Not at all, I was actually asking if anyone knew any more about who/what was involved. The other thing is that BP may attempt to offload responsibility on Halliburton and other contractors, that's all.
No black helicopters or tinfoil hats or anything, just trying to find out a bit more. I've noticed that a lot of folks here on Slashdot are pretty clued up (no sarcasm, I learn a lot from reading the comments here) and thought I'd ask if anyone else had anything to add. I was particularly curious to see if anyone could substantiate the claim that a commenter made on the Indy site about Halliburton having bought a company that specialised in this kind of repair work.
Apologies if it looked like I was trying to make a point, that really wasn't my intention. Reading back over my comment I can fully understand how it appeared that way though!
A commenter on that story asserts that a week before the trouble occurred, Halliburton bought a smaller company who specialise in these kinds of repairs, but I've been unable to find any details about this. Anyone got anything on this?
You've probably been through the various options already, but if you need ID to get served in bars and pubs, and get into clubs, have a look at these guys if you haven't done so already:
http://www.citizencard.com/index.php
http://www.validateuk.co.uk/
It may also be useful to apply for a provisional drivers license too if you haven't done so. I'm ancient, and for various reasons don't drive, but my provisional license is reasonably useful.
Ok, it was clever in a sort of averagey way, not massively funny or amusing. No Iron Nappy being changed or the kid being sick in the suit or anything that would cause it to go viral in the way that bodily fluids do.
Maybe it was just a part of someone's college project or something.
It's not just the Biometrics, it was the database behind it (the National Identity Register) that would log every use of the cards/access to the database e.g. at borders, checkpoints, when opening a bank account, getting into a club, being carded by the police at a political meeting etc... Oh, and fines of £1000 if you don't keep your records up to date.
One thing that often gets missed is the fact that the ID Cards legislation allows for:
- fines for not keeping the database up to date with your details, roughly £1000 un UK money
- logging details of every occasion that the ID card is used to access the National Identity Register, e.g. id you get carded at a political event, open a bank account, details get logged.
The other issue was the spiralling costs of the system, and yet another issue was the complete ineptitude of the UK Government in keeping the data safe and secure. They have already lost personal details (names, addresses, details of children etc) of 2.5 million benefits claimants on DVD-roms they left on a train.
In addition to all these issues, was the simple fact that the cards provided almost no benefit at all to the average citizen. Kidz wanting to buy Booze already have ID cards that cost far less via private schemes (and that don't keep details of every transaction on a database either).
It really is a hugely extensive population tracking device, completely at odds with the ideas of privacy and freedom, and with little real benefit for anyone except a bloated State that wants to extend its tendrils into every aspect of our lives.
If you still really think that this massive Orwellian/Kafkaesque system is a good idea, then check out Terry Gilliam's excellent film 'Brazil'...:)
As a controller it would be wonderful: sliding your fingers over a pretty interface, sweeping filters and panning away...
Shame about the lack of USB/relative lack of MIDI though. With those, it could have done great thigs as a controller medium.
Re:Electronic Music Production
on
Apple iPad Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
ORAC, my creaking old Vaio TR1MP, with it's hamster-driven 900Mhz processor and 512 meg of RAM could run Orion beautifully with a couple of instances of Toxic III and a few other VSTis. No glitches, crackles or problems with latency...
Fruityloops was a bit more of a chore, as was Ableton, but in general the performance from a small laptop can be damned fine. Plus laptops have USB connectivity for additional soundcards, hard drives and even small USB keyboards, plus they can run existing software/VSTis...
Why anyone would want to try and make music on an iPad is completely beyond me. Sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
Seeking bona fide legal advice would definitely be worthwhile, but airing the idea in the community and talking to others who have remade games is also a sound policy, since other advice and issues may be raised.
I think this is a case of 'and' rather than 'exclusive or'!
I'm sure many other companies and organisations could also save millions by switching to Linux.
What with this Global Credit Crunch that El Gordo has failed to save the world from, this could be the window that the Penguins need to storm the market.
I'm wondering if there could be a market for Linux consultants/trainers in the near future.
Bizarre.
Back in them days I had a Spectrum, and lived in the UK.
A 48k game would cost £5.95-£9.95 depending on the publisher (Ultimate games typically £9.95, Ocean £7.95, Hewson £6.95). Budget games cost £1.99 (Firebird silver range and Mastertronic) or £2.99 (Mastertronic's MAD range). No way was that anywhere near a week's pay! It would be a couple of hours work, maybe an afternoon at Waitrose (the local supermarket), if that.
Mind you though, that was when games could be written by a sole dev, or a small handful of folks. And games would be given away free on the front of magazines.
Yeah, and MS Windows never gets hacked or infected with viruses...
IIRC, didn't MS recently advise people to start using something other than IE because someone had spotted a gaping hole in it?
Probably not a good line to take with potential clients though, it's a bit mealy-mouthed and sinks to MS's level.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe when he said 'we' he was talking about himself and a couple of his mates.
Thanks, that's the kind of thing I was looking for! I'll have a nose through the rest of the article too.
Not at all, I was actually asking if anyone knew any more about who/what was involved. The other thing is that BP may attempt to offload responsibility on Halliburton and other contractors, that's all.
No black helicopters or tinfoil hats or anything, just trying to find out a bit more. I've noticed that a lot of folks here on Slashdot are pretty clued up (no sarcasm, I learn a lot from reading the comments here) and thought I'd ask if anyone else had anything to add. I was particularly curious to see if anyone could substantiate the claim that a commenter made on the Indy site about Halliburton having bought a company that specialised in this kind of repair work.
Apologies if it looked like I was trying to make a point, that really wasn't my intention. Reading back over my comment I can fully understand how it appeared that way though!
Apologies if this is old news, but didn't Halliburton actually do the work on the pipe that broke? According to The Independent it would seem so:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/what-was-halliburtons-role-in-us-oil-spill-1987038.html
A commenter on that story asserts that a week before the trouble occurred, Halliburton bought a smaller company who specialise in these kinds of repairs, but I've been unable to find any details about this. Anyone got anything on this?
You've probably been through the various options already, but if you need ID to get served in bars and pubs, and get into clubs, have a look at these guys if you haven't done so already:
http://www.citizencard.com/index.php
http://www.validateuk.co.uk/
It may also be useful to apply for a provisional drivers license too if you haven't done so. I'm ancient, and for various reasons don't drive, but my provisional license is reasonably useful.
Hope that helps anyway!
Ok, it was clever in a sort of averagey way, not massively funny or amusing. No Iron Nappy being changed or the kid being sick in the suit or anything that would cause it to go viral in the way that bodily fluids do.
Maybe it was just a part of someone's college project or something.
It's not just the Biometrics, it was the database behind it (the National Identity Register) that would log every use of the cards/access to the database e.g. at borders, checkpoints, when opening a bank account, getting into a club, being carded by the police at a political meeting etc... Oh, and fines of £1000 if you don't keep your records up to date.
In other words: you're tagged for life, citizen.
Most of this was also in the Lib-Dem-drafted Freedom Bill: http://freedom.libdems.org.uk/
* Scrap ID cards for everyone, including foreign nationals.
* Ensure that there are no restrictions in the right to trial by jury for serious offences including fraud.
* Restore the right to protest in Parliament Square, at the heart of our democracy.
* Abolish the flawed control orders regime.
* Renegotiate the unfair extradition treaty with the United States.
* Restore the right to public assembly for more than two people.
* Scrap the ContactPoint database of all children in Britain.
* Strengthen freedom of information by giving greater powers to the Information Commissioner and reducing exemptions.
* Stop criminalising trespass.
* Restore the public interest defence for whistleblowers.
* Prevent allegations of ‘bad character’ from being used in court.
* Restore the right to silence when accused in court.
* Prevent bailiffs from using force.
* Restrict the use of surveillance powers to the investigation of serious crimes and stop councils snooping.
* Restore the principle of double jeopardy in UK law.
* Remove innocent people from the DNA database.
* Reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days.
* Scrap the ministerial veto which allowed the Government to block the release of Cabinet minutes relating to the Iraq war.
* Require explicit parental consent for biometric information to be taken from children.
* Regulate CCTV following a Royal Commission on cameras.
One thing that often gets missed is the fact that the ID Cards legislation allows for:
- fines for not keeping the database up to date with your details, roughly £1000 un UK money
- logging details of every occasion that the ID card is used to access the National Identity Register, e.g. id you get carded at a political event, open a bank account, details get logged.
The other issue was the spiralling costs of the system, and yet another issue was the complete ineptitude of the UK Government in keeping the data safe and secure. They have already lost personal details (names, addresses, details of children etc) of 2.5 million benefits claimants on DVD-roms they left on a train.
In addition to all these issues, was the simple fact that the cards provided almost no benefit at all to the average citizen. Kidz wanting to buy Booze already have ID cards that cost far less via private schemes (and that don't keep details of every transaction on a database either).
It really is a hugely extensive population tracking device, completely at odds with the ideas of privacy and freedom, and with little real benefit for anyone except a bloated State that wants to extend its tendrils into every aspect of our lives.
If you still really think that this massive Orwellian/Kafkaesque system is a good idea, then check out Terry Gilliam's excellent film 'Brazil'... :)
What made me laugh was the report that David Blunkett (the Labour Home Secretary that gave birth to the scheme) wants to sue the Government for the thirty quid that the card cost him: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/i-might-sue-over-scrapped-id-card-says-blunkett-1985447.html Oh, and it's worth remembering that the Tories wanted to introduce an ID card system (sans database) back in the 90's.
As a controller it would be wonderful: sliding your fingers over a pretty interface, sweeping filters and panning away... Shame about the lack of USB/relative lack of MIDI though. With those, it could have done great thigs as a controller medium.
ORAC, my creaking old Vaio TR1MP, with it's hamster-driven 900Mhz processor and 512 meg of RAM could run Orion beautifully with a couple of instances of Toxic III and a few other VSTis. No glitches, crackles or problems with latency... Fruityloops was a bit more of a chore, as was Ableton, but in general the performance from a small laptop can be damned fine. Plus laptops have USB connectivity for additional soundcards, hard drives and even small USB keyboards, plus they can run existing software/VSTis... Why anyone would want to try and make music on an iPad is completely beyond me. Sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
Seeking bona fide legal advice would definitely be worthwhile, but airing the idea in the community and talking to others who have remade games is also a sound policy, since other advice and issues may be raised. I think this is a case of 'and' rather than 'exclusive or'!
Hm.
I'm sure many other companies and organisations could also save millions by switching to Linux.
What with this Global Credit Crunch that El Gordo has failed to save the world from, this could be the window that the Penguins need to storm the market.
I'm wondering if there could be a market for Linux consultants/trainers in the near future.
Bizarre. Back in them days I had a Spectrum, and lived in the UK. A 48k game would cost £5.95-£9.95 depending on the publisher (Ultimate games typically £9.95, Ocean £7.95, Hewson £6.95). Budget games cost £1.99 (Firebird silver range and Mastertronic) or £2.99 (Mastertronic's MAD range). No way was that anywhere near a week's pay! It would be a couple of hours work, maybe an afternoon at Waitrose (the local supermarket), if that. Mind you though, that was when games could be written by a sole dev, or a small handful of folks. And games would be given away free on the front of magazines.
Yeah, and MS Windows never gets hacked or infected with viruses... IIRC, didn't MS recently advise people to start using something other than IE because someone had spotted a gaping hole in it? Probably not a good line to take with potential clients though, it's a bit mealy-mouthed and sinks to MS's level.