User: aegl

Need more effective penalties

On: Could Anti-Texting Laws Make Roads More Dangerous?

Catch someone texting while driving - impound their car and tow it away. We already do this for people who are too drunk to drive. This just does the same for people who are too stupid to be allowed to drive.

Take the phone away too.

Why wait 10 years for next edition?

On: Oxford Dictionary Considers Going Online Only

If they do decide to drop the printed version - then there seems to be little point in waiting 10 years until they "complete" the current edition before publishing it. They could simply release any completed sections into the online version at whatever frequency made sense.

Feature list for smart phone with FM radio

On: NAB, RIAA May Seek Mandate For FM Radios In Mobile Devices

1) Record anything broadcast for replay later
2) Easy edit to trim off commercials from recordings
3) TiVo style back-up & replay of last 30 minutes
4) One-touch sample for use as ring tone
5) One-touch e-mail of recorded samples to friends
6) One-touch sharing of recorded samples on social media

All of these look pretty easy to implement. I'm sure that NAB and RIAA will just *love* that all this flexibility will be available to every smart phone user.

Re:What A Crock

On: Does Net Neutrality Violate the Fifth Amendment?

There are plenty of precedents for laws that make discrimination illegal. Have any of these been challenged with this 5th amendment argument? E.g. there are anti-discrimination housing laws that (attempt to) prevent landlords from discriminating when renting out properties.

I'm excited that we get any signal at all

On: Using Twitter Data To Approximate a Telephone Survey

"I'm excited that we get any signal at all from social media"

s/excited/amazed/

NOT including (all) the campaign videos

On: Dueling Summary Judgment Motions In Viacom v. YouTube

I seem to remember that some candidates used copyrighted music as the soundtrack for their campaign videos without permission of the rights holder. Holding them up as a shining example of all that is good and right about non-infringing use of You-Tube clearly does not match with recent history.

Intuit are evil ...

On: Why the IRS Should Automatically Fill In Returns With What It Knows

Just got a pop-up from Quicken 2007 telling me that it will cease down-loading data from my bank at the end of April. If I want to keep being able to do this, then I'll have to upgrade to Quicken 2010.

This is the second time that Intuit have made an incompatible change to the download data format (at least while I've been using it). So I'm going to assume that their business plan now includes a forced upgrade every three or so years. Time to start researching non-evil alternatives.

7 evaluation criteria

On: Congress Mulls Research Into a Vehicle Mileage Tax

Here's the seven criteria from the bill itself. I'll attempt
to save the goverment the $154.5M evaluation cost by doing it
here for free:

(A) protection of personal privacy,
GPS in every vehicle and RFID at the roadside to scan vehicles as they pass.
This one ought to just be a deal killer right away. Anyone who cannot think
of five ways that this will erode personal privacy shouldn't be allowed to
write new laws.

(B) ease of compliance,
How many vehicles are on the US roads today? How many are added/removed each
day? What is the MTBF for a car-mounted GPS unit? How many will fail each
day? Who pays to fix them?
How many miles of public roads will need RFID readers? How often will these
fail (or be vandalized/stolen)?

(C) public acceptance,
No just no, but HELL NO!

(D) geographic and income equity,
Poor people can't afford to install GPS in their cars. Large states (TX)
have lots more roads than small states (anything in New England).

(E) integration with State and local transportation
        revenue mechanisms (including demand management systems),
This one has some promise ... but the horse may have already left the
stable. I'd bet money that the existing systems installed in each state
are totally incompatible. Will I have to pick up a new RFID tag at each
state border crossing when I drive on vacation?

(F) administrative, cost, and enforcement issues, and
Minimum administrative unit becomes an individual vehicle. Compare this
against the current fuel tax where the unit is the gas station. There
are three orders of magnitude more vehicles than gast stations. Nuff said.

(G) potential for fraud and evasion.
Yes. Don't believe me ... wait for the first "Black Hat" convention
after this goes live and I'll yell "TOLD YOU SO".

What are the odds?

On: Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet

Perhaps we've stumbled across this planet during the last million years of its billion year life-cycle. Sounds like a one in a thousand chance that we'd do that. But the summary says that over 370 exo-planets[1] have been found ... so (waves hands as if doing actual math) its about a 1 in 3 chance that one of the planets we've found so far will be in some one in a thousand situation.

Wait until Kepler starts kicking in a few thousand more exo-planets to the database. Then we'll see even more "impossible" situations.

[1] http://exoplanets.org/ says the current tally is just 358

Re:Ah yeah The Beatles

On: Attempt To "Digitalize" Beatles Goes Sour

"Let's all get up and dance to a song
That was a hit before your mother was born.
Though she was born a long, long time ago"

Released in November 1967.

My wife was born in September 1967 ... so the "before your mother was born" is off, but only by a couple of months.

My daughter is 11 ... she knows who The Beatles are, and tolerates their music.

Re:How about cable and sat boxes that can power do

On: New Energy Efficiency Rules For TVs Sold In California

If AT&T U-verse is available in your area, then you can get a box that does that today. IIRC the DVR uses ~20W when running and drops to 13W in standby. Not fabulous ... but a whole lot better than 40W all the time that my old Comcast set top box used to use.

Or just give the PTSD sufferers some

On: Playing Tetris Is Good For You

ecstasy

Re:What?

On: Web Singletons?

"The only organizations that could create a "singleton" web app, if you really feel the need to misuse the term that thoroughly, are major patent trolls"

Patent trolls don't create anything (except pain, suffering and economic hardship for their victims).

San Jose "Capital of Silicon Valley"

On: East Coast Broadband Fastest In USA

San Jose likes to promote itself as the capital of Silicon Valley ... so you'd think there would be some good internet options here (I live in downtown San Jose).

Nope ... well not for me anyway.

My choices are:

1) AT&T DSL ... with an alleged speed of "up to 3Mbps" that actually maxes out at 2.4Mbps. The 6Mbps "Elite" option from AT&T is "not available in my area".

2) Comcast ... which might go faster, but I'd have to average the speed down for all the days when it was 0Mbps (based on anecdotal evidence from friends who have Comcast and have complained about downtime).

Lots of changes from 2.6.n to 2.6.n+1

On: Linus on Kernel Version Numbering

Several slashdot readers have made comments like "I can easily upgrade from 2.6.n to 2.6.n+1 because not much will have changed".

This is all part of the delusion of version numbers. The changes between releases are only limited by how many can be squeezed into the merge window. With an increasing number of developers, and development tools that seem to be scaling the overall trend seems to be that the n+1 release is progressively more different that its predecessor. Here are the diffstats for the last few kernels:

2.6.15 -> 2.6.16 6721 files changed, 392461 insertions(+), 202469 deletions(-)
2.6.16 -> 2.6.17 6321 files changed, 416664 insertions(+), 308709 deletions(-)
2.6.17 -> 2.6.18 8972 files changed, 381890 insertions(+), 217058 deletions(-)
2.6.18 -> 2.6.19 8040 files changed, 515161 insertions(+), 291784 deletions(-)
2.6.19 -> 2.6.20 5825 files changed, 262475 insertions(+), 136162 deletions(-)
2.6.20 -> 2.6.21 6568 files changed, 319232 insertions(+), 175247 deletions(-)
2.6.21 -> 2.6.22 7620 files changed, 519591 insertions(+), 266699 deletions(-)
2.6.22 -> 2.6.23 7203 files changed, 406268 insertions(+), 339071 deletions(-)
2.6.23 -> 2.6.24 10209 files changed, 776107 insertions(+), 483031 deletions(-)
2.6.24 -> 2.6.25 9738 files changed, 777371 insertions(+), 404514 deletions(-)
2.6.25 -> 2.6.26 8676 files changed, 595389 insertions(+), 416139 deletions(-)

Re:So, basically, we're ALL criminals.....

On: H.R. 4279 Would Establish Federal IP Cops

"For that matter, what about the mass of infringing material on YouTube? Download a clip from last night's American Idol before Fox has it pulled, and now your computer is ours."

What the IP cops ought to do in this case is impound the entire Google server farm (the infringing clips are stored in a distributed way across the whole farm) ... even if Google do pull off infringing content when notified, there will always be plenty of copyright infringing content still on the disks for the IP cops to point at. Somehow I don't see that happening, but perhaps Sergey and Larry should have a quick word with their lobbyists to make sure that there are some big loopholes for them to hide in.

Definition of "Lecture"

On: Lecture Notes Considered Infringement

Lecture (noun) : The process by which the notes of the teacher are transformed into the notes of the student without passing through the brain of either.

"Not able to connect to a server based network"

On: "Vista Capable" Lawsuit Is Now a Class Action

Take a look at Dell's web site. Not sure when they started doing it, but they have warning tags in red against the cheaper versions of Vista describing some of the limitations. A machine running Vista home basic seems to be entirely incapable of sharing files with XP (professional and home) machines on the same network (even after wasting the best part of half a day reading Microsoft solution web pages, downloading LLTD, making the workgroup names match, setting Vista to private network mode, etc.)

Didn't George W. just find a spare $185B?

On: Fixing US Broadband Would Cost $100 Billion

Apparently the U.S. government has a spare $185B sitting around ready to pay $600 each in "tax rebates" to stimulate the economy.

Now we find that USA will lose its competetive edge unless we upgrade to the same level of broadband as other countries. And the price tag to do this is a mere $100B.

So let's cut back the rebates to $275 each, and stimulate the economy (well the telecoms sector) by building out some real broadband.

[Just give me a short head start to buy some Cisco stock before starting the rollout :-)]

I wonder what

On: OLPC, Microsoft Working Toward Dual-Boot XO Laptops

the "SHOW SOURCE" key on the OLPC will do when Windows is running?

Exponential backoff?

On: Researchers Say Wi-Fi Virus Outbreak Possible

There is a very simple (and very old) technique to stop someone from trying a million passwords in any reasonable timeframe ... just add a delay every time an incorrect password is entered (resetting the delay to zero if the correct password is entered to prevent this becoming a denial of service). If wireless routers used this, then the worm would only spread to devices whose password was in the first few dozen of the dictionary attack list.

Re:photovoltaics

On: Electric Cars to Help Utilities Load Balance Grid

There's a limit to the credit that they'll give (in my case the utility is PG&E).

The deal works like this ... the meter is still read every month, and a nominal electricity bill is generated based on the net energy used/produced. The part of this bill that isn't related to power generation is due and payable that month (for me this is typically about $12-$13). The remaining amount is just left in the computer. At each anniversary of the system installation, there is a what PG&E describe as "true-ing up" the bill. The net amounts for the twelve preceeding months are added up, if I owe PG&E, then I must send a cheque. If they owe me, their shareholders get a nice little boost, but I get nothing. The credit is not carried over, nor can it be applied to any other amounts that are owed to PG&E (e.g. the non-energy related part of the bill, the gas bill, any other PG&E accounts I may have ... nothing). So I can get credit for extra energy I produce in the summer, but I must use that credit in the following winter or lose it. Well in fact my anniversary is in November ... so for me it actually works out that PG&E doesn't require that I pay for the energy that I use across the winter under the assumption that I may generate enough surplus in the summer to cancel out the debt. Even if I don't manage to get to zero, which I certainly didn't this year, I at least get an interest free loan all year.

I'm not sure what would happen if I moved mid-year ... I expect that I'd have to true-up with PG&E when I closed the account for that address (and they'd keep any credit).

This acts as a disincentive to install extra capacity ... the homeowner pays the cost for the extra panels (and larger inverter) but gets nothing for any extra energy that is produced.

In practice this may not be that big of an issue. The tiered pricing for electricity also acts as an economic lever ... the first few kilowatt-hours of energy each month are priced low enough that solar on the roof cannot compete with them. It is only economically sensible to install enough capacity to keep net usage into the bottom tier.

Re:I Am Against This...

On: Group Hopes to Rename Street After Douglas Adams

Try a search on google maps for "muirhouse drive, Edinburgh, Scotland". Sadly their map doesn't show the true horror as it fails to list the names of many of the small cul-de-sacs

Re:A good precedent

On: Comcast Sued Over P2P Blocking

California Business and Professions Code, Section 17500 says:

"It is unlawful for any person, firm, corporation or association, or any employee thereof with intent directly or indirectly to dispose of real or personal property or to perform services, professional or otherwise, or anything of any nature whatsoever or to induce the public to enter into any obligation relating thereto, to make or disseminate or cause to be made or disseminated before the public in this state, or to make or disseminate or cause to be made or disseminated from this state before the public in any state, in any newspaper or other publication, or any advertising device, or by public outcry or proclamation, or in any other manner or means whatever, including over the Internet, any statement, concerning that real or personal property or those services, professional or otherwise, or concerning any circumstance or matter of fact connected with the proposed performance or disposition thereof, which is untrue or misleading, and which is known, or which by the exercise of reasonable care should be known, to be untrue or misleading, or for any person, firm, or corporation to so make or disseminate or cause to be so made or disseminated any such statement as part of a plan or scheme with the intent not to sell that personal property or those services, professional or otherwise, so advertised at the price stated therein, or as so advertised. Any violation of the provisions of this section is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding six months, or by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or by both that imprisonment and fine."

Now Comcast have been running a lot of advertisements saying just how fabulously fast their internet service is. If I were a Comcast customer, I'd certainly feel that I'd been at least "mislead" by those advertisements, perhaps I might even be able to show that they were "untrue" (though that isn't required).

Re:The downloadable flash-cards

On: Open-Source Early Literacy Materials Gaining Some Attention

I was on this page ... http://free-reading.net/index.php?title=Sounding_out_word_cards there is a pdf version as well as a doc version