My maths teather...
...was a 3rd Dan in Karate (Shotokan I think). Quite frankly he scared the shit out of me (and most other pupils).
Probably explains why we were rather good at maths though!
Way to go Corduroy-ka!
3080 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Mar 2008
But the Dell Ubuntu landing page is *VERY* anti-Linux!
http://www.dell.co.uk/ubuntu
Aaaaaaand they have one model.
And it's pants.
HP sell Linux PCs too, although they make them nearly impossible to find (probbaly under pressure from MS).
Just buy what you want (after doing some rudimentary hardware compatibility checks)
Reject the MS EULA
Drop on the penguin of choice
Reclaim the Microsoft Tax (around €70, YMMV)
Or consider Frostbite Systems, System 76...
What a bunch of morons. I love using my old xBox to watch iPlayer (I live in the UK, I pay my license fee) and now I can't because some ass-hat is sucking the Adobe phallus.
We need DRM like we need a freaking hole-in the head. With the coming of HTML5, hopefully the world will wake-up to what utter crap Flash is and we can move on. but probably not.
As a techie, I can see the advantage of centralised records and data sharing. Putting all issues of privacy to side for one second, it should bring massive efficiencies, reduce time wasted etc.
However...
Our government (all 3 major parties) have shown themselves incapable of delivery any reasonably sized IT project, incapable of respecting the law, incapable of protecting privacy, incapable of coming clean and quickly fixing problems; basically, incapable of being trusted.
And that is also ignore the massive levels of corruption within the greater EU.
Because of this staggering ineptitude and corruption, any data sharing, retention or centralisation must be opposed because of the vast levels of abuse that will happen. So despite the potential advantages, we must forgo systems simply because we cannot trust our employees to use them correctly.
...as such. The money has to come from somewhere.
And it would be nice to think that this 50P will evaporate in a year or two once the roll-out is complete.
What I do mind is the fact that this 50p will grow in size and become permanent. Thus we will all end up paying £15 a month (or whatever) for a "internet fund license" which will actually go to pay for first class train tickets etc and not be used for what it was originally intended.
...OOXML will they have that? Or the old binary format? Maybe, maybe not.
This is exactly WHY standards are needed (and one standard for one thing - we did not need OOXML as ODF was there first). Now we have the VHS/Betamax wars AGAIN (just like BluRay/HD). The people who lose are the consumers through inflated prices and the devs who have to do everything twice.
And once again the arguably inferior standard will be the one that ends up getting adopted.
...I can do it to: MS violates all of my patents.
See? Nasty MS patent violators. *waggles finger* Where are my millions?
Of course there are three things to not about the above claim
1) I make no statement as to *what* patents;
2) I provide no proof; and
3) I don't actually hold any patents anyway.
Is it perhaps time for the FSF (or some other body) to challenge MS over these claims? File a suit of malicious falsehood or whatever? I'm pretty ignorant of USA law, so maybe that is not possible.
Either way, MS should either put up or shut up when it comes to these claims. If they have solid proof, then there should be no problem with making that proof public and allowing scrutiny. It's not as if this would show anything "secret" after all, they are claiming it has already been copied and is already in use.
...people saw pixies and fairies.
Then it was angels, demons, Jesus etc.
Now it's aliens.
It's all the friggin' same if you ask me. OK, I don't think Jesus was big on anal probes like the aliens apparently are, but you get my drift. It's all some general brain-fart (hallucination, waking dream, genuine insanity, etc). or just plain, money-making fraud.
Linux desktop penetration in the normal world is usually considered to be sub 1% (although it might sneak over 1% depending on which survey you look at). 38.5% is a significant increase on that, as is the 19.1% for Macs over their usual 5-6%.
One wonders how many of the remaining Windows users (42.4%) are using it out of choice. Most developers will work in a corporate environment where their desktop OS is dictated to them and no variance permitted (because they MUST use Outlook, MUST use Office Communication Server etc). For the non-Windows OSs to reach these levels of penetration is a significant achievement.
Or maybe 38.5% of PHP monkeys just love the command line?
(Relax, I'm joking)
If the sharing breaches the copy-holders right and they have the evidence to back that up, then they take the offender to court or they convince the police to arrest and then it goes to court. Just like any other crime, pretty much.
Anything else is inexcusable and a serious attack on what we take as legal process in this country.
I don't illegally file share - quite frankly I can buy enough cheap DVDs legally and record enough legally over the air to struggle to keep up!
Or gotten involved?
Or looked at the code?
Or sponsored someone to do this?
It's all very well moaning that it doesn't do X, but if you don't ask for X (and get involved in delivering X). This is the big difference between FOSS and proprietary. FOSS is only ever as good as the community involvement, and it moves in the direction that the community wants. If you are not in that community...then you only have yourself to blame really.
Personally, I am looking forward to giving 3.2 a bash at home (I am stuck using MS at work).
It's not that Google will or will not do DPI.
It's not that it is even Google per se.
It's because ONE ENTITY (Google in this case) is content aggregator, content provider (to an extent), device provider, DNS provider, hosting provider, connection provider etc. this gives them the POTENTIAL to engage in massive invasions of privacy on a scale never before known.
ANY entity given that kind of power needs very careful observation.
Even my government own doesn't have that kind of power over me!
If Haystack is good enough to by-pass the filtering in Iran, why don't the Aussies just use that?*
Or Tor?
Governments will have to learn that no matter what they do, they cannot compete with an legion of frustrated geeks with entirely too much time on their hands. :o)
*I agree it's the principle of the thing that's important.
Backport.
Add the module (through Windows Updates) to XP and Vista, then people can see for themselves if this is "caused" by Win 7 or not.
How about a Reg-Off? Unscientific I know, but two new lappys; same model, same specs. One with XP (or Vista, if you must) and one with Win7. Then use a scripting to tool to run through the same operation repeatedly until the battery paps it.
As for batteries....any good with a soldering iron? Pop the battery open (it's often LiOn AAs or similar inside), note down the serial number of whatever is inside, order new ones, unsolder the old, solder in the new. So long as you have a reasonably steady have (and a multimeter to check connections...) you should have a new battery pack for better than half price. Heck, if you know your electrickery, you might find a way to "upgrade" the battery.
Reminds me...I have a laptop I need to do that to.
BM: We have not found any leaks
Me: How hard and often did you look?
BM: No need, we have mechanisms in place for stakeholders to report any leaks.
Me: So you don't look?
BM: As I said, we have stringent policies in place to gather this sort of intelligence.
Me: But you don't actually, y'know, LOOK; do you?
BM: I have already answered that question on more than one occasion.
Me: Fine then. How about running simulated attacks. Y'know, test your own defences.
BM: That would be in contravention of our stringent, industry leading policies and a complete waste of tax payer's money as we have no leaks.
Me: But how do you know?
BM: None have been reported.
Me: Oh ffs.....
You're blaming OSS for you lack of a job? Strange...I and everyone I know uses OSS at some point in their job. OSS is, by and large, the "Lego"(tm) bricks...you still have to know how to put them together (and there lies the money, fella-me-lad; just ask Red Hat).
I suggest you look inwardly and conquer your own ego. Contsantly blaming an external entity you cannot control won't get you anywhere. It's a bit like blaming a hill for getting one out of breath, rather than accepting that one is simply unfit.
And working on OSS is still seen as "experience", you don't necessarily need experience in the language or tech - even testing or proof-reading the docs is good. It's better than doing nothing and shows more gumption that just sitting about getting fat. Guess what "skill" an employer likes most?...yup, getting off yer arse and doing something.
If you can do that, everything else is just reading.
I make videos of something (funny kittens, I dunno)
I put them on the web at no cost to the end-user (free, in other words)
I do not syndicate or otherwise make any money directly from the videos (still free)
But....I do make money from advertising on my pages.
The video is the draw that gets people to view and click the ads I serve.
So whilst my video is still "free", is it making me money?
Would I fall foul of the "no fee" MPEG-LA offer?
I think I would, to be honest.
Ogg Theora, A.N.Other, I don't care. Just make sure it is patent and cost unencumbered.
1) Stop eating fast-food shit, start eating more veg
2) Stop drinking beer, enjoy up to 4 glasses of quality wine a week
3) Take some friggin' exercise you fat berk
With this simple regime, you too could be moob free in 1 month. You also get fringe benefits!
1) Decreased illness due to the intake of more vitamins etc
2) Increased lifespan as liver returns to something resembling normal
3) More money in your wallet
4) Less chance of death or disfigurement, no surgery required!
Yes indeed, join The Big Yin's Moob-be-gone program now an say good-bye to inappropriate fun-bag blues.
I don't know about Apples, but if you want to finger about the only piece of software that can bring an entire Linux box to its knees, it's Flash.
That is not the fault of Linux, Gnome, KDE, Canonical, Novell, Red Hat or anyone else. It is 100% the fault of the donkeys at Adobe for not writing their code efficiently.
HTML5 held out some hope of removing large amounts of the parasite that is Flash from the web, but Google dropped a clanger and moved away from open standards, preferring instead patent-encumbered bullshit (or should that be, load of crap?) just as Apple do.
Thus Flash will be around for ages yet and we will continue to hear dual and quad cores scream in agony as they chew through the quagmire that is Flash code. Flash does have it's place, and that place should be the dustbin of history.
It does have a place, but it should not be treated as some DHTML/WEB2.0 standard-by-proxy.
I can play full screen video on my aging PC just fine, but even a small amount of video in Flash kills it (I don't use Windows, so the Adobe support is even worse). I am having a look at Gnash to see if that is an option, but as Flash is a closed "standard" it takes the Gnash team a while to reverse-engineer.
Right tool for a job and all that.
MS have been at the forefront of democratising IT and empowering people to leverage their hardware. If it wasn't for MS we'd be back with IBM and only six computers worldwide! MS "funding" Linux is just an extension of MS's drive to bring quality, affordable IT products to a world audience. MSs browser is goog enough for Google to take into markets like China, what more prrof do you want?
[The above may be a pathetic attempt at irony, verging into sarcasm]
If not - release browsers that can cope in areas not covered.
Does the patent cover compiled code or source? Is a "workaround" for individuals to compile the source themselves? (not hard on a Linux platform)
The best answer is, of course, to adopt a fully-open standard. But as the open types can rarely flash the wonga, that won't happen (no bungs to the top brass). Still - it would take just one manufacturer (let's say nVidia for the sake of argument; they're pretty open source friendly anyway, unlike ATI et al) to do it to show off some kind of "extensible video acceleration architecture" or something and...well...blammo. There you go.
An open source standard would stimulate innovation, competition and lower prices to consumers. Sure there are problems with the various Ogg formats; the great thing is if Apple (say) don't like something it does, they can simply proffer the fix, job done.
I use Ogg wherever I can as it (generally) gives equals (usually better) fidelity for a smaller file size when compare to MP3; important when you want to cram as much onto your player as possible.
I feel most sorry for the iPod users out there. The iPod is lovely to look at, well made but jeez - so locked down it is untrue.
I utterly despise MC SecureCode, it is utter crap and a total inconvenience. I have lost count of the number of times it has had some fit and blocked my purchase and just returned some meaningless exception code.
You phone the card company, they can't help.
You phone the retailer, they can't help.
So you use a different card and say "FUCK OFF" to MC SecureCode.
Also, the MC SecureCode shit is very badly integrated and my browser throws a fit as 85% of the time it detects MC SecureCode potential XSS. My, that really boost my confidence in MC SecureCode.
Take my advice - boycott retailers that use MC SecureCode/VbV and keep you life simples.
...but deliberately hobbling the RFID chip will be taken as a sign that you have something to hide and lead to the police giving you a full cavity search in public (or whatever it is RIPA lets them away with).
There's been too many stories of people not co-operating 100% and immediately with any inane plod request and then getting in deep-kaka because of that.
You will obey the law.
You will obey the police.
You will obey the machine.
Labour has spoken - you have no choice.
Or Farady pockets?
Whilst I can accept that in certain place it should be a requirement to identify oneself, I object strongly to be identified and tracked against my will, and especially in a public place without my consent and without probable cause.
Still, there is little sense in going to great lengths to protect your identity like that and then using a credit or debit card. They can just track you that way.
Tin foil hat, please.
I've got the plugins I want to play with on my customised (native) toolbar, I have my search box (where I can change sources) and I have my address bar (well, "Wow bar" or whatever).
WTF does Google toolbar give me? The weather? Don't need that; I can look outside, check clock in the panel or have a glance at conky.
Security/Privacy? That's what NoScript, AdBlock, TrackMeNot etc. are for.
Local search? Well I appear to have Catfish for that...but I've never used it (yet - I generally have documents in a proper doc management system).
So....WTF does the Google Toolbar give me? Other than an attack on my personal privacy of course.