Posts by Ben Liddicott

Re: Bwahahahaha

I want to vote down and up. ESR does gpsd and works on the time service, and repository conversion as well.

But well said on Linus.

Re: Source code

No. Parties are governments. Persons of parties are individuals or companies. So this says:

No government shall require .. source code owned by an individual or government, as a condition of import, sale, use or distribution.

It just means they can't refuse to allow it to be sold, they can't refuse to allow it to be imported, distributed or used. It doesn't mean they can't make it a condition of buying it themselves. Nor does it mean that vendors can't make it a condition of selling it.

So governments can mandate open source for their own internal use. Companies and individuals can mandate open source for their own use, and enforce open source licences. But governments cannot mandate open source for companies or individuals in their country, except for critical infrastructure.

It doesn't ban open source. it prevents governments from banning non-open-source.

Re: "The only GOOD DRONE is a DEAD DRONE. Y'hear me, scumbags?!"

When every second counts, the police are only minutes away.

Or up to an hour, in rural areas. Or they may misclassify your call and not come at all.

Shotgun ownership is quite high in rural areas, and with good reason. A family man living in a rural area who owns a shotgun is probably just being a responsible parent protecting his children.

Contrary to what many believe, firearms are not banned in England. You don't need to give - or have - a reason of any kind to own a shotgun, you just need to be of good character.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/25/gun-ownership-firearms-certificates

Police rural response times: Norfolk: 20 minutes

Re: Wouldn't be worth it...

Most intestinal tract cancer is caused by HPV or H.Pylori, not bacon.

Re: Non story

You can't make anybody work, full stop. The court won't order specific performance except under very restricted circumstances, which don't include employment.

However if you have *contracted* to work, you may have to pay actual damages if you then refuse to do so. This will certainly include repaying any additional element of severance pay you received, and may well be more.

Re: Other than Devs......

Writing secure code is hard.

Someone who thinks only "dumb" developers produce security bugs is overconfident, and is not the right person for the job.

Re: Conservation of energy

Compression and extension are electromagnetic phenomena at the atomic level. If the material is stretched, the atoms are further apart than the rest position, so the "spring energy" is electromagnetic potential energy. When the atomic bonds are released (because of the chemical reaction), this will be transferred into kinetic energy at the atomic scale (i.e. the atom will depart the surface of the material with significant additional velocity).

But recall: At the atomic scale, kinetic energy and heat are the same thing. Temperature is proportional to the mean square velocity of the atoms in the material.

Bulk material: Spring Energy => Atomic level: Electromagnetic potential energy.

Bulk material: Heat Energy => Atomic level: Kinetic energy.

and:

Bulk material: Chemical reaction => Atomic level: Electrons changing orbit

Bonus: Hooke's law.

Springs are complicated - when a spring is under compression one side of the wire is compressed but the other is extended. Neither of these are linear forces, but all smooth curves are almost straight lines if you zoom in enough. The point of a spring is that very small deflections are added up over the length of a very long wire. This gives an almost linear effect.

Springs closely obey Hooke's law not because it is a physical law, but because they are carefully manufactured to closely obey Hooke's law.

Re: The US mission refutes many of Bot’s comments

No, sorry. Collins English dictionary, second entry:

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/refute

Re: WARNING: Executable code may execute code

"press release" by security researcher mindlessly regurgitated by supposedly reputable sources:

MalwareBytes: Here the very first comment points out who daft it is.

PacketStorm

And yet twitter is going wild with people mindlessly retweeting this as if they discovered it.

Re: when will this madness stop?

That's not correct. http://www.djsphotography.co.uk/original_story.html

The camera was on a tripod, he didn't drop it. He set up the whole situation so that the monkeys would trigger the photograph.

I now wanted to get right in their faces with a wide angle lens, but that was proving too difficult as they were nervous of something - I couldn't tell what. So I put my camera on a tripod with a very wide angle lens, settings configured such as predictive autofocus, motorwind, even a flashgun, to give me a chance of a facial close up if they were to approach again for a play. I duly moved away and bingo, they moved in, fingering the toy, pressing the buttons and fingering the lens.

He intended to get those photos. He set it up to make it happen. His skill and effort went into it. It's his creative effort. It's his copyright.

Re: Any compassion?

"I think the point is not the sentencing regime but that fact that he is clearly delusional, mentally unstable and in need of medical help."

And therefore a dangerous person the public needs protection from.

When "lack of self control", "lack of empathy" and "delusions of grandiosity" are mental illnesses, it's clear that "mentally ill" cannot mean "not to be held responsible for his actions".

The legal standard for insanity is: Are you incapable of understanding that what you did was a crime, or are you incapable of controlling yourself. If yes to either question, it's life in a mental institution, so it's not a defence to be chosen lightly.

Re: Tape is on it's way out.

Fair enough. HDD prices didn't drop at that rate between 2010 and 2015. Excl. VAT I can find about £20/TB. Perhaps they've reached some sort of limit. That makes tape about six times cheaper per TB.

http://www.jcmit.com/disk2015.htm

Disk has much lower fixed costs though.

Re: Dear Lewis...

You do know that "the consequences" go further than changes to the transmissivity of the atmosphere?

Of course you know that the change of temperature affects (increases) the quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere, leading to a positive feedback. Modtran can add that in which is great. I think we can say this is well understood, and is not the source of disagreement with well-informed sceptics.

But the change in the quantity of water vapour affects how cloud formation works. Modtran doesn't include that because nobody - nobody - understands sufficiently how cloud formation works to be able to explain current cloud cover, nor how it will change.

Cloud cover affects albedo and can have both positive and negative feedback effects, depending on the type and altitude of the cloud, and the location and time of day it forms and persists. Cloud of course also affects rainfall, rainfall affects transpiration and transpiration affects water vapour in the air.

Nobody - nobody - knows whether cloud feedback is positive or negative overall. So nobody knows what the overall affect on temperature or rainfall will be. Only someone uninformed could think so.

Re: Interesting last paragraph

That's just bad maths. A sample of only twelve will often deviate quite widely from a fair sample in any direction.

That's the point of the peremptory challenge, and why it should be restored.

Sensitive personal data - needs both schedule 2 and schedule 3 reason.

The problem is not that they are breaking the DPA it's that they are a bunch of dishonest cheats who would rig the election bowling club secretary.

Here's the schedule 2 reason which applies. It's number 6 which you accidentally cut off:

6 (1) The processing is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests pursued by the data controller...

Now if they are cheating that's not a legitimate interest, but you have to prove that before you can prove they've broken the act.

And here's the schedule 3 reason:

5 The information contained in the personal data has been made public as a result of steps deliberately taken by the data subject.

Re: Paranoid consumers and schizophrenic vendors

If they are like-minded it can only be because they have already been controlled.

Re: Morons.

No, because the energy captured by the road results in a higher effective rolling resistance to the car. It's just a disguised petrol generator.

Re: Trading Standards

Defamation cases can be cheap and easy. Bring them in person, and you can do the whole thing for a few hundred quid. Provided you win - If you lose you will pay the loser's reasonable costs which may be tens of thousands.

In any case Amazon will probably fold at the first pre-action protocol step: A letter to their registered office, noting the damages and threatening to sue if nothing is done.

Re: I wonder...

You owe the bank $100,000, you have a problem.

You owe the bank $100,000,000,000, the bank has a problem.

The US national debt is a problem for China not the USA.

Re: Server 2003

And "shoe in" for "shoo in"..