Posts by PyLETS

@AC 21Nov 13:53GMT - Agnosticism and Atheism not the same

I think atheists had an easier time of this 100 years ago in claiming as unknown the origin of the universe, when steady state theory had as much or more evidence supporting a universe which had always existed as big bang theory - i.e. a universe coming into being from nothing at a point in time, and for which we now consider the scientific evidence substantial. I also must admit that I haven't yet encountered any arguments concerning the origins of matter which accept big bang evidence as other than a choice between randomness (which Einstein seemed to reject) and creativity. If you have one, then do please enlighten us.

But I read and understand your argument against my quoting Einstein in connection with his statement on dice as an agnostic position - and not the atheist one I was questioning.

It's not as if any faith position including mine doesn't carry difficulties, but those who dismiss the carefully considered and sincerely held positions of others such as Jonathan Sachs as childish superstition, would do better to start examining the assumptions present in their own position, (including those who hold to the agnostic view that the origin of the universe is inherently unknowable).

@silent_count "Nobody likes to hear it, but the problem is us."

Those who own the media have a vested interest in having as one sided a debate as possible on the copyright feeding frenzy. Politicians have a vested interest in obtaining media support - it wasn't Murdoch who had to fly half way around the world to get Tony Blair's support for the 2007 election.

The copyright problem isn't so much us as to do with politicians believing they need big media to get their message across to us. For those of us unwilling to vote single issue for a Pirate candidate even if we agree with the Pirate platform, because more important issues than copyright are being decided in an election your criticism is fair enough. But that's as much a fault with our system as it is with us.

Better for the Pirate Party to rate and endorse candidates for other parties in marginals based on responses to questionnaires on the copyright issue in places where Pirates can't afford to stand. This would start to modify views by mainstream parties on copyright once having more sane policies on copyright started improving chances of election.

@Had Dunlap

"I would like to see a reasonable response to why the Lockerbie bomber should be tried in Scotland but McKinnon should not be tried in the U.S."

Because McKinnon's offence was insufficient to justify extradition. Sledgehammers and nuts. This is probably why, also in your own words: "McKinnon is not important to most Americans". Of course he isn't - so why persist in damaging your international reputation over him when our courts could have dealt with him more appropriately ?

Wrong example

Gary didn't kill anyone. He was a naughty boy who, according to what we've heard, got into some systems in the US which were not well secured looking for UFO evidence. Of course the manager looking after these systems would go and blame someone else for the excessive claimed cost of doing work which would have been needed to secure these systems in the first place wouldn't he ?

Are you really trying to tell us you can't tell the difference if you found someone who'd got through the front door in a secure establishment when the guard was asleep and goes looking inside offices for confidential files about UFOs and if he'd killed someone when there ?

Would you expect that kind of nutter who goes wondering around where unwanted to have to pay the cost for hiring a better team of security guards and changing all the locks ?

Sorry but this kind of offence doesn't justify keeping someone awaiting extradition for a decade. It might justify a couple of hundred hours community service. But that should have been decided here, where Gary was when the crime was committed, and not in the US.

If the US authorities involved in requesting his extradition hadn't been as clueless as our UK judges in allowing this ridiculous case to drag on so long, people in the UK who are aware of Gary's situation might be able to think slightly better of the fools involved in this on your side of the pond.

family story

My German grandfather used to have to run to the bakers at lunch time with similar notes, before the price of bread went up.

Gnome and KDE equally bad

Tried Gnome 3 or KDE 4 lately, found stuff that used to work missing or in obscure and wrong places ? Anything they can do we seem to be able to do better.

Vigor the manic opensource paperclip turned out not to be just a joke, it was a working software product - after a fashion. http://vigor.sourceforge.net/ .

@Mark 65: regulations - taxes etc.

While taxes are as inevitable as death and carry a similar smell, I think you must admit that the burden of taxes, smuggling and regulation concerning decriminalised or legitimised drugs relatively minor social problems in comparison with problems with criminalised drugwars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Drug_War quotes 43,000 deaths over the last 5 years - which makes the bodycount resulting from 3 decades of troubles in Northern Ireland of 3568 (about half being civilians) pale in comparison:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jun/10/deaths-in-northern-ireland-conflict-data .

reprocessing and other hidden costs

I remember reading articles putting larger costs on the Windscale reprocessing plant every few years when we were promised one budget at the start of this and timescale but delivered something totally different. Given the length of time the plant has had to be shut down due to technology problems and small leaks which haven't yet impacted much on the outside environment but which have greatly influenced operating costs, I wonder just how soon nuclear generators will be expected to pay this full reprocessing and long term waste management cost.

All very well to call nuclear power cheap when the taxpayer has picked up a large share of the entire fuel cycle cost. While I don't think we can afford to do without a contribution from this major source of low carbon electricity altogether, I don't think anyone proposing large/fast nuclear expansion has been honest with the numbers. And that's before you consider who insures the nuclear accident risk of radioactive materials getting outside the reprocessing or generating site. Japanese taxpayers are now much more aware of this issue than they were prior to the tsunami taking out a significant fraction of their generating capacity.

Use tunnelling.

My home workstation does IPV6 over an IPV4 only connection. Very stable and a fairly simple setup. Have a look at http://tunnelbroker.net/ . Virgin Media don't support IPV6 yet, but protocol 41 works over my cable router and modem.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Tunneling

@Tony Smith: "covered by a whole mess of different regulations"

A whole mess indeed, and which would have been chucked out based upon human rights considerations had enforcement ever strayed out of the commercial sphere into the sphere most would consider to be private. Such considerations, for example, legitimised home taping of radio programs once this became widespread, because prosecution was not considered to be in the public interest. So if I play a song within copyright on my guitar to some friends for free, when does that become a "public performance" ? When we leave my living room and go to a nearby park ? Get real.

The problem copyright extremists are creating here is that they are confusing the public and private spheres of interest, boundaries between which used to be a matter of common sense, with copyright historically staying well outside what everyone knows to be the private sphere of interest.

who cares ?

This year, like the last 12 or so before it, is the year of the Linux desktop as far as my ability to get useful stuff (TM) done on it is concerned.

Most other folk seem content to be unaware that it is the year of their Linux phone, webcam, broadband router, set-top box, TV, Cable/Satelite box, NAS box and most of their web applications. Guess that's why there seem to be more Linux than Windows users these days. But how long before they realise it ?

WTO is a long winded ass

Which rarely decides anything much, because too many countries represented on it have too much to lose. A reason for the vibrant and growing Indian IT sector is that software patents don't apply there. A trivial amount of research would have educated you on this fact:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Other_countries .

One time pad rarely useful

For this to work you need an alternative communications channel for communicating the pad, which is more secure than the channel you are trying to protect. Works for the diplomatic services which can send trusted couriers on a regular basis to embassies abroad. Can't think of any other contexts where this is useful, and far more where it isn't.

Bluetooth and ad-hoc relay routing ?

Not sure if Bluetooth hardware and spec could be programmed to do this, perhaps in relay mode. Could propagate to a maximum number of hops set by originator and agreed by receiver and relays, reducing the hop count used with each relay ? It wouldn't prevent an agent provocateur working for the fuzz to keep/use a version of said software, perhaps with logging, in which case, how much infomation about the phone sending or relaying a unicast does a Bluetooth unicast disclose if all packets received are logged ?

Sales drop: because closed hardware is crap hardware

"Where exactly do you think the huge drop in sales is going to come from that would alter what manufacturers do? Do you honestly think that the tiny minority that run something other than Windows or Apple's OS, are going to influence manufacturers in any way whatsoever?"

Um, do you have any idea how often the typical Linux user is asked for hardware purchase recommendations by non Linux users ? As far as I'm concerned, if hardware doesn't run Linux, by being closed, this means it's probably undocumented and barely tested, and we have no way of knowing how crap it really is. So it's likely to have problems being upgraded to the next version of ProprietaryNClosed OS, for which even the next forced patch level may very well break it.

Anyone who had to tell people to throw away cheap Winmodem crap once the software which worked on Windows N didn't work with Win N+1, and the manufacturer had lost interest in maintaining the drivers will know all about this.

transaction costs and Tobin tax

The reason arbitrage as described in the article works is that the arbitrageur pays almost nothing to buy and sell in 2 markets simultaneously. This never applies to real stuff, like gold bracelets for reasons stated in other responses. It only works on electronically tradable virtualised securities, until governments decide collectively to introduce the Tobin tax on such trades. Doing that would force speculators to take a long enough view of something to help the change in value to be more real as opposed to short-term and psychological, and it would limit arbitrage to situations where the price difference is big enough to pay the Tobin taxes on the simultaneous deals.

News organisations looking into organised crime

I'm really confused. Are you saying News International, the organisation which has been profusely apoligising for some of the phone hacking of late, isn't ?

Seems unfair: rent-seeking activity

In classic economics rent was on land, because everyone needs to use some and it isn't being made anymore, so those who own and rent it out can live off the proceeds and don't need to work.

There are limits to the extent to which everyone else can be screwed over land rents, so new forms of artificial monopoly were invented. The form of enclosure called "intellectual property" taken to excess has also become a remarkably lucrative scam, partly because the main beneficiaries have been in a position to ensure that any "debate" over limiting the extent of this would be one sided. Few politicians choose to start fights with those who purchase ink by the barrel, which got the likes of Murdoch and his spawn into a position where Blair had to fly around the world to pay homage before he had any chance of winning the 1997 election. If you had imagined that the issue about undue influence of the owners of the media was restricted just to phone tapping you would have been wrong.

@Curmu

I could in theory, but it won't in practice, because few will use encrypted emails and these users will only be able to talk to each other and not those who don't use encryption. Bit like asking everyone to learn and talk Esperanto, a great idea, but highly impractical. Also even if everyone did upgrade to compatible encryption, you then have the same problem with typo-squat domains issuing look alike crypto key identities, and even if you use DNSSEC to validate these domains and keys, the typo squat domains will still validate using a near identical chain. The fact that joe@micorsoft.com is a different identity to joe@microsoft.com will simply shift the problem of getting the email address right to one of getting the key identity right.

talk about an ad hominem

That's fighting talk, besides which non-reuse of old handles once changed (even if for a single posting using a one time handle) is a policy of The Register, something you're presumably in a better position to change than I am.

Google for the site hosting PyLETS and its author if anyone else is that bothered about my identity.