Posts by Edward Lilley 32 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2008
"stark contrast to Google's position on net neutrality, which says operators should be required to connect to any valid address with equal facility."
Telephone numbers are not IP addresses; connecting to phone networks is just a random service that Google feels like providing to people. It's not particularly related to how traffic is routed (or not routed) around the rest of the internet.
John Ozimek's article (link in a previous comment) clearly outlines why articles about Wolfram Alpha like your own are utterly utterly retarded. I quote:
"For if any one thing is certain, the non-specialist press just love to tear apart new technologies the moment they fail to live up to claims they never made in the first place."
Even though the percentage of heavy p2p users is ~5-15%, within a few years (approx. 2-10) *everyone* will be using these sorts of bandwidths, as TV/Radio &c. move to internet-based distribution methods.
Disclaimer: I torrent something a couple of times every year, I don't think TeXLive_2008.torrent and Fedora_x86_64_DVD.torrent are illegal (not that it would make any difference).
Basically, it's just 0s and 1s and a series of tubes, people. If Mr. EvilP2P is maxing out his connection, and Mrs. Onlycheckshisemails wants a slice of the pie too, then *both* of their connections are (temporarily) limited by the same amount. No different from any other usage patterns then.
The whole point of New Labour is that they're *not* all nice and moderately left wing! New Labour is more of an awful corporate-friendly centre-right affair.
But --- that's not even the issue here. Totalitarianism can come from both left- or right- wing governments... and in this case it is coming from New Labour. So a big Shut Up to everyone trying to implicate Socialism/Marxism/<insert irrational fear of political system here> with this stupid new law
Of course he's not demonstrating outside mosques - not all Muslims are extremists.
However, Extremist Muslims are probably more dangerous than Scientologists -- but that's no reason not to criticise Scientologists. Like, Robert Mugabe isn't _quite_ as nasty as Kim Jong Il, but we still criticise him, qithout feeling the need to criticise all Zimbabweans.
Maybe FbiRolling, or Kiddy-Pr0n-Rolled.
Leading to expressions such as "Megalolz, you just got FbiRolled" etc.
Also, how messed up are these FBI guys (and American legal system generally)? Shouldn't they be going after the people who actually abuse the children and *produce* the KP. Once the KP is out there on a public server, it hardly should be illegal to click on a link accidentally that takes you there. Add to that the fact that there _was_ no offensive content on the FBI servers anyway, and it just makes this particular US governmental department look like a complete luser-farce.
Ignoring the fact that average desktop-oriented GNU/Linux distributions are only marginally related to the issue in hand (they make a great topic for a flame, though!), it might be worth pointing out that most Distros come with a choice of software, of which some is particularly suited to running on lower hardware requirements (think KDE-->Xfce, for example).
Just because _you_ had a problem with your installation (or other usage) of GNU/Linux, it doesn't mean that other people's claims of "Ubuntu is working" are not true. The fact holds that GNU/Linux is very user-friendly for most people in most cases (i.e., exactly the same as Microsoft Windows).
I have to admit, when I find someone who is actually an *expert* in Windows administration, and I watch them fixing a problem/doing a miscellaneous task, I am really quite baffled; it seems that Microsoft couldn't have made Windows power-user/sysadmin configuration for arcane and unnecessarily complex if they tried. Especially the Windows command-line.
@Mark
"Windows is not noob friendly.
"Linux isn't noob friendly.
"Maybe *computers* aren't noob friendly."
Exactly - the common doctrine seems to be that computers have to "Just work". But, in an ideal world, the doctrine that should be preached to OS designers would be "The OS should always act in a logical way; if you tell a computer to do something, it should do what you said/interpret what you said sensibly; also the interface to the OS should make sense."
Of course, this might entail users having to learn the method with which they have to use the computer, but that goes for all human tools. Noone expects that you should be able to pick up a violin and it should "play itself" exactly how you want it to. You have to learn how to play the violin, but the way you use the violin is indeed logical, even if you have to learn how to do it.
Likewise, users should expect to have to learn about the computers they use. If the OS is well-designed, it should at least seem logical to an end-user. For example, Unix-style abstraction where "everything is a file" may require a bit of learning to be able to use, but it certainly makes sense - and if you're using a sensible Unix-like system, your commands will be interpreted sanely by the OS.
Basically, saying things do/don't/should "Just work" (or "Should work like Microsoft Windows because I can't conceive of a different OS") belies ignorance.
Even if Windows Vista were better than all my current operating systems, I would still opt for a free (as in freedom) version of GNU/Linux. Of course, if Free operating systems in general were so bad as to actually be worse than Windows Vista, I would certainly not expect my less technically-orientated friends to also use them. However, this "Linux is not ready for the desktop" I keep hearing is simply not true. However good Windows and/or Macs are, this myth about the usability of GNU/Linux is a complete falsehood.
I would also like to point out that just because you (yes, YOU, the person reading this comment at the moment wondering whether to reply to it!) have had a perfect, or near-perfect user experience of Windows Vista, doesn't mean that everybody else is lying about their 12 minute start-up times. And vice-versa.
Something I find mildly humourous is the fact that Windows Xp is 5, that's right FIVE years old. Now, I'm not saying that everyone should format, and reinstall a new operating system every year, in fact, it should be possible to keep an OS running for ever with suitable updates (see Debian), BUT if you say that Xp is `better' than Vista (it definitely seems to be), then you are effectively saying that every operating system released since 2003 is similarly better than Vista. Doesn't the thought of running a 5-year-old OS worry anybody? Especially with Xp's security record.
There are literally tens of seemingly cloned comments here, all saying "Well obviously Windows Xp is going to run faster on the same hardware." Well, no. If anything, Windows Vista should run faster on older hardware (not *extremely* old hardware, obviously) because its code should have been tidied up and made more efficient (I seem to recall this happening, based on third-hand knowledge, to a recent SuSE release). Besides, the Laptop mentioned in the article was a _modern_ laptop, which was advertised has being capable of running Vista.
Finally, if you've noticed that Both Xp and Vista grind to a halt, gradually, after several months of use, that doesn't make Vista Better. It makes them equally rubbish.
Gotta love the posters who are either trolls, or are ignorably (i.e. it's easy to ignore their pitiful contributions) ignorant, and fill their posts with profanity and easily-disprovable falsehoods (like "Vista is good", "Mac OS X is good", or "Linux is an OS, rather than a kernel". Actually ignore this bit in brackets, it's too sarcastic.)
That *all* of the ranting Linux-Fan-boys are trolls, doing it on purpose. I can find no other explanation for it.
Almost as bad, but not quite, are the smug people saying that "Linux is fine for the IT people, but is not yet usable off the shelf for the masses". This is not true.
So Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and --insert-GNU/Linux-distro-of-choice--, all have problems, but Windows has the most. Case closed.
Ranter --> Rantress
Rantor --> Rantrix
Personally, I think Rantor sounds more like an evil bot programmed to flame (metaphorically, over the tubes) everything and everyone in sight, so I would go with Rantrix for this Flame of the Week.
IT angle, because, er, anyone remember that potato-powered server hoax a while back that got picked up on (and subsequently dropped from their website quietly) by the Beeb.
"Get real cos if you think it shouldnt be illegal to look at CP images you're seriously warped."
The person looking at the images is not necessarily the person who abused the child in the first place, and he might not be the person who distributed the images either. Sure, the producers (abusers) and the distributors should be prosecuted, but the government has no right to stop people looking at images that they have already in their own possession (whether they had to break the law to obtain those pictures is another matter).
I don't know about anyone else, but I am moderately annoyed that criminals (or at least certain types thereof) do not have the right to vote.
Hang on a minute: surely if thieves make up the majority of the population, and they want to vote to make theft legal, what is wrong with that? Democracy is what the majority of the people want (or maybe a slight compromise), and the whole point is that laws are brought about by popular demand, whatever their supposed 'morals' are.
Also, I agree that this case has an eeeevil hidden agenda
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