Posts by ElReg!comments!Pierre 2711 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009
He certainly can appeal.
"he appellate judge will be able to scrutinise the proceedings."
And break the guilty verdict because the court was demonstrably prejudiced. So why wasting millions? Because chances are the appelate judge will not break the decision on that base, as he should.
No matter how you take it it's going to be a farce from start to finish. Only that way it can be a very long and extremely expensive farce. But hey, at least the local political opposition can't campaign on the theme "the previous administration's incompetence let convicted murderers free". Which is, in my opinion, the only reason why there will be a retrial (IIRC, judges and the like are elected round these parts). Arse-covering exercise, as I said, so that the bucket stops with the firing of the scapegoat and noone in a high position feels the heat.
The best choice would probably be to free him, actually. Where are they going to find a whole court and jury honestly unprejudiced? If rules were to be followed it would be trivial for the defence to have the judge, jurors etc thrown out indefinitely until there is noone left. I'm guessing "they" won't let that happen, so the retrial is deemed to be farcical at best. Of course they cannot let him go, for political reasons, so the farce it is then. But fairness or justice have nothing to do with that: it's just an arse-covering exercise.
Seriously, a cock-up of such magnitude should have repercutions very high up. The stenographer was stupid, but the whole chain of command is at fault here. There should have been some form of control; at the very least a tracking of the proceedings. All versions of them.
No it's not a physical keyboard. Still, given the way our hands are made, it is much, much, much faster to push a keyboard key than to pull it*. Our fingers are (individually) designed to push. To pull you need several fingers and a movement of the arm. Plus, tapping down on the screen but thinking of it as if you were actually pullyng is not really very intuitive.
Note that this is not an argument against Apple but against the idiotic suggestion that people who understand how UI are made instinctively pull-as-they-push the keys and have no problem. Although I'm sure it significantly reduces the typing speed, thus getting rid of the problem.
*And pulling a virtual key on a touchscreen... well I'll let you try.
>But Pierre, as you ALWAYS say in your comments you'd never buy Apple anyway. Not surprised you don't agree with Apple's view on this occasion.
I never say never, and the main reason why I don't buy Apple is that their kit is overpriced. I still get to play a lot with their stuff, as the missus is -would you believe it- a fangirl.
>on a capacitative screen it would introduce even more mistypes
Probably not, no. As I mention, at least one person solved the problem by using a 3rd-party virtual keyboard.
>autocorrect works best with missing letters, not lots of extra ones.
[citation needed]
In any case, autocorrect is a pain in the nether regions for people who know more than 500 words. And as soon as you're multilingual it is completely unusable. Most people I know have it turned off at all time.
>But no, that's would be agreeing with an Apple design decision and obviously that's not an option for you.
I actually agree with most of Apple's design decisions. They are good at design, there's no denying that.
>Just stick to your UUCP and your text terminal
Will do. I still need a graphical workstation for the final steps of my image processing workflow though. I am looking at a NeXTcube, I hear they dropped in price a bit.
If so, it's a feature that introduces mistypes. So either the UI is well-designed, but poorly implemented (dropping registered keypresses) or it's well implemented but poorly designed (using button-like behaviour for a keyboard). In any case it makes the device less usable so it IS a flaw in my opinion. The difference between Apple's view and mine is that I somehow came to expect the device I use to behave as I want it to, whereas Apple expects the user to behave as the device requires them to ("you're holding it wrong", anyone?). Then again, as one commenter in the original article pointed out, the problem disappears when you use a 3rd-party virtual keyboard so that's "not that big of a deal", as someone would say. It would also suggest that the "problem" -be it a deliberate choice or a technical flaw- resides with Apple's own keyboard. The button-like behaviour (if that's the reason) is probably aimed at the keyboard-impaired, who are no doubt the core market for a virtual touchscreen keyboard. It should still be possible to switch between button- and keyboard-like behaviours, in my opinion, but that would be giving the user a choice. It might be confusing for most, frightening even; Apple's motto always have been "don't confuse users by giving them a choice". Not always without merit; it certainly worked well for them to date.
I read somewhere that on the Somali coast, the limiting factor for piracy isn't the pirates but the boats. A boat owner would have no trouble at all replacing an entire crew overnight because the population is starving and desperate; however boats (even the crappy ones) are costly. So bringing the pirates to Blighty and putting them in jail would be doing them a favor while doing nothing against piracy. Leaving them ashore without a boat ensures that they will not be able to re-offend, at least for a while -until they can afford another floating pile of crap.
Ignoring the far-right conspiracy theory That reeks of Fox News, to be honest every other article that A. Orlowski writes here is designed specifically to irritate some part of the readership (be it S. Fry's fans, tree huggers. vegans, fitness maniacs, fretards, ...) presumably to elicit reactions. So, "reliably obnoxious" really doesn't sound too far off. They could have added "deliberately", but it's suggested by "obnoxious" I suppose.
"It is *included* with their software renewal."
A bit like how FAT-related licensing is "included" in non-discloseable deals used to suggest that Microsoft owns Linux? Naaah, can't be. King Larry would not steep so low as to copy the competion's shady methods (and don't call me Shirley).
On second thought... you may call me Shirley, but be gentle.
--
Good capitalists, great capitalists, all that.
There is a nethack port for OpenWRT on the very Ben NanoNote, so in theory it could verily be used to draw your very own nethack levels. On your very lawn. How very cool is that?
(this message sponsored by VerY Inc., proud owner of the "very" trademark. VerY Inc., now a part of Oracle. Expect some rebranding as soon as you're used to the price hike)
I think the path calculations should be done locally (i.e. hardwired, not on a remote server as suggested somewhere in the article). Remote control is just asking for problems. What if you lose the link? There can be a remote oversight, but the core of the control should be local. Also, for safety reasons, if contact with the remote control channel is lost the mower needs a local system so that it can park itself safely, say, on the nearest Iranian desert*.
I suggest using a Ben Nanonote as the local brain. It's cheap, relatively inexpensive (100 bucks), resilient (I dropped mine a few times while in the tube; it takes 1.5 m falls on concrete -with forward momentum, even- without a complaint), fully copyleft, flashable at will, it has ethernet over usb or can be fitted with a WiFi microSD card (if you can find one). 336 MHz MIPS-compatible chip, 2GB NAND, 32 MB RAM, with a small colour monitor and a full-featured keyboard for in-situ interaction if needed; what's not to like?
http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Hardware-Ben
There's plenty of space to put your -legally obtained- music tracks, so attach a 50 quids sound system from Costco -with a massive subwoofer- to the lawn-mowing core and presto!, you got yourself an efficient neighbour-angerer.
The current shipped image is an OpenWRT with Python2.6, Lisp, 4th, gforth, perl I think, etc (and of course C). Even Octave, the open-source MatLab clone! so it could be used out of the box; of course it's all open source, so the sky (and your cross-compile toolchain) is the limit.
If you keep the microSD slot for wireless comm, the only possible channel to control the mowbot would be the USB port of the Ben (I'm guessing ethernet over usb would be the most convenient way to talk to whatever board is talking to the microcontrollers - and encoders, but what do I know? see disclaimer below). I can submit a tentative circuit board design if needed**. I do know my way around optical encoders, microcontrollers and such, and high-level languages are not a problem, but I have litterally zero experience in linking both through USB, so YMMV, as the cool kids say. The datastream needed is really more a datatrickle, so the Ben's USB 2.0 will be plenty fast. That's a good start, right? RIGHT?
*Nah, just kidding
** Caveat lector: all circuit board designs I might submit will be heavily inspired by pre-existing, proprietary designs belonging to various companies, all of which are long dead -but some might have been bought by Oracle, some of the angles might be rounded, which I hear is patented by Apple, and component colour might involve brown, so beware the Zune patent pool; your status = warned. The designs predate the "patent the obvious" goldrush, which is good, but almost always involve a 386 chip, which is bad. Well, for some values of "bad".
All the lawnmowers I've seen recently actually have a propulsion system (a small electrical motor driving the rear wheels, usually not sufficient to move the thing but easing the work somewhat).
The problem with that plan is that the whole thing will have to be modified so much that it is probably easier to start almost from scratch (of course existing motor blocks can and should be used; that's outside of the gardenshed-boffinry limits). Fitting a propulsion system on something that was not designed to accept one is going to be a major problem in itself; then there is the direction; then you need to get rid of the dead-man security system; etc...
Unless you want to start from one of these assisted-direction little tractor-like things? That would be an easy job (I believe all that would be needed would be to crack the control system for the assisted direction and throttle, and plug it into a control server) but that's going to be a huge machine, and hugely expensive, too.
The base should be an Oldsmobile Delta Royal 88, modified to run on steam, with big spinning blades at the front.
Also, there is a typo in the article. You typed "avoiding children" when you surely meant "chasing".
More seriously, chasing high grass in real time sounds fun but it is probably simpler to enter the lawn's geometry beforehand and calculate the optimal path (step-wise, should be a doodlewith the right optical encoders), with a sensor to detect obstacles (with path re-calculation of course). Whatever system you use to decide of the path, keeping track of the position by the optical encoder steps, not by triangulation as suggested higher up, is probably the way to go. Of course you will need a calibration step first (so that the control system knows the dimensions of the area in terms of encoder steps), but it will make the programming much easier (basically logo-turtle-like). I know, it's no fun, but it is simple, and in software "smart and fancy" often means "likely to fail". Plus, that will make writing "tasteful" messages (or stripes, for the unimaginative) very easy.
I don't have any suggestion as to which kind of encoder/microcontroller combination would be best, as the one I am working with, although reliable and durable, won't last long in a vibrating, dust-saturated environment. You need some heavy-duty stuff. I wonder what they use in the metallurgical industry...
"And digital prices are typically lower than physical prices."
Maybe in lalaland. 'Round here in the real world, the per-song price usually makes the digital album a tad more expensive than the physical one. And then you add the data transfer costs, and then the storage. And most of the time it comes with idiotic "anti-piracy" systems that do nothing to deter pirates but do hinder legitimate use -a lot.
So, quite a bit more expensive, and less convenient to use.
That doesn't excuse anything, of course, and it's not relevant really. Joe Bloggs has a fixed budget for that kind of things usually. Piracy or not, Ms and Mr 50 quids WILL spend their 50 quids. The amount of music/movies/etc they will have access to is what varies.
The "an illegal download is a lost sale" argument assumes that
1. households have an unlimited budget.
2. People don't buy what they like if they already have a crappy version of it.
Both assumptions are stupid; the first one for obvious reasons, and as for the second one, would you please look at the Star Wars fans, for example? The ones who own 5 physical copies of every movie, and went to see each at least twice in a theatre? (and probably have a few ripped copies around for convenience, too).
My thought exactly. I was actually thinking that downloading games and other timewasters onto a plaything would occur mostly on WE, so I was expecting 50% or more on WE. Apparently a lot of people do waste their employer's money...
Oh, yes, I know there are also a few "productivity" apps around, but not that many (especially when you remove the vast majority of apps solely aimed at *pretending* to be working) and you usually only download one per task. I think it's safe to assume that over 80% of all downloads are for timewasters*. I foresee a big drop in Minesweeper and Solitaire's market shares. When will Ballmer's woes end?
*From examples around me I would estimate 99%, but let's be generous.
Most articles are tightly controlled by one or two persons who see their "article pool" as their personnal kingdom and immediately reverse any edit made to their precious little domain. I still try to correct innacuracies that I find, roughly once a year, only to be immediately put off for another year by the endless heated discussions with people who don't bother reading what you write (but disagree anyway).
I used to think that Usenet had became a rancid cesspool; it was nothing compared to Wikipedia politics. The good thing is, that brought me back to Usenet.
Remember that "the biggest military hack of all time" was performed by entering the default password for a remote access program...
Or do you reckon that the Iranian are tech-illiterate neandertals? In that case, think again. People who can't solve problems by throwing pharaonic amounts of cash at them tend to develop smarter ways, in compensation.
"secured" (and really should read "sandboxed")
That says it all. There was no attempt made to assess the security/vulnerability of the browsers. Just "how strictly is the stuff sandboxed". It's nice to know, but shouldn't be mistook for actual security.
Cars with more airbags are not less likely to have accidents; a reliable braking system, good road holding, etc are more important (the consequences, however might or might not be mitigated).
The exploit does not work for me; plus, all versions give roughly the same (erroneous) results (i.e. the versions which are not supposed to work do not work worst than the one which is supposed to work). Also, same results after clearing the cache.
Although to be honest there might or might not be a caching proxy between me and the wild wild web; if that is the reason, someone here lurvs Justin Bieber and someone else likes Playboy (I really hope they are not the same person).
Can kiss my hairy ass. Propagation of racist predjudices is discrimination, no need to beat up your neighbour contrarily to what The Poor Man's Encyclopedia of American Culture seems to think.
Being "too pro-jewish" (as the app dev admit it is) is not better than being anti-jewish. Why would it be? It's exactly the same thing!
You'll also note that the app is about being jewish, full, half or convert. That's a religious criterion, not an ethnic one, so it's not racism. But it is still discrimination. In fact, the way I see it, it has been fought by the jewish associations because it actually introduces discrimination between jews (full, half, convert). That's hard-line zionism, or at least that what the hard-line zionists use to classify jews by degree of "pureness". Does that vocabulary ring any bell?
So, when exactly did you notice the personnality difference incurred by being "genetically" "fully jewish" (jewish mother) as opposed to "genetically""half jewish" (jewish father)? And where do converts fit in this? "False jews"? Not to mention gentiles*
How is that "noticing" or "informing"? That's schoolbook zionist drivel. It is discrimination. It is certainly not anti-semitism, though.
*(because they are not worth mentionning)
and as we all know, when on holiday big international companies just close shop entirely. Do you reckon they shut the servers down, too?
Oh wait, the article you point to says "Of course, Retail and some other groups will need to work that week so we can continue to serve our customers,"
Not the reason then. That's surprising, as it is really un-Apple-like to f*ck over app developper without explanation. Or is it?
I wonder what could be living up there in these deep, dark, freezing waters. And where any such lifeform would feel most at ease if it was to land on Earth.
On a completely unrelated note, if you're planning an expedition in Antartica to investigate a strange, large metal object embedded deep in the ice, do yourself a favor and bring a spare gas tank for your flamethrower.
Violent computer gaming ruined my life.
After years of Hack and Nethack gaming as a kid and then student, I met a really, really annoying person at a party. So annoying in fact that at some point I litterally attempted to kill her. The only way I knew of. Worst mistake of my life. I lost my freedom, my -relative- wealth, my lifestyle, everything.
Don't play violent games, kids: you'll end up like me. Married, and with kids.
Not the same system here obviously, but yes, they do all read "dickhead" or some equivalent in my eye.
Except for the one I saw the other day: 386 TWM
Now THAT's a statement. Also, here (licensed) ham radio operators get their own category of plates (which reads one's call sign). How cool is that?
I did not read the article in question because I KNEW it was going to be a load of -irritating- bovine droppings. Turns out I was right. Not reading it spared me the hassle of typing my very own incandescent comment.
Oh, and yes, if you ask me recruiters are in line together with the "management for dummies" types, right behind the patent lawyers.
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