feel this is a very expensive computer.

You will be quite wrong to think that. Its actually a cut price religion.

Not exactly a hater...

"I think, in the interests of bitter Apple-haters, someone should make the obligatory derogatory comments about Apple, c;'mon you know the ones."

The question we might ask is whether a continued rise in the fortunes of Apple would be good for us as buyers, or for society as a whole.

We know that its good for Apple employees and shareholders, and maybe for Apple buyers.

However, the answer to the question has to do with the lockdown lockin model. If we are happy to have our ibooks sold only through iTunes on the bookstore, and have it be impossible to use our ibook reader with anything but Mac and Windows, and if we are happy to buy all our hardware from Apple with no alternative, and if we are happy only to be able to install the software they say we can...

...and if we are happy to be denied access to an application because it might allow us among other things to download a copy of the Kama Sutra, a perfectly legal if rather dull and old fashioned publication, which for some crazed reason they do not approve of in Cupertino....

Then we can say how great Apple's success is for us and society.

Not me however, and not you too, if you start to really think about it.

Control cars, and also control drivers

The issue is real simple.

We kill 3,000 people a year on the roads. Most are pedestrians, many are children. This is not acceptable. We also seriously injure well north of 20,000, which is also not acceptable.

If you look at the relation between death and speed it is roughly as follows. At 40mph 90% of struck pedestrians die. At 20mph 90% of struck pedestrians live.

So, we do need speed cameras, because we need speed limits to be real and enforced like any other law. We do not need advisory speed limits which are widely ignored. We need real, rigorously enforced ones. We need the speed limit to be 20mph in residential areas and near schools, shops, community centres and the like. We need to bring the death rate and injury rate down to the irreducible minimum.

Funnily enough, by doing this, we will actually increase traffic flow and decrease congestion.

People who cannot manage to drive within the speed limit are simply incompetent drivers, and not safe on the roads. They are like people who are legally blind, who are also not allowed to drive. They must be moved to buses or bicycles. Or perhaps they should walk, or use electric mopeds.

I am not anti-car. I drive all the time, and observe all speed limits staying a few mph under them. Its not hard, it just requires attention. Driving does. My view is that much as I appreciate the car and its conveniences, I do not like cars enough to like being killed by one, or having my nearest and dearest killed by one. Control the things, and more important, control the drivers!

It will be insanely great!

It will be great, insanely great.

At last we will have someone who will maintain a list of books it is proper for us to read. Right now, I just download books I want, and the other day I came on a site offering a copy of the Kama Sutra. I can't tell you how distressing this was. Well, when Apple introduces its ebook, this will never happen, because the good folks there will make sure nothing upsetting is included in the store.

They will safeguard the user experience by locking the ebook to the bookstore. This will make sure that those of us who are too weak willed to refrain from downloading the Kama Sutra when it is offered to us will be preserved from, I was going to say, breaking the law, but of course the KS is legal, why I cannot imagine, but Apple will preserve us from reading inappropriate material. All that stuff about the sound 'phat', well, really!

And then there will be an app store, which will keep us from downloading any deviant apps.

And we will be prosecuted under the DCMA and any other laws Apple legal can think of should we jailbreak Apple's machine. Copyright included, because the purchase agreement will explain that this is not bought but only licensed. This will preserve the user experience as well, by protecting us from unfamiliar events.

Yes folks, its going to be insanely great, and in the great Apple tradition. Looking forward to it.

Soviet Union

Its a great idea, and a step towards something we have needed in this country for a long time, a system of internal passports, so that before anyone could live anyplace or access any services there, including housing, he or she would have to get approval from the local council. Its great to see that these guys have seen the need in Hillingdon as the pilot project.

I am sure this will go down very well, and that Hillingdon will have great success in keeping out undesirables and attracting the right kind of people, and that when other cities and local authorities see how well its done, they will follow suit.

Good on you Hillingdon, you are the future of England. What Hillingdon drinks today, England drinks tomorrow!

'if you don't like it don't buy it'

This is fine, if you accept the consequential argument, don't argue that it is better. The problem is that Apple people want to argue that Apple products are better, and recommend them both for individuals and for educational institutions because they are supposedly better.

Then when others give perfectly valid reasons why they are not better, and in fact are considerably worse than others on the market, they want to be able to reply, if you don't like it don't buy it. But that is exactly what we are talking about, reasons not to buy it. If you want to carry on persuading people that the Apple solution is better, you have to find some argument why the objections are not valid. And you cannot.

The fact that Apple wants to be the sole source of apps for the iPhone is one very good reason not to buy it. The fact that they want to control the flow of your messages by putting them all through their servers is another. The fact that they want to tell you what networks you may use is a third.

Yes, if you don't like it, don't buy it. These are all very good reasons why no-one with any sense should buy an iPhone. This is not the behavior you should want in your supplier of a phone. Don't buy it. Don't reward these creeps.

J Adams, you are quite right! Why cannot everyone see so clearly???

"By Jonathan Adams Posted Friday 3rd July 2009 10:33 GMT

"Umm ... the reason they don't sell the MacOS is that you can't legally buy it.

Mac only sell upgrades, i.e. you have to own a Mac, with a License to install MacOS, in order to install the software."

Yes, quite so.

That is why they ask you, when you go into a store on Tottenham Court Rd, to give proof that you own a Mac. They are anxious to avoid colluding in you committing a criminal offense by buying a retail copy of OSX without owning a Mac. If they helped you do that, both of you might end up in jail. Amazon is the same by the way. They will not sell you a copy of OSX without you supply the serial number of your machine, and they keep track of those serial numbers, so no serial number can be used more than once.

People don't realize this, they think you can just buy as many copies as you want. Well, you can't.

Not only that, but when you come to use your copy, it really is just an upgrade. You will find that it checks to see whether you have a valid copy of OSX on your hard drive. It will not boot and install onto a machine with a blank hard drive in it. No, no. See, if it were to do that, it would not be an upgrade at all, but a full retail copy. Which, as we know, it ain't.

This is proof that Psystar is abusing in some way, because look at it like this, they are buying lots of copies of OSX, which as shown above is a criminal offense. And then they are also installing these copies on blank machines, which is also criminal. So they will undoubtedly all go to jail. Along with their horrible customers.

I think this will be great. Apple is one of the greatest and most creative companies in the world, well it is the greatest actually, and it surely has the right to run its own business model how it wants, and governments all over the world should be helping it.

I like that their machines are so expensive too. The more they charge, the more profits they make, and the more they can pay Steve Jobs in stock options, which he richly deserves, and this is really, really good for us, it means more better Macs for us.

Of course there are people who do not understand this, they are ignorant and to be pitied for the most part, but there are also a few denialists, and these guys are traitors to the planet, and to humanity. No punishment is too dire for them. Psystar is the foremost of them, and there is a special circle of hell reserved for Psystar. Steve told us all about it in his Founders Message last week, but he asked us to keep the details confidential, so I will say no more.

Cheers.

This is perfectly true

I am posting anonymously, but I have inside knowledge of this device. The way it works is, it is linked to the iTunes store. You sign up to iTunes, then you buy your iBooks. They are all DRM'd of course. You manage the books on the thing through your Mac or Windows machine, and there is a special hook to detect if you are using Linux, which will delete all your books if you are.

There are also wonderful parental controls. What happens is, you can only load books onto the machine through the iBooks store, and no material with any sexual content whatever is going to be alliowed. The iBook will be a sex free zone. There will be no screening whatsoever for violent racist scatalogical or otherwise abusive material, the only thing that is a top priority for Apple is the elimination of all references to sexual activity.

Oh, and the works of Mark Twain are also banned, because they are considered subversive.

There are a number of things you cannot do with the device. One is, you cannot go to sleep with it on. It detects if you have it open but are not actually reading, and it emits a piercing alarm. It also detects any bouncing movements and does the same. This is in case you have suddenly decided to have sex with it open on the bed. Apple is strongly opposed to anyone having sex with their iReader open at the same time, in the same room, or even in the same house for that matter. They feel with St Paul that it is better to marry than burn, but not all that much better.

Criticism of the government of the day may also not be voiced with the iReader turned on. Well, there is more, but this is all I have time for. Oh, and it will have a direct line to the Authors Guild, and also to the RIAA. Apple does not approve of either of these, but is being compelled to its policies by them, Its not Apple's fault in any way, it is all theirs.

This is why you will not be able to move your books to Windows machines. The government has forbidden it.

The profit margin on the machine is said to be 600%. It is lovely, a classic of industrial design, and so integrated with the rest of the Apple product line that one can clearly see that it implements in new and striking form all of their long held values.

Why speed kills

The reason is very simple. As speed rises, force of impact rises as the square of the speed. This is just physics. So, if you go from an impact at 20 to an impact at 40, the force of the impact does not double. It is 4 times as great.

This happens with something else. The human body, for rather obvious evolutionary reasons, is not damaged by impacts as a straight line function of their force. As the force of impact rises, the damage done rises as the square of the force. You can see why we would have evolved like this. We evolved in an environment in which low speed bumps and falls were common, and high speed ones rare.

This is why it is simple undisputable truth that if car hits pedestrian at 20mph, 90% will survive, and at 40mph 90% will die. It is the combination of a non linear rise in impact force on a non linear rise in susceptibility to damage.

There is empirical evidence that when speed bumps are installed and speed limited to 20mph, pedestrian deaths fall by about 70% and cyclist deaths by about one third.

We need to run the country for the convenience and safety of those who live and walk around and cycle in neighborhoods, not for the amusement of people who just want to drive through them as fast as possible. So the more speed cameras the better. The lower the limits the better.

You see, we do not care how much fun you have driving. We don't care if you don't like being careful to monitor your speed. We don't even care how fast you get from A to B. We just want you going through where we live very slowly and carefully. And if you won't do that, we want you off the road.

preventing them ?

How can they prevent them? Are they inspecting their home computers to see what they are doing in the evenings? That is absolutely terrible, and a violation of their rights, and must be stopped at once. These goons wasting shareholders money by travelling up and down the country, breaking into the homes of their staff and inspecting their machines? Can this really be happening in England?

Oh, my partner comes into the room as I write these lines, and tells me not to be such an idiot, they are only restricting what sites the workforce can access from work. Oh. Well that's perfectly normal isn't it? I mean, they are supposed to be working not surfing?

Or have I misunderstood this yet again, and should we want there to be no restrictions on what I do at work on the web in this great country of ours?

Dunno really. All very confusing. I will sign off now before I get told something else confusing. Bye.

quick ban them

Personally I think it is all too confusing, all this choice. We only want one sort of ebook reader, and Apple should write it. We don't want Amazon confusing us with offering one as well. And we don't want to buy ebooks from Amazon, we want to buy them from the iTunes store. It is all too much. So I suggest Apple immediately discontinue the sale of this stuff through the App store, and immediately restrict all sales of ebooks to the iTunes store. And proceed against anyone who tries to either circumvent this, or tell others how to circumvent it, under the DMCA.

I want Apple to think this thing through and tell me what is best for me, because I am sure they know, and then I can just do what they say and not be so anxious with all these choices I don't want to make.

Thank you for this, Steve. You are a great man.

weight training?

Is it possible that weight training could have the same effect? For almost all men, there is some woman in their lives on whom osteoporosis may potentially have devastating effects -- if you ever see what it can do to someone, you'd know all too well how true this is -- and if its a simple as this, lets give them some 10 or 20 lb dumbells and have them do stepping exercises. You have to be careful about taking it too far and getting wear arthritis, but get the parameters right, and it could be a lifesaver.

Osteo is a killer not simply because of the extreme effects, the hunching over as the neck or spine deteriorates, but also because of the vulnerability it creates to minor bumps, and the way it makes falls which earlier would have been perfectly survivable into life threatening events. Broken wrists, for instance, from an apparently minor bump. Broken hips from stumbling and falling even on a well padded and carpeted floor. Its a very serious problem. Men get it too, less so, but they do.

Apple is right! As always!!

Apple is always right and is right now.

They are just trying to safeguard the quality of their customers' experience. Of course they should do that. I am just very sorry that people who own Macs are exposed to terrible experiences, Apple should protect them too, just like they protect the iPhone users. I think it is quite wrong, people just buying software from wherever they feel like it, and then diluting the Macintosh experience, and then complaining to their friends about it. If we had an app store for the Mac, and you could not buy crappy software on any street corner, Mac users would not be led into temptation. They would be delivered from evil. And the world would be a better, shinier, more comfortable place.

Long live Apple!

Death to Psystar!

Death to PearC!

Death to anyone else I have forgotten! I think there is someone in Argentina, well death to him too! And Long Live Apple. Did I say that already? Well long live Apple!

Death to efi-x! I think I might have said that already, but it was definitely worth repeating.

DRM with a reader on the side

This is yet another DRM encrusted dogs dinner. Boycott it. What is wanted is books that you can buy using a web browser and credit card, give or sell to others, make backup copies of on your hard drive, read on devices from multiple manufacturers.

This is not that. This is an attempt to control what you do with what you've bought with DRM, and a reader and store on the side.

Just stop complaining and obey the law!

People who object to cameras fall into two categories, sometimes both.

1) There are those who cannot manage to obey the speed limit for reasons of incapacity. These people should be got off the roads, the sooner the better. They are just as disabled as those with bad eyesight.

2) There are those who are determined not to obey the limit. These people are just deliberate lawbreakers, no different really from those who commit other anti social and criminal acts like littering or graffitti or muggings. They too should be got off the roads, the sooner the better.

Speed cameras are immensely valuable, not just because they save lives and reduce accidents, but because they enforce the law and get these idiots off the roads.

If we don't want to enforce speed limits, do not have any. But we do want them, and so it is entirely reasonable and proper to enforce them, even if it makes no difference to accident rates.

Personally, I enjoy driving in heavily camera infested areas. It is so much calmer and more relaxing as everyone becomes suddenly much more reasonable.

Very strange article

Very strange article indeed. First off, there is no reason for the average new user with this machine to EVER use a terminal. So it is completely weird to start out with this. Second, you don't even tell them, having decided for some bizarre reason to get into the terminal, useful information about it. If you are going to teach the terminal, fine, but start with simple stuff and move up. Pipes, for Heavens' sake! This is simply ridiculous.

Third, you show a very strange mixture of the sophisticated and the totally uninformed. Like, Linpus is just a variant of Red Hat, which you don't seem to realize. You are puzzled by Xfce, which has been around for ever and is probably the third after KDE and and Gnome, and anyway not much different from Gnome.

It would be much more helpful for the average user of these boxes to explain to them how to use Linpus in GUI mode. Then mention to them that there is such a thing a a terminal, and Scott Graneman's excellent little book is the best introduction to it, if you really do want to go there. I realize that the Register audience is probably not the one to direct this to. But you are falling between two stools. Its way too sophisticated for the naive user. And its not what someone who knows much about computing needs.

This, by the way, is experience talking. I know ladies of bus pass age who are happily using linux on these machines to write letters, collect recipes, email, shop, look at pictures of their grandchildren, all the usual stuff, and wouldn't ever think about getting acquainted with terminals or pipes. And quite right too!

Free the Hadley Code!

Did they publish their algorithm yet? The one they use to arrive from the raw observation data to their global temperature indices? The one that corresponds to the NASA/GISS adjustment algorithm? Anyone have a link to it, if they have published it? Or any explanation from them of why not, if they have not?

Hansen has published the GISS code, and very interesting it has been too, since you can now see how rural and urban stations get their readings adjusted so they are supposedly more consistent with each other, and you can see how the past and the present get adjusted to be supposedly more consistent with each other. Its not clear that all the adjustment has improved the data integrity, but at least its out in the open and we can argue about it. And at best it allows checking, so that the accusations about adjusting-in warming biases can be evaluated. Good for science.

So, where is our own Hadley code?

This is great

This is actually a great feature. Apple is providing a true integrated experience. So they do not want you making inappropriate use of your iPhone, which might lead to a scrappy and fragmented experience and make you unhappy.

They also do not want rogue unintegrated apps floating around, so they need to be able to remove inappropriate apps from your phone, since they would lead to inappropriate uses.

I have been using Apple products for 20 years now, and am very happy with this. I do not understand what all you nay sayers and denigrators of Apple are talking about. Apple is great!

A new First for Britain!

We should generalize this principle. If anyone in the UK is accused of some offence, there should be a bunch of companies that agree to deny them service. Like, for instance, you are accused of having speeded or parked in defiance of regulations. In that case you'd be barred from visiting the Lake District, or buying books from Waterstones, or reading the Guardian. Or maybe the Sun.

Lets say you've been accused of public drunkenness, or inappropriate smoking. Well, then we might refuse to accept your season ticket. Or perhaps your local Tesco will stop accepting your credit card. Or maybe you will no longer be allowed to buy compression fittings for plumbing. Or shop at Focus or Wickes for timber.

This is such a great step forward for Britain. We can do away with the whole messy business of evidence, proof, penalties. Just a bunch of people and companies getting together and imposing sanctions on anyone who is accused of anything, as they see fit.

How much nicer life is going to be when this is broadly accepted as the way we live here now.

Yes, you did miss something

"Perhaps I'm missing something -- Mike Richards

If Apple spend time and money developing an operating system why *shouldn't* they be able to dictate the conditions on how it's used?"

Yes, you are missing something.

The law in the EC forbids people from telling you how to use things you have bought from them. Actually forbids it. Once you've bought your copy of OSX, Apple has no more right to tell you what to do with it than Sony has the right to tell you not to use your DVD player as a doorstop, or Spear and Jackson can tell you not to use that spade you just bought on your allotment. No, you have to use their special allotment spade for that. Cannot be done. Contracts which attempt to do that are not lawful, and not enforceable.

See, they sold it. Now its yours. Its just like Spear and Jackson telling you how to use your computer, or Apple telling you how to use your spade. Once they have sold it, they no longer own it. Tough, but they need to get used to it.

If its so great, why does it have to be compulsory?

Why do we not take the BBC into pay-tv? Isn't this where it belongs? You want to watch it, subscribe. You don't, don't.

People are all the time saying how much they like it. I like it too. That doesn't mean it should be compulsory to subscribe to it. I like sardines in hot chile sauce. I don't demand that everyone in the country should pay £5 a week and take delivery of a couple of tins, whether they like them, or not, whether they eat them or not.

What is with you guys? Why do you want to make everyone buy what you want to buy? Do you want people to subsidize your particular brand of car, or bands, or newspapers too?

What I want is for me to be able to subscribe, without feeling I am ripping off everyone who is now forced to, but doesn't want it. Like, why should broadcasting be any different from any other service which I buy or not, as I feel inclined?

Accusation, evidence, proof, conviction

Acts to disconnect anyone who "persists in illegally downloading music or films."

No, not quite. It is acting to disconnect anyone foolish enough to be persistently accused of illegally downloading music or films. The EC (and the Labour Party here also) seems to have difficulty distinguishing between being accused of having done something, and being proved to have done it.

I have nothing against disconnecting proven copyright violators, if that is the sanction established in democratically passed legislation. However, to disconnect people, or apply any other form of sanction, merely because of repeated accusations from some self appointed guardians of copyright, is a form of state sanctioned vigilantism.

That way totalitarianism lies. This is the point of principle this stuff has to be fought on. By all means punish criminals. But AFTER you have convicted them, not after some one or other has simply accused them a few times.

recognizable behaviour

This is quite recognizable from Amazon's behaviour in a different context: Kindle. Lock the book to the device, and lock both to the purchase method. Got to be resisted.

Selling versus licensing

I'm curious whether it has ever been formally held in court that you have licensed rather than sold, and about post sale restrictions on use. Does anyone here have hard evidence of the legal position?

If, for instance, you entered into an agreement with B&Q that you'd take 100 drills, but with a 'license' that forbade their subsequent sale through third party resellers, would that hold up in court? Is this not simply a post sale restriction on use of the kind the EC has always held to be unlawful and so not binding?

And whatever the various agreements say, isn't it in fact a sale of so many seats that you buy? So you've actually bought your copies, or right to make a certain number of them, and surely under EC competition and consumer law, you can resell those purchases like any other property? The manufacturer of products surely loses all rights to control what you do with stuff after he sells it to you? He can of course withdraw support and warranty. But he surely cannot tell you what to do with it or who you can sell it to, or who they can sell it to?

Anyone have a proper authoritative legal opinion on this?

Make it voluntary

The difficulty is, we are forcing people to subscribe to a state channel in order to have the right to watch any TV. This is plainly wrong. However, to correct this wrong we do not necessarily have to privatise it.

The right thing to do is keep the present ownership structure, but remove the obligation to subscribe. If you do not want to watch it, why should you have to pay for it? Make it subscription TV like all the other channels.

The BBC would then adjust itself to a size appropriate to its revenues, it would remain a non-profit foundation with its present high minded objectives, those who want to watch it would pay to do so, those who do not would not have to. Perhaps it could be made into a sort of mutual or coop structure, owned by its subscribers, who would, as with savings banks, elect the Board.

It is very difficult to see any objections to this proposal. All other alternatives seem to involve forcing people who do not watch it to pay for the pleasures of those who do. That is just crazy.

No-one goes around saying there should be a tax on, for instance, white paint, so that those who want to paint their houses in colours can get a discount. No-one says I should have to have a NewsCorp ID card showing I have subscribed to the Times, before I am allowed into a newsagent to buy the Independent. No-one thinks I should have to subscribe to UK TV Gold, which I have no desire to watch, in order to be allowed to watch Channel 4. Well then, why should I have to subscribe to the BBC, which I also may have no desire to watch, in order to be allowed to watch Channel 4?

Isn't this just perfectly obvious and reasonable? Make subscription voluntary, and those who want to watch it will subscribe and the rest not. What's the problem?

I might add, I would immediately subscribe, and I would be happy to pay more than the present license fee. I am however very uncomfortable with people who do not want to being forced to pay, so I can pay a bit less.

mercury

Yes, that's right: MERCURY. Get these wretched imitation lightbulbs, ruin your eyes with peering at dimly lit print AND POLLUTE THE PLANET WITH MERCURY which is found in dangerous amounts in fluorescents.

Instead of putting out a little perfectly harmless CO2.

The Guardian as usual is advocating feelgoodery which will either have no effect on the supposed problem, or make it worse. Do not listen. Do not either buy one of these wretched cars with more lead acid batteries (LEAD, get it?). Do not buy a green electric bicycle either. Stop trying to save the planet. You are just making things worse!

The question

The question all you fulminating guys who want to drive fast need to answer is this: how many people do you think it reasonable for us as a country to aim at killing and injuring on the roads? And how many do you think we, the people you may kill, will accept?

The people being killed are mostly pedestrians, some cyclists, mostly either young or quite old.

The reason why 20 rather than 30 makes sense is that (roughly) at 20, almost no one you hit will die. At 30 about half will. At 40, almost all will. It is not linear.

The reason is simple. The vulnerability of the human body to impact rises faster than the force of impact. And in addition, the force of the impact rises faster than the speed of the impact. This means that at 40, which is only double 20, the impact is several times as severe, and although the impact is only (say) 5 or 10 times as severe, the likelihood of killing because of increased vulnerability of the body is 50 or 100 times as great.

So, if you want to lower the death rate, you have to lower the speed at which pedestrians get hit. The only way to do this is lower the speeds.

It is fairly predictable. If we raise the limit to 40, we can probably manage to kill around 5,000 a year and seriously injure maybe 5 times that many. Keep going as now, and whatever we do in the way of training, at the same speed limits we will carry on killing around 3.000 and seriously injuring 15,000 or so. Cut the limits to 20, and rigorously enforce existing limits, and 1,000 deaths and 5,000 serious injuries is within sight.

Now, some of you say that 'you do not want' to be driving at 20mph on a road that, as a road, will allow you to drive safely at 50.

I have news for you.

We do not care what you want. We are not interested in your feelings. What we want is for our friends, neighbors, relatives, children, wives and husbands, not to get fatally hit by you. We do not care whose fault it may be. We want our people to survive the collisions which we know are going to happen.

If you cannot or will not obey the speed limits, we want your licenses taken away. If you carry on driving, we want you in jail. We are serious about this. We very much like the freedom that the car has brought. We don't like the freedom to drive at 30 rather than 20 enough to die for it, or for you to kill our relatives for it.

The proposal is excellent. It should be accompanied by concealed speed cameras on all roads, and distance travelled speed cameras on all motorways. The country needs to get used to obeying the law. And yes, that means travelling a few miles UNDER the speed limit, if you want to keep your license.

Looking forward to it.

did you say 'up to 400,000 homes'?

The article says up to 400k homes. So let us curious people know, we are not interested in how many homes it supplies 'up to' something. What we want to know is how many homes it will actually supply, and how much fuel will not be burned to supply them. In short, don't tell me my interest rate will be 'up to' 9% and then deliver 1 or 2, instead tell me exactly what you will be paying.

I expect the answer will be that it will make no difference whatever to fuel consumption of the utility companies, and while supplying up to 400k homes, will in fact provide power intermittently (and therefore uselessly) to about one tenth of that number.

However, it will be heavily subsidized, so the only one losing will be the Australian taxpayer....

Ubuntu Shmubuntu

Ubuntu is no easier to use than any other OS, and OSX is no easier to use than (eg) Mandriva or PCLinux.

And the thing that Linux and OSS has that no other system has is unlimited derivative works. If you don't understand this, you don't understand the economics at all.

There is no point writing anything about the future of Linux either as server or desktop without covering this.

Just the US?

"Because the error in the US data is so specific to the way the US manages its figures, it seems unlikely that the data from the rest of the world will be afflicted by the same problem."

This is true as far as it goes. They will not be affected by THE SAME problem since they do not use the same series, or have the same problem with changing from one particular series to another.

However the implication that the rest of the world has good data is just idiotic. The UK may or may not have. The UK series and its manipulations are under the control of Hadley. Heaven help us. And the rest of the world data, if we were to do the kind of detailed audit that is being done in the US, is going to turn out to be corrupted with much worse than the US.

Fact is, the US surface station record is the best we have in historical surface temps, and it shows a bit of not very alarming warming, most of which is probably due to Urban Heat Island effects. There is no reason to think the US is any cooler than the rest of the world. The rest of the world has been just as cool as the US, but it has far worse data. What is going on is the merging of one set of halfway decent records with a set of garbage, to produce alarmism.

Also, do read Spencer's post on Pielke.

http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/08/14/positive-feedback-have-we-been-fooling-ourselves-by-roy-spencer/

There is every reason to think cloud formation is a negative loop not a positive one. The AGW models are wrong. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but the effects of increasing CO2 on temperature are far lower than the models show. This is because the models assume that as temperature warms, warming clouds form in a postive feedback loop. They don't. Cooling clouds form in a negative feedback loop, thus diminishing, not increasing, the already small effect of CO2.

The earth's climate is in fact a fairly stable and well damped system. It does fluctuate, but it does not have positive feedback loops which will take it to extremes, and the effects of the relatively small rises in CO2 that we are now seeing simply cannot do that.