* Posts by PatientOne

412 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Nov 2010

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Crime-fighting Seattle superhero unmasked, fired

PatientOne

Quite agree: People shouldn't be afraid to intervene.

I'm not sure if Pepper spray is illegal in the UK, but if it is, there are other legal devices available (marketed for lone workers) that would help in discouraging a fight (personal alarms for example). After all, the aim is to stop the fight, not to hurt people.

Assange loses High Court appeal against extradition to Sweden

PatientOne

@ratfox

Maybe, but he hasn't been charged.

Personally I don't give a rats tail about him as a person. My concern is the process.

For a moment, forget it's Assange: Think instead of it as being some bloke you've never heard of.

He's been accused. That's all. They question him and decide there is no case so let him go. Now they want him back so they can question him a second time. So they got an arrest warrant issued to question him? Not through the Swedish courts: The prosecutors went to the EU courts for it instead.

As I said in previous posts: They should ask the UK to hold him while they come over to question him. Dragging him back to Sweden is just being lazy on their part. What if he's innocent? What if they drop the case again? What happens to him? Is he left stranded in Sweden? Does he have to pay to leave the country yet again? And what then? What if the prosecutors decide they want to question him a third time? They go to the EU get another warrant and drag him back once more? Where does it end?

If they charge him then fine: Arrest his arse and drag him back to Sweden to face his accusers. Otherwise this is wasting time and money and if Sweden drop the charges again I do hope he sues them into the stone age for harassment.

And I still don't give a rats tail about Assange.

UK cops must justify using new mobile interception tech

PatientOne

With wire tapping don't the police have to apply per phone number rather than say 'any phone used by X'?

Shouldn't the courts reject any request which is excessive?

Wouldn't a reasonable person judge tapping all mobile communications within an area excessive just as they would (should) reject an application for the police to open all post and parcels passing through a sorting office on the off chance someone is sending something illegal through the post?

I think it's called fishing. I'm pretty sure the Police are forbidden to do it.

PatientOne

I'm more interested in the bit where they can shut down phone networks. The Telecommunications act has something to say about that, of cause. Mainly it's an offense to do so, and the police are not immune to prosecution if they break the law.

Why? Well, let's say I'm within the affected radius and I find a guy, grey faced, collapsed on the floor not breathing. What do I do? Get my mobile and call 112 (and shout for help, but if there's problems near by, people maybe busy getting to cover). So that call had better get through without any messing about as this is a guy who has had a heart attack and could well be dead within a few minutes.

Or are they saying they can block specific phones only? Or is this system smart enough to allow emergency calls through... and will it know all the phone numbers for hospitals, fire stations, ambulance centers, GP's and so on?

Some how I doubt it.

Samsung demands iPhone 4S source code in Aussie row

PatientOne

"I pretty much doubt there were any patent claims against Apple from Samsung until Samsung were sued."

From what I read, Samsung had approached Apple about the FRAND license before all this litigation came up. They had to wait until Apple launched their latest phone before going to court as until that point Apple hadn't actually infringed on the patents.

PatientOne

@Giles Jones

"Samsung are guilty of being lazy. Them calling for iPhone 4S source code is stupid, they probably want to steal that as well."

No, they're trying to show that Apple have utilised patented technology they're not licensed to use. It's in the article. Apple are calling for a copy of the license with the supplier to show they are covered already so don't need a separate license.

And why would Samsung need to steal Apple's source code for? Do you believe Samsung are planning on building iOS phones? Be a bit obvious, that one, don't you think?

PatientOne

@Ian

I think this really depends on the specifics of the technology and the details of the license.

As to selling something you're licensed to make to someone who isn't licensed to use it: Well, that's not your fault, is it? So long as you are clear about it and so long as the license you hold does not explicitly restrict such sales.

It would also depend very much on if the item sold could be used without implementing the patented technology. For example, a speed boost function: If you're not licensed to use it, you simply don't implement it. And that is what is implied by this request for Firmware code: Did Apple implement functionality off the chip they weren't licensed to use?

We're outsiders: We don't know the details. We can only guess for now.

PatientOne

While I agree, Johntron, Apple have refused to do just that. Justified or not, they don't seem all that keen to reach a settlement, and if rumour is correct, they have motive not to.

Apple gets patent for ‘unlock gesture’

PatientOne

A button like the one on the kindle? What's the betting that's patented already.

As to this patent: My Zen2 uses a gesture on the touch screen to unlock it. Guess what? That's been out for a lot longer than the iPhone. My HTC uses an unlock gesture, and that's been out for quite a while, too.

So as to the comment of 'It's not that big a deal': Oh, yes it is. It's a big deal because this patent should never have been granted. It's a big deal because now companies either have to pay for a license to use what already exists and is in use. That or they have to pay for the lawyers to challenge this patent and have it revoked. Apple, in the mean time, can sit back and bleed their competitors of funds at a time when competitors want to be focusing on research and true innovation.

Details of all internet traffic should be logged – MEP

PatientOne

@rossm

Erm... no... the problem is the amount of data they would collect would be too cumbersome to process and pretty meaningless without context.

How many nodes, how many proxies, does your connection go through? How many IP addresses get attached to your packets? How many layers need to be unwrapped if this detailed logging takes place just to find out you clicked a link that some hacker had hijacked to send you off to some dodgy pron site? Then consider just how many records would be stored for a single day. How many spiders out there trawling through the internet looking for key pages, how many links off each page to other sites, and how many people using AV that scans such links thereby generating a record.

How many millions of rows of data will be generated, which would need indexing to search properly, and those indexes will quickly become fragmented, slowing down queries. And what do you search for? How do you know what is illegal activity and what is genuine, legitimate traffic, and how do you know which IP addresses belong to which subnet so you can filter for the correct data.

Dinosaurs would look on this and laugh, and we should, too, as the system gets so swamped with data that it becomes impossible to analyse.

MEPs tend to be clueless, but they all seek publicity. That is what this is: Nothing more, nothing less, and is a total waste of our money.

Credit card companies plan to sell your purchase data to advertisers

PatientOne

@AC 09:46

I was wondering the same.

They'd have to use a persistent cookie in case you purge cookies when closing the browser, at which point why not simply put a list of group ID's in the cookie so they aren't selling your data, they're just selling the definition of their own groups.

How would they get the cookie on your PC? Well, I suspect the only time people have direct contact with Visa or Master is when we're making an online purchase and we use their secure payment system. At that point, yes, they could put a cookie on your PC.

But at that point why not simply put a list of groups they've put you in into the cookie? Then they sell the group definitions to other companies, or they sell a plug in for advertisers that reads the cookie for them and simply tells them what market group you fit in (according to the credit card's interpretation of your purchases, that is). That way they never send any information you have given the card company directly: They only sell their classification of you based on their assessment of your purchases. May be how they intend to get around data protection laws...

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

PatientOne

@AC 21:02

"The issue is not that the climate has always changed, it's that it is now changing faster that it has ever done. "

And how do you know this? How long have we been recording global temperatures? How often have we changed how we do this? And how significant do you think that period is when compared to the changing cycles this planet goes through? To put it simply: We do not KNOW how rapidly the planet temperature has changed in the past. We can surmise, based on evidence, but we didn't actually record it using the same methods we do now. Please do be careful, will you?

"Changes in climate while the dinosaurs were roaming the world didn't really matter that much because they didn't tend to make cities."

The changes in climate while the dinosaurs wandered the earth isn't important because they existed during a temperate age, and we're in an ice age. They would have been looking at the disaster of global cooling as the planet entered the current ice age because they were not suited to such climate. Plus, a city is a collection of buildings, much like nests. Dinosaurs may well have built nests, and a large collection might indeed have been a city. Again, we don't know: We're trying to guess on what it was like based on the equivalent of a couple of old cans and a crisp packet. That's why they still don't know what the T-Rex looks like. Seems they now think it has a feathered ruff...

PatientOne

Lee, just to correct a few things in your post.

1) While the earth did, indeed, warm up significantly since the last ice age, it then cooled down again for the current one and in no way, shape or form had anything to do with man as we didn't exist at the time.

What I think you meant is that during the current ice age (defined by permanent icecaps) we've seen significant fluctuations of temperatures that are unrelated to human activity (there are records of rapid warming some 25,000 years ago, for example, which is when our great ancestors must have been running around in their SUV's hunting Mammoths, and relaxing in their air conditioned mud huts, playing their proto-x-boxes and so on... (thanks to Tony Robinson and the time team for that one)). Currently we are interglacial, and environmental scientists should be kicking themselves if they didn't know we're expecting to see a warming trend globally (this is required if we're to exit our current ice age and move into the expected and somewhat overdue temperate age).

2) The French have produced some rather compelling information about how humans have, indeed, been affecting global temperature, and for generations! All the pollutants we'd been spewing into the atmosphere had been artificially cooling the planet! Then the clean air act was brought in and... well, we started to revert to the correct temperature, which was somewhat warmer than it had been... and this temperature change was rather rapid.

It is hard to tell what is natural and what is man made, and which way either is trying to take the planet. However, yes, you are spot on: We need to look at what this change means for us as a species and to adapt now so we can survive the change. And no, I don't think we can stop it, although we might try.

Not that the planet will care: We can all die off and good old earth will carry on regardless.

Apple versus Samsung: key points in the ruling

PatientOne

@jubtastic1

Take the Tesco box of cereals and put some in a bowl. Take Kellogs cereals and put in bowl. Can you tell the difference?

Take both boxes and spray them black. Take a random sample of other cereal boxes and paint them black. Can you tell the difference?

The logo on the boxes is copyright. Imitating that will get you sued for copyright violation, not patent infringement. The contents are the product, and that is near identical for both.

High Court: Computer simulations can get patent protection

PatientOne

@Adam Foxton

No, patents are for physical things (the drill head itself, for example). Copyright is for software.

This application involves software (can't be patented), mathematical models (can't be patented) and the process for testing (can't be patented). Even if there was some component that could be patented, the IPO were correct to reject the patent until the non-patentable components were stripped out. Not that my opinion carries much weight: Judges will make good and bad calls, and the lawyers will rub their hands with glee at this one.

Dutch ISP calls the cops after Spamhaus blacklists it

PatientOne

I was thinking the situation was more like you being denied entry into multiple restaurants because some third part objected to the way you were dressed the other night.

ISPs end PM's web smut block dream

PatientOne

"So, how was it supposed to work?"

1) block all .XXX web sites.

2) (optional) block sites with key words in the name with (if you're lucky) exceptions for sites that can demonstrate they're not smut peddlers.

3) (optional) also block sites you're advised about that are reported to peddle smut (and forget to tell them or explain how they can (not) challenge the block to get it removed...)

4) claim success.

OR

Positively identify which sites provide smut and add them to the block list, a task that will be never ending as new sites pop up or use proxies to help them move to avoid filters, and will cost the ISP's a fortune to maintain while only being able to report they're working on blocking sites.

Asking for a white list to be maintained is even more work for the ISP's, at greater cost and all that will happen is permitted sites will be hacked and used, or sites will be registered while 'clean' with links to the smut to bypass filters resulting in the ISP's having to admit failure.

Guess which method the ISP's would take.

Would you let your car insurer snoop on you for a better deal?

PatientOne

@Dibbley

Nope, you've got it back to front.

They will charge more if you show you're enthusiastic.

Look at the current change in insurance: Before you were classed as 'Social and domestic' or 'Business'. People complained that they were paying for commuters who were higher risk than those who didn't drive to work. So there's now a 'social, domestic and commuter' option, for which you pay more.

Insurance firms don't reduce your premiums: They find reasons to increase them, okay?

PatientOne

I happen to agree with you, Jimmy, and there are reports of how bad the false claims are getting.

The thing is: Honest people suffer. What ever happens, it's my pocket these companies raid just so they cover their costs and make their profits. And there's no one (or no one who is independent) regulating them.

Which is why I'd never allow an insurance company to spy on me, no matter what the discount they offered. I've no reason to believe they'll keep my details confidential. After all, they've been caught selling claims information to solicitors who then try the personal injury scam.

PatientOne

He's got a point, though: Carbon tax isn't just taken at the pump. The government also wants to charge businesses for how far their workers travel by car when commuting to work via carbon taxes, and that's on top of charging for how far the business fleet travels, and next is how far customers travel to visit the site...

Three guesses what project I'm working on at the moment :(

Intellectual Ventures wages patent war on Motorola

PatientOne

@Ramazan

Nope, they *buy* Intellectual Property then try to capitalize on it.

They *produce* nothing. There is no investment into developing new technology, and they haven't applied for any patents of their own - just registered a transfer of an existing patent.

I can see a use for a Patent holding company, though. No, not as target practice, but as a repository of patents that offers a blanket or technology specific license for the patents in the company's portfolio. The key, however, is the license needs to be reasonably priced and offer shares to companies that offer genuine patents to the patent company for inclusion in the portfolio.

If run properly, people know where to go for their patent protection and those who are driving innovation get to share in the profits from the portfolio. Oh, and patents are checked and validated before being accepted to prevent duplication and the patenting of the obvious.

Hmm... perhaps it could then replace the USPTO or even expand to handle patents from around the world?

Oh, pipe dreams... shame I don't smoke.

PatientOne

Intellectual Vultures? I would have opted for Idiot Ventures.

Innovatio targets Wi-Fi users with patent suits

PatientOne

If the lawyers had their way, you'd need a lawyer to blow your nose, and pay for the privilege.

Want to make a purchase? Get a lawyer to check that what you're buying doesn't infringe some patent somewhere, but you'll have to wait the ten years to make the purchase and you can add £££ (or $$$) to the price making the purchase unfordable.

Alternatively give all your money to the lawyers and accept gracefully anything they happen to give you in return. Well, other than a larger bill as now they have to employ accountants to handle all the money for them...

HTC Android handsets spew private data to ANY app

PatientOne

"Several models are said to be affected, including EVO 3D, EVO 4G, Thunderbolt and potentially the Sensation range."

from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15149588

No mention of the Desire, so hopefully it's safe.

UK punters happy to pay £3 to top up e-wallets

PatientOne

All business transactions are charged for by the banks for handling. The amount isn't always small, either. This is how the banks are putting pressure on business to reject cheques: Putting up the fees until it's just not worth honoring them any more.

But to charge the consumer a fee up front... okay, that's double dipping as they'll also get a handling fee from the shop this money is spent at...

As to the nature of this study: They didn't allow a 'no fee' option, and £3 is a lot if you're only wanting to add £10 credit, so to me this is a skewed study and the intention is to push people to use this system more than, say, debit cards. After all, if it's a £3 fee per top up, you'd want to keep the top ups to a minimum, and then you'd want to spend that money, probably in preference to cash or debit card... and all the while the banks will be making a greater profit.

Be interesting to see what they charge the retailer for use of this system, though...

PatientOne

Cap. Scarlet: Free wasn't an option, as I read it. So yes, I think they got a lot of stupid answers from those who don't agree with paying twice for this (you'll also pay the retailer as they'll get charged per transaction, too).

Samsung offers Apple TOP-SECRET peace deal in Australia

PatientOne

@Giles Jones

"The look and feel is what the case is about, nothing to do with technology. It's about product design, packaging design and the UI design. All of which are patented by Apple."

To me, that's the big issue right there: The look and feel should be copy write, and the technology should be patent. And both should apply only to the non-obvious (rounded corners being obvious, as does being flat, rectangular and with a smooth screen).

Oh, and don't Samsung manufacture parts for the iPad? Things like the resistive screen? Tends to suggest they know a bit more about how the iPad works than, say, Apple...

Apple loses bid to trademark 'multi-touch'

PatientOne

"Few readers here are apparently old enough to remember that application is a new term"

Application layer, part of TCP/IP, specifically IP (Internet Protocol), part of the OSI (Open System Interconnectivity). This was created in the 70's by DARPA.

The application layer is where higher level protocols live and operate, such as FTP, SMTP, HTTP etc.

Programs are broken down into subsets based on purpose. One subset is application programs, or application software as they're generally known now. This is to differentiate between programs intended to allow a user to perform an activity (applications), utility software for maintenance or general purpose chores, and system software that runs various parts of the computer.

So, applications are a kind of program, and the term has been in use since the 70's although mostly amongst those working in IT.

Outside of IT, the term has leaked into use slowly. Perhaps Apple helped this, but they didn't drive it. Many people were getting confused with IT terminology so clung to such general ideas as 'Programs', later replaced by 'Software', and only recently have they started to accept 'Applications'.

No, Apple are not responsible for this. They are just one of 'the crowd' who have used the term.

As to Apple having the first AppStore... it's an App store. That's a description of what it sells, not a brand name. So I don't think Apple should get rights to it.

As for Google... you do know they have the Android Marketplace, don't you?

BOFH: No, the Fabinocci sequence

PatientOne

PAT testers aren't much brighter than Health and Safety inspectors in my experience.

PAT tester: Put the labels on the desks... and had a master key to the server room from the estates department... but not for very long.

H&S drone: Told us to replace our rather expensive surge protection sockets within IT with their approved sockets (Metal, no surge protection, but they don't melt if there's an inferno in the office...). Yes, I asked if we could have surge protection on ours. His reply was 'Why do you need that?'.

Faster-than-light back with surprising CERN discovery

PatientOne

Perhaps the two clocks talk to each other? You know: One sends a signal to the other with a time stamp. The second returns the signal with the received time stamp. Then they swap and the second sends first. That gives them the time it takes to send and process a signal. Now you can synchronize both clocks and you have the means to check they are in sync.

That's just off the top of my head, of cause...

Parliament has no time for 100,000+ signature e-petitions

PatientOne
Flame

"We live in a democracy"

Wrong.

We live in a REPRESENTATIONAL democracy. The difference is: We vote in a representative for us, who then gets to vote on our behalf... or not, as the case so often is.

Patent wars: Apple attacks Samsung in Japan

PatientOne

@arctanck

I think there are simply too many patents in the US now to sort them all out. I think the patent system has become unfit for purpose. I also think too many companies/corporations know this and are taking advantage of it. What's been needed for some time is to get all the patents on computer so they can be compared, both against each other and against the rules for granting them and those that are pretty much duplicated and those that don't match the rules are removed, and then the results can be opened up to searching to everyone so we can see what the existing patents are and who actually holds them. Then we can avoid wasting time working on something that someone else has already patented...

However, this current spate of patent infringement claims is nothing more than an attempt to slow down competition: Prevent rival products reaching market. Apple don't want the competition to take away market shares, and Samsung, HTC etc all want to close the gap and get a bigger bite of the *cough* apple...

Does Cameron dare ditch poor-bashing green energy?

PatientOne

@PJI

You can build a power station pretty much anywhere as you ship the fuel to it. That means you can put a power plant close to where you need the power.

Wind farms need to be where there's sufficient wind to be worth building, so you are limited as to where they can go.

Power plants are enclosed, so suffer less from environmental damage. Wind/Solar are exposed to the elements and so need frequent repairs.

Yes, advances are being made, but can we afford to wait for technology to catch up with our demands? Or should we act now to make sure we're able to develop that technology?

Oh, and...

"Good thing your atttiude was not around" + "find the English spelling checker"

Normally I wouldn't criticise other people's spelling as mine can be quite poor, but in your case: Please take your own advice.

PatientOne

@AC Idealism v Ralism v reality.

When Thatcher sold off things like the gas and electricity, it wasn't to make a quick buck, it was to get money in to get us out of massive debt. This country was on the brink of bankruptcy, thanks to the actions of the previous government, unions and general idiocy. Now, she didn't sell off everything - she sold half shares in the utility companies. Half remained with the government so they still had control and gained some benefit from the profit the utility companies made, and the other shares were initially offered to the people. I know as my folks bought some and still have them. Okay, most of those government shares have since been sold... by Blair and Brown. They wanted to be popular, to spend freely from a rapidly emptying trough, and hid this by taking money from anywhere they could. Hence the pension pots vanishing and the gold reserve disappearing while they generally pretended we 'prospered' under their care.

In the mean time, they came up with plans on how to further line their pockets, and all this renewable, green energy crap is just that. And I say crap because it isn't of benefit to the people (aka you and me) and it has nothing to do with the environment. No, it benefits those who already have money, who can pay for wind turbines and solar panels and have the space to put enough in to make them worth some certificates... which then generates more income for them.

A normal person living in rented accommodation can't get any benefit from wind or solar: We simply have to keep paying the going rate, and that's going up all the time. Buy a house, however, and you're tied in to a mortgage that saps your funds, and so you can't afford to install turbines or panels. Queue the free installs: Someone else turning up and putting panels on your roof so *they* get the certificates, which is where the real money is, and you get a little bit of 'free' electricity to help reduce your bills. And all that does is offset the price hike in energy prices by a small fraction.

Just thing about it: You're paying a surcharge to the electricity company to pay for the certificate they've bought from the people who put the panels in your roof. Yes: You wind up paying for those panels no matter what you do. Sucks, doesn't it?

And the way out of this? Ditch the certificates. Make the different energy sources compete but regulate them so they have to be 'clean', suitable, reliable and sustainable. Anything else is a waste of time.

And as for the 'Greens'? Well, they're the ones who bought the lie and helped push it forwards. How Blair and Brown and their cronies must have laughed all the way to the bank.

There endeth the cynics view :p

PatientOne

@AC

"Lets keep burning stuff, we can always find new stuff to burn! Hurrah!

Oh no wait, that wont work, as we will actually run out of stuff at some point. Damn."

Yup! It's not like wood grows on trees...

PatientOne

@Cap. Scarlet

There's another point, too: Wind isn't an infinite resource. Neither is the Sun. What's more, neither is a reliable source.

Oh, sure, the sun comes up during the day, but not every day is 'sunny'. Also, during the winter when we need the most electricity, we have the least sun and wind. So, power generation is inversely proportional to power consumption with these two renewables. Why didn't they see that? Or were they blithely ignoring it?

PETA to launch .xxx smut site 'to help animals'

PatientOne

Cat& Toast...

Cat licks butter off toast then lands on paws. Later, toast lands on your head as you walk through a door. Toast, of cause, is covered with cat slobber.

Sometimes reality bites. Sometimes it just giggles at you from behind the sofa.

Dragon Bannatyne threatens to break arms of 'Russian' bloke

PatientOne

@b166er

"I have to wonder what DB has done to these Bellarussians to incur their wrath though."

Erm, he's got a lot of money. It really is that simple. £35,000 isn't even pocket change to him, which is why it's clear this isn't personal: It's just some thugs thinking he'll pay because it's such small change. Don't forget: Scamming £10 off 10000 people is a lot easier than trying to scam £50,000 off one person, and you've a better chance of getting away with it, too.

Isolated human genes can be patented, US court rules

PatientOne

@ AC 13:22

You're missing the bit where the chemical structures are developing naturally.

Every single case of that DNA existing in nature is prior art. Or do you believe that you can take a chair where one of the legs has developed a twist, cut off that leg then patent it? Crudely put, that is what this judgement is suggesting.

As I mentioned elsewhere, this is much like growing a rose. If a sucker develops, it's natural and should not be patented. If I graft another stem onto the rose, however, that growth could be patented as it required intervention to create (I'm growing a hybrid, after all, so why shouldn't I get recognition from that work?). This DNA sliver developed naturally, unless someone is claiming they intervened and *caused* that DNA to develop, in which case there will be one hell of a lot of damage claims and law suits being aimed at the patent holder...

PatientOne

eltit

'Does the Queen have the ability to rescind Independance, thereby reverting all US-owned stuff to England?'

No, and that's probably just as well. Unless you want to see Britain landed with a multi-trillion-dollar debt?

PatientOne

@AC 11:27

"Just because the sliver of DNA doesn't exist naturally, it does exist as part of a whole. "

Just going to correct this a bit:

"Just because the sliver of DNA doesn't exist independently in nature, doesn't mean it isn't naturally part of a whole."

That DNA sliver might be cancerous but it developed as part of a natural process, hence it is natural, if undesirable, as opposed to a DNA sliver that was specifically grown off a natural one. A bit like the difference between a sucker and a graft when you're dealing with rose bushes. The sucker is natural, the graft is artificial.

George Lucas defeated by Stormtrooper helmet man

PatientOne

Yes, you missed something.

What you missed was what was missing: A written contract.

You also missed another important point: The props were out of copyright by the time they were being sold.

So, in your analogy above: You weren't ripped off as the guy didn't just bugger off immediately and make as many copies as he wanted. He had to wait until your rights had expired before doing so. So you had time to capitalize on your design before he could make a penny outside of sales to you. Oh, and you didn't issue him with a limited license that restricted sales of your design to you so you can't stop him from producing genuine copies from your original design, either.

Rupert Murdoch was never Keyser Soze

PatientOne

Just to correct you

'Even with the rebate we pay far more into the EU than we get out of it. We could pay those subsidies directly, why do we need to have it administered by a remote bureaucracy that hasn't had its accounts signed off for the last decade or more?'

The EU has never had its accounts signed off - they can't get them to balance.

CERN 'gags' physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

PatientOne

More importantly...

...why did the Norse settlers call Greenland 'Green'?

Could it be that it was once a green and verdant land? And then it got covered in snow...

PatientOne

Mostly right...

..except we should be at the end of the current ice age and moving into a temperate age. That should be happening... well... now. As in this very minute. Or maybe this year. Or next. Or the year after or in the next ten years, or a hundred, or perhaps a thousand. It's not that exact a science.

Go look it up: There are plenty of text books out there that will give you the details. What's more: We (well, environmental scientists at least) have been predicting this for... well... since the Victorians. It's not new, it's old news, so no one really cares.

How LulzSec pwned The Sun

PatientOne

Or they're roll-players

After all, there was a Palladium roll playing game....

Hmmm.. Murdock dead by eating lots of books...

Assange™ in court to fight extradition order

PatientOne

I think he offered to talk to the investigators here...

It's the one thing I don't understand about it, too: Why does he have to go to Sweden to be questioned?

EAW's shouldn't be allowed to be used to bypass proper extradition process, if that's what's happening. Oh, sure, if Assange was Swedish and they issue an EAW, then yes, ship him back to his home country, but not if he's a foreign national. Rather, they should only require that a country arrest and hold a person (for a limited time) while the issuing country sends investigators to question the suspect - under supervision and under the protection of the holding country, and if the issuing country does not send out investigators in a timely manner, then the suspect is released and any further EAW for that person for that investigation be ignored (to prevent EAW's being used to harass someone).

Then, if charges are warranted, a proper extradition request can be made, and that can go through the courts. Besides, assuming he's shipped off to Sweden, then released without charge, and without being spirited away to the US, who pays for his return to the UK? If it's Assange, then that really isn't fair, is it?

So yes, I support Assange fighting this EAW. Not because I think he's innocent - that's not for me to decide, but because I can't see it's necessary to ship him off to Sweden if he's not been charged. And if he shouldn't be shipped off due to an EAW like that, then no one else should be, either. Charge him and go through extradition, or don't charge him and have to come here to question him: That should be the system.

Apple patent: 'Pour' your data from iPhone to iPad

PatientOne

and more....

Avatar: In the control room people were using hand gestures to move readouts onto slates and carrying them around.

Minority report: Moving readouts around by gesture.

I think Payback also had gesture controls for displays. And I'm sure I've seen someone mimic screwing up a report and throw it at a virtual bin. All on film or TV.

So... where did Apple get the idea from? And how isn't it obvious if film and TV peeps have come up with it already?

Got a website? Pay attention, Cookie Law will come

PatientOne

@ Klutz

"It is by interrogating the Cookie that the browser finds out 'what to do', if that is not an instruction, I would love to hear your definition of what is."

Software is described as a series of instructions, yes, but they are programed instructions compiled into code that a computer can execute. Those instructions can include the reading and processing of data, and that data can be used in decision making within the software, which can then affect the software's behavior.

A Cookie is, by definition, data. It is not software as it can not be executed by a computer. Instead, software can read a Cookie and take the content to determine how the software is to behave.

Or look at it another way: I go to a website for the first time: The website can't find a cookie, but it is still able to function properly. If I delete the cookie it creates, it will still work: It will just loose the setting, preferences and other data it was storing on my PC.

So rather than referring to Cookies as instructions, it would be safer, and perhaps more accurate, to refer to them as preferences and/or settings.

A sysadmin's top ten tales of woe

PatientOne

This isn't so uncommon

Had this a couple of times when I was working for a company down Swindon way.

User calls, makes demands and threats, I drop what I'm doing, head on down and find the computer was unplugged. User, of cause, was never around when I got there. So I plug the computer back in and leave it plugged in. Last time I went down, checked the computer worked, then unplugged it and returned to the office to report on the ticket. Note in the comments box: No fault found. Computer left in state found in. I didn't mention that the problem seemed to occur at about 8:30 when the canteen opened...

And as to cleaners: Yes, had that, too. Server room was kept locked: Main door was key coded with access audited. A rear escape door was secure from the outside: Had to break the glass tube to unlock it. The side door was kept locked with 'no entry' markers on it, and the office it was accessed from was also kept locked. So, the cleaner went through the office and in through the side door using the master key. We only found out this was happening when she forgot to plug the server back in when she left the one night: The UPS had been keeping it running the rest of the time.

But my favorite has to be the offsite server farm: Two sites mirrored, just in case, and in separate counties. Only when the substation supplying power to one went down, both sites went dark. When they investigated why, they found both sites were supplied by the same substation. Apparently no one had thought to check that possibility out...

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