Posts by Ken Hagan

You say Qaddafi, I say Gaddafi

Both are in common use. I think it depends on how you choose to transcribe from Arabic. That, in turn, probably depends on your Arabic accent.

A lot can happen in two and a half years. One thing that might happen is that someone throws together a canned "Linux desktop with XP in a (seamless) VM". Everyone gets to run their Windows-only apps inside a firewalled VM and perform their internet-facing activities in an OS that is considerably less vulnerable to attack than any version of Windows yet produced.

That's probably *already* a more flexible and secure option for people with professional IT staff to help set it up. As long as MS continue to puke up bloated eye candy instead of lean OSes, the incentive will be there for someone to put the pieces together.

It's not a contradiction. Nuclear is the cheapest low-carbon option, but if you force it to compete with high-carbon options that have externalised their environmental costs, it loses.

Actually I urge everyone to follow the link to the speech. It's not half as wild as the article suggests and (allowing for the fact that the Huhne seems to find it emotionally difficult to turn his back on an anti-nuclear childhood) reasonably sane. He *is* calling for a new generation of nuclear stations. He just doesn't want to write a blank cheque. Since I'd be underwriting that cheque, I'm inclined to agree with him.

Most of the swipes he takes at the UK's past exploits in the nuclear field are painfully true. The civil program was always hobbled by the priorities and the secrecy of the military one, and building the Magnox reactors to 11 different designs was quite astronomically stupid. If we are to avoid similar stupidity in the new nuclear program, we need to be able to admit that.

I don't know if you read the article correctly, but you seem to be confused about networking. Your IP address is not private information, so the ISP can tell the MPAA who you are.

Your address is public. If people don't know it or it isn't on the envelope, you won't get any letters. Your IP address is the same.

The contents of your letters are private. The postman doesn't need to rip open the envelopes in order to deliver them to the right house. The contents of your network packets is the same.

The fact that you are receiving a lot of medium sized parcels in brown envelopes may also private, although the postman doesn't have to open the packets to know. You will certainly find people willing to argue that it shouldn't be wrong for the postman to *notice* such things and organise their rounds to make it easier to accomodate your traffic. It might only become wrong if the postman goes on to publicise the fact that you are getting all this stuff.

"Net security firm F-Secure hasn't seen the Trojan in the wild"

It doesn't really answer your question, but it suggests that such evidence is very thin on the ground.

"I can only hope the IPO have the balls to reject it again, for an inarguable reason this time."

You're in luck. The judge pretty much told them how to do it...

"For the purposes of this appeal I can assume that the invention is new and not

obvious since those points are not before me."

Since numerical simulations as a design method pre-dates computing and are also one of the earliest uses to which computers were put, I'd say that's clear prior art and obviousness.

I expect there is prior art in the drilling industry itself, that no-one bothered to publish because it was too obvious. This is the real damage done by such decisions. Everyone who previously refused to abuse the system starts losing out and eventually you have to be an arsehole in order to survive.

Re: "Simple .. it's the most hateful and hated company ever."

That would, of course, be a matter of opinion. For what it's worth, I say Sony were better than this lot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

"By hamstringing young drivers they never really learn how to control a car, how to get out of a bit of a slide and are never going to learn how to manage screw-ups by themselves and others."

If the device really does result in drivers never needing to go a bit too quick, corner too fast or brake too sharply, then it is the greatest single contribution to road safety ever.

And last time I was in a live-endangering situation on the roads, there wasn't time to teach the other driver my skills, so it really wouldn't have made any difference whether I had them or not.

"Even governments have condemned it FFS. And as others have noted - you actually have no choice to remove it either."

Do keep up. Even Microsoft have condemned IE6 and would very much like you to to remove it. In fact, it takes conscious effort to *stop* Windows Update from removing it.

"I installed Windows 7 on the same hardware as Vista and found it to be MUCH slower. "

I don't doubt your experience, since I wasn't there, but I think you are the *only* person in the world with that experience.

Re: ability to be a nutter

There's a saying: "Reasonable people adapt themselves to fit the world. Unreasonable people adapt the world to fit them. Therefore all progress comes from unreasonable people."

I think both Jobs and RMS have been more than a bit unreasonable in their time.

Re: How does this differ from extortion?

Nothing bad will happen if you don't pay.

Umm, I think the modern concept is the idea that creativity is something that children do with finger paints and the illustrious forebears you refer to would have had no trouble with the OP's statement.

The two of you seem to be in agreement on substance and differing only in the choice of language.

And with regard to your final paragraph, I think the "jury's still out" on whether the complaint is valid and we shall see in the next few days whether the database actually is a single point of failure or whether, in fact, it has been replicated across the world.

That small tunnel would be about 10km below the earth's surface at its mid-point. (Oh, and around 730km long.) That's around 3 times deeper than the deepest mine in the world.

"Your newer one probably has more digits precisely because of this issue."

Possibly, but since the 4 digit wrap-around corresponds to a £13,000 bill, I'm inclined to think that 4 digits is already sufficient to avoid ambiguity.

Perhaps the modern trend for not bothering to read meters means that the interval between *reliable* readings is now an order of magnitude longer than it used to be.

Re: Nowt on TV

That probably depends on your age. If you can remember "Life on Earth", probably all of Attenborough's subsequent work strikes you as a succession of sequels, HD or not. Good sequels, perhaps, but still missable. The same probably goes for most sitcoms. In fact, it is probably asking too much of the entertainment industry to manage more than a couple of decades of novelty. Therefore, *everyone* with a functioning memory eventually decides that "there's nothing on".

It is probably *also* true that you could have watched TV for several years a generation ago and not have found anything worth watching. The dross has always been with us.

I'll do something even dumber. I'll feed the troll.

1) Given what we all know is out there, making yourself liable for it all is legal suicide. Therefore, all ISPs will have no choice but to immediately leave the market.

2) Retrospective law-making to punish "digital businesses", whatever they are. Hmm, I think you'd have to rip up most of the legal principles that make this country safe to live in.

3) Given (1) and (2), I don't think "people" are going to have any respect for you ever again, so if you *really* want to bolster respect for Intellectual Property could you please start campaigning for legalised piracy? That would be a big help for the rest of us. Thanks.

Re: title schmitle

"The western way of law has long since removed realistic access to the law for ordinary people."

The weak point seems to me to be the fact that everyone believes that a *good* lawyer gives you an advantage. (I don't know if there is hard evidence to support this claim. I can't imagine who would have both the cash and the interest in funding such research.) This allows lawyers to charge wildly different rates for doing essentially the same job. This, in turn, means that if you are sued by a huge company, then losing will land you with their enormous legal bill. This means you need to be financially reckless to actually stand up for your rights.

You could fix the system by imposing a sensible upper limit on the liability of the losing party for the winner's costs. I'll let you figure out the likely wider consequences.

"In a system created by lawyers you can be damn sure that the lawyers always come out on top."

Oh, you already have done.

Odd that you omit food production and housing from that list of things that are important to the health and well-being of society, even allowing for your footnote. I'd rate both as significantly more important than mobile phone coverage.

Less odd once you realise that the entire argument is bogus. Things that are essential to the well-being of society need to be *regulated*, but the ownership is irrelevant.

I refer you to my sweeping generalisations about the prevalence, or not, of JIT compilation in OS kernels and server software.

I'd also point out that "in theory", compiling to an intermediate ISA discards information that is then not available to a JIT compiler.

"idiocy is not a crime"

It may not ever have been written down, but I suspect that a careful reading of history would show that *beligerent* idiocy is indeed a crime in every human society, punishable by "whatever they can make stick".