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User: Tony+Hoyle

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  1. Re:VHS Recording... on EFF And MPAA On Broadcast Flags · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree it does seem a bit pointless. It's already illegal to record something and make 50,000 copies of it for sale in Taiwan, so how does this flag help anything? They want to make recording to VCR illegal, just because the recording media happens to be hard disk rather than magnetic tape?

    Since it's digital it's also trivial to remove said flag, so it won't even slow the pirates down, let alone stop them.

  2. Re:of course they are on All Sourceforge.net Being Blocked by SmartFilter · · Score: 2

    They still are... they're renowned for not being able to make balance sheets add up (unless you slip them a wad of dollar bills in a brown envelope).

  3. Re:And you wonder why people hate Linux Supporters on DishPVR 721 Review · · Score: 2

    Nobody is asking them to do this. However to comply with the GPL they must make the GPL licensed code available or point to somewhere where it can be downloaded (kernel.org would probably be enough if they haven't modified anything). If they have made any modifications they must make the modifications available. Ambiguity helps nobody, and saying 'f**k you' to the (presumably polite) enquiry about this makes it seem like they have something to hide.

  4. Re:Court Test of the GPL on DishPVR 721 Review · · Score: 2

    Actually the GPL isn't like other licenses - the 'Future changes apply' is turned on its head...

    "This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version."

    This applies to the recipient, not the author. It basically says 'Use any version of the GPL that suits you.' If the FSF created a GPL3 that required you to sacrice your firstborn to RMS or something there is no requirement for anyone to use it.

  5. Re:I won't ever buy it on DishPVR 721 Review · · Score: 2

    They aren't legally allowed to distribute GPL code if they won't abide by the license, so it won't need someone to reverse engineer it... either they start distributing the code or stop distributing the PVR.

    In the past the companies that have tried this have backed down before things got legal, which means that the GPL has never been tried in court. It remains to be seen how this one gets sorted out.

  6. Re:Who wants to see RC cars... on Robocup 2002 Now Underway · · Score: 2

    In Robot wars series 5 the robots have evolved quite a bit - the most effective weapons being powerful pincers (aka. Razor, which can cream 95% of the robots out there... it normally only loses if it gets driven into a pit or something) and flippers (Chaos II, which likes to finish rounds by throwing the robots [which weigh about half a ton] clean out of the ring, and WheelyBigCheese, which recently threw a robot from the middle of the ring, through the air and out of the ring, where it nearly demolished the protective barriers).

    The weedy Axes and stuff are generally only used by newbies - they're pretty useless.

    Mind you, I wouldn't like to meet any of those things in a dark alley...

    Robot Wars has flamethrowers btw. - both the house robots and the ring itself have them. They're not terribly effective against a titanium shell.

    Tacnukes would vapourise the judges, so it'd probably be declared a draw...

  7. Re:the real question is... on Inside The World's Most Advanced Computer · · Score: 2

    Probably not many. Computers of this size generally don't have exceptionally fast processors, just shitloads of them. Since Quake is a (mostly) single threaded app a standard PC would run it faster.

    Then again you could write a massively parallel i686 emulator (precalculating 5,120 instructions simultaneously) and run the worlds fastest (and most expensive) PC.

  8. Re:compiling software. on Gentoo Linux 1.2 · · Score: 2

    On an Athlon 1800 it took over 24 hours to compile a working system w/kde+gnome. It's a nice distro but I don't have that amount of time to waste - add another 8 hours to hand configure the system. Several of the compiled packages didn't work (Pan wouldn't start, kde kept falling over) and mozilla wouldn't even compile.

    The dependencies are also a bit screwy - vim is dependent on XFree86?

    I'll probably go back to it in 6 months or so when it's matured as a distro, but it's a bit beta at the moment. If the debian internal politics get much worse it might even be sooner...

  9. Re:Ahhh where have the tabs gone on Mozilla 1.1 Alpha Released · · Score: 2

    I've got used to opening tabs in the background and closing them as I've finished with them. With this 'enhancement' It'll close my first (primary) tab instead. Great :-(. I hope that's removed or at least set as an option fairly quickly.

  10. Re:Symptomatic of DNS problems in general on South Africa Wants Control of .za · · Score: 2

    If Microsoft wanted to setup an alternative root they could do so without asking anyone - just make it a 'critical update' and suddenly the majority of browser users are using it.

  11. Re:Great, what will this do? And what SHOULD they on Unique ID Codes for CD / DVD Manufacturers · · Score: 2

    The transaction would probably have to be anonymous.

    In the UK, and many countries of the EU, storing trackable information about an individual is covered by law. In the UK we have the Data Protection Act. It strictly limits what you can do with such data (even IP addresses are considered 'personal data' - our company had to abandon a project because of the legal ramifications of storing simple usage history on one of our servers), and disclosing it to third-parties (RIAA or equiv (PRS probably).) is *not* one of the things you can do with it.

    Most stores simply wouldn't do this - it's not worth the hassle (and lost sales) to them. You'd have to make it illegal not to to keep this data (is is the situation with TVs and Videos in the UK) which would require additional legislation in every member state of the EU (otherwise you'd just buy mail-order) and would take years.

  12. Re:Solution on Mozilla RC3 Released · · Score: 3, Informative

    copy & paste? Too hard... :-)

    Drag the link onto the tab-bar.

  13. Re:Please just get a life on Quickies from a Galaxy Far Far Away · · Score: 2

    A geek might say it, but what geek would ever have the chance to do it?

  14. Re:Episode 2 CD (Jango Fett cover+Bonus Track) on Post-it Notes vs. Copy-Inhibited CDs · · Score: 2

    I don't think they'd risk not labeling it in the UK - there was a huge stink when they last tried copy protection because the shops had to bear the wrath of angry customers who couldn't play their CDs - the entire lot was taken off the shelves a few days later, to be replaced by non-copy protected versions.

    I'd expect any cactused CD to have a huge sticker on it with 'Will not play on PC CD, Will not play on Cheap CD Player, Might not play on anything else, either... avoid.'

  15. Re:Typo on UK Home Office plan: ID Chips in Everything · · Score: 2

    But a book doesn't burn until 451F (what, you've never read Ray Bradbury?) so we can safely destroy these things by sticking them in an oven.

  16. Re:Please, not more of this crap... on UK Home Office plan: ID Chips in Everything · · Score: 2

    The bit about the police breaking up meetings of more than 3 people was the 'Criminal Justice' bill. There was a big stink at the time but the government just had the newspapers print that only 'anarchists and criminals' didn't support the bill.

    Beware if you have more than a couple of relatives over for christmas... the police now have the right to break your door down and arrest you.

  17. Re:Tough Shit. on Apple Drops Mac OS 9 · · Score: 2

    Losts of businesses (big, successful ones) are still using Win95 and NT4. Why? Because the hardware and software upgrades on 1000+ machines will make a serious dent on the balance sheet, and they can't justify it.

    Most of our customers are NT4, with about 25% gone to Win2k (increasing quite rapidly now as it leaves the testing/evaluation phase). XP isn't on the roadmap yet.

    Just because the manufacturer tries to leave its customers high and dry doesn't mean you can stop supporting it... customers have money, and it's our job to make sure they give it to us not someone else.

  18. Re:Sad... on James Doohan Not In A Coma and Likely To Survive · · Score: 2

    He didn't reprogram the mac for voice activation, merely typed in the formula for transparent aluminium (very implausibly, for those who know about computers, but heck, it's just hollywood).

    The talking to the mouse bit is really funny :-)

  19. Average??? on Fewer Jobs, Less Pay In The IT Industry · · Score: 2

    The average pay of an IT worker is $63,000?

    Bl$$dy hell, I'm the best paid programmer in the company and I'm only on 2/3rds of that.

    I'd love to know where these 'average' jobs are available...

  20. Re:RTF? Gah, here it is for those without Word. on Megaspammer Monsterhut Loses On Appeal · · Score: 2

    Mozilla wants to load 'less' to read RTF files, which is worse than useless, because it loads into the console that X was started from...

  21. Re:Tivo by law on Turner CEO: "PVR Users Are Thieves" · · Score: 2

    Very soon the adverts will begin playing during the programs, probably in a quarter of the screen or something, meaning you can't see the whole program without seeing the adverts.

    There may be increased product placement but that can only go so far - most advertising is regional and too much could have the show banned/heavily cut in other countries (the ITC in the UK has strict rules about product placement... anything too obvious cannot be shown, so you can't have the characters in the show saying 'drink budweiser, it's really good', for example).

  22. Re:UK Broadcaster provides PVR on Turner CEO: "PVR Users Are Thieves" · · Score: 2

    The same broadcaster runs movies without any adverts in them - they're all played before and after the programme when nobody is watching. Sounds like they don't give a shit whether the ads get seen or not...

  23. Re:Vote for me on Matt Groening on Futurama, Simpsons and Fox · · Score: 2

    OK what gimp voted the above offtopic?

    *sigh*

  24. Re:STL Downsides? on Downsides to the C++ STL? · · Score: 2

    It's bad to have a global function when you should be writing OO. The string object should know how to do a format operation on itself.

    The subclass needs no destructor anyway, since it's just extending the methods of a predefined class, not adding destructable properties to it.

    btw. The whole virtual destructor thing is a red herring. Unless your compiler is seriously broken it'll work fine (it certainly does in VC++) - each object knows what type it is & knows how to destroy itself.

  25. Re:Team work on Downsides to the C++ STL? · · Score: 2

    The STL *is* part of the C++ language.

    Anyone claiming to know C++ who doesn't know the STL is lying.