* Posts by PT

350 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2007

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US space programme in shock metric conversion

PT

Re: Not likely.

"...Monterey Jack is NOT CHEESE."

It's worse than that. If you read the label on a well known brand of supermarket American cheese slices, it clearly states them to be "cheese flavored FOOD SUBSTITUTE". Actual words. Not only is it not cheese, but it's not food either.

PT

Re: "even if "six-tenths of a kilometre" still has a ring of old school about it."

I show a third of a meter as "about a foot", or "thirteen inches" if I need more accuracy.

Microsoft ejects DVD playback from Windows 8

PT

Re: @ myself and Downvoters

That's worth a downvote <done>. If I buy a DVD, I own it and will damn well play it on any device I like. If purchasing the format doesn't come with an implied license to play it, there's something very wrong - if not actually fraudulent - in the licensing arrangements.

But wait, what's this I see in your post - "I were from the MPAA id be saying words like theft and stealing but im not",and then a little further on, "is still IP theft if there isnt a valid licence" - ok, I get it now. You're just confused.

PT

Re: If you re correct-

By my calculations, even a svelte distribution like XP would have required 750 floppies.

How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to

PT

Re: back story

And as North correctly observes, it's not the British politicians that are to blame. They are quite powerless. The UK government has been castrated by the EU and reduced to the legislative level of a parish council. They have no power to set water policy, and in fact the only power they do have is to obstruct other peoples' efforts that for one reason or another don't line up with the directives from Brussels.

http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=82616

One wonders why our leaders don't come out and admit this. Perhaps they think it would be like standing up on a porn movie set and admitting they're impotent, but the shame would be momentary compared with the scorn if they insist on trying to complete the movie.

GCHQ's spy death riddle shines light on UK hacker war

PT

Re: @Matt Bryant

From the article, "Save for exceptional tidiness, Williams’ London government-rented flat was equipped as a nerd should wish..."

Exceptional tidiness? Hmmmm. I've been in a few nerds' flats. I'm inclined to agree with you that his flat probably had a visit from the cleaners before the police became involved. Whoever it was that killed him, I don't have any difficulty believing that his employers went in for a thorough search and clean up when they discovered him and before notifying the police. In that case, the competence or otherwise of the police investigation is quite irrelevant.

Globe-spanning patent bombs touted by Euro, UN pen-pushers

PT

Re: Can you challenge a foreign patent?

There will be no opportunity for a UK court to challenge a US patent. Alleged violators will simply be extradited to the US so that the case can be heard in East Texas.

Glider pilot 'swallowed camera memory' say plunge tragedy cops

PT

I wonder...

Maybe what the SD card reveals could bring worse consequences than those of obstruction and destroying evidence.

Maybe she was threatening to tell his wife.

'Don't break the internet': How an idiot's slogan stole your privacy...

PT
Stop

Re: Thing is...

"if everybody contacted the copyright holders for every single instance they may have to ask permission ... the whole system would come crashing down under the weight of the administration required."

Probably not. It's far more likely that people seeking permission would have to call a phone number that's permanently busy, or answered automatically and then put permanently on hold for the "next available representative". Though I wouldn't put it past the copyright industry to log the incoming phone numbers for future enforcement investigations.

Busted in the US? 'Drop your trousers, sir'

PT

Re: What /is/ it with the US and nudity ?

Simple, really - the USA is obsessed with repressed sexual guilt. You might have noticed the great majority of second-rate American horror/suspense movies revolve around threatening a nubile and helpless young woman with rape, mutilation and death. Any trick cyclist could explain that for you.

Personally, I think it's what happens when religious nutters get too much influence. There are no naked boobs in Iran or Saudi Arabia either.

Eddie Murphy heading for worst movie ever glory

PT

Walking Out

I've walked out of two movies that I paid for. One was 'Jubilee', long ago. The other, more recently, was 'Temptation of the Christ'. I can't even believe I paid to walk in to that one. I desperately wanted to walk out of 'God Save The Queen', but I stuck it to the bitter end because my girlfriend like the Pistols (it didn't work out). As for the other turkeys cited here, having paid attention to the reviews I didn't pay to see any of them at the theater, so walking out was not an option.

Cambridge boffins build laser 'unprinter' to burn pages clean

PT

Recycling currency

Not by this technique presumably, but US one-dollar bills can be (and have been) bleached and overprinted with higher denominations. The results don't stand up to examination by eye, but they're good enough to deceive some electronic bill validators that rely on the optical characteristics of the paper to establish genuine-ness and only read the denomination from the print.

UK Home Secretary approves TVShack's O'Dwyer extradition

PT

Re: I doubt

Very often, in the US evidence is neither required nor produced in criminal cases. What will probably happen is he will be mercilessly badgered by the "nasty" cops for a few days until they convince him he's in jeopardy of a thousand year sentence, then the "nice" cop will show up and get him to sign a confession in exchange for dropping most of the charges. Bingo, conviction achieved, no evidence necessary.

My son got a ticket for running a stop sign. When he decided to go to court to fight it, they even offered him a plea bargain on that.

SOPA poked an angry bear and set it loose on the net

PT

Re: Going to the "Copyright In Three Dimensions"

Disney's concerns, and that of many others, could have been met quite adequately just by requiring rights holders to re-register every few years. Would that have been so hard? It could even have been made indefinite and I don't think many people would have objected, because as long as a work is worth a little effort and a nominal fee it's still of interest to the owner and probably still available. Whereas what we ended up with is a situation where everything created in my lifetime (and much that was created before I was born) will still be copyright long after I die, and the vast majority of that work is out of print and will never be available again. And YES, as a member of the public I've been cheated, by providing the rights holders' side of the deal while they systematically gutted my side of it.

Bromine bomb drops toxic mercury fallout

PT

Re: Isn't this backwards?

"Shouldn't the story be 'bromine from melting ice removes toxic pollutant from atmosphere'?"

Probably, but that wouldn't attract such a big research grant as one about the evils of industrial civilization.

Asteroid could SMASH INTO EARTH in 2040

PT

Morons

"In 2040 humanity will be looking up at the sky with a same stupid expression the dinosaurs had when the rock hit them."

As usual, The Onion brought us that news first.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/republicans-vote-to-repeal-obamabacked-bill-that-w,19025/

RIP: Peak Oil - we won't be running out any time soon

PT

Re: Optimism from beyond the grave

Oh don't worry, the Republicans are pledged to repeal those anti-business laws when they get the US Government back.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/christian-right-lobbies-to-overturn-second-law-of,281/

Pirate Bay AND its users violate labels' copyright - judge

PT

Re: Not news

In order to be punished, you first need to be found guilty - by a jury, in many cases. We are already approaching a point where you could not get a jury of under-30s to convict in a copyright case, at least not without careful packing - I mean, jury selection. These potential jurors will not become more copyright-friendly as they get older. So whistle in the wind, copyright maximalist - whatever happens in the short term, sooner or later copyright will become unenforceable, having been destroyed by its strongest proponents.

Obama refuses to respond to MPAA bribery claim petition

PT

@Loyal Commentator

Surely 'all stake holders' includes not only those who benefit from monopoly protection, but those on the other side of the deal who agree to that monopoly in exchange for a public benefit. This is emphatically NOT restricted to people who buy the shit, but the entire public, born and unborn, who have a right under the agreement to receive these works freely from the public domain - preferably some time this millennium. It is precisely because the general public has been excluded from negotiations that things have become so one sided. If the public receives no benefit from the deal, why should they care if anyone else does?

Obama washes hands of O’Dwyer piracy extradition case

PT

@Miek

"you seem to think we had a say in it!"

Oh yes, I apologize. I forgot we live in democratic countries.

PT

@Climbing Kid

"we do not expect our extradition agreements, put in place to protect us from terrorism, to be exploited for trivial "suspected" piracy allegations"

LOL - then you shouldn't have made treaties with America, where every law is sold on the basis of tackling some popular discontent and then widely abused by jailing grandmothers and drowning kittens.

It's a pity Tony Bliar allowed the treaty to be so one-sided, otherwise we could enjoy the spectacle of the UK extraditing random Americans and prosecuting them for possession of firearms. Or if such treaties existed elsewhere in the world, perhaps a country like Saudi Arabia would extradite Newt Gingrich and behead him for adultery.

US shoots down key Rambus patent

PT

Prior Art?

Since when has prior art had anything to do with it? Any consideration of prior art would be an offense under the Attorneys Full Employment Act.

Actually, my favorite prior-art patents are US6280318, granted in 2001, which patents using a fan to cool electronic equipment, and US7499276, granted in 2009 to a competitor of the first company, which claims the exact same thing except that the fan is specified to extract hot air rather than blow in cool air. These stand out to me because in 1998 I wrote a paper lamenting the patent mania and predicting that one day someone would try this, though I never expected it would be granted.

Surprise: Neil Young still hates digital music

PT

O'Really

The last Neil Young album I bought, probably about 25 years ago now, sounded as if it was recorded in a garage on an old Grundig using a crystal microphone. I don't think higher resolution audio would have done any good, especially given the musical skill of his Wyld Stallions - uh, I mean Crazy Horse - backing band. It's the only music CD I ever threw away.

Ocean currents emerge as climate change hot-spots

PT

Out West

Where I live in Nevada, up until about ten years ago we used to get rainstorms that flooded the streets and floated cars away. Lately we haven't had anywhere near so much rain, and in one two-year period I think we only had 1/10 inch. The past couple of years have been wetter, with about our average 4 inches. Temperature-wise, the winters seem milder with only a few days of frost this winter, but they're variable anyway. Ten years ago the fountains froze in Las Vegas and people made snowmen on the Strip. The summers are always hot, but lately I haven't seen the highs I used to, like in 2003 when the thermometer on my back porch reached 124 degrees F.

Brit pair deported from US for 'destroy America' tweet

PT
FAIL

Bryant, why don't you go and have a beer with your pal Gumby and calm down? You're not achieving anything here with your laughable and predictable ad-hominem attacks on everyone who disagrees with you.

Most EU states sign away internet rights, ratify ACTA treaty

PT

Steam model?

I'm not sure I like the idea of having to store content I paid for in the "system" and just borrowing it from time to time. I prefer the idea of tangible property in my hands, that I can use at any time without reference to any other person and dispose of any way I please. I have CDs that are 20 years old some vinyl records more than 40 years old. I'd like to see the online storage that would hold my property safe for so long, free of charge, and let me take them to parties or lend to my friends.

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?

PT

Welcome, new commentard

Am I the only one who finds it ironic to see Andrew Orlowski participating in a comment thread? Naturally it's not attached to one of his own articles. That would be difficult.

Flog secondhand MP3s at your peril - law guru

PT

"However the lawyers have convinced people that when a "1" or "0" stored on digital media is represented by a voltage in a circuit, that a copy has been made."

This was a wholly novel idea that was first introduced in the US case of MAI Systems v. Peak Computers, 9th circuit 1993. MAI Systems maliciously sued one of their former service engineers for leaving to work for a competitor, and convinced the court that in order to fire up a computer to run diagnostics it had to load the operating system, and when a competitor did so it was making an unauthorized copy. This was picked up by a US government working group on intellectual property headed by Bruce Lehman, the Patent Commissioner and former copyright lobbyist, and staffed by numerous other former copyright lobbyists, who thought the Mai decision was an excellent idea that should have wider application. The Lehman group's report was issued in 1994; the rest is history.

UK student faces extradition to US after piracy case ruling

PT

One Honest Politician

No - he would be shot before he had the opportunity.

PT

@tinker+tailor+torrent

"This should mean that the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA act should apply, but apparently this only applies if you are google."

No - DMCA is a US law, so its Safe Harbor provisions only apply within the US. However, if it were to be applied extraterritorialy, it would apply in this case. On the other hand, you could then be extradited to the US for region-unlocking your DVD player.

I predict that O'Dwyer will never stand trial anyway. If extradited, he will spend a lengthy period in jail on remand - possibly a couple of years - which will constitute his punishment, and then charges will either be dropped, or he will be offered a plea bargain to some misdemeanor. They will NEVER let this case come in front of a jury.

Foreign sabotage suspected in Phobos-Grunt meltdown

PT

No capable engineers left?

So I guess now it's the Russian media's turn to start wailing about the shortage of engineers and programmers, and to demand that the colleges turn out many more of them.

There is no staffing problem that can't be solved with money. Unfortunately that's the last solution that is ever tried.

Profs call for harsh taxes on sweet carbonated beverages

PT

Mexican soda, made with sugar instead of HCFS, is very popular where I live in the SW in spite of being more than twice the price of the domestic article. You really can taste the difference. I don't often buy sugared drinks but if I'm having a party, I get a case of Mexican.

PayPal dispute ends in 'violin destruction'

PT

I absolutely agree - PayPal is the worst online payment service in the world, except for all the others.

When I ran a CC merchant account, I once had a Visa payment yanked right back out of my account (without notice) because a buyer claimed his card had been stolen and he neither ordered nor received the goods. I was able to prove from previous correspondence that he had discussed the purchase with me and personally ordered it, and had personally signed for the delivery. The bank accepted this, but then told me they couldn't make corrections for trivial amounts of money (anything under $1000).

For this merchant "service" I was being charged about $100 a month in fees plus 6 to 8 percent on transactions, and was required to maintain a separate commercial bank account that also carried monthly fees. PayPal may have its problems, but at least you only get screwed accidentally instead of systematically.

Verizon retreats on ‘convenience fee’ for online bill payment

PT
Mushroom

Logical

I understand this perfectly well. Customers who take advantage of this payment method are those who left it a bit late to pay and are in danger of incurring a late fee. Verizon feels entitled to that late fee, and was just trying to bring a portion of it forward. I know of at least one bank that makes a hefty charge if you pay your credit card bill online within a couple of days of the due date. Banks, phone companies - all the same really. They'll both be first up against the wall together when the revolution comes.

EFF appeal win reopens NSA dragnet spying case

PT

@FISA

That's normal for America. The US calls unpopular laws by catchy, misleading names because that's all the average 'merkin ever knows, them not being big readers.

Exhibit A:

USA PATRIOT act: Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism act of 2001

Extra credit here for the doubly-misleading acronym. The first prosecution under the 'Patriot' act was of a county commissioner (UK equivalent would be a county council member) accepting favors from a strip club owner.

Exhibit B:

State 'RIGHT TO WORK" laws

Many states have "Right to Work" laws. These laws give employers the right to dismiss any worker for no cause, without notice, with no recourse.

Ah, America - Land of the Fee, Home of the Slave.

The cure for US job woes: More immigrants

PT

@ryanthelion

Ryan, I'll assume you really know what you want and aren't pursuing some dream of an America that died ten years ago - you might want to think about that. But here's some advice from a guy that did it.

The conventional path is for you and your wife to shovel shit for at least five years, always in fear of falling out with your employer (who has to pay substantial fees and file all the papers on time), and hope the immigration officer who makes the final decision after five years isn't in a shitty mood, otherwise it's back to square 1.

A more certain method is to divorce, come to the US as visitors and each marry Americans. Your British accents will give you a pronounced advantage over the home team. It will still take over five years before you can breathe easily, but it becomes more difficult to deport you meanwhile, though to be on the safe side you shouldn't leave the country until the process is complete.

An alternative is to go to Cuba and take the boat. Since the US regards Cuba as an evil communist dictatorship that tortures its citizens, everyone from there is automatically granted asylum and citizenship as a refugee. You will have to convince an immigration officer that you lost your papers on the way, and will be a more credible refugee if you can speak Spanish. Tell the officer you promise always to vote Republican.

Yet another alternative is to become Ministers of Religion. We don't have enough of them, and there are special visa programs with fast-track citizenship. It doesn't much matter what religion, so long as it's nominally Christian and you can get some organization to ordain you both. Ministers of Religion are free to pursue any career - TV personality, theme park proprietor, university founder, etc etc - and there are great tax incentives.

PT

More clarification

Let's hear it from the top. Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed, wrote in his memoirs:

"As awesomely productive as market capitalism has proved to be, its Achilles' heel is a growing perception that its rewards, increasingly skewed to the skilled, are not distributed justly. A dysfunctional US education system has failed to prevent a shortage of skilled workers and a surfeit of lesser skilled ones, expanding the pay gap between the two groups. Unless America's education system can raise skill levels as quickly as technology requires, skilled workers will continue to earn greater wage increases, leading to ever more disturbing extremes of income concentration. We need to address increasing income equality now. By opening our borders to large numbers of highly skilled immigrant workers, we would provide a new source of competition for higher earning employees, thus driving down their wages."

See, the worrying income inequality isn't the 500-fold gap between the richest 1% and the rest, but the 40% advantage the educated have over the unskilled. It doesn't matter - to the elites, we're all serfs.

Cambridge puts Isaac Newton's notes online

PT
Headmaster

At last!

All those hours I spent studying Latin in school weren't wasted after all.

GCHQ code-breaking challenge cracked by Google search

PT

Absolutely. Stealing the plaintext is the quickest method, and is one of the proud traditions of security services everywhere. Failing that, the rubber hose method also brings results with less effort.

European court advisor slams software copyrights

PT

Yes but

"I've never quite worked out how they manage to get the patents, do patent offices in the US not understand coding?"

In the United States, patents are granted automatically (on payment of the proper fee) under the Attorneys Full Employment Act, which states that you can get a patent on the color green if you pay for it, and the details will be thrashed out over the next two decades by armies of lawyers.

What's always puzzled me is why software companies are allowed to get away with patenting something, then copyrighting the same thing, and then saying you can't even read it because you don't own it, just license it.

FCC slams AT&T and T-Mobile union

PT
Big Brother

I do not want T-Mobile to merge with AT&T either. Earlier this year when they thought the deal was going through, I got a call from a nice T-Mobile customer service lady to ask my opinion. I told her frankly that if the merger goes through, I will certainly move to a different carrier.

Not that my T-Mobile plan is particularly good, but it has one really big thing going for it - it's NOT AT&T. I've had experience with those bastards in the past, and even if I hadn't, I wouldn't put my service in the hands of the carrier that most enthusiastically cooperated with the US Government's illegal domestic spying program.

Manning to get day in court

PT

@Asgard

Hear, hear. +1.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

-- Joseph Goebbels

Happy 40th birthday, Intel 4004!

PT

Speed

740kHz was the oscillator frequency, not the processor speed - it took 8 clocks to execute a single instruction. The actual instruction cycle was 10.8 microseconds, for an effective speed a little under 93kHz.

Mystery radioisotopes in Czech air are not from Fukushima

PT

"A 240VAC version will be released six months after release of the 120VAC version."

For twice the price.

Doctor Who and the Unsatisfactory Five Hole Tape Punch

PT
Paris Hilton

Strange, I didn't see Leela mentioned anywhere except in your comment.

Thanks for the memory, though!

Details of all internet traffic should be logged – MEP

PT

No need. ANPR already does that, to save you the trouble.

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

PT

O'Really?

Perhaps it looks like "hard core right wing" from the position of an AGW activist, though the impression is as false as all their other claims. But I agree with you that the argument isn't about science. It never has been. It's always been political on the AGW side.

Judge cracks down on Bayesian stats dodginess in court

PT
Headmaster

"i.e. if you take 1 million flights you _will_ be killed in an airplane crash"

An appropriate comment for an article about the abuse of statistics. In fact, if the risk is one in a million, the probability that you will be killed after a million flights is about 63%. You calculate this by raising the odds that you will NOT be killed on a particular flight (999999:1000000) to the power of the number of flights, and subtracting from one. (0.999999)^1000000 = 0.368.

It's easier to see it with a smaller number. If the odds of rolling a six on a dice is 1 in 6, the odds of rolling a six at least once in six rolls is 1 minus the odds of _not_ rolling a six, six times in a row - 1-(5/6)^6, or about 66%.

Microsoft unveils file-move changes in Windows 8

PT

@Danan

"What I hope they improve is the file renaming"...

Tasks easily carried out with the 'Group Rename' function of PowerDesk, which is everything Windows Explorer could have been if Microsoft had any imagination. Perhaps they should buy a copy and rip it off, if they're looking for reasons why people should pay yet again for another unnecessary version of Windows.

Here lies /^v.+b$/i

PT

@steve

Splendid - I wondered how far down the comments I'd have to read before someone mentioned it.

Of course, by the time Verity needs it, nobody will be left alive who understands what it is.

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