Posts by DavCrav

"Theft was the only crime, whether the loot was gold, innocence, land or life. And for the thief-taker, there was the chase…"

It's from Jingo.

"What do they now possess that you do not?"

I cannot find the Pratchett quotation at the moment, but in one of his books he said something along the lines of 'all crime is, at its basic level, theft'. Murder is theft of life, rape is theft of the ability to consent. And so on. Copyright infringement, to give it its correct term, is the theft of my ability to decide what to do with my ideas and work.

Part of the social contract is that the work reverts to the public domain in just over a century or so, and that's fine. I think it should be earlier, but that's a debateable point. I think most people think copyright should last longer than a year though, which is how long my latest book has been published.

"Hey comrade, what happened to "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"?"

You don't need to read my books.

Re: It's really quite simple

"Out of print isn't tough, it's negligence."

Springer-Verlag, it appears, has digitized their entire back catalogue and will do print on demand, for a relatively reasonable price, for any book.

"Don't forget that one digital copy given away can very quickly become one hundred thousand pirate copies."

It can, and I can live with someone sending it to their colleagues. Indeed, I give it to one person specifically knowing that he will do that. I would not expect them to stick it on their website.

"The authors are the only ones that can change this part of the equation. They need to step up before outright piracy, or unpaid open works, become the social norm."

Sorry, so I should engage with thieves, and try to undercut free? Yeah, that's going to work.

Let's be clear here. Almost all books are published by people who are not rich. Copying them deprives them of either money (if you were going to buy it otherwise) or the ability to control who gets to access their book (if you weren't).

Nobody has any divine right to read my work for free. Pay or I stop doing it.

This is true. Sorry, I mean England and Wales. Scotland, as you point out, has a (sometimes slightly, sometimes very) different legal system.

Re: Libel tourism

"He happens to be living in Surrey now, but the judges accepted the argument that this was incidental to where the alleged defamation actually took place."

He lives in Surrey. Right, so we agree that he is ordinarily resident in the UK. So it isn't tourism to use your home court. My partner is German; should she have to go back to Germany to sue someone?

Note that Wright has been (successfully) sued in the US, despite not being born there, a national there, or living there. To call this libel tourism is bullshit.

(I'm not saying he's right, I'm saying it's not libel tourism to sue someone in your local court.)

Re: Libel tourism

"So Wright tried libel tourism"

Is that what suing someone in your own country is called now?

Re: airbus wiring

That's both interesting and terrifying. There is no 'different way' to calculate bending radius, surely? I mean, it either gets the right answer for that loom or not.

Re: the key words "figures in billions"

So he asked his colleagues to not use it to mean million million, not that it was 'officially' changed. Right.

On the other hand, I remember Gordon Brown using 'thousand million' in a Budget, although I can only find one example of his doing so online, in 2010.

1996 Fowler says that old billion was still commonly used, and 1965 Fowler argued for the new billion.

"saw a program, about building planes...one of the new Airbus? (have not currently googled the details)...France's software ran in one unit (inches or cm), Germany's software ran in the other."

I'd be highly surprised if it were, both countries having used the metric system for over a century. That seems like more of a US thing. So my guess would be Boeing. You know, because they haven't cocked up enough recently.

Edit: I've looked for a few minutes. Either my Google-fu is lacking or this didn't happen.

Re: the key words "figures in billions"

"What's next, changing the gallon to be a mere 3.8 litres?"

You mean changing it back to 3.8l? English measures changed over time. US ones were crystallized at a point in time, using the Queen Anne 1706 gallon of 231 cubic inches. In the 19th century Britain redefined the gallon to be more capacious (but complicated, roughly 277.274 cubic inches, and based on distilled water at specific air pressure and temperature), and then only in 1976 was it standardized as 277.4194 cubic inches.

Re: the key words "figures in billions"

"British English was changed in 1974"

That's weirdly specific. Since there is no Academie Francaise for British English, in what sense was it changed, and who changed it? I agree that one billion is now a thousand million, but even when I was a child (and I was born after 1974) there was confusion over what a billion meant.

Re: Contact tracing?

"So this has never been necessary before and nobody ever saw any reason to develop anything for it? It seems that nobody ever thought that there would ever be a pandemic or epidemic that might need this happening."

It's only been the last couple of years where such an app has even been possible.

"We were caught completely unprepared because the government ignored any suggestion that there might be anything like this in the future."

You mean every government in the world. There was nobody anywhere that had a pandemic tracking app ready to roll. Some countries already had tracking apps that they repurposed, but those were for a very different use.

"Reporting the news and facts becomes a political opinion piece on the actions of Dominic Cummings."

It's not an opinion piece. Cummings did break lockdown.

"Call this journalism?"

What? Telling people stuff governments prefer you to 'move on' from? Yes.

"ARM was * bought * by a * Japanese * company."

I'm sure it's all the same to him, of course.

But Softbank, while domiciled in Japan, are not entirely Japanese. Their Vision Fund rounds 1 and (probably not 2), in which Softbank is heavily invested, are substantially funded by others, most notably some totally-fun Gulf states. Masayoshi Son is in a spot of bother at the moment. WeWork and Uber are two big bets with the Vision Fund, both turning brown at pace. Softbank recently took a massive charge on their investment in VF, which lost around $18 billion this year.

The VF owns (I believe) a quarter of ARM Holdings.

Re: So...

"There is no accounting for the brain-dead stupid lot who think (or perhaps cannot think at all) a virus comes out of radios."

To be fair, that's not what they think, that would be crazy. What they 'think' is that COVID-19 is a cover story and these people are being killed by 5G signals. That's why they are assaulting cable layers and 4G masts. Obviously. And why countries with no 5G networks are suffering lots of COVID-19 deaths.

Re: And it's all based on ALLEGATIONS!

What evidence? Some guy at OCPW who disagrees with everyone else there, and who the Russian government invited to speak?

You're going to need more than 'everybody knows that's a lie' stuff. All major international organizations, all major NGOs, everyone with any kind of reputation, and not tied to Syria or Russia, believes Assad used chemical weapons in Syria.

Re: And it's all based on ALLEGATIONS!

Citation for you not being correct: this Reuters article, which says that he helped the FFM collect samples. Sounds like a bit player at best, and not part of the FFM team at all.

Unless we can add Reuters to your list of people who are getting basic facts wrong. As opposed to The Gray Zone, your references, founded by Max Blumenthal, who (acording to Wikipedia) regularly contributes to RT and Sputnik.

Not that the Russian government has any interest in fake news regarding Assad's chemical weapons, and certainly Russia has never been noted for planting such fake news around the place.

Re: And it's all based on ALLEGATIONS!

"he lead the team."

The FFM team seem to disagree.

Re: And it's all based on ALLEGATIONS!

"Swimming pools and water treatment plants, as well as hospitals, contain supplies of chlorine dioxide or chlorine gas used for disinfection."

This is true. How did a chlorine gas canister get halfway up a building though, if it started off in a swimming pool?

And, I don't know about Syria, but everywhere I know uses sodium hypochlorite in swimmijng pools, because, you know, chlorine gas is nasty.

Re: And it's all based on ALLEGATIONS!

Here's Bellingcat talking about your guy Henderson. Summary:

1) Henderson wasn't on the FFM team.

2) Everybody on the FFM team disagrees with him.

3) He's wrong on facts.

Re: And it's all based on ALLEGATIONS!

"And it's all based on ALLEGATIONS!"

With regards Syrian "gas attacks", they were gas attacks. There is copious evidence, from eyewitness reports, soil samples, human tissue samples, piles of dead bodies, etc., that it happened, and that Assad was responsible. Don't lump that in with the 'dodgy dossier'.

Re: WTF ?!!

"A few baton rounds tends to result in the guy with the knife dropping it"

This guy's wearing armour. If it works properly, surely baton rounds wouldn't be much...welll...cop?

Re: This is why...

"I had a George Formby Grill.

Turned out nice again, that did."

Terrible at grilling, but the windows are nice and clean.

Re: tldr

"How does anyone realistically expect that won't result in fewer IT staff?"

If you want your remote company to work, you need IT. It's pretty much the only workers you need in such a company. Cutting down on essential staff (rather than 'essential' staff like management) is a bad idea for the viability of your company, even in the short/medium term.

"I do question whether it's fair to count furloughed staff in these figures though"

True, but given that the massive IT requirements are now, furloughing is as good as firing for the purposes of the article.