Posts by Tom 13

Re: how does an unarmed kid get shot multiple times

Well it starts with not complying with the police officer's direction. It escalates when you give the cop lip for doing his job. And it's pretty much guaranteed once you assault the police officer.

Yeah, I've been pulled over by the police for speeding. I've always found them polite, direct, and forceful. Pretty much what an officer needs to be these days.

Re: He's right! PGP sucks to use!

The real problem with PGP isn't the principles behind it, its the same problem that plagues secure web sites: there is no secure but easily used exchange for certificates. We "solved" that problem for websites by designating a couple of suppliers of top level certs, and everybody buys their certs from them. But that approach doesn't readily work for PGP email keys. Maybe Google, Yahoo, and MS could setup some sort of free public storage for certs from which people could download keys, maybe not.

Re: bloody US patent Office... has got a lot to answer for...

Yes, but not as much as the Congress which enables it.

Re: Presumably there will be a counter-suit

Nope.

First off, in order to be accountable they'd have to have some authority in the company by which they could affect share price.

Next up, you can't be sued for attempting to enforce your civil rights unless in making such attempts you make false allegations.

Re: witnesses must be independent not his friends.

Not merely not just his friends but truly independent. The problem at the moment as the mayor of the town has noted is that the black community so distrusts the police force they won't apply to work on it. Which means you can't assume they won't be lying if the corroborate the victim's story. In the same way this story broke running under "white racism" they all know what they're supposed to say to back up a brother. Racism doesn't only come in white sheets.

Re: Build them out of what?

While I find the idea of the post-scarcity economy absurd, the robotic argument assumes robots mine the raw materials. You can equally substitute nano for robots for a different branch of utopianists. The thing is, while we've seen a lot of proto-dystopias, we've never seen a proto-utopia.

Re: So where do their numbers come from...

Somebody runs through their data, runs the cost structures, runs payment structures, and calculates the best way to make money.

For small businesses it tends to be more back of the envelop calculations: I expect my typical purchase to be X. My processing fees are 0/.25/.50 per transaction plus 1/1.5/2/2.5% of the transaction. I expect x% charge backs, so that works out to ... +y% per item in costs.

Back when I first did this for a large east coast (US) fannish convention, we worked it out to about 2.3% per transaction for the vendors we chose. We decided to add a 5% processing fee and pocket the difference (additional equipment was needed beyond the vendor charges and they don't want you advertising their exact fees as that constitutes privileged competitive information). And yes, we assessed the 5% on taxes collected as well because the credit card was going to charge us for processing those taxes too.

Re: Public money

First time I read that I read "lawyers upon the lawyers of idiots" which I suppose is pretty much the same difference.

Re: entirely bereft of any factual content.

Hussain is that you?

Shouldn't you be working on your defense with your lawyers instead of posting at El Reg?

Re: Mork Calling Orson @P. Lee

While both of your comments have some validity, on the whole I'd side with P. Lee. And yes, I have been there.*

There are far too many people in society who are willing to move your thoughtful comments on edge cases away from the edge and into normal for their own selfish purposes. So I believe we must insist the instinct is to always protect life and only deviate from that for the gravest of reasons which have been fully challenged at each step. It may not have been intended, but in the comment to which P. Lee was responding, I read a bit too much of the unrepentant Ebeneezer Scrooge: if they want to kill themselves they'd best get on with it; too much surplus population anyway.

*Still fight it daily in my own way because the neither the drugs nor the talking help beyond what recovery I have made. Not debilitating the way it once was, I'm functional in society and pay my own way. Sometimes I even enjoy myself. I just never forget where the abyss lies and do my best to avoid even fleeting contact with it.

Re: wrong cause and effect

Monopolies and the local governments are still a big part of it. True you will get more competition in higher density, higher income areas.

Another factor for Virginia is that as I recall, they're pretty much the biggest transatlantic relay for internet traffic. All the big guys had their headquarters there once upon a time. I think that alone will tend to boost the speeds.

Re: why there isn't a fixed transaction charge for selling an e-book.

This on the other hand is a very good question. They won't answer it of course, because the elephant in the room is that Amazon doesn't actually give a damn about authors, publishers or readers. They're just intent on dominating the market.

Re: seem to be against younger people

No, they aren't. In fact, most of them are against adults. It's just that those incidents haven't made the headlines, because the people who are being the most actively targeted are actually conservatives and the LSM don't like them so they don't matter.

Re: a court may decide it is libellous.

That's actually a higher standard than NetScout will have to meet. Yes, it is opinion and so due a great deal of deference in the US. But, since Gartner claims to be making a technical assessment they need to be able to show unbiased methods for determining their rankings.

That being said, even the lesser standard NetScout is claiming will be difficult to prove, even if everybody in the industry suspects it is true. At least absent a smoking email.

Re: > punt the guy by any means

The problem is with the word "responsible". Unfortunately and all too frequently, there's a difference between having your name on the door and actually being responsible for the project.

From my admitted long distance view on this, it sounds like as the guy with his name on the door as far as he was able to, he acted responsibly. He warned the BBC that the project was off the rails and needed to be canceled or brought under control. Warnings which were promptly ignored by his superiors who told him to carry on with the existing program. Then when the investigators caught the BBC wasting money, they attempted to shitcan him and put all the blame on him, aka scapegoated him.

Re: Zynga has no USP...

Wrong problem. I'm familiar with all the accusations you've made. Back when I was playing their games on FB, they made no difference to me. I doubt they would now if I were still playing. Just before I quit playing I had finally cleanup my own finances enough that I was willing to cough up $25 a month to purchase some in game stuff. (I'd also figured out a way I figured my CC info was safe enough when I made the purchase.) So I ought to be exactly the sort of prime customer they are looking for.

So why did I quit? Two reasons:

1. Their server lag got to the point the game was simply unplayable. I'd log in and it would be five minutes before the playing field would display. As I'd be working along on something the server would suddenly reset. And I'd be back to the five minute wait while it loads bit.

2. Instead of letting the focus be on playing the game, it became farming friends to sell you things. Only, once you farmed yourself more than 35 friends playing the game, you discovered you couldn't send stuff to ALL of them, only 35 of them. Also a fair number of the rewards depended on visiting friends farms. That five minute wait listed above? Yeah, it happened each time you visited a friend's farm.

I've used Farmville here as an example, but the rest of their games had similar issues, except for Mafia and Vampire Wars where you didn't visit other people's playing fields, but the rest of the issues were still there.

My retired mother still plays. But they're never going to make a dime off her.

Re: Make un-patched software open source is a great idea. Period.

My own thought was that at that point you should lose your copyright protection and the code should become public use. But given the way most people treat open source, Stallman and his acolytes are the only people who would argue against it being mere semantics.

Whether or not a chunk has been abandoned is irrelevant. The monolithic code has been abandoned and it is in the public interest that the monolithic code continue to be supported. Yes, you do need to indemnify the company so that their continued use of a code segment isn't a violation of copyright on the old code, hence my preference for copyright expiration over OSS.

Re: lasts for at least 10 years, and sits quietly in the corner

And how big a corner are you willing to part with?

Re: Not much of a surprise there then

Maybe for British recruits. But one of the frequent complaints from the Russians is that studying US SOPs is useless because as soon as the guys get on the front lines they throw the book away.

Re: real sounds off old silent cinema

There's a reason so many of the stars of the silent movies failed to make the transition to the talkies: their squeaky voices were unpalatable to audiences. And as someone who has a voice made for newspapers, I understand this.

Re: I don't think "tapped" is the correct word for what the Israeli's did.

No you went straight to a better word when you defined "tapped": intercepted. And because it is intercepted without either delaying transmission (as would be the case if you intercepted a courier) or trespassing on foreign soil, is not as high a level breach as those operations would be.

Thank-you for the correction on SIN BET and the explanation.

Re: uk living, working, hitec manufacturing...

Regulation is also less in the US, although the pols seem to have the petal to the metal in an effort to catch up.

The thing is, for all the benefits you see in those areas comparing the US to the UK, comparing the US to China you'll see the same benefits, albeit sometimes for different reasons.