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Britain - and other nations - have lots of Royal Societies for all sorts of things. Convention has it that the only one called `The Royal Society' is this one:

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/

Lots of Royal Societies? Yep - look here:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=royal+society&sou rceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=u tf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:offici al

You can't get away from Royal stuff in the British Isles - I mean, even the definitely very anti-British-rule and entirely republican Republic (i.e., we have no royalty here, matey[1]) of Ireland has this:

http://www.rsgyc.ie/ - founded in 1838, so that `Royal' was a definite reference to the British monarch - Queen Victoria at that time (reigned 1837-1901).

[1] Aside from the point that all of Irish descent are the descendents of kings. Nothing's straightforward.

Yup, looks like it's time to update my Annoy Browser Zealots script ;-)

Some pictures of a real laffer curve.

> When the northern ice caps melt then the cold water starts to cool the ocean, > and there would be fewer hurricanes. That is what the environmentalists told
> us all during the 80's and 90's. How come we have had the terrible hurricanes
> this year and last...

I don't recall any such thing being said, but then I did smoke alot of pot during the 90s. Like a proper hippy should.

It's not as simple as the oceans cooling en masse. The melting of arctic ice affects the gulf stream, lessening the flow of warm water northwards. Thus tropical oceans are warmer causing more hurricanes.

> Why is it happening if the ice caps are melting? How about explaining
> Antarctica's glaciers getting larger?
> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1806

You really shouldn't confuse trends with single instances. That article itself asks whether this reversal is a trend or a blip: " The big question is if the change marks the end of the retreat, or just a short-lived reversal."

Even if the antarctic ice sheet is expanding, you might have observed that the emphasis these days is not on global warming but climate change. And climate change will benefit nobody but speculators.

> They also said we created the hole in the ozone; however in 2004 the hole in
> the ozone was recorded as getting smaller by up to 20%.

That's one year. See http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=graph+ozone+ho le+size for graphs of ozone hole trends.

> Still think we are causing global warning? Remember the Ice Age?

I don't think you appreciate the sensitivity of complex systems. Yeah global climate changes. But a giga tonnage of atmospheric CO2 released over a much shorter period of time than the system is used to, could cause all sorts of changes to the system.

Spend a few hours studying chaotic systems and how minor changes in quasi periodic systems can cause a bifurcation into a completely new set of behaviours.

The idea anyway, as people keep trying to point out, is that we take care to value our environment and our effect on it over plastic crapola, fat cars and not giving a toss about anything but the here and now.

> I know I'm going to get slammed for this post, the same way I do when I defend
> MS, but hey what can ya do?

Not try to play devil's advocate.

I hate it whenever Word tries to encourage me not to use passive.

You can turn this off you know. If I had MS Word installed on this machine I'd tell you how, but I don't think it is too obscure.

Personally, I find the grammer checker quite useful and I believe that the passive voice is Evil(TM). Most people who use passive seem to believe that they need to in order to take the focus away from the person doing the action, and that this is particularly important in scientific publications etc.

All I can say in response is that there are a great many almost unreadable scientific papers out there that are over-wordy, constructed portacabin-like from pre-fabricated sentences, which contain nothing to keep the reader engaged. If that is the price of using the passive voice, then I don't think it is worth paying.

Can I recommend you take a look at George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language ? Although written in 1946, he still has a lot that is relevant to say about writing clear and engaging english. (Sorry, I've gone off the original subject a little, but I think this essay should be required reading for anyone who does any kind of formal writing.)

http://www.eyeonmogs.com/

From a google search: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Eye+On+MOGS &btnG=Google+Search&meta=/

Do you mean this?

Not to mention deforestation so they have somewhere to put cows. Y'know, until the ground becomes unusable because it no longer has forest to protect it from the weather.

The big efficiency issue with cows, however, is people putting them on land that would be fine for growing more or less anything directly consumable by humans, which happens a lot more due to the increased demand for meat, because everyone seems to have this belief it's a good idea to eat lots of it. Actual recommended daily intake of meat is 5-7 ounces/140-200 grams.

So, right, yeah, had a point. Cattle aren't efficient if used where vegatables/fruit could be grown, and eating less wouldn't do you us any harm.

You seem to be missing some qualifiers (or I missed a sarcasm tag):

The currect (US led) system has 0 political control of domains. The US government doesn't tell ICANN to remove a root DNS entry if they have a problem.

Qualifier: Provided they agree with them. [google: bush blocks domain]

The find the server and seize it according to the law.

Qualifier: Provided they agree with them.

Otherwise, they say it is according to the law. They also say you are not allowed to know which law or why, and whilst you may challenge that in the relevant court, you are not allowed to know which the relevant court is. [ rackspace, indymedia ]

If it is overseas, they work with the local government.

Qualifier: Provided they agree with them.

Otherwise they just apply US law abroad regardless of local law. [ eg. DMCA - if not subject to US law, you can't object to a takedown ].

US law states "If you are not for us, you are a terrorist, and we all agree terrorists have no rights".

Now prove me wrong without breaching national security [ Gilmore vs. Ashcroft ]

Note that I'm not saying anywhere else is any better - but holding up the USA as better than everywhere just doesn't stack up these days.

What is PDC?

It is the third link if you google pdc or the first link if you google pdc and microsoft.

So it's clearly a really hard to find secret MS black project that you couldn't possibly expect anyone who's read an IT news site in the past couple of months to have heard of...

What is PDC?

It is the third link if you google pdc or the first link if you google pdc and microsoft.

So it's clearly a really hard to find secret MS black project that you couldn't possibly expect anyone who's read an IT news site in the past couple of months to have heard of...

You're only missing what they've been saying on their website about this for weeks now.

Do you have a link?

All I've found is http://www.google.co.uk/talk/developer.html , which suggests that whilst they will choose to connect to some other servers, they won't be connecting to all Jabber servers. So it will still be their separate network, albeit with some overlap with the Jabber network. An open network means we shouldn't need to have Google's permission to join the IM network.

But why would Americans need such shops or street vendors? Most Americans have high-speed internet access, or can obtain their illegal software from the computers at work. In many other countries, they don't have the network access, or jobs, so they have to buy off the street.

OK, so what you are saying is that access to a high speed net link somehow supplants the need for the shops? Why did America not have a widespread network of these shops before distribution of movies via the internet became commonplace (Probably less than 5 years ago)? Why is it that despite the fact that my entire Marketing Department, Sales Department, Directors and Administration all have access to a high speed net link, both domestically and at work, why do they all bug the IT Department guys for downloaded copies of the latest movies?

The distribution channel is only superficially related to the scale of the piracy problem. It is more the case that by allowing these places to exist that they are implicitly condoned by the authorities, which makes people more inclined to take advantage of the impossibly cheap prices they offer, which the studios have absolutely no chance of competing with. Heck, why would anyone bother downloading a movie if they are available on every street corner for less than the cost of the bandwidth, and without the hassle of tying up your broadband line for however long it takes?


I don't see what makes street vendors any more evil than other "pirates." I also don't see how the existence of street vending makes piracy a more serious problem than other methods, like Bittorrent.

I didn't say pirates are 'evil'. I was making the point that whilst the governments turn a blind eye to piracy by (for example) allowing the existence of the shops then the piracy problem in these countries makes it uneconomical for companies to compete on a large scale.


"but I would imagine that the piracy situation in countries where you can openly buy pirated material on the high street is going to be significantly bigger than in those aforementioned countries where the piracy market is somewhat underground."

Why? What is the logic behind this reasoning?

As I said before, I have no figures to back it up, so it was just a hunch based on the fact that when I walk in to Joe Schmo's house where I live, he will have maybe 20 DVD's on the shelf, and of those maybe 1 or 2 are pirate copies. Now when I have visited Joe Schmoski in Russia he has 20 DVDs on the shelf, of which maybe, and it's a BIG maybe, 1 is an original. So before I had no evidence, but now you have got me interested let's have a look for some quick quotes:

http://www.dvdexclusive.com/article.asp?articleID= 2431/

"Overall DVD unit shipments in China are forecast to rise to more than 300 million in 2009, up from about 100 million DVD units in 2005. Also, stronger government support should work to curb the country's present 90% piracy rate, where virtually all films are consumed illegally, to 70% to 80% by in 2009."

http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive/2005/May/26-92 5739.html

Recent reports on global intellectual property rights (IPR) protections paint a "stark and unattractive" picture of the situation in China, where piracy levels in some sectors exceed 90 percent, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch said during a May 25 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

In fact: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=china+russi a+piracy&meta= there's hundreds of sources. Looks like I was right.


This doesn't make sense. China is issuing this format for its own citizens. Chinese companies will be pressing the discs. China doesn't need anyone's permission o

If you ask me, Microsoft should create a mode of operation in Windows that will disallow all programs and libraries except for the ones indicated in some list.

They already do. It's called Microsoft Bob

For my own safety I think I'll configure my copy of bind to not resolve names in the bt.com zone. BT's IDS is famously overzealous--anyone remember that 'hacker' gaoled for using Lynx story from last year? That was BT's fault as well.

Yeah, but Ireland is even more of a tease... You look at Dublin, and it seems all normal and stuff... Roads and everything! Except wait! You actually SEARCH for said roads, and despite the fact that Google is showing them to you, it says "No results found!" Grrrr.

And google defines a clod as an awkward stupid person :-)

BBC's recruitment and purchasing policies

This academic paper titled Freelance Worker Networks in Audio-Visual Industries is a good read, I imagine a real eye opener for you.

BBC's recruitment and purchasing policies

This academic paper titled Freelance Worker Networks in Audio-Visual Industries is a good read, I imagine a real eye opener for you.

(And you'd think there'd be a law against fabricating "debt" against people, especially where the situation is disputed).

There are laws against fraudulent misrepresentation in most countries.

What is that? The real time guardian in talk? Nothing obvious here: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define:rtg

• European Constitution
  
• European Court of Human Rights

You think that's bad? Forget scratches, 'ipod nano kills' yields 120,000 results! :)

List

Wonder if he's being paid for this or if he's just a dick.

Justin.

I believe that I applied for an exemption for this term when I originally set up the ad with AdWords, but it's been running for months quite happily without bothering anyone.

When I Google for "enterprise-level" I (of course) get loads of hits discussing enterprise-ready email, whether Linux is enterprise-ready, firewalls & stuff, but I see the only advertiser is Enterprise Rent-A-Car UK. That makes me extremely tempted to trademark the term in the context of ADSL modems & then file a complaint about the Ford-pimping bastards. At least that way I might get a dialogue going with Google - as it is I confidently expect any complaints or protests about the matter to be ignored or get auto-responses; if I create a new advert with the words it gets suspended within half an hour.

If there's anyone reading this who works at Google then I'd be extremely grateful if you could have a little word with your censorship department for me, or give me a direct email address for them. Having an advert claiming "Outstanding Linux-support" simply doesn't satisfy me the way "Enterprise-level Linux support" does. And hey! Linux is a trademark, so I guess they'll be censoring that next week!!

Thank you for ignoring this rant. Please moderate it "funny" because i surely won't be so miffed at Google next week.

Have fun!

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define:planet

Well, from the looks of the news reports 'google for daisy chain, sex' young kids are already having orgies too.

RAM to validate and then process it

You appear to be unfamiliar with the difference between sax and dom.

RAM to validate and then process it

You appear to be unfamiliar with the difference between sax and dom.

I have tried the Linux and Solaris versions and they are simply not as compatible with the range of web sites and plug-ins I wish to use as Firefox is.

Also it is missing essentials like adblock and does not integrate as tidily into my GNOME desktop as Firefox.

The Solaris version is particularly dire with long standing problems with the Java plugin.

They were quite happy to sell a license for Opera on Solaris while one of its developers was making statements like this on their support newsgroup:

"I haven't got java installed here, so I can't test your example link. Neither have I got any sun hardware..."

http://xe.com/ for all other currencies apart from USD. It looks like Google only converts to USD, even the non-.com. I'd expect the .co.uk to convert to GBP and the .fr or .de to convert to EUR. But no:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=85+million+kronor
http://www.google.fr/search?q=85+million+kronor
http://www.google.de/search?q=85+million+kronor
OK, so the French one doesn't work (presumably the French for Kronor isn't Kronor).

Congrats on your copy/paste abilities.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=20&hl=en&safe=o ff&q=%22So%2C+I+guess+the+point+I'm+trying+to+make +is+that+what+seems+easy+and+natural+to+Linux+geek s+is+definitely+not+what+regular+people+consider+e asy+and+natural.+Hence%2C+the+preference+towards+W indows.%22&btnG=Search&meta=

So conservation does not help global warming, it just lowers the price so that the Chineese can burn more, and it discourages alternative fuel research. For the good of humanity, it is important that you burn as much oil as you can afford to, in order to bump up prices and encourage alternatives to oil.

It gets worse! No one thought of SSH! Oh well at least it explains why he thought windows was great: he was simply ignorant.

how, what happens when I create a AI that is capable of reflection?
Create it first, and then we can talk.
Fair enough, it's going to take me a little while, but I have some very good plans for creating an AI system that it capable of reflection (infact the way it works is mostly through reflection)

But everybody knows the miracle, even sees in videos, yet still noone believes [appart from you?].

you obviously have no idea that the priest that does the ceremony inside the Jesus tomb enters the temple naked. Before that, the whole temple is searched, centimeter by centimeter for hidden objects by Jews, Arabs and priests of every other religion. Jews have devoted their best scientists to discover the trick. Don't you think that if it was a trick, it would have been discovered in the last 1700 years that this takes place?

What, like this

I'm not saying your gullable, you just haven't evaluated things correctly, don't believe what you see, for example take a look at this book on mind hacks.

WinFS has its origins with the Object File System of the Microsoft Cairo project circa 1992.

Keeping food fresh is pretty important, though.

and that's easy enough to do without a fridge, the fridge is only a hundred of so years old and people have been about a bit longer that that (even if you only think it's 3000 years)

So the links would have been relevant if the grandparent had written You didn't see our country piling innocent people into prisons after 9/11??? If Cat Stevens had been American the link would have been relevant? The attrocities in the third link are ok as the prisoners are not American?

My point remains: that imprisoning even criminals in this way is not acceptable, much less civilians whose guilt has not yet been proven (or do you not believe in "innocent until proven guilty"? Perhaps it only applies to Americans?)

(As to the link about Steven Hatfill, I apologise for the red herring -- I was out of the country at the time and only caught the beginning of the tale, not it's conclusion. Thank you for enlarging my knowledge in that area.)

You are describing SELinux. :)

That's a very interesting question, and you are right, it does often seem to b conveniently ignored. I did find a couple of rather woolly links here and here. There are of course many other links , but they seem largely preoccupied with managing food, oxygen and human waste rather than actually getting the astronauts back off the Martian surface.

...just get one of these revolutionary Skype-over-PSTN devices.

Gah.... I've just found you can also read this tripe on several other sites. I had to look, I was curious........

But outside of a corporate intranet, you really can't trust the client end to do the validation. It's very convenient and it does save bandwidth, but ultimately it can be spoofed. Google for netcat .....

Your backend code really does still need to do some checking of its own. And if you haven't mucked around with the -T option in Perl, then you probably ought to.

1. The reply is a direct quote from the Dictionary.com page.
2. If your definition of "culturally ignorant" is "doesn't know how many 'r's are in a single word" then I'm hardly hurt by your calling me that. Especially considering I myself am an Australian citizen, not a "Yank".
3. A Google search of "pages from the UK" for "referrer" yields 2.5 million results while "referer" yields 226,000.
4. And finally and perhaps most conclusively, the Oxford Dictionary Online returns no results for "referer", but a definition for "referrer" - and that's in the UK view!

See for yourself:

http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=searchresul ts&freesearch=referer
http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=searchresul ts&freesearch=referrer

In short, fuck you.

1. The reply is a direct quote from the Dictionary.com page.
2. If your definition of "culturally ignorant" is "doesn't know how many 'r's are in a single word" then I'm hardly hurt by your calling me that. Especially considering I myself am an Australian citizen, not a "Yank".
3. A Google search of "pages from the UK" for "referrer" yields 2.5 million results while "referer" yields 226,000.
4. And finally and perhaps most conclusively, the Oxford Dictionary Online returns no results for "referer", but a definition for "referrer" - and that's in the UK view!

See for yourself:

http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=searchresul ts&freesearch=referer
http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=searchresul ts&freesearch=referrer

In short, fuck you.

And Phoronix is a popular Linux site?

According to google a whole 2 other sites link to it... :-o

I suspect I'm as shocked as you to find this on Slashdot (assuming you're not very shocked at all).

Its faster, it's freer and more open. Its so good that the slashbots modded it down to try and hide it from you.

Get it today!

To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image : bleaker

Firstly, thank you for a much more informative reply than your initial complaint.

I still have the impression that you dont have a lot of patience, and that you're so comfortable with BT that anything which doesnt do things in exactly the same way is not good enough. Please remember that neither is good reason to criticise ed2k/emule. Clearly, BT suits your needs much better than ed2k, but that doesnt make BT "right" and ed2k "wrong".

Incidentally, please excuse my aggressive tone where I refute some of your points - it is not intended to offend.
---
I am still not convinced that emule is confusing or difficult to set up. You have not actually identified *what* the problems are. Yes, elitist attitudes are a problem, and yes, it is good that you work to develop autonomic software, but this is just arm-waving in relation to emule, not a proper complaint.

Also, the very popularity of the ed2k network provides empirical evidence that several million people *can* get it working rather well. That BT is *more* simple does not imply emule is hard to set up, only *comparitively* harder.

Servers do come and go on the list. However, as you have not eliminated, nor it seems evaluated the liklihood, that many of those servers are unreliable, point the blame at the emule client is not justified. There are a number of reliable, long-standing servers, and they tend to have large numbers of connected users. A large number of servers appear with just one user, suggesting to me that they are set up "because it's fun". In any case, emule handles variable server presence - you should examine the static server list and automatic reconnection options.

Bootstrapping: emule's kad implementation avoids *all* servers by design; it eliminates the dependence on servers, which is the goal of a fully p2p network.

Azureus' approach may well be more *convenient* to you logging in. "Effective" depends on point of view and stated purpose (such as there is one, of the network).

Server lists: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=ed2k+server +list&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

The one you want is gruk.org, #8 on the list. The #1 entry *does* have some working servers in its list, though the list is old. Many links have server.met files which you'd need to put in the emule config directory - not intuitive, I grant you, though the guide at emule-project.net does describe this, I believe.

With regard to BT's apparent speed over emule, you might want to try the following: set BT to download something large and popular, say, an entire season of Babylon 5, or Galactica. Do the same on ed2k. I grant you, ed2k may take an hour or two to get started, but in my experience it can easily saturate a 2MBit line. I'm sure BT will do the same.

emule is perfectly capable of moving large amounts of data in a short time. However, it may not do it in the order *you* want. If that's not convenient, fine, stick with BT, but *do not* criticise emule for not being the tool it is not designed to be.

(side note: new releases: TV prog shown friday, emule download complete by saturday evening - not as fast as BT, but then I have patience ;)

Searching: yes, ed2k's search is, well let's say erratic. Because it *has* a search, the equivalents of piratebay are not required, but an optional extra (so the quality of such sites are likely to be reduced - though realworld and anidb.info are, as far as I can see, excellent). Realworld is under legal attack, just like Loki and Suprnova were - again, you cannot criticise emule for suffering from the same legal problems as BT.

Useless peers: you can't tell whether a client is *refusing* to upload to you unless you can see its client list (which you can't). All you can see is your position on the queue and yes, sometimes you can be #1 in the queue and drop down without getting anything - caused by re-ask

I think its fixmbr on the Windows Repair Console... Or just reinstall windows :D

Did you try
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=removing+grub

Because there's just loads there...

Dug