Posts by Richard Gadsden 1 105 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jul 2009
If they put 2G/3G cells in each station and WiFi on the trains, you have data access everywhere much more easily than moving cells in the trains and much more cheaply than fixed cells along the lines.
No-one in their right minds will make voice calls on the tube anyway, so the only facility you don't offer that way is texting - and people could use data-to-text if they had to anyway.
Step 1: I bet for event 1 to happen
Step 2: I bet for event 1 not to happen.
Step 3: I lose a small amount of money either way.
Step 4: I bet for event 2 to happen, using my free bet
Step 5: I bet for event 2 not to happen
Step 6: I lost a small amount of money, except I used my free bet.
Let's look at a £25 free bet, with a 5% bookies margin (typical).
I bet £25 in all four steps. I therefore bet £100 and got back £95 in my two sets of winnings.
But my bets only cost me £75 in actual money, so I'm now £20 up.
How would this apply to internet video streaming? Does that mean that if it's legal to send out a stream (from e.g. Russia) then the hosting company could not face legal action?
If so, expect a streaming site (like justin.tv or something) to be setup in a safe jurisdiction pronto. Sure, the person streaming up to it will be an infringer, but they will be harder to catch, and likely a man of straw.
It could also result in the BBC opening up iPlayer to foreigners.
Thanks Bill, that's the best summary of the basic differences between US and European mobile charging I've seen:
"In Europe calls to mobiles cost the caller more, and are identifiable by a mobile area code ("07" in the UK). The caller pays a premium for calling such numbers, while the callee pays nothing. In the US mobile numbers use the same area codes as fixed, so the caller pays the same (nothing if it's a local call) and the callee has the minutes deducted from their bundle."
A lot of Germany's reputation as great chemists and chemical engineers comes from a tradition of incredibly precise high-grade fractional distillations.
If I wanted a company to do something like the Kroll process to separate lanthanides by fractional distillation of halide salts, then I know I'd be talking to BASF or IG Farben or Bayer.
ICANN, when issuing ccTLD delegations use ISO 3166 as the standard for defining the ccTLDs.
ISO 3166's position on this is:
Why is the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) coded GB in ISO 3166-1?
The codes in ISO 3166-1 are - wherever possible - chosen to reflect the significant, unique component of the country name in order to allow a visual association between country name and country code. Since name components like Republic, Kingdom, United, Federal or Democratic are used very often in country names we usually do not derive the country code elements from them in order to avoid ambiguity. The name components United and Kingdom are not appropriate for ISO 3166-1. Therefore the code "GB" was created from Great Britain and not "UK" for United Kingdom. Incidently, GB is also the United Kingdom's international road vehicle distinguishing sign - the code on the oval nationality stickers on cars.
Not finished reading in detail, but it looks like the new guidelines might make it possible to comply with PCI-DSS while running a IPv6 network. The old system used to mandate RFC1918 space - specifically RFC 1918, so you couldn't even use site-local space under IPv6.
The new 1.3.8 is a big improvement, you just have to not disclose private IP addresses and routing information.
Where on earth do you get the idea that your personal sovereignty has changed at all?
The EU isn't a foreign government - you're a European citizen and have exactly the same rights over it as every other European citizen. Sure, it would be nice if the elections were direct - ie if the European Parliament had more influence and people appointed by the member-state governments had less (whether they be commissioners or "national veto"-wielders in the council), but it's still the case that the EU is a representative government that a majority of sufficiently-determined EU citizens could force to change.
If 51% of EU citizens (ie 175m people) chose a single issue that they were determined to change in Europe, and in both national and EU elections all of them voted for parties that were committed to that issue, then those parties would have a majority to implement it after one cycle of elections (5 years). Precisely the same could be said for a majority of UK citizens changing a UK policy.
Of course, it would be a lot better if we could change EU policy by kicking the numpties out and replacing them with different numpties in the EU election. So every time someone proposes getting rid of a national veto, remember to support it, as that makes it easier for citizens to have power and not national ministers.
In Ireland, they take a ballot box to all the local hospitals and nursing homes in the few days before polling day so everyone can vote. Anyone who is unable to vote for medical reasons can let them know and they will visit you at home. I've seen it - two guys from the local office come around with a stack of paperwork, a ballot box and a pad of ballot papers, hand you one and you mark it and drop it in the ballot box.
They also have a system where if you're away from home (e.g. working, on holiday), you can book in and visit any polling station in the country, or any consulate / embassy abroad and cast your vote. You have to book in so they get the correct ballot paper in for you.
If I was designing a surface navy for a small power like Britain....
First priority would be anti-smuggling, shipping inspections etc. That means small, light, fast boats with a gun.
Second priority would be some kind of mothership for the gunboats, so you can use them for anti-piracy operations. It would also have a helipad so you get high-altitude surveillance too (for inshore operations, you can use ground-launched helicopters).
Third priority is a marine-landing force of some description. (HMS Ocean or equivalent - preferably two so one can be in refit and the other at sea).
Fourth priority is an SSM platform that can smack bigger enemy ships. If designed properly (ie not the bloody Type 45) then it can be a CV escort as well, but a long-range SSM is a key part of the ship.
Fifth priority is a carrier battlegroup, ie carrier plus escorts. As the French and HMS Ocean have proved, you should never have only one of a class - so two is the minimum number of carriers, but we don't need two full CVBGs - if a CVBG is 1CV+3DD+3FG, then we need four or five of each of the DDs and FGs; we're only going to have one CVBG at sea anyway.
If we're not going to have the carriers, then we should scrap the entire escort fleet - ie all the Type 45s and Type 26s as well; the purpose of the escorts is to protect the carrier.
If you want something to show the flag, then use the gunboat motherships or the SSM platform; most of this is about impressing the rubes, and they won't know the difference anyway.
Baen's webscriptions site has been selling DRM-free ebooks since 1999.
They get pirated, of course, but why bother, when a new book is $6 and the ARC (available 3-6 months before the paper copy) is $15. It still amazes me that one small publisher in the 'States has been literally a decade ahead of the market, and no-one has copied them.
3G GSM is WCDMA, which is not a TDMA technology. And TDMA wasn't analogue in the first place - it's a digital technology, which is why you can run GPRS or EDGE over it.
AT&T's implementation might be crappy, but there's an entire continent running on GSM just the other side of the Atlantic, and we're not all on analogue. Indeed Verizon runs (under the Vodafone brand) GSM networks here in Europe and they work just fine. Don't let AT&T use the technology as an excuse for their inability to build a working network!
I see the electric car manufacturers have got Apple disease with non-swappable batteries.
The sensible solution is: pull into a fuel station, push the release button for the batteries. Pull out your current batteries and put them on a dolly. Wheel them over, and pay for the replacement fully-charged set. Take the dolly with the charged batteries, wheel over to your car and put them in. The fuel station person connects up your discharged batteries and then sells them when they're fully charged.
No, all it means is that you only have to pay the normal licensing fee if you reasonably believed that allofmp3.com was legal (ie no punitive damages).
But you can't claim to have reasonably believed that - allofmp3.com made clear when you signed up that you needed to check out the law in your own country, but it was legal in Russia. If you had done reasonable due diligence, you'd have found that the license that allofmp3.com held was not recognised outside Russia.
Surely films are already in three dimensions. After all, that's the difference between a film and a still photo.
Stereoscopic films aren't really 4D at all - there's no parallax, which is why they feel artificial. At least a 2D (still) image is meant to be artificial. I wonder if we will get used to stereoscopic images, though; we managed to get used to perspective on stills.
I suspect that part of the objective is just to get his hands on more of the profits - Sky is a very profitable business these days.
Also, by taking it private, he can probably put it under an off-shore corporation and pay less tax, and also make the financials of News Corp less transparent.
In normal canvassing, the canvasser identifies themselves as such; if you answer them, then the DPA does not require them to clarify what they are using the data for - it's assumed to be implicit. The problem with this app is that the "canvasser" is your friend or work colleague; when you tell them how you're voting, you see that as a personal conversation, not giving data to the Tory party.
Incidentally, re: TPS, if the person only asks you how you will vote that's OK; if they try to persuade you to vote for them, it isn't. Sensible political parties have two scripts for their canvassers, one for TPS-registered people that tells them not to try to persuade, one for non-TPS registered.
Finally, advice for anyone who wants to be left alone by canvassers:
1. Find out which party your current MP is and who came second last time.
2. If you are called on by any party other than your current MP's party, say you are voting for your current MP. They will leave you alone in the hope that by them not mentioning the election you will forget to vote.
3. If your current MP is Labour or Tory, if you are called on by their party, say you are voting for the opposite party. Again, they will leave you alone.
4. If your current MP is not Labour or Tory and you are called on by their party, say you are voting for whichever party came second last time.
There are a (very) small number of exceptions, mostly three-way marginals where the incumbent is Labour with a very small majority; there is no option there that will easily get rid of a Lib Dem canvasser (well, apart from telling them to go away, but another one will probably turn up in a few days if you do that).
BBC4 is what BBC2 was thirty years ago.
The point of BBC3 seems to be to have experimental programmes. If they're experimental, then a lot of them are going to be bad - by definition, if you knew it was going to be good, it wouldn't be experimental, would it?
If they're good, then they transfer to 1 or 2 for obvious reasons - they aren't experimental any more, are they?
And if we're saving 3 for Being Human, let's save 4 for Only Connect as well.
Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine is the fuel. That's better known as RDX, the active ingredient in, for example, Semtex and composition C - but also in Torpex, the explosive in the bombs dropped on Germany in WWII.
The IUPAC name for those who can work out structures from such is 1,3,5-Trinitroperhydro-1,3,5-triazine, or C3H6N6O6, which will happily decompose to 3CO, 3H20 and 3N2. REF is 1.6.
I can just imagine the reaction of airlines to the discovery that a new generation of laptop batteries were made from high explosives.
Because SQL 2005 was the first version of SQL to come in an x64 edition, there are a lot of 2005 installations that customers have no particular need to upgrade - 2000 to 2005 brought huge benefits; 2005 to even 2008 R2 is a fairly small step, which tends to provoke thoughts of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Amazon.com selling paper books is fine legally - that's just first sale doctrine.
Selling Kindle books to non-US customers is a complete legal minefield, and that's why it took so long for them to get contracts allowing them to do that. I think their solution is legally dubious, but it's legal.
My run on SunSpider makes it more like 30% performance improvement on my setup. It's improved from a bit better than a third as quick as Chrome to a bit better than half as quick as Chrome, or from four times the speed of IE8 to nearly six times the speed of IE8. Gecko is still the second-quickest engine after WebKit - faster than both Presto and Trident.
Pleased to see that the Tims understand that cutting people off the internet is a serious thing and should not be done casually.
As I read it, it's not 50 infringements, but 50 complaints, and each complaint would have to be for a new infringement that occurred after you had be notified of the previous complaint. If you managed to get 50 solicitor's letters sent to your ISP about you, then you would have been trying really hard to get yourself cut off.
I thought reporting of Parliamentary proceedings had absolute privilege, but I was wrong.
Parliamentary proceedings themselves have absolute privilege under the 1689 Bill of Rights. This was extended to the Official Report (aka Hansard) when it became such (in 1909).
Reports by bodies other than Parliament itself have qualified privilege, which only protects the publisher so long as the statements they are repeating are not malicious and have not been discredited.
QP would certainly apply in this case - I can't believe that the unnamed judge (apparently there is still an injunction against naming them!) granted an order that is so blatantly in breach of QP.
Amending the law to protect verbatim reports of OR with absolute privilege and prohibit any injunctive or other relief against their restatement would be a thoroughly worthwhile change in the law.
I also think that the Standards and Privileges Committee should haul the judge up for Contempt of Parliament - perhaps he should be forced to appear before the Bar of the Whole House to answer questions from the Members? Much as I'd like to see S&P recommend a formal trial at the Bar of the House for Contempt, I very much doubt that the modern House has the guts to do their job properly on this one. Still, he should be hauled over the coals to scare off any other judge daft enought to try challenging Parliamentary privilege
The places where I most often lack coverage are on trains and main roads. Coverage where people live or work is usually present, if sometimes dropping back to 2G, but I go through a blackspot on the train to work every day.
There are lots of blackspots on motorways and other main roads too. Mobile phones would be a lot more useful if you could use them when you're actually in motion, rather than only being able to use them when you're stationary.
<i>These inductive pads still tie your phone/laptop to a specific place, which will still have a cable running to it (to power the pad).
All this appears to save you is the couple of seconds that it takes to plug in the device.</i>
That's fine when you're talking about one device. But when you have a mobile, a bluetooth headset, a laptop, a bluetooth mouse and a digital camera, and your partner has the same again and so do your kids, then you're looking at having anything up to 20 chargers to recharge everything. Being able to just dump a pile of kit on one pad would be a real advantage in comparison.
Not only that, but if inductive pads were common, then all portable electric/electronic devices would start being able to use them, which might allow higher drain on devices that usually use disposable batteries, like portable radios, TV remotes and watches (helping digital radio, eg DAB+ and also making SideShow remotes practical)
Really, it's not that hard to understand; they took a look at SharePoint and said "that's cool when it works; let's do a version that is cloud not intranet and works properly and is free and isn't tied to Office".
And they did, and it was pretty good, if not perfect, which tends to work well when the alternative is the price that SharePoint is.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
