Posts by Vic

> how many people wanted to make that comment

You can probably infer that number from the number of people making the comment...

I, for one, am enjoying this current season of non-moderation. Long may it continue!

Vic.

>> "It is comparatively rare to find a judge who simply ignores the law."

> LOL

Well, rather than just posting your assertions, why don't you go and find some evidence?

If it's as commonplace an activity as you imply, that shouldn't be an imposition.

The problem is that so many people believe they understand the law, without actually every having read it. Judges rarely flout the law because it is so easy for that flouting to be undone on appeal. Judges often make unpopular decisions because the law does not say what urban myth would have us believe it says.

Vic.

> Is that wrong? No

Yes, actually, it probably is.

If you're grabbing copies of OEM installations, you are breaching copyright.

That you are incredibly unlikely to get caught is irrelevant; your actions are unlawful, even if they seem to make sense to you and me.

Vic.

> You obviously don't download much GPL software.

I do.

> The comment 'never pay for this software' does sometimes appear on author's website

Very rarely.

What you will occasionally see is an author warning about others re-badging his software (sometimes legally, often not) and claiming it to be some sort of "authorised" version.

> Google will find sites supplying exactly the same product for a price.

Yes.

> Parasites!

Sometimes. Other times, they are bundling it with something else (e.g. support).

But note that selling GPL software is *explicitly* permitted by the licence, so long as you conform to the other conditions.

Vic.

No.

The EULA is not up for discussion here - this is simple copyright infringement.

Vic.

> because it is "fair use"

You assume that there is any such provision in the law.

Note that this is a UK case; UK law does not have clear "fair use" exemption from copyright, just a number of instances where behaviour is not deemed to be a breach. This situation most certainly is not covered.

> if you paid for a copy of Windows then you generally have the right to make a back up

But Comet does not.

> Can you pay someone to make that backup ... Almost certainly

Section 50A of CDPA88 (which governs backup copies under UK law) makes no such provision.

> judges ... can make any decision they like without any reference to the law or justice

That is what generates appeals. It is comparatively rare to find a judge who simply ignores the law.

The issue we have is that many of our laws are actually quite unjust. CDPA88 is one such law; we can't blame the judiciary for upholding it, we must blame the politicians for making it.

Vic.

> I dont see how M$ has a leg to stand on.

Oh, they do.

The software on these disks is copyrighted. That means that it is unlawful to copy unless you have a licence from the copyright owner to do so.

Whether or not the copied disk is of any use to you *makes no difference*. Copyright law doesn't care whether or not a copy is useful, just whether or not it is authorised.

> This smacks of MS being arses

That's probably the case. But that doesn't mean they don't have the full weight of the law behind them.

Vic.

> I borrowed a Mac Mini a few weeks ago to see what the fuss was about.

Think yourself lucky. I bought one for a job.

> I was expecting a life changing experience after all the hype.

As was I.

> What a disappointment. It just felt clunky and looked clunky.

I don't know about "clunky", but there were definitely a number of things that didn't "just work". And finding the fix was less than easy :-(

> I'm a long term Windows user and after using Win7, OSX just felt awful.

I'm a long-term Fedora user. I now have three Macs (for various work projects), but I would not consider changing my personal machines for Apples.

Vic.

> Android is using a fork of Linux kernel

No. Android is using a Linux kernel, but it doesn't use the Gnu userspace that many people seem to want to call "Linux". That's sort of what RMS's (oft-misunderstood) rant was all about...

> 1- someone to write an app for that

You need someone to write an app for anything you want to do with any computer. But writing for Android really isn't very hard.

> 2- someone to allow you to use that app (app store or Something)

Absolutely wrong in every possible respect.

Android is *not* a walled garden. You can put what you want on it. Side-loading of APKs is commonplace on the cheaper tablets which don't have a marketplace, and supported on every single one of them.

> no Skype for Android on tablets although there is one for Android phones

And what is the *difference* between a tablet and a phone?

> Samsung will not offer the upgrade to Android 4

That's between you and Samsung. It has nothing to do with Android.

But if the Samsung hardware can support Android 4, you can bet someone will release code that enables your hardware to run it. It's up to you whether or not to take that route.

Vic.

> Who on earth chooses their own desktop OS based on anything /other/ than its functionality?

I do.

Freedom is important to me. It's a significant factor in choosing software of any sort.

The fact that my choice of desktop OS is both Free and functional is rather wonderful, actually...

Vic.

Re: So, your opinion is that nobody's managed to do it right...

> ... so nobody ever will.

No.

My opinion is that interfaces are inherently wide - either a small number of classes[1] with a lot of options, or a large number of classes with fewer options.

To create a visual paradigm for this, you either have a vast amount of options on each item, or you have a very large pallette of items from which to select. Either of these situations ends up with the user needing to know so much about the API that he might as well just be coding to it.

It's the same old GUI/CLI argument: the reason we developed speech, rather than just pointing and gesturing at images, is that speech is very much more expressive. You can convey an *accurate* message with far less effort.

And that is the end-point of programming; the language doesn't matter, it's all about describing the solution to the problem space. The more expressive a coder can be, the more effectively he can fulfil that task. And so a GUI is excellent when getting to know a system, but the CLI becomes the tool of choice when the user is more experienced with its capabilities.

Vic.

[1] Choose your term here; "class" is appropriate, but I'm not going to get into a semantic argument about how to term a collection of programming elements.

> Where I can draw a command, and the computer executes it and gives me the result

Visual programming paradigms have been around for donkeys' years. I last used one in anger in the mid-90s.

Sadly, they don't really work for long. If you have the richness of interface that a typical command achieves, you have a very complex interface to try to support that richness. It very quickly becomes much easier to learn the "traditional" text-based interface than to try to work through the mappings from that interface to a visual paradigm.

So the visual thing gets you through the first few weeks of development, as you start up the learning curve, but soon becomes an impediment to progress, not an aid.

Vic.

> as upset by someone undercutting them as the Salvation Army would be

> upset by someone working out how to help the poor better than they can.

*Nice*. I'm pinching that one.

Vic.

> Read what I said

I did. It doesn't get any less wrong for a repetition.

> the pertinent point is day to day use.

Read James' posts on the thread. He's doing exactly what you say can't be done.

I tend to trust the experiences of someone with first-hand experience over a web commentator who hasn't got his hands on a unit yet...

> It'll stink as a day to day device.

Probably not. I have a number of machines that run at about that level (the laptop I'm typing this on is currently reporting 600MHz from the CU scaler).

> The device's true strength will lie in running an embedded version Linux

And that's what *I* want one for. But that doesn't mean that it can't do what other people are already doing with it...

Vic.

> What people should NOT expect is to use a generic Linux dist on it for day to day use.

Yeah, you might want to read the web site before making statements like that.

The unit *already* supports Debian, Fedora and ArchLinux. Ubuntu was originally planned, but seems to have been dropped for the time-being.

Vic.

> So who would want such a thing?

Me. I think this is an excellent idea, and I'd have gone to £100 or so for one of these 10. It's good to give back to charitable organisations from time to time.

But the ones on eBay are well out of my price range...

> Buy a beta board, reverse engineer it and start flogging your own version

These are exactly the people who would *not* be bidding for an early version.

If you head over to the RaspberyrPi website, there are lots of photos of the boards, including hi-res shots of the unpopulated board. Someone trying to clone the RaspberryPi would start from there - it's a board with a very low component count, after all.

> Or worse: find that the copies have been improved over the original.

Why would that be worse?

The original will be performing as specified. If someone finds a way to improve that spec without increasing the board price, those improvements will doubtless find their way back into the R-Pi units.

Vic.

> You are?

Yes.

> May I ask where?

Groklaw.

> Been ages since I saw a story about any specific Microsoft patent.

It's not actually a secret blog. Anyone may read it...

Vic.

> Why is no one complaining about Microsoft then?

We are.

But this story is about Apple, so we're commenting on Apple here.

That Microsoft is worse than Apple is hardly a wonderful recommendation...

Vic.

> long answer

Actually, the long answer - the only answer - is for those who understand the problem to stand up and do something about it.

The USPTO won't do anything. The US government won't either. And let's not even joke about what the UK government might do.

So if we want this crap fixed, we need to do it ourselves. And that means each of us putting our hands in our pockets to fund a campaign to overturn as many bogus patents as we can find. Given the way the US justice[1] system works, that will cost serious cash.

But if everyone who really means it puts in twenty quid, there'll be less than a ton in the kitty. :-(

Vic.

[1] Ha!

> AIUI the USA changed the rules recently.

There was no de jure change; however, the USPTO has increasingly been asleep at the wheel.

> Prior art no has no meaning and it is first-to-file that counts.

Prior art most definitely does have meaning. However, the USPTO has simply been ignoring it (and those filing patents have increasingly been neglecting to mention the prior art they know about).

The upshot is that patents are granted erroneously - and to overturn them requires an expensive court case with a high burden of proof on whomever would challenge such a nonsense patent. So they persist, and the whole world suffers as a result.

Vic.

> the Patent process makes public the research

What, "plug a powered device into a power source"?

That hardly qualifies as "research"...

> suggesting an idea in a story is not good enough unless there was a working prototype made...)

Actually - yes it is. Science Fiction counts as prior art if it covers the "invention".

Vic.

> Assuming the "French Airshow" crash you mention is Flight 296, that was pilot error.

*Might have been* pilot error.

There was a documentary a few years back that showed some rather troubling allegations - e.g. one of the flight recorders was very old (on a brand-new aircraft), and that recorder had a *sudden* change of sync (by 7 whole seconds) compared to the other one just before the accident. The implication was that someone had dibbled with the recording to make it appear that the pilot had reacted too late.

The official transcript of the CVR had two bangs in it (the programme claimed that this was compressor stall leading to loss of power at a critical time), yet the released audio had no such noise...

Most troubling from my perspective was an interview with the CTO (IIRC) of Airbus, who claimed that the computers couldn't possibly have gone wrong, so it must have been a pilot error. That's arrogance of unimaginable proportions.

But it must be said, the pilot was attempting a low-speed, low-altitude, high-attitude fly-by in a large aircraft. He was doing that presumably because it's a comparatively difficult manoeuvre. The stunt went wrong. So it *might* have been pilot error, although IIRC Airbus Industrie were advised to make some changes to the pilot displays.

Vic.

> When a web user visits an SSL-protected page, most browsers will check

> the see if the certificate has been revoked.

*Some* browsers *may* check to see if the certificate has been revoked. Not everyone actually uses OCSP.

But OCSP is heavily-cached (and needs to be).

So when you said "CAs get to log each visit an IP address makes to an HTTPS page protected by one of their certificates", you were incorrect.

Should a CA log OCSP requests, it would get one log entry per IP per renewal period. This is very different form what you suggested.

HTH, HAND, etc.

Vic.

> I believe the Michigan State Police experimented with the ABS system

> during their annual police vehicle tests one year.

Perhaps you'd like to give a reference for that; the only MSP info I can find shows ABS-equipped vehicles performing very well, with the sole exception of the Harley Davidsons in the 2007 test. This is hardly a surprise for anyone that's seen a Harley, and nothing to do with ABS...

Vic.

> the recommendation is to pull over *in a safe place*

Indeed.

And by comparison to driving a faulty car onto a railway line, pretty much anywhere counts as "safe"...

Vic.

> researchers have already demonstrated remote hacks of car electronics

> that COMPLETELY DISABLED THE BRAKES

Reference?

> do a search and you'll find it.

I did a search and found nothing of the sort. Perhaps you'd like to show me what I missed.

Vic.

>>This *dramatically* shortens the stopping distance.

>

> That's exactly what I was saying!!!!!!

Nope. What you said was :

>> It does not stop you faster in a straight line

And it does.

> then braking just short of the the point of where the ABS is needed will be better still

You have that sort of control, do you? With wheels on different surfaces?

Maximum retardation depends somewhat on the tyre in question, but for most tyres, it is achieved when the tyre is *just* starting to slip. And that''s what you get from ABS.

Vic.

> Vic - as with many internet commenters - is armed with the invincible

> knowledge provided by ardent conviction in spite of things like "facts"

An ad hominem, Trevor? Have you run out of argument already?

I've presented you with evidence. I have given you a reference to the material I use, and if you'd look at that, you'd understand why I say the things I say.

Instead, you go off on a personal attack. Shame on you.

Vic.

> ABS isn't really a computer system is it?

Modern ones are.

Vic.

@Auditor

> If such a device fails, e.g. its own hardware or an essential sensor is broken, it

> should disable itself indeed.

Errr - yes. That's what I said.

What are you differing about?

Vic.

@Trevor

> Well, the issue at hand is one of getting off the road without getting killed by the twits

That's a problem to be solved. I could not possibly see driving a failed car onto a railway line as a proper solution to that problem.

> Walking away from the car alone is probably riskier.

Then I would maintain you do not understand the risk of driving a failed car onto a railway line.

> Remember: the car was at this point working just fine at 20kph.

No it was *not* working fine. You were already aware of a serious fault with the car.

> There was no reason to believe that it would suddenly stop responding to input.

I would say that there was every reason to believe so. Your car was in the middle of a significant failure. All bets are off...

> (I believed it to be stuck in 1st it pretty much is how it was behaving.)

Had your hypothesis been correct, a total loss of drive would have been a reasonable next step in the failure. Driving onto a railway line in a car that might be about to lose all drive really isn't a smart thing to do.

> It is another thing entirely to know all the details and have to make those choices on the fly.

Read the book I mentioned earlier. The thing it hammers home all the way through is that the way to survive problems like that is by the use of really effective planning. Had you been in that mindset, you would not have had to make a choice on the fly.

> I stand by my choice, even in the face of judgement from random people on the Internet.

Not for the first time, I find myself watching you make excuses for the errors in your approach, rather than understanding and learning from the criticism you receive. Please don't ever buy a motorcycle.

Vic.

> ABS limiting your ability to make controlled actions.

ABS does no such thing.

If your wheels are locked, you're sliding. You don't make controlled actions in those circumstances.

If you manage to unlock the wheels - your ABS will do nothing. It is only operative *whilst you have your wheels locked*.

> the ABS fired in and out like crazy and the car was borderline useless.

This implies that you are braking far, far too hard.

It is better, in very slippery conditions, to use the brakes as little as possible. If your ABS was "fir[ing] in and out like crazy", perhaps you do not have sufficient experience in those conditions. ABS doesn't make grip, it just salvages as much as possible. If you're salvaging all the time, your driving is inappropriate for the conditions.

> With a car without ABS, I'd have had a much easier time

No you wouldn't. You'd have slid into something because you were braking far too harshly.

Vic.

> I can't beleive that in this day and age there is still so much ignorance surrounding ABS...

I would concur with that.

> It does not stop you faster in a straight line

Yes it does.

Go to a skid pan and try it - make sure you know which fuse to pull before you get there.

If you're a *very* good driver, you'll get reasonably close to the ABS stopping distance (but not beat it). And you'll get signed by McLaren. We mere mortals go a lot further.

> in fact it increases the distance from stopping without locking the wheels in the first place.

If you don't lock your wheels, your ABS system does *nothing at all*. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever to an unlocked wheel. So your stopping distance, if you don't lock the wheels, is absolutely 100% identical.

If, however, you *do* lock the wheels, then the ABS does something: it unlocks the wheel. This means that you can get some retardation from the wheel, rather than just sliding across the road. This *dramatically* shortens the stopping distance.

> Learning how your car reacts on different road surfaces and knowing how hard to hit the

> brakes in an emergency will improive your stopping distances.

Perhaps. But ABS isn't there for when you do everything completely right - it's there to pick up the pieces when you make a mistake. Have you ever made a mistake? I certainly have.

> And in my experience it fails on ice...

That is because you fundamentally do not understand what ABS does.

> It does 'work' but it doesn't slow you down as the grip just isn't there before you start.

Even imagining that ABS might generate grip that isn't there shows just how little you understand the technology.

Please - go to a skid pan and *learn*.

Vic.

> the ABS replaces the brake proportioning valve.

Not on any car I've ever looked at. It would be a serious mistake.

The ABS system is designed to disable itself in the event of any failure (e.g. a few iron filings on the sensor). It would be madness to design a braking system that is seriously compromised in the event of an ABS shutdown.

Vic.