Posts by Tom 13

@Paul Shirley: You had to do it didn't you?

Here I was enjoying a good rant against those thieving bastages at the ulta-huge megacorp, and you HAD to find one thing I'll have to give the credit for: they had the stones to take their case to court even though they were likely to spend more trying the case than settling it.

Frankly, I'd like to see more companies do that when they think they are in the right. In the long run we'd wind up with fewer nuisance suits. But then again I think you Brits have a losers pay clause that sort of limits that, whereas we 'Mericans don't.

Re: Extreme? Well Oracle are taking a similar line in this case...

And why we crazy 'Mericans have those very useful "fair use" and "parody" clauses on our copyright laws.

Re: Floored, I tell you

No, we know the decision will be appealed, we DON'T know that it will be overturned. It SHOULD be upheld, but there is always doubt when lawyers are involved.

Re: A very welcome outbreak of common sense

I'd like to join you in your optimism, unfortunately I know our legal system and the players too well.

I expect Larry "I have more money than God" Ellison will charge his lawyers with finding a way to appeal the decision and have the judge's ruling overturned. I don't expect it to end until SCOTUS has ruled. I'd quote a famous Brit about what this is, but I won't offend you by getting it wrong.

Re: At the center of each black hole is the event horizon ...

If you think about what a black hole really is, you'll realize that your description is actually as ridiculous as his. We don't really have words to describe what happens once you pass the event horizon. It is only accurately describable with equations. And we aren't quite sure what they mean on "the other side" of the event horizon where space has negative curvature, assuming of course the equations are continuous and not bounded at the event horizon.

I will grant that the author did not use the usual words seen in literature describing black holes.

Re: Poor choice of words

Of course, it would be less confusing if you read what he wrote instead of what you claimed he wrote.

@Ben Tasker

Your recall is accurate as far as it goes. The problem is in that caveat. You are missing the elapsed time between the events, which IIRC is not days or even weeks, but a couple of years. As in the "non-consensual conditional sex" happened years before the complaint was filed. Long enough for Assange to have made a name for himself and be seen as someone from whom you might make a lot of money if you could sue him. From a law enforcement point of view I have a problem with that. Admittedly I'm conflicted on this, because from a schadenfreude point of view, I'm immensely enjoying watching a Progressive get caught up in his own corrupt web. If it weren't for the fact that some other poor and honest schlob can get caught up in the same trap, I say let Assange deal with his comeuppance.

@Dazed and Confused

Right, that matches my read. But that makes the law in the country requesting the extradition an ass, not UK law. No need for UK law to collapse because another country bolluxed up theirs. Also, Assange knew the law there when he did, as he was a citizen. He is therefore responsible to it. He's the one who has kept putting it off for over a year. Given he claims to be 'speaking truth to power' at Wikileaks when it's other people's lives at stake, it seems only fair to me that he should go 'speak truth to power' when it is only ability to move about freely at stake. The only thing for certain is that UK law can't sort out injustice from another jurisdiction, particularly one with which it has numerous treaties and obligations.

Re: I don't think you can blame Facebook

Yes you can, and I do. The new look should have been opt in, not force fed. If they'd done that, there wouldn't be a problem.

Re: why Vista gets slated so much

bpfh nailed it in the post above yours - if the hardware was specific for the first release of Vista you were okay. If you were trying to upgrade existing hardware, including some top of the line kit, you were likely to be fscked.

Re: Windows list

If you're gonna do a list, do it right.

Windows 1.0 - Such a complete piece of crap it made Windows Bob look good.

Windows 2.0 - Passable, but still mostly crap. Only use it if there isn't a DOS alternative.

Windows 3.0 - Decent. Handled most DOS programs without trouble.

Windows 3.10 - ??? I've hear of it, never seen it.

Windows 3.11 for Workgroups - What's with the name? Basically 3.0, but with added bits to support Novell.

Windows 95A - Utter crap. More install disks OS/2 when it came out, so there was no way to finish an install. And if by some miracle you do manage to make it through all the disks, god help you with the IRQ and address issues.

Windows NT 3.5 - Sorry you moved to slow and missed it.

Windows 95B - On CD, what a lifesaver. Reasonably solid until Intel broke it with the new chipset. Fortunately the internets eventually dispersed information about how to work around that snafu.

Windows NT 4.0 - Yo, gamer, move away from the OS. Rock solid stable. Unless you want to install Lotus Notes. God help you if you want to install Lotus Notes. Really, rat poison would be quicker and far less painful.

Windows 95C - Stable, but most folks don't recall it. I think it was the IE 4 release.

Windows 95D - Stable.

Windows 98 - Stable. Not actually a lot different the 95D except... Hmm, is somebody suing MS about that IE add on that came tacked on the end of the 95 B-D installs?

Windows 98SE - Amazingly still stable. Added a bit for larger HD support.

Windows 98ME - Puke, Vomit, Hurl! Who tried to rework this shit from the 1.0 disks?

Windows 2000 - Stable, but god help you if you are trying to upgrade and existing system. Backup your data and do a clean install. Merges Gamers into the NT fold. And you best make sure your drivers are certified. God help you if they aren't.

Windows XP - Stable, plus the drivers work. Finally.

Windows XP SP2 - What's a firewall? Otherwise just like XP.

Windows Vista - Puke, Vomit, Hurl! Cough! Gak! Who tried to rework this shit from the NT 2.0 code?

Windows 7 - Okay, so you finally got the drivers working. How come 64-bit is still for shit? Haven't you guys been working on that code fork since XP?

So as you can see, there isn't any infallible pattern to what releases are good.

Re: It's usage though, not installations

sometimes there's not a lot of difference, especially when the install automatically changes it to the default. My mother would be one of those. Absolutely no idea what she's using, and doesn't care either, as long as it gets her to her games.

Personally, I can't stand the damn thing. FF is my main, but I use Opera and IE depending on what I need.

Re: "I suspect it would have been cheaper to settle"

One of life's great truisms is that by the time any issue goes to court, both plaintiff and defendant have already lost. All they are fighting over are the scraps that remain. The only people who come out with more money than they went in with are the lawyers [includes the judge(s) hearing the trial].

Re: neatly side-step

Not really. Private industry still has as many foibles as government, just different ones. They need to do it for the least cost practical and still have to take some political decisions into account. And there's always the chance some egotistical manager will demand that some schedule be kept or someone will lose their job. (Where private industry will be better is that they don't get to side-step the blame quite as adroitly as politicos do.) That's part of why the Big Thumbs Up to SpaceX for following correct engineering processes. They too could have chosen to ignore them.

I concur that government run space agencies will eventually go the way of the dinosaur, but more because of their inherently more efficient processes. I commented some time back on a related issue that one of the advantages of the private project was that it looked to have sustained fiscal and planning backing instead of the start, stop, redo jerking of government.

Re: why should English speakers change from the centuries-old usage of "Persian Gulf"?

Because somewhen between 1945 and now we lost the pair we use to have. If we still had a pair, we'd have told them to sod off a long, long time ago.

Re: 7 pint gallon

It's still 8 pints to the 'Merkin gallon. Granted those would be 'Merkin pints.