Posts by ratfox

There are big advantages for a security camera to be web-enabled. It makes it a lot easier to check your home while on a trip.

It means Software Defined Networking

And it is to networking what virtualization is to servers. Apparently.

Version for Android coming up?

Wow. That's not the Apple I know.

Die Gedanken sind frei

Once again, I note that the FBI/CIA/NSA has not demanded mandatory, regular brain scans in order to read our every thought, and check we have no terrorist intent.

And I ask, is the reason they haven't done so that they do not think they should have such an access to our thoughts, or is it merely that the technology does not exist – yet?

There's 15 minutes difference between Nepal time and India time

Also, is there any difference at all between the way Amazon and Google handle the leap second? The descriptions look pretty much the same to me.

Do Australians customers deal mainly with Australian employees

Seems a loophole to me. It would be enough to outsource all sales people to India to avoid this new tax.

Larger size

Apple has caught the market’s changing tastes just in time

Er… Actually, it took them two years to catch up with that particular changing taste of the market. The larger size of the iPhone 5 was already considered at the time as a reaction move to the popularity of bigger phones; and the iPhone 6 came two years after that. Have a look at this article from two years ago:

Apple CEO Tim Cook: Here's Why We Don't Sell An iPhone With A Big Screen, Even Though Lots Of People Want One

Of course, they had many good reasons for that; in particular they wanted to simplify the life of developers and give them a small number of screen resolutions to work with. That particular condition is one they had to break with the iPhone 6 and the 6+, each having a new aspect ratio, and downsampling to display apps made for previous versions: The Ultimate Guide To iPhone Resolutions

One of the reasons the iPhone 6 has been so popular is that it finally has a larger size.

Not bad

I wonder who taught him to declare loop variables at the beginning of the methods, though. That's a style I haven't seen in a long time.

Wall of text alert

I have a confession to make: I'm cynical about laws. I don't believe that laws are written to enforce what is right and just, or balance of crime and punishment, but merely to ensure a functioning society with a minimal amount of trouble.

One of the reasons for my position is that what is considered right and just varies considerably with time and place. Slavery, homosexuality are viewed in a very different light now from two centuries ago. Copyright law is no different.

Copyright law and the content industry are in my view evolving to protect artists in ways appropriate to the current technology. It used to be that possession of an official recording gave you the right to listen to the music it contained. Giving, selling or inheriting the physical object transferred that right. Copying was hard and caused loss of quality, so little needed to be done to stop people from doing it.

Nowadays, since copying without loss of quality has become trivial and widespread, the industry is moving to licensing. You buy the right to listen to the music, with eventual time restrictions. The right cannot be resold or given away. This is becoming both possible and necessary because of the Internet.

The key point is that when an old law is becoming increasingly difficult or impossible to enforce, the solution is not to introduce increasingly complex systems to enforce it. The law does not necessarily represent a moral absolute which must be enforced no matter the cost; it is often merely the most efficient means to an end. If it is not efficient any more, it is more reasonable to change the law in a way that attempts to achieve the same goals, than to turn society upside down to try to keep the statu quo.

Attempting to shame China and India about copyright law does not seem very efficient to me.